Yodel-ay-hee-hoo! Monkeys are better yodelers than humans, study finds Voice breaks in Latin American monkey calls resemble human yodeling, but over a much wider frequency range. Jennifer Ouellette Apr 3, 2025 3:10 pm | 9 Black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) Credit: Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) Credit: Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreHumans have practiced some form of yodeling since at least the 13th century, when Marco Polo encountered Tibetan monks on his travels who used the vocal technique for long-distance communication. It's since morphed into a distinctive singing style. But can animals also yodel? According to a new paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences, several species of monkey dwelling in the rainforests of Latin America employ "voice breaks" in their calls that acoustically resemble human yodelingi.e., "ultra-yodels" that boast a much wider frequency range.Many years ago, I wrote about the bioacoustics of human yodeling for New Scientist. In many respects, yodeling is quite simple. It merely involves singing a long note subjected to repeated rapid sharp shifts in pitch. It's the unique anatomy of the human vocal tract that makes it possible, notably the larynx (voice box) located just behind the Adam's apple. The larynx is comprised of cartilage and the hyoid bone that together support the vocal cords, which are attached to muscles on either side of the larynx.When air flows through the trachea, the vocal cords vibrate at frequencies ranging from 110 to 200 Hz. We have the capability of contracting the muscles to change the shape, position, and tension of our vocal cords, thereby altering the pitch of the sound produced. Stiffer vocal cords result in faster vibrations, which produce higher pitches.Prior research has shown that human vocal cords share the same two principal vibration modes as a guitar, and human singers rely on both when performing. It's well-known that we have two distinct ranges: a "head voice" and a "chest voice." There is a gap when shifting between them, which trained singers learn how to smooth over. Yodelers accentuate that gap instead.Monkey see, monkey yodel?That's how it works for humans, but when it comes to the question of yodeling animals, it depends on how you define yodeling, according to bioacoustician Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna in Austria, who co-authored this latest paper. Plenty of animal vocalizations use repeated sudden changes in pitch (including birds), and a 2023 study found that toothed whales can produce vocal registers through their noses for echolocation and communication.There haven't been as many studies of vocal registers in non-human primates, but researchers have found, for example, that the "coo" call of the Japanese macaque is similar to a human falsetto; the squeal of a Syke monkey is similar to the human "modal" register; and the Diana monkey produces alarm calls that are similar to "vocal fry" in humans. Tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek) Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University It's known that non-human primates have something humans have lost over the course of evolution: very thin, light vocal membranes just above the vocal folds. Scientists have pondered the purpose of those membranes, and a 2022 study concluded that this membrane was crucial for producing sounds. The co-authors of this latest paper wanted to test their hypothesis that the membranes serve as an additional oscillator to enable such non-human primates to achieve the equivalent of human voice registers. That, in turn, would render them capable in principle of producing a wider range of callsperhaps even a yodel.The team studied many species, including black and gold howler monkeys, tufted capuchins, black-capped squirrel monkeys, and Peruvian spider monkeys. They took CT scans of excised monkey larynxes housed at the Japan Monkey Center, as well as two excised larynxes from tufted capuchin monkeys at Kyoto University. They also made live recordings of monkey calls at the La Senda Verde animal refuge in the Bolivian Andes, using non-invasive EGG to monitor vocal fold vibrations.The results showed that New World monkeys had evolved the largest primate vocal membranes, supporting the hypothesis that they play a critical role in vocal production, specifically voice breaks that transitioned rapidly in frequency, which they achieved by switching sound production from their vocal folds to their vocal membranes. It's technically a yodel, even though it might not sound much like the human version (cf. the recording of a tufted capuchin above).The monkeys' "ultra-yodels" had frequency leaps that were five times larger than human frequency changes, often exceeding three octaves. (Human yodelers are limited to one octave.) While the monkeys' vocal membranes serve to extend their pitch range, the tradeoff is a lack of pitch stability.These results show how monkeys take advantage of an evolved feature in their larynxthe vocal membranewhich allows for a wider range of calls to be produced, including these ultra-yodels," said co-author Jacob Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England.This might be particularly important in primates, which have complex social lives and need to communicate in a variety of different ways. Its highly likely this has evolved to enrich the animals call repertoire, and is potentially used for attention-grabbing changes, call diversification, or identifying themselves.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Biological Sciences, 2025. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0005 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 9 Comments

CLIENT-SIDE ENCRYPTION Google unveils end-to-end messages for Gmail. Only thing is: Its not true E2EE. Yes, encryption/decryption occurs on end-user devices, but there's a catch. Dan Goodin Apr 3, 2025 5:16 pm | 10 Credit: Getty Images Credit: Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWhen Google announced Tuesday that end-to-end encrypted messages were coming to Gmail for business users, some people balked, noting it wasnt true E2EE as the term is known in privacy and security circles. Others wondered precisely how it works under the hood. Heres a description of what the new service does and doesnt do, as well as some of the basic security that underpins it.When Google uses the term E2EE in this context, it means that an email is encrypted inside Chrome, Firefox, or just about any other browser the sender chooses. As the message makes its way to its destination, it remains encrypted and cant be decrypted until it arrives at its final destination, when its decrypted in the recipient's browser.Giving S/MIME the heave-hoThe chief selling point of this new service is that it allows government agencies and the businesses that work with them to comply with a raft of security and privacy regulations and at the same time eliminates the massive headaches that have traditionally plagued anyone deploying such regulation-compliant email systems. Up to now, the most common means has been S/MIME, a standard so complex and painful that only the bravest and most well-resourced organizations tend to implement it.S/MIME requires each sender and receiver to have an X.509 certificate thats been issued by a certificate authority. Obtaining, distributing, and managing these certificates in a secure manner takes time, money, and coordination. That means that if Bob and Alice have never worked together before and an urgent or unexpected need arises for him to send Alice an encrypted message promptly, theyre out of luck until an admin applies for a certificate and sees that its installed on Alices machineso much for flexibility and agility.Google says that E2EE Gmail abstracts away this complexity. Instead, Bob drafts an email to Alice, clicks a button that turns on the feature, and hits send. Bobs browser encrypts the message, and sends it to Alice. The message decrypts only after it arrives in Alices browser and she authenticates herself.To make this happen, Bobs organization deploys what Google says is a lightweight key server, known as a KACL, short for a key access control list. This server, which can be hosted on premises or most cloud services, is where keys are generated and stored. When Bob sends an encrypted message, his browser connects to the key server and obtains an ephemeral symmetric encryption key. Bobs browser encrypts the message and sends it to Alice, along with a reference key. Alices browser uses the reference key to download the symmetric key from the KACL and decrypts the message. The key is then deleted.To prevent Mallory or another adversary-in-the-middle from obtaining the key, Alice must first authenticate herself through Okta, Ping, or whatever other identity provider, or IDP, Bobs organization uses. If this is the first time Alice has received a message from Bobs organization, she will first have to prove to the IDP that she has control of her email address. If Alice plans to receive encrypted emails from Bobs organization in the future, Alice sets up an account that can be used going forward.Bobs organization can add an additional layer of protection by requiring Alice to already have an account on the IDP and authenticate herself through it.The idea is that no matter what, at no time and in no way does Gmail ever have the real key. Never, Julien Duplant, a Google Workspace product manager, told Ars. And we never have the decrypted content. Its only happening on that users device.Now, as to whether this constitutes true E2EE, it likely doesnt, at least under stricter definitions that are commonly used. To purists, E2EE means that only the sender and the recipient have the means necessary to encrypt and decrypt the message. Thats not the case here, since the people inside Bobs organization who deployed and manage the KACL have true custody of the key.In other words, the actual encryption and decryption process occurs on the end-user devices, not on the organizations server or anywhere else in between. Thats the part that Google says is E2EE. The keys, however, are managed by Bobs organization. Admins with full access can snoop on the communications at any time.The mechanism making all of this possible is what Google calls CSE, short for client-side encryption. It provides a simple programming interface that streamlines the process. Until now, CSE worked only with S/MIME. Whats new here is a mechanism for securely sharing a symmetric key between Bobs organization and Alice or anyone else Bob wants to email.The new feature is of potential value to organizations that must comply with onerous regulations mandating end-to-end encryption. It most definitely isnt suitable for consumers or anyone who wants sole control over the messages they send. Privacy advocates, take note.Dan GoodinSenior Security EditorDan GoodinSenior Security Editor Dan Goodin is Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, where he oversees coverage of malware, computer espionage, botnets, hardware hacking, encryption, and passwords. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and following the independent music scene. Dan is based in San Francisco. Follow him at here on Mastodon and here on Bluesky. Contact him on Signal at DanArs.82. 10 Comments

How to avoid Terminators Google DeepMind releases its plan to keep AGI from running wild DeepMind says AGI could arrive in 2030, and it has some ideas to keep us safe. Ryan Whitwam Apr 3, 2025 5:43 pm | 0 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAs AI hype permeates the Internet, tech and business leaders are already looking toward the next step. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to a machine with human-like intelligence and capabilities. If today's AI systems are on a path to AGI, we will need new approaches to ensure such a machine doesn't work against human interests.Unfortunately, we don't have anything as elegant as Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Researchers at DeepMind have been working on this problem and have released a new technical paper (PDF), which you can download at your convenience.It contains a huge amount of detail, clocking in at 108 pages before references. While some in the AI field believe AGI is a pipe dream, the authors of the DeepMind paper project that it could happen by 2030. With that in mind, they aimed to understand the risks of a human-like synthetic intelligence, which they acknowledge could lead to "severe harm."All the ways AGI could suck for humanityThis work has identified four possible types of AGI risk, along with suggestions on how we might ameliorate said risks. The DeepMind team, led by company co-founder Shane Legg, categorized the negative AGI outcomes as misuse, misalignment, mistakes, and structural risks. The four categories of AGI risk, as determined by DeepMind. Credit: Google DeepMind The four categories of AGI risk, as determined by DeepMind. Credit: Google DeepMind The first possible issue, misuse, is fundamentally similar to current AI risks. However, because AGI will be more powerful by definition, the damage it could do is much greater. A ne'er-do-well with access to AGI could misuse the system to do harm, for example, by asking the system to identify and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities or create a designer virus that could be used as a bioweapon.DeepMind says companies developing AGI will have to conduct extensive testing and create robust post-training safety protocols. Essentially, our current AI guardrails on steroids. They also suggest devising a method to suppress dangerous capabilities entirely, sometimes called "unlearning," but it's unclear if this is possible without substantially limiting models.Misalignment is largely not something we have to worry about with generative AI as it currently exists. This type of AGI harm is envisioned as a rogue machine that has shaken off the limits imposed by its designers. Terminators, anyone?To avoid that, DeepMind suggests developers use techniques like amplified oversight, in which two copies of an AI check each other's output, to create robust systems that aren't likely to go rogue. If that fails, DeepMind suggests intensive stress testing and monitoring to watch for any hint that an AI might be turning against us. Keeping AGIs in virtual sandboxes with strict security and direct human oversight could help mitigate issues arising from misalignment. Basically, make sure there's an "off" switch.If, on the other hand, an AI didn't know that its output would be harmful and the human operator didn't intend for it to be, that's a mistake. We get plenty of those with current AI systemsremember when Google said to put glue on pizza? The "glue" for AGI could be much stickier, though. DeepMind notes that militaries may deploy AGI due to "competitive pressure," but such systems could make serious mistakes as they will be tasked with much more elaborate functions than today's AI.The paper doesn't have a great solution for mitigating mistakes. It boils down to not letting AGI get too powerful in the first place. DeepMind calls for deploying slowly and limiting AGI authority. The study also suggests passing AGI commands through a "shield" system that ensures they are safe before implementation.Lastly, there are structural risks, which DeepMind defines as the unintended but real consequences of multi-agent systems contributing to our already complex human existence. For example, AGI could create false information that is so believable that we no longer know who or what to trust. The paper also raises the possibility that AGI could accumulate more and more control over economic and political systems, perhaps by devising heavy-handed tariff schemes. Then one day, we look up and realize the machines are in charge instead of us. This category of risk is also the hardest to guard against because it would depend on how people, infrastructure, and institutions operate in the future.AGI in five years?No one knows if the thinking machines are really just a few years away, but there are plenty of tech leaders who are confident enough to say so. Part of the problem in predicting the emergence of AGI is that we're still just speculating about how human-like intelligence would manifest itself in a machine. Anyone who has used generative AI systems over the past years has seen real, tangible improvements, but does that trajectory lead to true human-like capabilities?We recently talked about a range of AI topics, including AGI, with Google's Tulsee Doshi, director of product management for Gemini. "Different people have different definitions of AGI, and so depending on who you talk to, how close or far we are from AGI is a different conversation," said Doshi. "What I would say is LLMs, Gemini, and the training of smarter and smarter models is on the path to models that are going to be at extremely high intelligence. And that has a ton of value in and of itself."This paper is not the final word on AGI safetyDeepMind notes this is just a "starting point for vital conversations." If the team is right, and AGI will transform the world in five short years, those conversations need to happen soon. If not, well, a lot of people are going to look kind of silly.Ryan WhitwamSenior Technology ReporterRyan WhitwamSenior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he's written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards. 0 Comments

Dying young Wealthy Americans have death rates on par with poor Europeans Some wealthy Europeans have death rates 35 percent lower than the richest Americans. Beth Mole Apr 3, 2025 6:18 pm | 18 Pensioners look out across Lake Zurich in central Zurich, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. Credit: Getty | Pascal Mora Pensioners look out across Lake Zurich in central Zurich, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. Credit: Getty | Pascal Mora Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIt's well-established that, on the whole, Americans die younger than people in most other high-income countries. For instance, an analysis from 2022 found that the average life expectancy of someone born in Switzerland or Spain in 2019 was 84 years. Meanwhile, the average US life expectancy was 78.8, lower than nearly all other high-income countries, including Canada's, which was 82.3 years. And this was before the pandemic, which only made things worse for the US.Perhaps some Americans may think that this lower overall life-expectancy doesn't really apply to them if they're middle- or upper-class. After all, wealth inequality and health disparities are huge problems in the US. Those with more money simply have better access to health care and better health outcomes. Well-off Americans live longer, with lifespans on par with their peers in high-income countries, some may think.It is true that money buys you a longer life in the US. In fact, the link between wealth and mortality may be stronger in the US than in any other high-income country. But, if you think American wealth will put life expectancy in league with Switzerland, you're dead wrong, according to a study in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.A stark findingThe study, led by researchers at Brown University, found that the wealthiest Americans lived shorter lives than the wealthiest Europeans. In fact, wealthy Northern and Western Europeans had death rates 35 percent lower than the wealthiest Americans, whose lifespans were more like the poorest in Northern and Western Europewhich includes countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland."The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the US contributing to lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like stress, diet or environmental hazards," lead study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown, said in a news release.The study looked at health and wealth data of more than 73,000 adults across the US and Europe who were 50 to 85 years old in 2010. There were more than 19,000 from the US, nearly 27,000 from Northern and Western Europe, nearly 19,000 from Eastern Europe, and nearly 9,000 from Southern Europe. For each region, participants were divided into wealth quartiles, with the first being the poorest and the fourth being the richest. The researchers then followed participants until 2022, tracking deaths.The US had the largest gap in survival between the poorest and wealthiest quartiles compared to European countries. America's poorest quartile also had the lowest survival rate of all groups, including the poorest quartiles in all three European regions.While less access to health care and weaker social structures can explain the gap between the wealthy and poor in the US, it doesn't explain the differences between the wealthy in the US and the wealthy in Europe, the researchers note. There may be other systemic factors at play that make Americans uniquely short-lived, such as diet, environment, behaviors, and cultural and social differences."If we want to improve health in the US, we need to better understand the underlying factors that contribute to these differencesparticularly amongst similar socioeconomic groupsand why they translate to different health outcomes across nations," Papanicolas said.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 18 Comments

Switch RTX Nvidia confirms the Switch 2 supports DLSS, G-Sync, and ray-tracing Nvidia says the Switch 2's GPU is 10 times faster than the original Switch. Andrew Cunningham Apr 3, 2025 3:32 pm | 27 The Nintendo Switch 2. Credit: Nintendo The Nintendo Switch 2. Credit: Nintendo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIn the wake of the Switch 2 reveal, neither Nintendo nor Nvidia has gone into any detail at all about the exact chip inside the upcoming handheldtechnically, we are still not sure what Arm CPU architecture or what GPU architecture it uses, how much RAM we can expect it to have, how fast that memory will be, or exactly how many graphics cores we're looking at.But interviews with Nintendo executives and a blog post from Nvidia did at least confirm several of the new chip's capabilities. The "custom Nvidia processor" has a GPU "with dedicated [Ray-Tracing] Cores and Tensor Cores for stunning visuals and AI-driven enhancements," writes Nvidia Software Engineering VP Muni Anda.This means that, as rumored, the Switch 2 will support Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology, which helps to upscale a lower-resolution image into a higher-resolution image with less of a performance impact than native rendering and less loss of quality than traditional upscaling methods. For the Switch games that can render at 4K or at 120 FPS 1080p, DLSS will likely be responsible for making it possible.The other major Nvidia technology supported by the new Switch is G-Sync, which prevents screen tearing when games are running at variable frame rates. Nvidia notes that G-Sync is only supported in handheld mode and not in docked mode, which could be a limitation of the Switch dock's HDMI port.The current Switch hardware is mostly too old to take advantage of these technologies. A handful of late Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, did make some use of AMD's hardware-agnostic (and lower quality) FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling to squeeze out more performance, but at a certain point the base hardware is just too old and slow to achieve acceptable results.For the Switch 2, a good deal of circumstantial evidence points to the Nvidia T239a slightly cut-down version of the Nvidia Orin T234 it sells for automotive, industrial, and robotics applicationspowering the handheld. (In Nvidia's branding scheme, smaller/lower numbers denote a higher-end chip). The T239, or whatever Switch-specific variant of the chip ends up being inside the Switch 2, uses Nvidia's Ampere graphics architecture, the same as 2020 and 2021's GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs for PCs.Ampere doesn't support DLSS Frame Generation, a new feature Nvidia has marketed for the GeForce 40- and 50-series GPUs that generates entirely new frames using the tensor cores rather than touching up existing frames. But it does support all of Nvidia's DLSS upscaling models and hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, making it a good candidate for the Switch 2's GPU architecture.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 27 Comments

Pay attention here! Bonobos calls may be the closest thing to animal language weve seen 300 aspects of each call were cataloged, letting researchers estimate meaning. Jacek Krywko Apr 3, 2025 4:14 pm | 3 This situation might call for a whistle. Credit: USO This situation might call for a whistle. Credit: USO Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBonobos, great apes related to us and chimpanzees that live in the Republic of Congo, communicate with vocal calls including peeps, hoots, yelps, grunts, and whistles. Now, a team of Swiss scientists led by Melissa Berthet, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich, discovered bonobos can combine these basic sounds into larger semantic structures. In these communications, meaning is something more than just a sum of individual callsa trait known as non-trivial compositionality, which we once thought was uniquely human.To do this, Berthet and her colleagues built a database of 700 bonobo calls and deciphered them using methods drawn from distributional semantics, the methodology weve relied on in reconstructing long-lost languages like Etruscan or Rongorongo. For the first time, we have a glimpse into what bonobos mean when they call to each other in the wild.Context is everythingThe key idea behind distributional semantics is that when words appear in similar contexts, they tend to have similar meanings. To decipher an unknown language, you need to collect a large corpus of words and turn those words into vectorsmathematical representations that let you place them in a multidimensional semantic space. The second thing you need is context data, which tells you the circumstances in which these words were used (that gets vectorized, too). When you map your word vectors onto context vectors in this multidimensional space, what usually happens is that words with similar meaning end up close to each other. Berthet and her colleagues wanted to apply the same trick to bonobos calls. That seemed straightforward at first glance, but proved painfully hard to execute.We worked at a camp in the forest, got up super early at 3:30 in the morning, walked one or two hours to get to the bonobos nest. At [the] time they would wake up, I would switch my microphone on for the whole day to collect as many vocalizations as I could, Berthet says. Each recorded call then had to be annotated with a horribly long list of contextual parameters. Berthet had a questionnaire filled with queries like: is there a neighboring group around; are there predators around; is the caller feeding, resting, or grooming; is another individual approaching the caller, etc. There were 300 questions that had to be answered for each of the 700 recorded calls.But when all this data was finally vectorized and the team started working their distributional semantics magic, gathering it proved worth the effort.Bonobo dictionaryBerthet started with establishing the tentative meaning of the basic calls: singular grunts or yelps. Grunts appeared in many different contexts, including grooming, feeding, or moving, and the team interpreted them as intended to get anothers attention, a bit like saying look at me. Yelps meant lets do this as an imperative, while peeps had a very similar meaning, but were more of a suggestionthink I would like to Bonobos also used peeps or yelps when they wanted others to join them. Low hoots were translated as I am excited, while high hoots signaled the presence and location of the caller in dangerous situations. Whistles meant lets stay together.Once the basic calls were sorted, Berthet started looking at their different combinations. Bonobos combined yelps and grunts into a trivial compositional structure meaning lets do what I do. This was mostly used when the group was building night nestsplatforms made high in the trees out of broken branches, sometimes lined with leaves.However, the team also found examples of non-trivial compositionality, the first such discovery outside of humans.The first non-trivial combination was high hoot-low hoot that was translated as a distress call. But it was also used to stop other individuals display behaviorsdramatic, exaggerated actions or gestures bonobos perform to assert dominance or attract attention. The second was either peep or yelp in the join meaning paired with high hoot to form a structure used for coordinating with others before traveling. Finally, the I would like to peep followed by lets stay together whistle was used for initiating more romantically inclined interactions bonobos are famous for indulging in.Berthet said her team managed to record a few more calls but could not use them in her study because they were too rare to gather meaningful context data. Still, she expects we have much more to learn about bonobos communication.Gestures and soundsOne thing the team was not certain about was whether there were more nuanced variations of the sounds they roughly categorized as grunts, peeps, yelps, hoots, and whistles. There may be subtle acoustic differences that could lead to different meanings, and it may be our dictionary is too rough, Berthet acknowledges. Another thing the team did not include in their analysis is the gestures that bonobos often accompany their calls with. They use a lot of gestures, and they may use them to either refine or completely change the meaning of their vocalizations, Berthet added. Applying the same methodology but with gestures included would be great. Thats definitely the next step to take.But she also has a few further steps in mind, and they go way beyond just bonobos. The team argues that the most important contribution of their work is establishing a methodology for deciphering animal communication. Since now we have this nice tool to investigate compositionality and meaning, what I want to do is apply it to several animal species, Berthet says. Chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas, and monkeys are next on her list. The goal of these future studies is to trace when abilities like non-trivial compositionality started to appear in primate evolution. Maybe well find compositionality in old world primates. Maybe its just present in great apes. Maybe its been there the whole time. Its really an open question now, Berthet says.Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adv1170Jacek KrywkoAssociate WriterJacek KrywkoAssociate Writer Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry. 3 Comments

8 seconds SpaceX just took a big step toward reusing Starships Super Heavy booster SpaceX hasn't said whether the next Starship flight will use a new or flight-proven booster. Stephen Clark Apr 3, 2025 1:11 pm | 28 The first flight of Booster 14, seen here, occurred on January 16. SpaceX hasn't said how many, if any, of the 33 Raptor engines it replaced in preparation for Thursday's static fire test. Credit: SpaceX The first flight of Booster 14, seen here, occurred on January 16. SpaceX hasn't said how many, if any, of the 33 Raptor engines it replaced in preparation for Thursday's static fire test. Credit: SpaceX Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSpaceX is having trouble with Starship's upper stage after back-to-back failures, but engineers are making remarkable progress with the rocket's enormous booster.The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship's first stagecalled Super Heavycame at 9:40 am local time (10:40 am EDT; 14:40 UTC) Thursday at the company's Starbase launch site in South Texas. With an unmistakable blast of orange exhaust, SpaceX fired up a Super Heavy booster that has already flown to the edge of space. The burn lasted approximately eight seconds.This was the first time SpaceX has test-fired a "flight-proven" Super Heavy booster, and it could pave the way for this particular rocketdesignated Booster 14to fly again soon. A reflight of Booster 14, which previously launched and returned to Earth in January, could happen as soon as the next Starship launch. With Thursday's static fire test, Booster 14 appears to be closer to flight readiness than any of the boosters in SpaceX's factory, which is a short distance from the launch site.But SpaceX hasn't confirmed whether the upcoming launch will use a new or reused booster. If SpaceX goes with Booster 14, another successful flight would be an important step forward for the Starship program, while engineers struggle with problems on the rocket's upper stage, known simply as the ship.What a differenceSuper Heavy has 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines capable of producing nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts toward the Moon. Super Heavy is perhaps the most complex rocket booster ever built. It's certainly the largest. To get a sense of how big this booster is, imagine the fuselage of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet standing on end.SpaceX has now launched eight full-scale test flights of Starship, with a Super Heavy booster and Starship's upper stage stacked together to form a rocket that towers 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall. The booster portion of the rocket has performed well so far, with seven consecutive successful launches since a failure on Starship's debut flight. Booster 14 comes in for the catch after flying to the edge of space on January 16. Credit: SpaceX Most recently, SpaceX has recovered three Super Heavy boosters in four attempts. SpaceX has a wealth of experience with recovering and reusing Falcon 9 boosters. The total number of Falcon rocket landings is now 426.SpaceX reused a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in March 2017. This was an operational flight with a communications satellite on a mission valued at several hundred million dollars.Ahead of the milestone Falcon 9 reflight eight years ago, SpaceX spent nearly a year refurbishing and retesting the rocket after it returned from its first mission. The rocket racked up more mileage on the ground than it did in flight, first returning to its Florida launch base on a SpaceX drone ship and then moving by truck to SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, for thorough inspections and refurbishment.Once engineers finished that work, they transported the booster to SpaceXs test site in McGregor, Texas, for test-firings, then finally returned the rocket to Florida for final launch preparations.There will be no such journey for the Super Heavy booster. First of all, it's a lot more difficult to transport than the shorter, skinnier Falcon 9. Super Heavy's design also features improvements informed by lessons learned in the Falcon 9 program. This helped SpaceX get the Super Heavy on the cusp of a potential reflight in less than three months.You can watch a replay of Thursday's static fire test in this video from NASASpaceflight.com.With Starship and the Super Heavy booster, SpaceX should get more points for difficulty. Super Heavy is larger and has more engines than the Falcon 9, so theoretically, there are more things that could go wrong. And instead of touching down with landing legs at a separate location, SpaceX uses mechanical arms to catch Starship's booster as it returns to the launch pad.This approach should allow engineers to rapidly reuse Super Heavy boosters. Eventually, SpaceX will do the same with Starships returning from orbit.Still investigatingAt the same time that engineers are taking steps forward with the Super Heavy booster, the other big piece of Starship is holding up SpaceX's launch cadence in Texas. The upper stage, or ship, failed at roughly the same point in flight on SpaceX's two most recent test flights in January and in March.These test flights were the first use of an upgraded, larger ship known as Block 2 or Version 2. On both flights, Starship lost power from its engines and tumbled out of control roughly eight minutes after liftoff, breaking apart and dropping fiery debris near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.The failures prevented SpaceX from testing Starship's upgraded heat shield, one of the most significant upgrades introduced with Block 2. The plan for both flights was to send Starship on a trajectory through space halfway around the world, then perform a guided reentry over the Indian Ocean, targeting a pinpoint splashdown northwest of Australia. A successful reentry and splashdown at sea could give SpaceX officials confidence to attempt a full orbital flight of Starship, culminating in a catch at the launch site in Texas.Instead, SpaceX repeated the same launch profile from the January mission on the following flight in March. The company will likely do the same on Flight 9, the next Starship launch. Debris from Starship's eighth flight falls back into the atmosphere in this view over Hog Cay, Bahamas. Credit: GeneDoctorB via X SpaceX has closed out the investigation into the accident that cut short the January test flight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA announced Monday that it accepted the results of SpaceX's investigation, which determined the "probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle was stronger than anticipated vibrations during flight [that] led to increased stress on, and failure of, the hardware in the propulsion system."Ultimately, the vibrations led to a fire in the engine compartment before the engines shut down and the vehicle lost control.The FAA said SpaceX identified and implemented 11 corrective actions to prevent the same failure from happening again. Officials haven't announced a probable root cause for the launch failure in March. The FAA said SpaceX's investigation remains open. But the circumstances and timing of the failure suggest it could share a similar underlying cause.Whatever the case may be, Starship's back-to-back failures to start the year are a setback. Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, wanted the company to launch as many as 25 Starship flights in 2025. At this point, achieving half that number might be a stretch.This means critical tests of the ship's reentry and return to the launch site, in-orbit refueling capability, and the first Starship missions to deploy larger versions of SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites are on hold. Earlier this year, Musk suggested the Starship refueling demonstration would slip into 2026, which isn't good news for NASA.The US space agency has multibillion-dollar contracts with SpaceX to develop a version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon's south pole as part of the Artemis lunar program. For those missions, SpaceX must launch around 10 (the exact number remains unclear) Starship refueling flights to low-Earth orbit to top off the propellant tanks for the ship before it heads to the Moon.This will require not just a thorough demonstration of SpaceX's refueling architecture but also recovery and reuse of boosters and ships to maintain a launch rate fast enough to complete all of the refueling flights over a period of a few weeks to a few months.SpaceX hasn't released a schedule for the next Starship flight, but it's probably at least a month away. The ship assigned to the next test flight is still in its factory at Starbase. Its next move will be to roll out to a test stand for its own engine firing, then SpaceX will likely move it back to the factory for inspections and finishing touches. Then, SpaceX will roll the ship to the launch pad, where crews will raise it on top of the Super Heavy booster in the final days before liftoff.Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 28 Comments

Math isn't mathing? Critics suspect Trumps weird tariff math came from chatbots Trump accused of consulting chatbots after critics mock tariffs on islands of penguins. Ashley Belanger Apr 3, 2025 1:22 pm | 102 Some of Trump's tariffs target uninhabited, remote islands home to penguins. Credit: BA19285 | Stone Some of Trump's tariffs target uninhabited, remote islands home to penguins. Credit: BA19285 | Stone Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreCritics are questioning if Donald Trump's administration possibly used chatbots to calculate reciprocal tariffs announced yesterday that Trump claimed were "individualized" tariffs placed on countries that have " the largest trade deficits" with the US.Those tariffs are due to take effect on April 9 for 60 countries, with peak rates around 50 percent. That's in addition to a baseline 10 percent tariff that all countries will be subject to starting on April 5. But while Trump expressed intent to push back on anyone supposedly taking advantage of the US, some of the countries on the reciprocal tariffs list puzzled experts and officials, who pointed out to The Guardian that Trump was, for some reason, targeting uninhabited islands, some of them exporting nothing and populated with penguins.Some overseas officials challenged Trump's math, such as George Plant, the administrator of Norfolk Island, who told the Guardian that "there are no known exports from Norfolk Island to the United States and no tariffs or known non-tariff trade barriers on goods coming to Norfolk Island."Economists fear these tariffs could suddenly hit American businesses with enormous costs that could rapidly cause price hikes for consumers. Among those sounding alarms was economist James Surowiecki, who took to X (formerly Twitter) to allege where the supposedly "fake tariff rates come from."The US Trade Representative published a breakdown of how the Trump administration arrived at its calculations, which Politico said "describes the same calculation detailed by Surowiecki." But according to Surowiecki, the president's team allegedly used "made-up numbers" that "only used the trade deficit in goods," not services, "so even though we run a trade surplus in services with the world, those exports don't count as far as Trump is concerned.""They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did," Surowiecki wrote. "Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us." Further down in the thread, he alleged that Trump's math was "dumb and deceptive."Rumors claim Trump consulted chatbotsOn social media, rumors swirled that the Trump administration got these supposedly fake numbers from chatbots. On Bluesky, tech entrepreneur Amy Hoy joined others posting screenshots from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok, each showing that the chatbots arrived at similar calculations as the Trump administration.Some of the chatbots also warned against the oversimplified math in outputs. ChatGPT acknowledged that the easy method "ignores the intricate dynamics of international trade." Gemini cautioned that it could only offer a "highly simplified conceptual approach" that ignored the "vast real-world complexities and consequences" of implementing such a trade strategy. And Claude specifically warned that "trade deficits alone dont necessarily indicate unfair trade practices, and tariffs can have complex economic consequences, including increased prices and potential retaliation." And even Grok warns that "imposing tariffs isn't exactly 'easy'" when prompted, calling it "a blunt tool: quick to swing, but the ripple effects (higher prices, pissed-off allies) can complicate things fast," an Ars test showed, using a similar prompt as social media users generally asking, "how do you impose tariffs easily?"The Verge plugged in phrasing explicitly used by the Trump administrationprompting chatbots to provide "an easy way for the US to calculate tariffs that should be imposed on other countries to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of its trading partners, with the goal of driving bilateral trade deficits to zero"and got the "same fundamental suggestion" as social media users reported.Whether the Trump administration actually consulted chatbots while devising its global trade policy will likely remain a rumor. It's possible that the chatbots' training data simply aligned with the administration's approach.But with even chatbots warning that the strategy may not benefit the US, the pressure appears to be on Trump to prove that the reciprocal tariffs will lead to "better-paying American jobs making beautiful American-made cars, appliances, and other goods" and "address the injustices of global trade, re-shore manufacturing, and drive economic growth for the American people." As his approval rating hits new lows, Trump continues to insist that "reciprocal tariffs are a big part of why Americans voted for President Trump.""Everyone knew hed push for them once he got back in office; its exactly what he promised, and its a key reason he won the election," the White House fact sheet said.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 102 Comments

this is all so unnecessary Employee pricing for all, tariffs on the sticker: OEMs react to tariffs New car prices were already 25% more expensive than before the pandemic. Now what? Jonathan M. Gitlin Apr 3, 2025 12:00 pm | 49 You won't believe how automakers reacted to business-crippling tariffs. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images You won't believe how automakers reacted to business-crippling tariffs. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreNew 25 percent tariffs on all foreign car imports into the United States went into effect this week as President Trump ignited his new trade war. It has caused something of a rush at dealerships around the country as customers descend on existing stock in an attempt to beat looming price increases of thousands of dollars. Now we're starting to see how the automakers are reacting.Employee pricing for allFord is in the rather enviable position of having the least exposure to the new vehicle tariff than all but Tesla; less than 20 percent of the cars, trucks, and SUVs that Ford sells in the US are imported from abroad. And it will lean into that with a new ad campaign with the slogan "From America, For America," which launches today. (Note that this does not take into account the separate parts tariff that goes into effect before May 2.)Nevermind the slogan, though. The campaign extends Ford's "A plan" pricing, which in plain English is its employee discount, to all its customers. The blue oval is offering A plan pricing on most 2024 and 2025 vehicles, including the all-electric F-150 Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, as well as its various hybrids."You pay what we pay," Ford's director of US sales told the Detroit Free Press.Make it clear where the price increase comes fromAt the other end of the scale, Volkswagen is much more exposed to the new tariff. Almost half its US sales are imported from its plant in Mexico, with the ID. Buzz and Golfs GTI and R coming from Germany. Adding new production to its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which currently builds the electric ID. 4 and the Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport SUVs, is possible but would not be a quick process.So VW wants to make it clear to customers why some of its products are about to get more expensive, which it estimates will begin around April 22 or 23. It will do that by adding a new line to the Monroney sticker, with a line for the import fee added alongside the destination charge, according to a VW memo seen by Automotive News.Send employees homeAround three million people work in the automotive industry in the US, and it's hard to see how the sector will avoid job losses as it contracts, particularly once the parts tariff goes into effect. (Some parts can cross the US border more than once on their journey from raw material to finished component and will get much more expensive, especially as Canada and Mexico levy retaliatory tariffs of their own.)Stellantis is having a rough time of late in North America, where its sales have fallen for the past seven consecutive quarters. Now, some of its workers in Michigan and Indiana are among the first to be idled as a result of the tariffs.The company is laying off 900 workers temporarily at stamping, casting, and transmission plants as a result of idling production at factories in Windsor, Canada (where 4,500 employees are being sent home for two weeks), and Toluca, Mexico (where workers will still get paid but won't assemble cars this month), according to a letter sent by Stellantis to employees, seen by Reuters.We can expect more automakers to react in the coming days, but the full effects will be delayed as automakers and their dealerships run down existing inventory, which may take a couple of months. One thing is clear: It will be an even lousier time to buy a new vehicle, the prices of which have already been elevated by 25 percent since the pandemic of 2020.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 49 Comments

The thrill of discovery Google gives NotebookLM a Discover button to search the web NotebookLM can do the legwork for you now. Ryan Whitwam Apr 3, 2025 12:19 pm | 1 Credit: Google Credit: Google Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreMost of Google's AI efforts thus far have involved adding generative features to existing products, but NotebookLM is different. Created by the Google Labs team, NotebookLM uses AI to analyze user-provided documents. Starting today, it will be even easier to use NotebookLM to explore topics, as Google has added a "Discover Sources" feature to let the app look up its own sources.Previously, to create a new notebook, you had to feed the AI documents, web links, YouTube videos, or raw text. You can still do that, but you don't have to with the addition of Discover functionality. Simply click the new button and tell NotebookLM what you're interested in learning. Google says the app will consider "hundreds of potential web sources" in the blink of an eye, giving you the top ten from which to choose. There will be links available so you can peruse the suggestions before adding them to the model.The sources you select will be ingested as if they were documents you uploaded, creating a conversant AI for your chosen topic. The content of those sources will also be loaded into NotebookLM so you can refer to them directly. That's not why you use NotebookLM, though. You use NotebookLM for all the nifty AI-assisted features.In addition to the chatbot functionality, NotebookLM can use the source data to build FAQs, briefing summaries, and, of course, Audio Overviewsthat's a podcast-style conversation between two fake people, a feature that manages to be simultaneously informative and deeply unsettling. It's probably the most notable capability of NotebookLM, though. Google recently brought Audio Overviews to its Gemini Deep Research product, too.And that's not allGoogle is lowering the barrier to entry even more. You don't even need to have any particular goal to play around with NotebookLM. In addition to the Discover button, Google has added an "I'm Feeling Curious" button, a callback to its iconic randomized "I'm feeling lucky" search button. Register your curiosity with NotebookLM, and it will seek out sources on a random topic.Google says the new NotebookLM features are available starting today, but you might not see them right away. It could take about a week until everyone has Discover Sources and I'm Feeling Curious. Both of these features are available for free users, but be aware that the app has limits on the number of Audio Overviews and sources unless you pay for Google's AI Premium subscription for $20 per month.Ryan WhitwamSenior Technology ReporterRyan WhitwamSenior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he's written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards. 1 Comments

express train to storageville Explaining MicroSD Express cards and why you should care about them Little-used 2019 standard bridges a gap between internal and external storage. Andrew Cunningham Apr 3, 2025 10:00 am | 9 The microSD Express standard has existed for a long time, but it hasn't seen wide adoption in a mass-market consumer device. Enter Nintendo's new Switch 2. Credit: SanDisk The microSD Express standard has existed for a long time, but it hasn't seen wide adoption in a mass-market consumer device. Enter Nintendo's new Switch 2. Credit: SanDisk Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAmong the changes mentioned in yesterday's Nintendo Switch 2 presentation was a note that the new console doesn't just support MicroSD Express cards for augmenting the device's 256GB of internal storage, but it requiresMicroSD Express. Whatever plentiful, cheap microSD card you're using in your current Switch, including Sandisk's Nintendo-branded ones, can't migrate over to your Switch 2 alongside all your Switch 1 games.MicroSD Express, explainedWhy is regular-old MicroSD no longer good enough? It all comes down to speed.Most run-of-the-mill SD and microSD cards you can buy today are using some version of the Ultra High Speed (UHS) standard. Designed to augment the default speed (12.5MB/s) and high speed (25MB/s) from the earliest versions of the SD card standard, the three UHS versions enable data transfers of up to 624MB/s.But most commodity microSD cards, including pricier models like Samsung's Pro Ultimate series, use UHS-I, which has a maximum data transfer speed of 104MB/s. The original Switch uses a UHS-I microSD card slot for storage expansion.Why have newer and faster versions of the standardUHS-II, UHS-III, and SD Expressfailed to achieve critical mass? Because for most consumer applications, it turns out that 100-ish megabytes per second is plenty. The SD Association itself says that 90MB per second is good enough to record an 8K video stream at up to 120 frames per second. Recording pictures and video is the most demanding thing most SD cards are called upon to dogive or take a Raspberry Pi-based computerand you don't need to overspend to get extra speed you're not going to use.All of that said, thereis a small but measurable increase in launch and loading times when loading games from the original Switch's microSD card instead of from internal storage. And for games with chronic performance issues like Pokmon ScarletandViolet, one of the community-suggested fixes was to move the game from your microSD card to your Switch's internal storageto alleviate one of the system's plentiful performance bottlenecks.The Switch 2's additional power opens the door to more complex games that could lag even more noticeably, especially if they're ported from consoles that expect more than 50 times the storage bandwidth (Sony requires an SSD with read speeds of at least 5,500MB/s for the PlayStation 5).And that's where SD Express comes in. These cards are connected to the same PCI Express/NVMe interface that internal SSDs use in modern PCs and the other game consoles, theoretically giving your SD card access to the same bandwidth as internal storage.Now, you won't actuallyget performance as fast as an internal SSD using this interface. The speed varies a lot based on the PCI Express version your gadget is using (3.0 or 4.0) and how many "lanes" of bandwidth it's allowed to use (these are, in short, the connections between a device's CPU and external accessories like SSDs, Wi-Fi adapters, or dedicated GPUs, and all CPUs and SoCs have a limited number of them to hand out). Depending on these factors, microSD Express can deliver anywhere between 985MB/s and 3940MB/s of theoretical bandwidth.MicroSD cards will also be slowed down because there are fewer physical flash memory chips to write to at a time, a process called "interleaving" that is responsible for much of an SSD's speed. This SanDisk microSD Express card, one of the only ones actually available at retail right now, lists its top speeds as 880MB/s for reads and 650MB/s for writes.But even at its worst, this is several times the amount of bandwidth available to whatever UHS-I microSD card is inserted into your current Switch. Express cards won't make an SD card feel as fast as internal storage, but it will help the microSD card keep pace a bit.At what cost?One other benefit of workaday, plain-old UHS-I microSD cards? The price. Great ones are cheap. Good-enough ones are dirt cheap, even if you stick to major storage vendors like Samsung, Sandisk, and Lexar (please do not buy no-name solid state storage). A quality 256GB microSD card will run you around $20, a pittance compared to whatever you paid for the device you're putting it in.For the SanDisk microSD Express, the same amount of storage will run you around $60. This is not only more expensive than a regular cheap SD card, but it's more expensive than actual internal SSDs. The cheaper name-brand 1TB internal SSDs, including some sold by SanDisk parent company Western Digital, can give you four times as much space for around the same price.These prices should go down over time, and the Switch 2 will be a part of the reason whyat a bare minimum, it will likely prompt the creation of multiple alternate microSD Express options from SanDisk's competitors. But at launch, it may still feel like a raw deal because it's just one ofmany things about the Switch 2 that costs more money than the Switch 1. Compared to the first Switch, you're paying between $100 and $150 more for the console itself, $10 more for each pair of Joy-Cons or Pro Controllers you buy, $50 for a replacement dock, and between $10 and $20 more for first-party games.The Switch 2's relatively generous 256GB of internal storage should help you avoid the need for an SD card, and it could be all you ever need if you manage your storage space carefully. But the extra cost of microSD Express on top of everything else does rankle, even if the technical reasons behind the move are totally justifiable.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 9 Comments

Bonus! A bonus from the shingles vaccine: Dementia protection? The study shows a sharp change when the vaccine was introduced in Wales. John Timmer Apr 3, 2025 10:39 am | 0 Credit: Cavan Images Credit: Cavan Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA study released on Wednesday finds that a live-virus vaccine that limits shingles symptoms was associated with a drop in the risk for dementia when it was introduced. The work took advantage of the fact that the National Health Service Wales made the vaccine available with a very specific age limit, essentially creating two populations, vaccinated and unvaccinated, separated by a single date. And these populations showed a sharp divide in how often they were diagnosed with dementia, despite having little in the way of other differences in health issues or treatments.What a dayThis study didn't come out of nowhere. There have been a number of hints recently that members of the herpesvirus family that can infect nerve cells are associated with dementia. That group includes Varicella zoster, the virus that causes both chicken pox andpotentially many years after shingles, an extremely painful rash. And over the past couple of years, observational studies have suggested that the vaccine against shingles may have a protective effect.But it's extremely difficult to do a clinical trial given that the onset of dementia may happen decades after most people first receive the shingles vaccine. That's why the use of NHS Wales data was critical. When the first attenuated virus vaccine for shingles became available, it was offered to a subset of the Welsh population. Those who were born on or after September 2, 1933, were eligible to receive the vaccine. Anyone older than that was permanently ineligible.(The UK NHS considers things like the cost/benefit of treatments, and likely took into account the potential impact of the side effects on the elderly in making this decision.)This created what's termed a natural experiment, in that the populations born a few weeks on either side of this data should be roughly equivalent in terms of health risks and cumulative exposure. The only real difference is whether or not they were likely to get the vaccine. And health records indicated that only 0.01 percent of those in the ineligible group did, while nearly half of those eligible received it.So residents of Wales born on either side of the dividing date were matched according to their use of preventative health services, past diagnoses, and educational level. The incidence of dementia was then compared between people on either side of September 2, 1933. As a first step, the researchers confirmed that the vaccine was effective at reducing the incidence of shingles, with numbers similar to those in the vaccine's clinical trials.Overall, being eligible for the vaccine was associated with a 1.3 percent reduction in the absolute risk of a dementia diagnosis. That translates to a 8.5 percent reduction of relative risk; when scaled to account for the fact that fewer than half of those eligible received the vaccine, that works out to be a 20 percent reduction in relative risk, which is pretty substantial.To make sure that it was real, the researchers repeated the analysis using a difference-in-difference approach and came up with roughly the same numbers. That also eliminates the possibility that people who came in for health care (for shingles or some other condition) were more likely to incidentally receive a dementia diagnosis. They also compared the before-and-after populations in terms of a collection of common health outcomes and found that none of those showed any change in the two populations. And nothing else related to NHS policy was changed based on the September 2 date.Separately, in a draft manuscript the researchers posted on the Med arXiv, the researchers find a similar effect when using UK HNS data to search for a protective effect of the shingles vaccines when it comes to deaths diagnosed to result from dementia. So by all indications, the effect was real.Whats going on?The researchers suggest three potential explanations. One of them is the obvious: Suppressing the reactivation of the varicella zoster virus reduces dementia onset. But it's also possible that the effect is indirectthat dementia is associated with immune activity, and the vaccine alters that in some way. Finally, there's the possibility that being treated for shingles could promote the onset of dementia or increase the frequency of diagnoses.The last question was fairly easy to answer. The researchers note yet again that other chronic diagnoses show a change at around the critical date. And they also adjusted their analysis to control for the frequency of medical care. The subgroup that interacted with the NHS most often showed roughly the same protection by the vaccine as the group as a whole did. Finally, the researchers note that shingles diagnosis and treatment didn't increase the probability of dementia diagnoses.In contrast, there is some evidence that the effect is related to the activation of the virus. People who experienced multiple shingles events were more likely to receive a dementia diagnosis. And people who received an antiviral treatment in response to shingles had a reduced incidence of dementia.But there were also differences that suggest the immune response in general may be involved. Those who are prone to autoimmune or allergic responses (which are more common in women) showed a greater protection from the vaccine, as did women. These effects aren't large, but they may provide a hint that there's something more than a specific response to one virus.Following up on these results, however, will be complicated. While most people associate the onset of dementia in the elderly with Alzheimer's, there are a number of distinct dementia diagnoses, often with risk factors and underlying biology that only partly overlap. In many cases, there's no easy way to distinguish between some of them. So there's the chance that these results represent an even stronger effect that's specific to a subset of the known dementias.But at least from a medical perspective, it doesn't really matter. The vaccine is highly effective at preventing severe cases of shingles, and it seems to significantly reduce the frequency of dementia. There is even less reason to avoid getting it.Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-08800-x (About DOIs).John TimmerSenior Science EditorJohn TimmerSenior Science Editor John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots. 0 Comments

"Investigation is ongoing" Vast pedophile network shut down in Europols largest CSAM operation 79 arrested after Europol shuts down massive child porn platform. Ashley Belanger Apr 2, 2025 2:59 pm | 24 Credit: REMKO DE WAAL / Contributor | AFP Credit: REMKO DE WAAL / Contributor | AFP Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreEuropol has shut down one of the largest dark web pedophile networks in the world, prompting dozens of arrests worldwide and threatening that more are to follow.Launched in 2021, KidFlix allowed users to join for free to preview low-quality videos depicting child sex abuse materials (CSAM). To see higher-resolution videos, users had to earn credits by sending cryptocurrency payments, uploading CSAM, or "verifying video titles and descriptions and assigning categories to videos."Europol seized the servers and found a total of 91,000 unique videos depicting child abuse, "many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement," the agency said in a press release.KidFlix going dark was the result of the biggest child sexual exploitation operation in Europol's history, the agency said. Operation Stream, as it was dubbed, was supported by law enforcement in more than 35 countries, including the United States.Nearly 1,400 suspected consumers of CSAM have been identified among 1.8 million global KidFlix users, and 79 have been arrested so far. According to Europol, 39 child victims were protected as a result of the sting, and more than 3,000 devices were seized.Police identified suspects through payment data after seizing the server. Despite cryptocurrencies offering a veneer of anonymity, cops were apparently able to use sophisticated methods to trace transactions to bank details. And in some cases cops defeated user attempts to hide their identitiessuch as a man who made payments using his mother's name in Spain, a local news outlet, Todo Alicante, reported. It likely helped that most suspects were already known offenders, Europol noted."The online world is not anonymous," Europol warned. "Most of the suspects identified in Operation Stream were matched against records in Europols databases, proving that most offenders engaged in child sexual exploitation are repeat offenders and are not unknown to law enforcement authorities."Arrests spanned the globe, including 16 in Spain, where one computer scientist was found with an "abundant" amount of CSAM and payment receipts, Todo Alicante reported. Police also arrested a "serial" child abuser in the US, CBS News reported."Some of those arrested not only uploaded and watched videos but also abused children," Europol said, while confirming that "the investigation is ongoing," making it appear likely that more arrests could follow.More arrests could prevent more abuse. In Germany, cops conducted raids in nearly 100 locations. Guido Limmer, the deputy head of the Bavarian Criminal Police, told CBS News that a 36-year-old German man was among those arrested. He not only allegedly searched for CSAM on KidFlix but "offered his young son for games," Limmer said.Other users potentially uploaded fake child sex images generated by artificial intelligence, as police found AI CSAM on one suspect's devices, Todo Alicante reported. Law enforcement globally has warned that a flood of AI CSAM is making it harder to identify real victims, which could complicate Europol's task of protecting more kids through its ongoing investigation.Ashley BelangerSenior Policy ReporterAshley BelangerSenior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 24 Comments

Some companies can still keep a secret A look at the Switch 2s initial games, both familiar and what-the-heck A bit of early 2020s triple-A, some neat originals, and two wild arrivals. Kevin Purdy Apr 2, 2025 3:20 pm | 15 Credit: FromSoftware Credit: FromSoftware Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreI don't think anybody outside Nintendo or FromSoftware was expecting a spiritual successor to Bloodborne to be one of the titles announced at the Nintendo Switch 2's launch today. Not just "playable" on the Switch 2, but exclusive to it. But there it was, The Duskbloods, debuting its dread horror action just a few minutes before the luminously pink and puffy Kirby Air Ride 2.The Switch 2's launch titles, and other announced games, are quite the rich stew. Here are some of the AAA ports, exclusives, and unexpectedly gruesome games arriving on the just-announced system.Switch exclusives, including Nintendos own Riding it like he stole it (in 2003). Credit: Nintendo Riding it like he stole it (in 2003). Credit: Nintendo We'll get to FromSoftware's surprising Switch 2 exclusive in a bit. Far less surprising is a new Mario Kart game, as Mario Kart 8sold more than 67 million copies, covering more than 40 percent of all Switches sold. Mario Kart World goes big, with 24 simultaneous players, and the ability to explore off the course in a kind of open-world setting.These are the other Switch 2 exclusives Nintendo touted today:Kirby Air Riders, a sequel to the 2003 GameCube titleKirby's Air Ride, puts the adorable pink inhalation monster and his friends on jet-powered stars.Donkey Kong Bananza has the big guy doing his usual 3D/2D platforming, but also digging into mines.Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonmenthas Koei Tecmo and Nintendo putting a prequel story toTears of the Kingdom into theDynasty Warriorsmass slash-em-up mold.Drag x Driveuses both the Joy-Con's mouse mode and motion controls for moving, shooting, and even waving to your teammates for the ball in a stylized wheelchair basketball match.Along with those Switch 2-only titles, Nintendo is offering "Switch 2 editions" of many titles for the original Switch, including the not-yet-released Pokmon Legends Z-A, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and Civilization 7. Existing titles Super Mario Party Jamboree, theZelda games Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, andKirby and the Forgotten Landwill have both Switch 2 Editions and upgrade packs for original Switch title owners.You can read a lot more about original Switch games' compatibility on the Switch 2, "Editions," and upgrade packs elsewhere in Ars' Switch 2 launch coverage.AAA games of recent vintage Switch 2's "Partner Spotlight," Part 1 With the promise of new hardware capable of 1080p, 120 frames per second, HDR, and even mouse capabilities, the Switch 2 is getting attention from developers eager to make up for lost timeand stake out a place on a sequel to the system that sold more than 150 million hardware units.Elden Ring Tarnished Edition,Yakuza 0,Hitman: World of Assassination,Cyberpunk 2077, Street Fighter 6, Hogwarts Legacy, andFinal Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade stood out as games from the near-to-middle past slated to arrive on the Switch 2.Final Fantasy 7 Remake,Street Fighter 6, Civilization 7, andCyberpunk 2077 are due to arrive at launch on June 5, with the rest arriving in 2025.Notable independents (most notably Silksong) Proof of life. Credit: Nintendo/Team Cherry Proof of life. Credit: Nintendo/Team Cherry The cruel games industry joke, ever sinceSilksong's announcement in 2019, is that the game, originally intended as DLC for acclaimed platformer/MetroidvaniaHollow Knight, is always due to be announced, never gets announced, and resumes torturing its expectant fans.But there it was, for a blip of a moment in the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal:Silksong, coming in "2025." That's all that is known: it will, purportedly, arrive on this console in 2025. It was initially due to arrive on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox when it was announced, but that remains to be seen.Another delayed indie gem,Deltarune, a kinda-sequel to Undertale, purports to land all four chapters of its parallel story on Switch 2 at the console's launch.Other notable games from across the studio-size spectrum:Hades 2(2025)Split Fiction (at launch)Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster(at launch)Enter the Gungeon 2 ("Coming soon")Two Point Museum (2025)Human Fall Flat 2("Coming soon")The legally distinct game that sure looks like Bloodborne 2 The hero of this sanguine tale. FromSoftware The hero of this sanguine tale. FromSoftware Everybody's excited about the Switch 2, even this person. FromSoftware Everybody's excited about the Switch 2, even this person. FromSoftware Dig in, it's an unexpectedly rich feast. FromSoftware Dig in, it's an unexpectedly rich feast. FromSoftware Everybody's excited about the Switch 2, even this person. FromSoftware Dig in, it's an unexpectedly rich feast. FromSoftware The next original game from FromSoftware, maker of beautifully realized finger-torture titles like Elden Ring and theDark Souls series, is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive,The Duskbloods. The trailer, with its gore-etched hands, gothic churches, and eldritch/Victorian machinery, certainly stood out from the Kirby andDonkey Kong games around it. The game arrives sometime in 2026.The Duskbloods announcement from the Switch 2 launch event. It's not FromSoftware's first visit to the Switch, as it broughtDark Souls Remasteredto the original in 2018. But it's the first console exclusive the successful studio has made sinceBloodborne, the 10-year-old PlayStation 4 title that remains available only on the PS4 and PS5, despite clamoring for a PC port or other re-release of many fans' favorite FromSoftware title. Sony, the publisher ofBloodborne, has yet to indicate it intends to release the game wider or even remaster it, while director Hidetaka Miyazaki has said he's keen on it but is hamstrung by Sony.FromSoftware does not typically go for direct sequelseven the multiplayer co-op Elden Ring: Nightreignplays very differently than its single-player predecessor. But the looks, name, and guns of The Duskbloods has even the most devoted Bloodborne fans optimistic that has, all along, been quietly hearing them. The Is Bloodborne on PC account on X posted after today's Switch event that, "I wanted to make an April Fools post about the Nintendo event today but the only fool would have been me. 2 Blood 2 Borne here we go!"An X post by Nintendo citesDuskbloods as multiplayer, and a translation of the game's website implies co-op play versus enemies. This would suggest that, likeNightreign, single-player may not be the focus, or it could not be available at all, though the latter would be surprising.While being a Nintendo exclusive will likely cut off future generations of fans from playing The Duskbloods on newer hardware or different platforms, that is seemingly just the price to pay for more blood-driven boss fights.Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 15 Comments

A New Chapter for Google AI Google shakes up Gemini leadership, Google Labs head taking the reins With fresh leadership, Google aims to create new products based on Gemini. Ryan Whitwam Apr 2, 2025 3:40 pm | 5 Credit: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Credit: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOn the heels of releasing its most capable AI model yet, Google is making some changes to the Gemini team. A new report from Semafor reveals that longtime Googler Sissie Hsiao will step down from her role leading the Gemini team effective immediately. In her place, Google is appointing Josh Woodward, who currently leads Google Labs.According to a memo from DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, this change is designed to "sharpen our focus on the next evolution of the Gemini app." This new responsibility won't take Woodward away from his role at Google Labshe will remain in charge of that division while leading the Gemini team.Meanwhile, Hsiao says in a message to employees that she is happy with "Chapter 1" of the Bard story and is optimistic for Woodward's "Chapter 2." Hsiao won't be involved in Google's AI efforts for nowshe's opted to take some time off before returning to Google in a new role.Hsiao has been at Google for 19 years and was tasked with building Google's chatbot in 2022. At the time, Google was reeling after ChatGPT took the world by storm using the very transformer architecture that Google originally invented. Initially, the team's chatbot efforts were known as Bard before being unified under the Gemini brand at the end of 2023.This process has been a bit of a slog, with Google's models improving slowly while simultaneously worming their way into many beloved products. However, the sense inside the company is that Gemini has turned a corner with 2.5 Pro. While this model is still in the experimental stage, it has bested other models in academic benchmarks and has blown right past them in all-important vibemarks like LM Arena.In his role leading Google Labs, Woodward oversaw the launch of Notebook LM, a popular generative AI tool that can provide answers and analysis based on user-supplied data. It can also generate a "podcast" style conversation based on the data that is both informative and creepy. This capability was recently added to the Gemini Deep Research tool. A demo of Google's Project Mariner, which was developed by Woodward's group. In addition to working on Notebook LM, Woodwards team was involved with Google's Project Mariner, an experimental AI agent that can control the Chrome browser. Google and other major AI players see agentic systems as the next frontier in AI development, so it does make sense to bring someone with that experience in to lead the Gemini team during this crucial time.Anyone who uses Google products has no doubt seen Gemini in existing apps, but most of Google's Gemini integrations so far boil down to adding a chat window so you can query Gemini about the content in a product like Drive or Gmail. Putting Woodward in charge suggests Google hopes to use the success of Notebook LM as a guide as it begins finding ways to turn its most capable AI model into new AI-powered products. Google may find that people are more receptive to generative AI when it backs a new experience rather than invading the apps they've already been using.Ryan WhitwamSenior Technology ReporterRyan WhitwamSenior Technology Reporter Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he's written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards. 5 Comments

cha-ching $70 and $80 game price tags send an early signal about Switch 2 game pricing Early first-party games are getting bumped up to the $70-to-$80 range. Andrew Cunningham Apr 2, 2025 3:30 pm | 7 Mario Kart World's $80 price tag increase is a significant bump from the current Switch. Credit: Nintendo Mario Kart World's $80 price tag increase is a significant bump from the current Switch. Credit: Nintendo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreNintendo's Switch 2 presentation gave us pricing for the console ($449 to start) and Nintendo's product pages have given us pricing information for accessories ($80 for a Pro Controller, $90 for another pair of Joy-Cons, and $110 for a replacement dock, sheesh). But what Nintendo didn't mention during the presentation was game pricing, either for standalone Switch 2 titles or the Switch 2 Edition upgrades for existing Switch games.We do have one solid first-party data point for US game pricing:Mario Kart World, the console's flagship launch title, will cost $50 when you buy a digital copy as part of a Switch 2 bundle. But the game will cost $80 when you buy it on its own, $30 more than the pack-in version and $20 more than the usual $60 price for first-party Switch games.That doesn't mean that $80 is the starting price forall Switch 2 games.Donkey Kong Bananza, slated for a near-launch July 17 release, has a $69.99 MSRP, which is more in line with the $70 default for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S games.Nintendo hasn't explained that first-party pricing gap between the two games, but it could reflect Mario Kart World's more involved online multiplayer, or simply be a way to push people on the fence in the direction of the cheaper bundled version.Inflation alone would be enough to justify the price increasesa $60 game in 2017 could cost $78 now (though that's using the overall rate of inflation, and prices have risen more steeply in some corners of the economy than others). But with a new console comes the potential for better and more detailed graphics, and those can take more money to produce, too.The big question mark is how expensive the Switch 2 Edition game upgrades will be, and what the price gap (if any) will be between games likeMetroid Prime 4 orPokmon Legends: Z-Athat are going to launch on both the original Switch and the Switch 2.But we can infer fromMario Kart andDonkey Kong that the pricing for these Switch 2 upgrades will most likely be somewhere in the $10 to $20 rangethe difference between the $60 price of most first-party Switch releases and the $70-to-$80 price for Switch 2 games. Sony charges a similar $10 fee to upgrade from the PS4 to the PS5 editions of games that will run on both consoles.Nintendo will also use some Switch 2 Edition upgrades as a carrot to entice people to the more expensive $50-per-year tier of the Nintendo Switch Online service. The company has already announced that the upgrade packs for Breath of the Wild andTears of the Kingdom will be offered for free to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscribers. The list of extra benefits for that service now includes additional emulated consoles (Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo 64, and now Gamecube) and paid DLC for both Animal Crossing: New Horizons andMario Kart 8.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 7 Comments

Losses RFK Jr.s bloodbath at HHS: Blowback grows as losses become clearer "Americans will be sicker and face increased health care costs." Beth Mole Apr 2, 2025 5:26 pm | 63 A sign marks the entrance to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) headquarters building on October 7, 2024, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | J. David Ake A sign marks the entrance to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) headquarters building on October 7, 2024, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | J. David Ake Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLast week, Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Trump administration would hack off nearly a quarter of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees critical agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).The downsizing includes pushing out about 10,000 full-time employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts. Another 10,000 will be laid off in a brutal restructuring, bringing the total HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000."This will be a painful period," Kennedy said in a video announcement last week. Early yesterday morning, the pain began.It beginsAt the FDAwhich will lose 3,500 employees, about 19 percent of staffsome employees learned they were being laid off from security guards after their badges no longer worked when they showed up to their offices, according to Stat. At CMSwhich will lose 300 employees, about 4 percentlaid-off employees were instructed to file any discrimination complaints they may have with Anita Pinder, identified as the director of CMSs Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. However, Pinder died last year, The Washington Post noted.At the NIHwhich is set to lose 1,200 employees, about 6 percentnew director Jay Bhattacharya sent and email to staff saying he would implement new policies "humanely," while calling the layoffs a "significant reduction." Five NIH institute directors and at least two other senior leaders have been ousted, in addition to hundreds of lower-level employees. Bhattacharya wrote that the remaining staff will have to find new ways to carry out "key NIH administrative functions, including communications, legislative affairs, procurement, and human resources."At CDCwhich will lose 2,400 employees, about 18 percentthe cuts slashed employees working in chronic disease prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, tuberculosis, global health, environmental health, occupational safety and health, maternal and child health, birth defects, violence prevention, health equity, communications, and science policy.Some leaders and workers at the CDC and NIH were reportedly reassigned or offered transfers to work at the Indian Health Services (IHS), an HHS division that provides medical and health services to Native American tribes. The transfers, which could require employees to move to a remote branch, are seen as another way to force workers out.Among those reportedly offered an IHS reassignment are Jonathan Mermin, the director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, and Jeanne Marrazzo, the director of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who replaced former director Anthony Fauci."In a matter of just a couple days, we are losing our nations ability to prevent HIV," Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in a statement. "The expertise of the staff, along with their decades of leadership, has now been destroyed and cannot be replaced. We will feel the impacts of these decisions for years to come and it will certainly, sadly, translate into an increase in new HIV infections and higher medical costs."Swift backlashOverall, the effects of the sweeping cuts are expected to take time to fully realize. But backlash and concern are mounting quickly.At the FDA, the chief tobacco regulator and dozens of other employees at the agency's tobacco center were among those ousted Tuesday. That includes two entire offices responsible for drafting new tobacco regulations and setting policy, according to the Associated Press."If you make it virtually impossible to create and draft policy, then you are eviscerating the role of the center," Mitch Zeller, the FDAs former tobacco chief, told the AP. "From a public health perspective, it makes absolutely no sense."Over the weekend, dismay grew over the dramatic ouster of the FDA's top vaccine regulator, Peter Marks, who was reportedly given the choice of resigning or being fired. In a searing resignation letter Friday, Marks wrote that "it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary [Kennedy], but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies." Kennedy is a longtime anti-vaccine advocate who is now using his position as the top US health official to spread misinformation and doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.The effects of Marks' departure are already coming to light, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that the agency has now missed its deadline to decide on Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine. According to the Journal's sources, the agency was set to give full approval to Novavaxs shot by the April 1 deadline, but senior FDA leaders are now "sitting on the decision," saying that Novavax needs to provide more data and that the FDA is unlikely to grant approval soon.The cuts and changes at the FDA have made companies nervous. Alex Schriver, senior vice president at the powerful pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA, told Axios that "The rapid and substantial changes at [the Food and Drug Administration] this week raise questions about the agency's ability to fulfill its mission to bring new innovative medicines to patients."Threat to AmericaMeanwhile, NPR reports that at least 40 percent of the staff of the Administration for Community Living, or ACL, were laid off Tuesday. The ACL runs and funds various programs for older and disabled people, including Meals on Wheels."The programs that ACL implements improve the lives of literally tens of millions of older adults, people with disabilities and their families and caregivers," Alison Barkoff, former ACL director under Biden, told NPR. "There's no way to have these RIFs [reductions in force] and not impact the programs and the people who rely on them."The ACL is set to be eliminated, with its responsibilities split across three other HHS divisions, Kennedy announced last week.David Skorton, president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges, noted that the work of HHS "touches the lives of every American." The loss of "critical leaders" is "likely to slow scientific advancement and negatively impact the health and well-being of the American people."In an op-ed Tuesday, Tom Frieden, former CDC director under Obama, called the cuts to the CDC a threat to "Americas health, safety, and economy.""Despite claims of efficiency, these cuts target proven programs that prevent disease and save livesand as a result, Americans will be sicker and face increased health care costs," he wrote.Tracking the effects of the cuts and the health of Americans will also get more difficult under the Trump administration and Kennedy. The majority of the teams handling communications, media relations, and Freedom of Information Act requests at the NIH, CDC, and FDA have also been cut, according to Stat.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 63 Comments

another round Male fruit flies drink more alcohol to get females to like them Alcohol makes male fruit flies sexier by stimulating the production of sex pheromones. Jennifer Ouellette Apr 2, 2025 3:50 pm | 20 Credit: Anna Schroll/CC BY-SA Credit: Anna Schroll/CC BY-SA Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreFruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are tremendously fond of fermented foodstuffs. Technically, it's the yeast they crave, produced by yummy rotting fruit, but they can consume quite a lot of ethanol as a result of that fruity diet. Yes, fruit flies have ultra-fast metabolisms, the better to burn off the booze, but they can still get falling-down drunkso much so, that randy inebriated male fruit flies have been known to court other males by mistake and fail to mate successfully.Then again, apparently adding alcohol to their food increases the production of sex pheromones in male fruit flies, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That, in turn, makes them more attractive to the females of the species."We show a direct and positive effect of alcohol consumption on the mating success of male flies," said co-author Ian Keesey of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. "The effect is caused by the fact that alcohol, especially methanol, increases the production of sex pheromones. This in turn makes alcoholic males more attractive to females and ensures a higher mating success rate, whereas the success of drunken male humans with females is likely to be questionable."Fruit flies are the workhorses of modern genetics research, used to study everything from cancer to sleep disorders. They make excellent model systems because they share so many genes with humans, plus they are cheap, easy to breed, and can be genetically altered easily. Many years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the University of California, San Francisco laboratory of behavior geneticist Ulrike Heberlein, who spent years getting fruit flies drunk in an "Inebriometer" to learn about the various genes that influence alcohol tolerance. (Heberlein is now scientific program director and laboratory head at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus.)Driven to drink?For instance, Heberlein co-authored a 2012 paper discussing experimental results that suggested romantic rejection (i.e., "social defeat") could drive male fruit flies to drink. She paired virgin males with females who had already mated for an hour at a time, three times a day, for four straight days. (Mated females will vehemently reject advances from other males, often aggressively so.) Then the males were placed in an alcohol-drinking assay, where they would drink more than twice as much alcohol as male fruit flies in the control group who had successfully mated. Ian Keesey of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, studies fruit flies. Credit: Anna Schroll/CC BY-SA In terms of a mechanism, the rejection seems to decrease levels of a neuropeptide in the brain, which increases after mating, leading Heberlein et al. to conclude that drinking the ethanol activates reward centers in the fruit fly brain. The end goal is to find equivalent mechanisms in the human brain to guide future interventions into human drug and alcohol addiction and abuse.While their latest findings are generally consistent with this and other fruit fly studies, Keesey and his co-authors offer an alternative hypothesis to explain these alcohol-related behaviors in fruit flies. They concluded that fruit flies "are attracted to ethanol (and methanol) not as a means to cope with the negative psychological effects of mate rejection, but rather that flies are driven toward these alcohols to increase their chances for subsequent mating success," they wrote. In other words, rejected male fruit flies chug down alcohol as a strategy to get girls to like them.The researchers studied the behavioral responses of male fruit flies using an experimental apparatus called a Flywalk, in which 15 fruit flies in individual glass tubes lined up in parallel were exposed to odors (including ethanol and methanol) and monitored for their responses to those odors. They also employed imaging techniques to visualize what was happening in those tiny fruit fly brains.The results: In keeping with prior research, male fruit flies who had not yet mated were more drawn to alcohol. Those that consumed methanol showed a marked increase in the levels of pheromones known to be involved with the elaborate fruit fly courtship rituals. And males who had access to natural sources of methanol, like fermented oranges, were more successful in attracting females than males who did not. Of course, when it comes to alcohol, there can be too much of a good thing. Keesey et al. also found that too much methanol can kill the flies."What is unique about our results is that we found not just one, but three neural circuits that we were able to show actually balance each other in terms of this risk assessment, that is, attraction and aversion," said Keesey. "This means that the flies have a control mechanism that allows them to get all the benefits of alcohol consumption without risking alcohol intoxication. That different neural pathways with opposite valence for the same odor are combined to balance attraction and aversion based on physiological state is a rarity."So male fruit flies, essentially, know when they've reached the optimal level of inebriation to attract more females and successfully mate, before they become so intoxicated that they repulse the females, or approach other males by mistake.Science Advances, 2025. DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adi9683 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 20 Comments

one series, infinite adventures Genres are bustin out all over in Strange New Worlds S3 teaser "We want to give audiences a reflection of their own world through the lens of fantasy." Jennifer Ouellette Apr 2, 2025 3:52 pm | 4 Credit: YouTube/Paramount+ Credit: YouTube/Paramount+ Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreStar Trek: Strange New Worlds returns this summer with ten new episodes. Paramount+ has dropped a tantalizing one-minute teaser for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds., and it looks like the latest adventures of the starship Enterprise will bring romance, comedy, mystery, and even a bit of analog tech, not to mention a brand new villain.(Some spoilers for S2 below)We haven't seen much from the third season to date. There was an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con last summera callback to the S2 episode "Charades," in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock's half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human, just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee's parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission but weren't able to change back.The S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation's colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped (La'an, M'Benga, Ortegas, and Sam), along with other survivors of the attack. Pike faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat, or disobey them to rescue his crew. In October, we learned that Pike naturally chose the latter. New footage shown at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise.In addition to the returning main and recurring cast members, Cillian O'Sullivan joins the recurring cast as Dr. Roger Korby, a legacy character (originally played by Michael Strong). Korby was a renowned archaeologist in the field of medical archaeology, introduced in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" as Nurse Chapel's long-missing fianc. That's bound to cause problems for SNW's Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), who is currently romantically involved with Spock (Ethan Peck). Rhys Darby (Our Flag Means Death) and Patton Oswalt will guest star in as-yet-undisclosed roleswe catch glimpses of both in the teaser. A throwback to classic sci-fi, with "weekly space adventures." YouTube/Paramount+ A throwback to classic sci-fi, with "weekly space adventures." YouTube/Paramount+ Looks like the crew will be solving a groovy murder mystery this season YouTube/Paramount+ Looks like the crew will be solving a groovy murder mystery this season YouTube/Paramount+ Spock and Nurse Chapel are an item now. YouTube/Paramount+ Spock and Nurse Chapel are an item now. YouTube/Paramount+ Looks like the crew will be solving a groovy murder mystery this season YouTube/Paramount+ Spock and Nurse Chapel are an item now. YouTube/Paramount+ Ooh, Patton Oswalt! YouTube/Paramount+ Rhys Darby is looking downright dapper YouTube/Paramount+ Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments

Tales from the digital commons AI bots strain Wikimedia as bandwidth surges 50% Automated AI bots seeking training data threaten Wikipedia project stability, foundation says. Benj Edwards Apr 2, 2025 1:06 pm | 42 Credit: Carol Yepes and Dana Neibert via Getty Images Credit: Carol Yepes and Dana Neibert via Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOn Tuesday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that relentless AI scraping is putting strain on Wikipedia's servers. Automated bots seeking AI model training data for LLMs have been vacuuming up terabytes of data, growing the foundation's bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content by 50 percent since January 2024. Its a scenario familiar across the free and open source software (FOSS) community, as we've previously detailed.The Foundation hosts not only Wikipedia but also platforms like Wikimedia Commons, which offers 144 million media files under open licenses. For decades, this content has powered everything from search results to school projects. But since early 2024, AI companies have dramatically increased automated scraping through direct crawling, APIs, and bulk downloads to feed their hungry AI models. This exponential growth in non-human traffic has imposed steep technical and financial costsoften without the attribution that helps sustain Wikimedias volunteer ecosystem.The impact isnt theoretical. The foundation says that when former US President Jimmy Carter died in December 2024, his Wikipedia page predictably drew millions of views. But the real stress came when users simultaneously streamed a 1.5-hour video of a 1980 debate from Wikimedia Commons. The surge doubled Wikimedias normal network traffic, temporarily maxing out several of its Internet connections. Wikimedia engineers quickly rerouted traffic to reduce congestion, but the event revealed a deeper problem: The baseline bandwidth had already been consumed largely by bots scraping media at scale.This behavior is increasingly familiar across the FOSS world. Fedoras Pagure repository blocked all traffic from Brazil after similar scraping incidents covered by Ars Technica. GNOMEs GitLab instance implemented proof-of-work challenges to filter excessive bot access. Read the Docs dramatically cut its bandwidth costs after blocking AI crawlers.Wikimedias internal data explains why this kind of traffic is so costly for open projects. Unlike humans, who tend to view popular and frequently cached articles, bots crawl obscure and less-accessed pages, forcing Wikimedias core datacenters to serve them directly. Caching systems designed for predictable, human browsing behavior dont work when bots are reading the entire archive indiscriminately.As a result, Wikimedia found that bots account for 65 percent of the most expensive requests to its core infrastructure despite making up just 35 percent of total pageviews. This asymmetry is a key technical insight: The cost of a bot request is far higher than a human one, and it adds up fast.Crawlers that evade detectionMaking the situation more difficult, many AI-focused crawlers do not play by established rules. Some ignore robots.txt directives. Others spoof browser user agents to disguise themselves as human visitors. Some even rotate through residential IP addresses to avoid blocking, tactics that have become common enough to force individual developers like Xe Iaso to adopt drastic protective measures for their code repositories.This leaves Wikimedias Site Reliability team in a perpetual state of defense. Every hour spent rate-limiting bots or mitigating traffic surges is time not spent supporting Wikimedias contributors, users, or technical improvements. And its not just content platforms under strain. Developer infrastructure, like Wikimedias code review tools and bug trackers, is also frequently hit by scrapers, further diverting attention and resources.These problems mirror others in the AI scraping ecosystem. Curl developer Daniel Stenberg has detailed how fake, AI-generated bug reports are wasting human time. SourceHuts Drew DeVault has highlighted how bots hammer endpoints like git logs, far beyond what human developers would ever need.Across the Internet, open platforms are experimenting with technical solutions: proof-of-work challenges, slow-response tarpits (like Nepenthes), collaborative crawler blocklists (like "ai.robots.txt"), and commercial tools like Cloudflare's AI Labyrinth. These approaches address the technical mismatch between infrastructure designed for human readers and the industrial-scale demands of AI training.Open commons at riskWikimedia acknowledges the importance of providing "knowledge as a service," and its content is indeed freely licensed. But as the Foundation states plainly, "Our content is free, our infrastructure is not."The organization is now focusing on systemic approaches to this issue under a new initiative: WE5: Responsible Use of Infrastructure. It raises critical questions about guiding developers toward less resource-intensive access methods and establishing sustainable boundaries while preserving openness.The challenge lies in bridging two worlds: open knowledge repositories and commercial AI development. Many companies rely on open knowledge to train commercial models but don't contribute to the infrastructure making that knowledge accessible. This creates a technical imbalance that threatens the sustainability of community-run platforms.Better coordination between AI developers and resource providers could potentially resolve these issues through dedicated APIs, shared infrastructure funding, or more efficient access patterns. Without such practical collaboration, the platforms that have enabled AI advancement may struggle to maintain reliable service. Wikimedia's warning is clear: Freedom of access does not mean freedom from consequences.Benj EdwardsSenior AI ReporterBenj EdwardsSenior AI Reporter Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC. 42 Comments

Trump's Signal man Not just Signal: Michael Waltz reportedly used Gmail for government messages More damaging reports for Trump official who invited journalist to Signal chat. Jon Brodkin Apr 2, 2025 1:46 pm | 50 US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz at the US military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on March 28, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz at the US military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on March 28, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreNational Security Advisor Michael Waltz and a senior aide used personal Gmail accounts for government communications, according to a Washington Post report published yesterday.Waltz has been at the center of controversy for weeks because he inadvertently invited The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat in which top Trump administration officials discussed a plan for bombing Houthi targets in Yemen. Yesterday's report of Gmail use and another recent report on additional Signal chats raise more questions about the security of sensitive government communications in the Trump administration.A senior Waltz aide used Gmail "for highly technical conversations with colleagues at other government agencies involving sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict," The Washington Post wrote.The Post said it reviewed the emails. "While the NSC official used his Gmail account, his interagency colleagues used government-issued accounts, headers from the email correspondence show," the report said.Waltz himself "had less sensitive, but potentially exploitable information sent to his Gmail, such as his schedule and other work documents, said officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe what they viewed as problematic handling of information," the report said. "The officials said Waltz would sometimes copy and paste from his schedule into Signal to coordinate meetings and discussions."Separately, The Wall Street Journal described additional Signal chats in a report on Sunday about Waltz losing support inside the White House. "Two US officials also said that Waltz has created and hosted multiple other sensitive national-security conversations on Signal with cabinet members, including separate threads on how to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine as well as military operations. They declined to address if any classified information was posted in those chats," the WSJ wrote.We contacted the White House about the reported use of Gmail and Signal today and will update this article if we get a response.Waltzs denials increasingly hard to believeAccording to The Washington Post, National Security Council "spokesman Brian Hughes said he has seen no evidence of Waltz using his personal email as described and said on occasions when 'legacy contacts' have emailed him work-related materials, he makes sure to 'cc' his government email to ensure compliance with federal records laws that require officials to archive official correspondence.""Waltz didn't and wouldn't send classified information on an open account," Hughes was quoted as saying. Hughes also said that Signal is approved for government use but "acknowledged that it is not supposed to be used for classified material and insisted Waltz never used it as such."Trump administration officials previously claimed that no classified information about war plans was shared in the Signal chat that included Goldberg. The Atlantic subsequently published texts showing that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared planned strike times and information about targets and weapons before the attacks in Yemen.The Post wrote that "US officials say Trump is much more upset about the inclusion of a liberal journalist on a confidential group chat than he is about exposing secrets to foreign adversaries. But White House officials have found Waltz's denials increasingly hard to believe."Waltz denied even knowing Goldberg despite a 2021 picture of the two men standing next to each other at an event. Explaining how Goldberg might have been added to the Signal group, Waltz told Fox News, "I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact where it said one person and then a different phone number... if you have somebody else's contact, and then somehow it gets sucked in, it gets sucked in."In response, Goldberg told NBC News, "Well, this isn't The Matrix. Phone numbers don't just get sucked into other phones. I don't know what he's talking about there... He's telling everyone that he's never met me or spoken to me. That's simply not true. I understand why he's doing it but this has become a somewhat farcical situation. There's no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone, he mistakenly added me to the group chatthere we go."Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 50 Comments

Revenge of the nerds RIP Val Kilmer: Celebrating cult classic Real Genius is now a moral imperative The 80s comedy has stood the test of time, even inspiring a 2009 Mythbusters episode. Jennifer Ouellette Apr 2, 2025 12:21 pm | 6 Mitch (Gabriel Jarret) and Chris (Val Kilmer) play young science whizzes trying to build a 5-kilowatt laser in the 1985 film Real Genius. Credit: TriStar Pictures Mitch (Gabriel Jarret) and Chris (Val Kilmer) play young science whizzes trying to build a 5-kilowatt laser in the 1985 film Real Genius. Credit: TriStar Pictures Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreActor Val Kilmerstar of Top Gun, The Doors, and Batman Forever, among other roleshas died at the age of 65 of pneumonia, Deadline Hollywood reports.Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2015 and while chemotherapy and two tracheotomies helped him defeat it, the procedures destroyed his voice. He spoke in a rasp or used an electric voice box for the remainder of his life and largely left acting. (He made a brief cameo in 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, for which his voice was digitally altered.) The 2021 documentary Val, narrated by his son Jack Kilmer, followed his life and health struggles.Kilmer had a reputation for being eccentric and difficult to work with, but he also had his champions, and his talent was undeniable. While working with Val on Heat, I always marveled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Vals possessing and expressing character," Michael Mann, who directed the actor in 1995's Heat, told Deadline. "After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news.Sure, there were some stinkers over the course of Kilmer's career, but he leaves behind an impressive list of roles that have stood the test of time. His portrayal of rock star Jim Morrison in The Doors (1991) was widely praised, as was his work in the 2004 black comedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang opposite Robert Downey, Jr.And who could forget his deliciously profligate Doc Holliday ("I'll be your Huckleberry") in 1993's Tombstone or his colorful turn as Elvis Presley in True Romance that same year? Then there was the cocky "Iceman" opposite Tom Cruise's Maverick in 1986's Top Gunand Madmartigan in the classic fantasy adventure Willow (1988) that turned him into a major star.But here at Ars, we'd like to remember him as Chris Knight in Real Genius, the rebellious, irreverent science whiz kid at the fictional Pacific Tech (a thinly disguised Caltech) who befriends a shy young 15-year-old freshman (Gabriel Jarret). It was only his second feature film role, but Kilmer was unforgettable. So we're re-upping our 2020 tribute to the film in Kilmer's honor.[Original article:]Back to the Future justly dominated the summer box office in 1985, but it's too bad its massive success overshadowed another nerd-friendly gem, Real Genius,which debuted one month later, on August 9. Now celebrating its 35th anniversary, the film remains one of the most charming, winsome depictions of super-smart science whizzes idealistically hoping to change the world for the better with their work. It also boasts a lot of reasonably accurate sciencea rare occurrence at the time.Real Geniuscame out the same year as the similarly themed filmsWeird Sciencewhich spawned a 1990s TV sitcomand My Science Project, because 1980s Hollywood tended to do things in threes.But I'd argue that Real Genius has better stood the test of time, despite being so quintessentially an '80s filmright down to the many montages set to electronic/synth-pop chart-toppers. The film only grossed$12.9 million domestically against its $8 million budget, compared to $23.8 million domestically for its fellow cult classic,Weird Science.(My Science Project bombed with a paltry$4.1 million.) Reviews were mostly positive, however, and over time it became a sleeper hit via VHS, and later, DVD and streaming platforms.(Spoilers for the 35-year-old film below.)Fifteen-year-old Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is a science genius and social outcast at his high school. So he is over the moon when Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton), a star researcher at the fictional Pacific Technical University, stops by the science fair to inform Mitch he's been admitted to the university. Even better, Hathaway has handpicked Mitch to work in his own lab on a laser project. But unbeknownst to Mitch, Hathaway is in league with a covert CIA program to develop a space-based laser weapon called "Crossbow," designed for precisely targeted political assassinations. The only remaining obstacle is the weapon's power source: they need a 5-megawatt laser and are relying on Hathaway to deliver.The first act is a nerdier version of the classic fish-out-of-water tale, as Mitch arrives at Pacific Tech and tries to fit in. His roommate, Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), is a senior who was once a bright young star like Mitch but has since rebelled against the high-pressure academic grind and embraced a goofy YOLO approach to life, urging his fellow students to allow themselves to blow off a little steam now and then. Mitch butts heads with Kent (Robert Prescott), a less gifted older proteg of Hathaway's who is jealous of the attention Mitch receives. He finds friends and allies not just in Chris, but also fellow science nerds "Ick" Ikagami (Mark Kamiyama) and Jordan Cochran (Michelle Meyrink), a hyperactive young woman who rarely stops talking or inventing gadgets, and by her own admission almost never sleeps.Then there is Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries), a former star student who cracked under the pressure and is now an eccentric hermit living in the dormitory steam tunnels. Fun fact: Lazlo's steam tunnel hideout, accessible through Mitch's closet, is an elaborate homage to Leonardo da Vinci. As depicted when Mitch finally figures out how to gain access, it features a multidirectional elevator built out of a small car controlled by a rotating screw. The car descends to a horizontal track and is propelled forward by a hidden drive chain. The automated scribbler Lazlo uses to submit more than a million entries to the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes was inspired by a sketch in one of Leonardo's notebooks.Eventually, Mitch and Chris succeed in solving the power problem for their laser, only to realize (thanks to Lazlo) that it will be used to build a powerful directed-energy laser weapon. The five of them team up to foil Hathaway's big military test of the system, in their usual eccentrically ingenious way. 15-year-old Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is admitted to the fictional "Pacific Tech" to work on lasers. TriStar Pictures 15-year-old Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is admitted to the fictional "Pacific Tech" to work on lasers. TriStar Pictures Mitch's rival, Kent (Robert Prescott), and his rather shady mentor, Dr. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton). TriStar Pictures Mitch's rival, Kent (Robert Prescott), and his rather shady mentor, Dr. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton). TriStar Pictures Mitch's roommate is the equally brilliant but idiosyncratic Chris Knight (Val Kilmer). TriStar Pictures Mitch's roommate is the equally brilliant but idiosyncratic Chris Knight (Val Kilmer). TriStar Pictures Mitch's rival, Kent (Robert Prescott), and his rather shady mentor, Dr. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton). TriStar Pictures Mitch's roommate is the equally brilliant but idiosyncratic Chris Knight (Val Kilmer). TriStar Pictures Jordan (Michelle Meyrink) surprises Mitch in the men's room with the sweater she knitted. TriStar Pictures Lazlo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) is a former genius who cracked and keeps mysteriously going into Mitch's closetand vanishing. TriStar Pictures Mitch discovers the passage to Lazlo's secret lair. TriStar Pictures Conked out. TriStar Pictures Of course Chris sleeps like a pretzel. TriStar Pictures Chris engineers a "pool party" so everyone can let off some steam. TriStar Pictures Jordan and "Ick" Ikagami (Mark Kamiyama) help Chris and Mitch take revenge on Kent. TriStar Pictures "Is that you, Jesus?" TriStar Pictures Yes that is a giant pile of unpopped popcorn in Jerry's foyer. All it needs is a bit of heat. TriStar Pictures Hacking a defense department laser weapon provides that heat. TriStar Pictures Hathaway realizes his system has been hacked. TriStar Pictures The team celebrates a job well done. TriStar Pictures It fell to film consultant Martin A. Gunderson of the University of Southern California (who has a bit part as a math professor) to help ensure that the science and campus culture depicted in the film were plausible, even if certain liberties were taken. Certain details were deliberately left out, according to Director Martha Coolidge, such as those for Mitch's flash-pumped ultraviolet laser at the science fair, and technical details pertaining to a directed-energy laser weapon. ("We didn't want to inspire any lethal tinkering.")I've always appreciated how closely the laboratory laser setups hewed to reality: Gunderson himself provided the blue-green argon laser and tunable dye laser used in those scenes. Chris uses a cube beam splitter to create the laser light show announcing the Tanning Invitational pool party that incurs Hathaway's wrath. That said, a 5-megawatt laserhad certainly not been achieved in 1985. While Chris' construction of a xenon-halogen laser to solve the power problem was purely theoretical at the time, the underlying scientific details were later outlined in a scientific papera fitting example of how science and Hollywood can both benefit from such collaborations.For the "Smart People on Ice" scene, the crew used a frozen volatile gas, pumped through thousands of feet of tubing beneath the corridor flooring that was connected to a refrigeration unit to keep the gas cold. And as Ick explains when Kent asks him what will happen when the ice melts, the frozen gas shifts directly from a solid to a gaseous state, rather than melting into a liquid.Then there is the famous popcorn scene that marks the group's triumph over Hathaway. Mitch, Chris, Ick, Jordan, and Lazlo fill his newly renovated house (accomplished with funds embezzled from his CIA grant) with unpopped popcorn covered in tinfoil. They place a prismatic-like piece of glass on the window sill and hijack the computer during Hathaway's big military test to redirect the laser energy through that window. The kernels start popping, expanding to fill the entire house until it quite literally bursts at the seams.Real Genius movie clip: Jerry's House of Popcorn. In a 2010 interview with the AV Club, Atherton revealed that the studio had six ten-foot-high air poppers devoted to popping popcorn all day for three months, filling a massive storage tank. Since the popcorn had been treated with fire-retardant to keep it from combusting, additional measures had to be taken to ensure the birds didn't eat it. All that popcorn was then carted out to a new subdivision being built in Canyon Country just northwest of Los Angeles and then stuffed inside a Victorian frame house specifically built for the film. That way the crew could pull the whole thing down in the climactic scene with the help of an elaborate network of conveyor belts, hydraulic lifts, airblowers, and vacuum hoses. "Now they'd do it digitally, I guess, but in those days, you had to pop the dang popcorn and put it in a truck and schlep it out to the valley," Atherton said.As evidence of the film's enduring popularity with the nerdy set, the Mythbusters decided to test the feasibility of popping that much popcorn in 2009 with a laser and destroying a house. The initial test went well: the team successfully popped a single kernel wrapped in aluminum foil with a ten-watt laser. Unfortunately, they weren't able to get a sufficiently powerful laser for their scaled-up experiment, relying instead on a large pan used to cook the popcorn via induction heating. They also built a scaled-down model of the house in the film with a piston on the floor pushing popped popcorn upward to see if it could generate sufficient force to break apart the house. Alas, the Mythbusters determined it would require several tons of force. So myth: busted. But it's still an entertaining movie comeuppance.Real Genius is admittedly a bit cheesy. The plot is predictable, the characters are pretty basic, and the dialogue can be clunky. And it goes without saying that the sexually frustrated virgin nerds ogling hot cosmetology students in bikinis during the pool party reflects hopelessly outdated stereotypes on several fronts. But the film still offers smartly silly escapist fare, with a side of solid science for those who care about such things. And its yearning idealism is a good antidote to the current prevailing cynicism.Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 6 Comments

work-in-progress Some original Switch games will run better on Switch 2; some wont run at all Some Switch games will get free updates to improve Switch 2 performance. Andrew Cunningham Apr 2, 2025 12:33 pm | 0 Nintendo's Switch 2 console. Credit: Nintendo Nintendo's Switch 2 console. Credit: Nintendo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWe've known for a few months now that the Nintendo Switch 2 will support backward compatibility for older Nintendo Switch games, and as of today's presentation, we also know that some Switch games will get special Switch 2 Editions that add new features and support higher resolutions and other features.Nintendo's product pages for the Switch add more details, including the status of backward-compatibility testing for original Switch games and a small handful of first-party Switch games that will get "free updates" to enhance them for Switch 2.First, some good news. There will be a second tier of updates for original Switch games that Nintendo says "may improve performance or add support for features such as GameShare in select games." These won't include the extra features or higher resolutions of Switch 2 Edition games, but they'll be available for free, and they ought to improve playability. Nintendo lists a dozen first-party Switch games that will benefit from free Switch 2 updates:ArmsCaptain Toad: Treasure TrackerSuper Mario OdysseySuper Mario 3D World + Bowser's FuryClubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide ClassicsThe Legend of Zelda: Link's AwakeningThe Legend of Zelda: Echoes of WisdomGame Builder GarageNew Super Mario Bros. U DeluxePokmon ScarletPokmon VioletBig Brain Academy: Brain vs. BrainNintendo says "the contents of these free updates will differ depending on the game."Compatibility testing is ongoingWe still don't know whether non-updated Switch games running on the Switch 2 will perform better by virtue of the updated hardware; we'll have to wait to test the console ourselves to know for sure. (There are, for better or worse, many Switch games with performance issues that we could use to test.) The current state of Switch 2 backward compatibility testing. The vast majority of first-party games are good to go; third-party testing is a work in progress. Credit: Nintendo Though Nintendo's plan is to support the vast majority of the Switch library on the Switch 2, there are some games that won't run, some games that will have specific requirements, and others that are still being tested.All of Nintendo's first-party games have passed "basic compatibility testing," meaning they should play more or less as reliably as they do on current Switch hardware. The one incompatible game is the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04 VR Kit, which requires you to put the Switch into a cardboard VR headset; since the Switch 2 is a lot bigger than the original Switch, it won't work.Other games, including most of the other Labo stuff, will require the use of original Switch Joy-Cons rather than the updated Switch 2 versions. These games are generally ones that were built specifically around the Joy-Cons, including Ring Fit Adventure, 1-2-Switch, and WarioWare: Move It!Third-party games are more of a work in progress. Nintendo says that roughly 20 percent of the "over 15,000" third-party Switch games have cleared the "no issues found during basic compatibility testing" bar, while the vast majority of the remaining games are still being tested but will at least start up without crashing.There are three other compatibility statuses: games that aren't compatible at all, games that won't start up properly, and games that are playable "with issues in certain parts of the game." Nintendo has published a full list of the games with start-up issues (PDF) and those that will start but have compatibility issues (PDF).The company says it is working to address these issues, "including by working with publishing and developing partners." This implies that some of the problems, whatever they are, can be resolved on Nintendo's end via Switch operating system updates, while others will require patches to be released by developers.For the games where testing is still in progress, Nintendo says it will provide another compatibility update "later in April." So while backward compatibility isn't a foregone conclusion, it seems that Nintendo is evaluating the Switch library pretty comprehensively and wants to make sure that the vast majority of Switch games on the new hardware will run as well as or better than than they do on the original Switch.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 0 Comments

Magic Unshittification: 3 tech companies that recently made my life better Enshittification is not the only option. Nate Anderson Apr 2, 2025 9:30 am | 0 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreI've been complaining about tech a lot recently, and I don't apologize for it. Complaining feels great. That feeling of beleaguered, I-against-the-world self-righteousness? Highly underrated.But a little righteous complaint goes a long, long, loooong way. (Just ask my wife.) Too much can be corrosive, it can make you insufferable to others, and it can leave you jaded, as many people, myself included, have become about technology.I had three recent experiences, however, that were each quite small in their way but which reminded me that not everything in the tech world has fallen victim to the forces of "enshittification." Once in a while, technology still feels easy anddare I co-opt the world from Apple's marketing department?even magical.Call it "unshittification."Better DRMArs has complained about DRM since our founding over 25 years ago. As writers and editors ourselves, we certainly get the desire not to have one's work ripped off or repurposed without payment, but even effective DRM imposes annoying costs on those who actually paid the money for the thing.Case in point: I've been teaching myself songwriting, audio production, and mixing for the last 18 months, and part of that process has led me to invest some decent money into Universal Audio products. I bought its stellar and rock-solid-reliable Volt 2 audio interface and then spent much of 2024 snapping up high-quality plugins like Topline Vocal Suite, the Manley Voxbox, and the Electra 88 Rhodes piano. Terrific stuffbut not necessarily cheap.So it was just insulting to find out the hard way that Universal Audio used a variant of the iLok DRM systemitself unfortunately common in the audio industrythat required constant Internet connectivity to function.The iLok ecosystem can be configured in three main ways, authorizing your plugins 1) to a custom iLok USB dongle (which costs $50$70 and requires a USB portplus, you have to remember it at all times), 2) to the local machine you are working on, or 3) to the cloud. Universal Audio allowed only dongle and cloud authorizations, but I figured this wouldn't be a problem because, surely, the system would only need to check in semi-regularly.In fact, the system checked in constantly. Go even a few minutes without Internet access, and all your plugins will disable themselves, leading any mix that uses them to fall apart immediately. Want to work on your laptop during a power outage? Edit some audio on a flight? Use a studio computer thatfor stability, performance, and security reasonsis not generally online? Well, I hope you like dongles.(Some users dothough others have complained that they too can be unstable, they cost extra, and they permanently take up a USB port on your machine.)Universal Audio is a big name in the business, and their users have complained endlessly about this situation, but the response has generally been that machine-based authorization is less secure and therefore not supported.So it was a surprise and delight when, on March 25, Universal Audio saw the light and announced that "by popular demand" it was shifting to local machine or iLok USB authorizations. The cloud option was gone, and a company rep even admitted that cloud monitoring "requires a constant Internet and server connection. [In other words], more resources."In addition, Universal Audio now allows "up to three" simultaneous authorizations of each digital tool, while before you could only have two.The online response appears overwhelmingly positive. As one commenter put it, "Ok, I admit: I thought the 'submit feedback' feature was just there so users would vent without any serious change occurring... I was wrong on that front. Glad to see UA is listening. Good job!"Others stressed just how beneficial the move was for touring musicians who may use various bits of Universal Audio tech on stage or on tour. "For touring musicians and all other people that often work in an offline environment this is awesome!" wrote one commenter. Another added, "iLok dongle on stage is scary and glad that's over with. Power move!"I concur.Better customer serviceLet's stick with the "musical" theme for example No. 2.I purchased Native Instruments' terrific piano library Noire, which sampled the specific grand piano used by Nihls Frahm in both standard and felted formatsand all of it capturing the ambience of Saal 3 in the East Berlin Funkhaus recording facility where Frahm works. The library is one of my favoritesevocative and gorgeous. But I was apparently the victim of fraud.See, I purchased the library secondhand. This is completely legal and explicitly allowed by Native Instruments, though the company needs to get manually involved in the transfer process. I purchased Noire from a UK user who already had a "transfer code" approved by Native Instruments, indicating that the software in question was genuine and available for sale.So I purchased Noire, completed the transfer, and the software showed up in my Native Instruments account. Everything went smoothly, and I was (very gently) rocking out with Noire's felted piano.A few weeks (!) later, I received a note, completely out of the blue, from Native Instruments support. They had removed Noire from my account, they said, because the seller had committed some unspecified fraud, and Native Instruments had transferred my copy of Noire back to the original purchaser.This was extremely uncool. Not only did I have nothing to do with any fraud, nor any reason to think fraud had occurred, but Native Instruments had vetted the software and approved it for transfer, which gave me the confidence to move forward with the purchase. So why was I now the only person to suffer? The original buyer got the plugin restored, the scammer had my money, and Native Instruments hadn't lost anything.There appeared to be little I could do about all this. Sure, I could file a dispute with PayPal and try to claw my money back, but Native Instruments is a German company, andlet's face itI wasn't going to do anything if they decided to screw me out of a purchase they had helped me make. (WellI was going to do something, namely, never purchase from them again. After all, who knew, when they awoke in the morning, if their purchased products would still function?)This may sound like a complaint, but here's the thing: When I made my case to Native Instruments over email, they got back to me in a day or two and agreed to put a free though "not for resale" copy of Noire on my account as a goodwill gesture. This was all conducted politely, in impeccable English, and without undue delay. It felt fair to me, and I'm likely to continue purchasing their excellent sample libraries.Customer service can feel like a lesser priority to most companies, but done right, it actually ensures future sales.Better money-takingFinally, an almost trivial example, but one that worked so smoothly I still remember my feeling of shock. "Where's the catch?" pretty much summed it up.I'm talking, of course, about March Madness, the annual NCAA college basketball tournament. It's a terrific spectacle if you can ignore all the economic questions about overpaid coaches, no-longer-amateur players, recruiting violations, and academic distortions that the big sports programs generate. And my University of North Carolina Tar Heels had juuuust squeaked in this year.Ordinarily, watching the tournament is a nightmare if you don't have a pay-TV package. For years, streaming options were terrible, forcing you to log in with your "TV provider" (i.e., an expensive cable or satellite company) account or otherwise jump through hoops to watch the games, which are generally shown across three or four different TV channels.All I wanted was a simple way to give someone my money. No gimmicks, no intro offers, no "TV provider" BSjust a pure streaming play that puts all the games in one place, for a reasonable fee. When I looked into the situation this year, I was surprised to find that this did now exist, it was easy, and it was cheap.The Max streaming service had all the games, except for those shown on CBS. (You can't have everything, I guess, but I get CBS in HD using an over-the-air antenna.) It was $10 for a month of service. There were no "intro offers," no lock-ins, no "before you go!" pleas, no nothing. Indeed, I didn't even have to create a new account or share a credit card with some new vendor. I just added Max as a "subscription" within Amazon's video app and boomtournament time. It took about four seconds, and it has worked flawlessly.That something this simple could feel revelatory was a good reminder of just how crapified our tech and media ecosystems have become. On my expensive LG OLED TV, for instance, I have to go out of my way to literally prevent my TV from spying on everything that I watch. (Seriously, you should turn this "feature" off. Otherwise, your TV will watch your screen and try to identify everything you watch, then send that data back to whatever group of zombified MBAs thought this was a good idea.) Roku, which provides streaming services to my basement television, is toying with new ads. Every streaming service I've subscribed to has jacked up rates significantly over the last year or so.So just being able to sign up quickly and easily, for 10 bucks, felt frictionless and magical in the way that tech used to do more often. As a bonus, I've been able to watch full episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I have never seen before.Magic?"Unshittification" is not always the result of "innovation"sometimes it's just about treating people decently. Responding to feedback, personal customer service, and non-gimmicky pricing aren't new or hot technologies, but they are the sort of things that make for satisfied long-term customers.So much tech has fallen victim to algorithms, scale, and monetization that it can be a surprising relief to connect easily with a Real Live Human, one empowered to act on your behalf, or to make a purchase without being part of some constantly upselling "sales funnel." But when it does happen, it feels good. Indeed, in a cynical and atomized age, it feels a tiny bit magical. Listing image: Getty Images Nate AndersonDeputy EditorNate AndersonDeputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 0 Comments

gee, I wonder why? Tesla sales and production slumped heavily in Q1 2025 The numbers are going the wrong way for a company valued on continuing growth. Jonathan M. Gitlin Apr 2, 2025 10:34 am | 0 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 22: Demonstrators gather for a protest against Elon Musk and electric car maker Tesla on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Credit: David Ryder/Getty Images SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 22: Demonstrators gather for a protest against Elon Musk and electric car maker Tesla on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Credit: David Ryder/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreTesla posted its production and sales numbers for the first quarter of 2025 this morning, and they continue the bad news streak for the electric automaker. Tesla produced 362,615 vehicles in total between January and the end of March, a 16.3 percent decrease from the same period in 2024.The drop in sales was a little less bad; unlike this time last year, Tesla was able to more closely match production with demand. As a result, the company delivered 336,681 EVs in Q1, a drop of 12.9 percent compared to Q1 2024.The Models 3 and Y make up the vast majority of Tesla's businessit built 345,454 of them in Q1 2025, a 16.2 percent reduction compared to the same period last year. Despite a recent refresh for the Model Y, which comprised the majority of these two EVs, sales declined by 12.4 percent year-over-year, with just 323,800 being sold, compared to 386,810 for Q1 2024.Things look even worse for the even more outdated Models S and X and the often-recalled Cybertruck. Production for these EVs fell by 18.3 percent year-over-year to 17,161 units in Q1 2025, with sales dropping year-over-year by 24.3 percent to just 12,881.Things were slightly rosier for Tesla's energy storage business, which deployed 10.4 GWh, but this part of the business contributes a small fraction to the bottom line; in 2024, automotive sales accounted for 77 percent of revenues.Much of Tesla's sales collapse has occurred in Europe, where customers are displaying even greater revulsion for CEO Elon Musk's political activity than here in the US. But protests at US Tesla stores are becoming a weekly event, as a majority of Americans disapprove of his interference with the federal government. In the US and abroad, Tesla stores and storage lots have been vandalized and cars have been destroyed. The fall in sales is greater than most market analysts were expectingthey had predicted between 360,000 and 370,000 deliveries for the quarter.These sales numbers are the automaker's worst for several years, but we have to wait until April 22 for the full extent to be revealed, when Tesla publishes its first quarter financial results. Its profit marginwhich briefly rivaled that of OEMs like Ferrari and Porschewas barely half the industry average at just 6.2 percent for Q4 2024.However, it seems that Tesla investors aren't too fazed by these details. Although Tesla was trading below yesterday's closing price at the start of trading this morning, that has steadily been reversing itself, leaving a very long way to go for the price to fall into the $114$100 zone, where it's thought that CEO Musk would face a margin call.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 0 Comments

The real story Starliners flight to the space station was far wilder than most of us thought "Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in." Eric Berger Apr 1, 2025 1:26 pm | 10 NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore receives a warm welcome at Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston from NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Woody Hoburg after completing a long-duration science mission aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore receives a warm welcome at Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston from NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman and Woody Hoburg after completing a long-duration science mission aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAs it flew up toward the International Space Station last summer, the Starliner spacecraft lost four thrusters. A NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, had to take manual control of the vehicle. But as its thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move Starliner in the direction he wanted to go.He and his fellow astronaut, Suni Williams, knew where they wanted to go. Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth. Approaching the station was deemed too risky for Wilmore and Williams, aboard Starliner, as well as the astronauts on the $100 billion space station.But what if it was not safe to come home, either?"I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point," Wilmore said in an interview. "I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't."Starliner astronauts meet with the mediaOn Monday, for the first time since they returned to Earth on a Crew Dragon vehicle two weeks ago, Wilmore and Williams participated in a news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Afterward, they spent hours conducting short, 10-minute interviews with reporters from around the world, describing their mission. I spoke with both.A lot of the questions concerned the politically messy end of the mission, in which the Trump White House claimed it had rescued the astronauts after they were stranded by the Biden administration. This was not true, but it is also not a question that active astronauts are going to answer. They have too much respect for the agency and the White House that appoints its leadership. They are trained not to speak out of school. As Wilmore said repeatedly on Monday, "I can't speak to any of that. Nor would I."And so when Ars met with Wilmore at the end of the dayit was his final interview, scheduled for 4:55 to 5:05 pm in a small studio at Johnson Space Centerpolitics was not on the menu. Instead, I wanted to know the real story, the heretofore untold story of what it was really like to fly Starliner. After all, the problems with the spacecraft's propulsion system precipitated all the other eventsthe decision to fly Starliner home without crew, the reshuffling of the Crew-9 mission, and their recent return in March after nine months in space.I have known Wilmore a little bit for more than a decade. I was privileged to see his launch on a Soyuz rocket, from Kazakhstan in 2014, alongside his family. We both are about to become empty nesters, with daughters who are seniors in high school, soon to go off to college. Perhaps because of this, Wilmore felt comfortable sharing his experiences and anxieties from the flight. We blew through the 10-minute interview slot and ended up talking for nearly half an hour.It's a hell of a story.Launch and a cold nightBoeing's Starliner spacecraft faced multiple delays before the vehicle's first crewed mission, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on June 5, 2024. These included a faulty valve on the Atlas V rocket's upper stage, and then a helium leak inside Boeing's Starliner spacecraft.The valve issue, in early May, stood the mission down long enough that Wilmore asked to fly back to Houston for additional time in a flight simulator, to keep his skills fresh. Finally, with fine weather, the Starliner Crew Flight Test took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It marked the first human launch on the Atlas V rocket, which had a new Centaur upper stage with two engines. Suni Williams' first night on Starliner was quite cold. Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas Suni Williams' first night on Starliner was quite cold. Credit: NASA/Helen Arase Vargas Sunita "Suni" Williams: "Oh man, the launch was awesome. Both of us looked at each other like, 'Wow, this is going just perfectly.' So, the ride to space and the orbit insertion burn, all perfect."Barry "Butch" Wilmore: "In simulations, there's always a deviation. Little deviations in your trajectory. And during the launch on Shuttle STS-129 many years ago, and Soyuz, there's the similar type of deviations that you see in this trajectory. I mean, it's always correcting back. But this ULA Atlas was dead on the center. I mean, it was exactly in the crosshairs, all the way. It was much different than what I'd expected or experienced in the past. It was exhilarating. It was fantastic. Yeah, it really was. The dual-engine Centaur did have a surge. I'm not sure ULA knew about it, but it was obvious to us. We were the first to ride it. Initially we asked, 'Should that be doing that? This surging?' But after a while it was kind of soothing. And again, we were flying right down the middle."After Starliner separated from the Atlas V rocket, Williams and Wilmore performed several maneuvering tests, and put the vehicle through its paces. Starliner performed exceptionally well during these initial tests on day one.Wilmore: "The precision, the ability to control to the exact point that I wanted, was great. There was very little, almost imperceptible cross-control. I've never given a handling qualities rating of "one," which was part of a measurement system. To take a qualitative test and make a quantitative assessment. I've never given a one, ever, in any test I've ever done, because nothing's ever deserved a one. Boy, I was tempted in some of the tests we did. I didn't give a one, but it was pretty amazing."Following these tests, the crew attempted to sleep for several hours ahead of their all-important approach and docking with the International Space Station on the flight's second day. More so even than launch or landing, the most challenging part of this mission, which would stress Starliner's handling capabilities as well as its navigation system, would come as it approached the orbiting laboratory.Williams: "The night that we spent there in the spacecraft, it was a little chilly. We had traded off some of our clothes to bring up some equipment up to the space station. So, I had this small T-shirt thing, long-sleeve T-shirt, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm cold.' Butch is like, 'I'm cold, too.' So, we ended up actually putting our boots on, and then I put my spacesuit on. And then he's like, maybe I want mine too. So, we both actually got in our spacesuits. It might just be because there were two people in there."Starliner was designed to fly four people to the International Space Station for six-month stays in orbit. But for this initial test flight, there were just two people, which meant less body heat. Wilmore estimated that it was about 50 Fahrenheit in the cabin.Wilmore: "It was definitely low 50s, if not cooler. When you're hustling and bustling, and doing things, all the tests we were doing after launch, we didn't notice it until we slowed down. We purposely didn't take sleeping bags. I was just going to bungee myself to the bulkhead. I had a sweatshirt and some sweatpants, and I thought, I'm going to be fine. No, it was frigid. And I even got inside my space suit, put the boots on and everything, gloves, the whole thing. And it was still cold."Time to dock with the space stationAfter a few hours of fitful sleep, Wilmore decided to get up and start working to get his blood pumping. He reviewed the flight plan and knew this was going to be a big day. Wilmore had been concerned about the performance of the vehicle's reaction control system thrusters. There are 28 of them. Around the perimeter of Starliner's service module, at the aft of the vehicle, there are four "doghouses" equally spaced around the vehicle. Each of these doghouses contains seven small thrusters for maneuvering. In each doghouse, two thrusters are aft-facing, two are forward-facing, and three are in different radial directions (see an image of a doghouse, with the cover removed, here). For docking, these thrusters are essential. There had been some problems with their performance during an uncrewed flight test to the space station in May 2022, and Wilmore had been concerned those issues might crop up again. Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is pictured docked to the International Space Station. One of the four doghouses is visible on the service module. Credit: NASA Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is pictured docked to the International Space Station. One of the four doghouses is visible on the service module. Credit: NASA Wilmore: "Before the flight we had a meeting with a lot of the senior Boeing executives, including the chief engineer. (This was Naveed Hussain, chief engineer for Boeing's Defense, Space, and Security division). Naveed asked me what is my biggest concern? And I said the thrusters and the valves because we'd had failures on the OFT missions. You don't get the hardware back. (Starliner's service module is jettisoned before the crew capsule returns from orbit). So you're just looking at data and engineering judgment to say, 'Okay, it must've been FOD,' (foreign object debris) or whatever the various issues they had. And I said that's what concerns me the most. Because, in my mind I'm thinking, if we lost thrusters, we could be in a situation where we're in space and can't control it. That's what I was thinking. And oh my, what happened? We lost the first thruster."When vehicles approach the space station, they use two imaginary lines to help guide their approach. These are the R-bar, which is a line connecting the space station to the center of Earth. The "R" stands for radius. Then there is the V-bar, which is the velocity vector of the space station. Due to thruster issues, as Starliner neared the V-bar about 260 meters (850 feet) from the space station, Wilmore had to take manual control of the vehicle.Wilmore: "As we get closer to the V-bar, we lose our second thruster. So now we're single fault tolerance for the loss of 6DOF control. You understand that?"Here things get a little more complicated if you've never piloted anything. When Wilmore refers to 6DOF control he means six degrees or freedom, that is the six different movements possible in three-dimensional space: forward/back, up/down, left/right, yaw, pitch, and roll. With Starliner's four doghouses and their various thrusters, a pilot is able to control the spacecraft's movement across these six degrees of freedom. But as Starliner got to within a few hundred meters of the station, a second thruster failed. The condition of being "single fault" tolerant means that the vehicle could sustain just one more thruster failure before being at risk of losing full control of Starliner's movement. This would necessitate a mandatory abort of the docking attempt.Wilmore: "We're single fault tolerant, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, we're supposed to leave the space station.' Because I know the flight rules. I did not know that the flight directors were already in discussions about waiving the flight rule, because we've lost two thrusters. We didn't know why. They just dropped."The heroes in Mission ControlAs part of the Commercial Crew program, the two companies providing transportation services for NASA, SpaceX and Boeing, got to decide who would fly their spacecraft. SpaceX chose to operate its Dragon vehicles out of a control center at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Boeing chose to contract with NASA's Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston, to fly Starliner. So at this point the vehicle is under the purview of a Flight Director named Ed Van Cise. This was the capstone mission of his 15-year career as a NASA flight director.Wilmore: "Thankfully, these folks are heroes. And please print this. What do heroes look like? Well, heroes put their tank on and they run into a fiery building and pull people out of it. That's a hero. Heroes also sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, 'What do you think?' they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly. That is a hero. And there are several of them in Mission Control."From the outside, as Starliner approached the space station last June, we knew little of this. By following NASA's webcast of the docking, it was clear there were some thruster issues, and that Wilmore had to take manual control. But we did not know that in the final minutes before docking, NASA waived the flight rules about loss of thrusters. According to Wilmore and Williams, the drama was only beginning at this point.Wilmore: "We acquired the V-bar, and I took over manual control. And then we lose the third thruster. Now, again, they're all in the same direction. And I'm picturing these thrusters that we're losing. We lost two bottom thrusters. You can lose four thrusters, if they're top and bottom, but you still got the two on this side, you can still maneuver. But if you lose thrusters in off-orthogonal, the bottom and the port, and you've only got starboard and top, you can't control that. It's off-axis. So I'm parsing all this out in my mind, because I understand the system. And we lose two of the bottom thrusters. We've lost a port thruster. And now we're zero-fault tolerant. We're already past the point where we were supposed to leave, and now we're zero-fault tolerant and I'm manual control. And, oh my, the control is sluggish. Compared to the first day, it is not the same spacecraft. Am I able to maintain control? I am. But it is not the same."At this point in the interview, Wilmore went into some wonderful detail.Wilmore: "And this is the part I'm sure you haven't heard. We lost the fourth thruster. Now we've lost 6DOF control. We can't maneuver forward. I still have control, supposedly, on all the other axes. But I'm thinking, the F-18 is a fly-by-wire. You put control into the stick, and the throttle, and it sends the signal to the computer. The computer goes, 'Okay, he wants to do that, let's throw that out aileron a bit. Let's throw that stabilizer a bit. Let's pull the rudder there.' And it's going to maintain balanced flight. I have not even had a reason to think, how does Starliner do this, to maintain a balance?"This is a very precarious situation were inEssentially, Wilmore cannot fully control Starliner any longer. But simply abandoning the docking attempt is not a palatable solution. Just as the thrusters are needed to control the vehicle during the docking process, they're also necessary to position Starliner for its deorbit burn and reentry to Earth's atmosphere. So in Wilmore's mind, he is contemplating whether it is riskier to to approach the space station, or to try to fly back to Earth. Williams was worrying the same thing.Williams: "There was a lot of unsaid communication like, 'Hey, this is a very precarious situation we're in.' I think both of us overwhelmingly felt like it would be really nice to dock to that space station that's right in front of us. We knew that they (Mission Control) were working really hard to be able to keep communication with us, and then be able to send commands. We were both thinking, what if we lose communication with the ground? So, NORDO Con Ops (this means flying a vehicle without a radio), and we didn't talk about it too much, but we already had synced in our mind that we should go to the space station. This is our place that we need to probably go to, to have a conversation because we don't know exactly what is happening, and why the thrusters are falling off, and what the solution would be."Wilmore: "I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point. I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't. So there we are, loss of 6DOF control, four aft thrusters down, and I'm visualizing orbital mechanics. The space station is nose down. So we're not exactly level with the station, but below it. If you're below the station, you're moving faster. That's orbital mechanics. It's going to make you move away from the station. So I'm doing all of this in my mind. I don't know what control I have. What if I lose another thruster? What if we lose comm? What am I going to do?"One of the other challenges at this point, in addition to holding his position relative to the space station, was keeping Starliner's nose pointed directly at the orbital laboratory.Williams: "Starliner is based on a vision system that looks at the space station and uses the space station as a frame of reference. So, if we had started to fall off and lose that, which there's a plus or minus that we can have; we didn't lose the station ever, but we did start to deviate a little bit. I think both of us were getting a little bit nervous then, because the system would've automatically aborted us."After Starliner lost four of its 28 reaction control system thrusters, Van Cise and this team in Houston decided the best chance for success was resetting the failed thrusters. This is, effectively, a fancy way of turning off your computer and rebooting it to try to fix the problem. But it meant Wilmore had to go hands-off from Starliner's controls. Imagine that. You're drifting away from the space station, trying to maintain your position. The station is your only real lifeline, because if you lose the ability to dock, the chance of coming back in one piece is quite low. And now you're being told to take your hands off the controls.Wilmore: "That was not easy to do. I have lived rendezvous orbital dynamics going back decades. (Wilmore is one of only two active NASA astronauts who has experience piloting the space shuttle). Ray Bigonesse is our rendezvous officer. What a motivated individual. Primarily him, but me as well, we worked to develop this manual rendezvous capability over the years. He's a volunteer fireman, and he said, 'Hey, I'm coming off shift at 5:30 Saturday morning, will you meet me in the sim?' So we'd meet on Saturdays. We never got to the point of saying lose four thrusters. Who would've thought that, in the same direction? But we're in there training, doing things, playing around. That was the preparation."All of this training meant Wilmore felt like he was in the best position to fly Starliner, and did not relish the thought of giving up control. But finally, when he thought the spacecraft was temporarily stable enough, Wilmore called down to Mission Control, "Hands off." Almost immediately, flight controllers sent a signal to override Starliner's flight computer, and to fire the thrusters that had been turned off. Two of the four thrusters came back online.Wilmore: "Now we're back to single-fault tolerant. But then we lose a fifth jet. What if we'd have lost that fifth jet while those other four were still down? I have no idea what would've happened. I attribute to the providence of Lord getting those two jets back before that fifth one failed. So we're down to zero-fault tolerant again. I can still maintain control. Again, sluggish. Not only was the control different on the visual, what inputs and what it looked like, but we could hear it. The valve opening and closing. When a thruster would fire it was like a machine gun."Were probably not flying home in StarlinerMission Control decides that it wants to try to recover the failed thrusters again. After Wilmore takes his hands off the controls, this process recovers all but one of them. At this point, the vehicle can be flown autonomously, as it was intended to be. When asked to give up control of the vehicle for its final approach to the station, Wilmore said he was apprehensive about doing so. He was concerned that if the system went into automation mode, it may not be possible to get it back in manual mode. After all that had happened, he wanted to make sure he could take control of Starliner again. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed in a Crew Dragon spacecraft in March. Dolphins were among their greeters. Credit: NASA Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed in a Crew Dragon spacecraft in March. Dolphins were among their greeters. Credit: NASA Wilmore: "I was very apprehensive. In earlier sims, I had even told the flight directors, 'If we get in a situation where I got to give it back to auto, I may not.' And they understood. Because if I've got a mode that's working, I don't want to give it up. But because we got those jets back, I thought, 'Okay, we're only down one.' All this is going through my mind in real time. And I gave it back. And of course, we docked."Williams: "I was super happy. If you remember from the video, when we came into the space station, I did this little happy dance. One, of course, just because I love being in space and am happy to be on the space station and great friends up there. Two, just really happy that Starliner docked to the space station. My feeling at that point in time was like, 'Oh, phew, let's just take a breather and try to understand what happened.' There's really great people on our team. Our team is huge. The commercial crew program, NASA and Boeing engineers, were all working hard to try and understand, to try to decide what we might need to do to get us to come back in that spacecraft. At that point, we also knew it was going to take a little while. Everything in this business takes a little while, like you know, because you want to cross the T's and dot the I's and make sure. I think the decision at the end of the summer was the right decision. We didn't have all the T's crossed, we didn't have all the I's dotted. So do we take that risk where we don't need to?"Wilmore added that he felt pretty confident, in the aftermath of docking to the space station, that Starliner probably would not be their ride home.Wilmore: "I was thinking, we might not come home in the spacecraft. We might not. And one of the first phone calls I made was to Vincent LaCourt, the ISS flight director, who was one of the ones that made the call about waiving the flight rule. I said, 'Okay, what about this spacecraft, is it our safe haven?'"It was unlikely to happen, but if some catastrophic space station emergency occurred while Wilmore and Williams were in orbit, what were they supposed to do? Should they retreat to Starliner for an emergency departure, or cram into one of the other vehicles on station, for which they did not have seats or spacesuits? LaCourt said they should use Starliner as a safe haven for the time being. Therein followed a long series of meetings and discussions about Starliner's suitability for flying crew back to Earth. Publicly, NASA and Boeing expressed confidence in Starliner's safe return with crew. But Williams and Wilmore, who had just made that harrowing ride, felt differently.Wilmore: "I was very skeptical, just because of what we'd experienced. I just didn't see that we could make it. I was hopeful that we could, but it would've been really tough to get there, to where we could say, 'Yeah, we can come back.'"And so, they did not.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 10 Comments

might not be cheap, though Honda will sell off historic racing parts, including bits of Sennas V10 Honda will also find new homes for some heritage IndyCars and MotoGP bikes. Jonathan M. Gitlin Apr 1, 2025 10:00 pm | 1 This is a Honda RA100E 3.5 L V10 engine. It was used in McLaren's 1990 F1 season, during which time the team won the constructors championship and Ayrton Senna won the driver's title. Credit: Honda Racing Corporation This is a Honda RA100E 3.5 L V10 engine. It was used in McLaren's 1990 F1 season, during which time the team won the constructors championship and Ayrton Senna won the driver's title. Credit: Honda Racing Corporation Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreHonda's motorsport division must be doing some spring cleaning. Today, the Honda Racing Corporation announced that it's getting into the memorabilia business, offering up parts and even whole vehicles for fans and collectors. And to kick things off, it's going to auction some components from the RA100E V10 engines that powered the McLaren Honda MP4/5Bs of Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger to both F1 titles in 1990."We aim to make this a valuable business that allows fans who love F1, MotoGP and various other races to share in the history of Honda's challenges in racing since the 1950s," said Koi Watanabe, president of HRC, "including our fans to own a part of Honda's racing history is not intended to be a one-time endeavor, but rather a continuous business that we will nurture and grow."The bits from Senna's and Berger's V10s will go up for auction at Monterey Car Week later this year, and the lots will include some of the parts seen in the photo above: cam covers, camshafts, pistons, and conrods, with a certificate of authenticity and a display case. And HRC is going through its collections to see what else it might part with, including "heritage machines and parts" from IndyCar, and "significant racing motorcycles."The fact that the parts are going to be auctioned at Car Week suggests the RA100E parts won't be cheapthe annual gathering in Northern California attracts extremely well-heeled car enthusiasts, and the tickets for events like the Quail or the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance will put a hefty dent in your wallet.If your idea of fun isn't hanging out with a bunch of the 0.1 percent at a golf course looking at pre-war carsand I'll admit the lure of Car Week has worn pretty thin on me these last few yearsand your budget is more down to earth, fear not: F1 components are still within reach via an Etsy vendor in the UK. There's been some inflation in 12 years, but you can find F1 parts as gifts for under $100. Credit: Ledon Gifts I've had a coin tidy made from the 1st gear of one of Honda's late-2000s F1 cars sitting on my desk for 12 years now, and I can report it makes the most satisfying noise if you roll it back and forth along the gear teeth when you should be working.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 1 Comments

Reasonable accomodations Satisfactory now has controller support, so theres no excuse for your bad lines Can you mine resources and build factories with merely sticks and buttons? Kevin Purdy Apr 1, 2025 2:52 pm | 8 Hitting the "ship it to space" button feels pretty good with a controller. Credit: Coffee Stain Studios Hitting the "ship it to space" button feels pretty good with a controller. Credit: Coffee Stain Studios Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreSatisfactory starts out as a game you play, then becomes a way you think. The only way I have been able to keep the ridiculous factory simulation from eating an even-more-unhealthy amount of my time was the game's keyboard-and-mouse dependency. But the work, it has found meon my couch, on a trip, wherever one might game, really.In a 1.1 release on Satisfactory's Experimental branch, there are lots of new things, but the biggest new thing is a controller scheme. Xbox and DualSense are officially supported, though anyone playing on Steam can likely tweak their way to something that works on other pads. With this, the game becomes far more playable for those playing on a couch, on a portable gaming PC like the Steam Deck, or over household or remote streaming. It also paves the way for the game's console release, which is currently slated for sometime in 2025. Coffee Stain Studios reviews the contents of its Experimental branch 1.1 update. Satisfactory seems like an unlikely candidate for controller support, let alone consoles. It's a game where you do a lot of three-dimensional thinking, putting machines and conveyer belts and power lines in just the right places, either because you need to or it just feels proper. How would it feel to select, rotate, place, and connect everything using a controller? Have I just forgotten that Minecraft, and first-person games as a whole, probably seemed similarly desk-bound at one time? I grabbed an Xbox Wireless controller, strapped on my biofuel-powered jetpack, and gave a reduced number of inputs a shot. Here is how Satisfactory works on an Xbox Wireless Controller. Coffee Stain Studios Here is how Satisfactory works on an Xbox Wireless Controller. Coffee Stain Studios Here is the PlayStation DualSense version of Satisfactory's controller scheme. Coffee Stain Studios Here is the PlayStation DualSense version of Satisfactory's controller scheme. Coffee Stain Studios Here is how Satisfactory works on an Xbox Wireless Controller. Coffee Stain Studios Here is the PlayStation DualSense version of Satisfactory's controller scheme. Coffee Stain Studios The biggest hurdle to get past, for me, is not jumping in place when I wanted to do something, though it's not unique to this game. In most games that have some kind of building or planning through a controller, the bottom-right button ("A" on Xbox, "X" on PlayStation DualSense) is often the do/interact/confirm button. In Satisfactory, and some other games where I switch between keyboard/mouse and controller, A/X is jump. Satisfactory wants you to primarily use the triggers and bumpers to select, build, and dismantle things, which feels okay when you've got the hang of things. But even after an hour or so, I still found my pioneer unexpectedly jumping, as if he needed to get the zoomies out before placing a storage container.Wherever you go, there your blueprints areWhatSatisfactory has going in its favor is its relatively forgiving nature when it comes to objects clipping through each other, and the perfect amount of snappiness when combining buildings and logistics. I managed to build out my new-to-me remote oil production facility (oil into rubber and plastic, residue into fuel for generators, excess material into the Awesome Sink) using only a controller. I might switch back to keyboard and mouse if I knew I were going to be building a big project, the kind you sketch out on paper, or an online calculator. But I'm otherwise impressed at what the developers have pulled off here, having only reached for my mouse once or twice for what was seemingly a missing option (in the crafting bench). Using the chainsaw with a controller generates a lot of rumble, which feels appropriate. Coffee Stain Studios Using the chainsaw with a controller generates a lot of rumble, which feels appropriate. Coffee Stain Studios It's not too bad moving through your inventory with a controller, and there are common mechanics across all interfaces. Coffee Stain Studios It's not too bad moving through your inventory with a controller, and there are common mechanics across all interfaces. Coffee Stain Studios I built this rat's nest of fuel-powered generators, refineries, and reservoirs using a controller. Don't be too impressed. Coffee Stain Studios I built this rat's nest of fuel-powered generators, refineries, and reservoirs using a controller. Don't be too impressed. Coffee Stain Studios It's not too bad moving through your inventory with a controller, and there are common mechanics across all interfaces. Coffee Stain Studios I built this rat's nest of fuel-powered generators, refineries, and reservoirs using a controller. Don't be too impressed. Coffee Stain Studios You'll want to build out your item selection wheels if you have not previously. They make on-the-spot building far faster to get through than clicking the left shoulder for a build menu, then pacing through the categories and options, merely to get to a power line or foundation. You will also want to give the order of your hand-held items more consideration than normal, as you can only move through them in one direction with a controller. Discovering this while in the midst of conflict with a native creature is ill-advised.Generally, I'm very impressed with the controls as implemented (by Fishlabs). There is a common language to each panel and situation that slowly seeps into your fingers, like moving between panels with the right stick, and holding the left trigger while clicking brings up a kind of right-click contextual actions menu. If you started the game with a controllerpresumably something the developers hope lots of people will do on consolesyou would never know to miss your Q, F, and V keys.I will be both glad and somewhat concerned that I can now take my exploitative space factory into more relaxing spaces than the same desk where I do my full-time job. There is no excuse now for the conveyor spaghetti, the inefficient truck paths, the missing alternative recipes I could be scavenging from hard drives. What else was I doing, really?Kevin PurdySenior Technology ReporterKevin PurdySenior Technology Reporter Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch. 8 Comments

The stream of life How a 1980s Atari creator with cystic fibrosis crafted a story of salmon survival Doctors said he'd die by 13, but Bill Williams turned long odds into iconic art about endurance. Benj Edwards Apr 1, 2025 3:33 pm | 0 A 1982 screenshot of Salmon Run for the Atari 400/800 computers from Atari Program Exchange. Credit: Atari A 1982 screenshot of Salmon Run for the Atari 400/800 computers from Atari Program Exchange. Credit: Atari Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIn 1982, while most game developers were busy with space invaders and maze ghosts, Bill Williams created something far more profound: a game about swimming upstream against impossible odds. Salmon Run for the Atari 800 served as a powerful metaphor for life itself, one that resonates even more deeply when you learn about the creator's own struggles with cystic fibrosis.As a kid growing up in the 1980s with an Atari 800 home computer, I discovered this hidden gem in our family's game collection, and it soon became a favorite.What struck me mostand what still amazes me todaywas its incredible audio design, creating water sounds that seemed impossible for 8-bit hardware. But Salmon Run was about far more than impressive audio.In the game, you play as Sam the Salmon, swimming upriver to spawn with a female salmon waiting upstream. You control your speed while dodging obstacles like rocks, waterfalls, and riverbanks, moving left to right and leaping from the water. And predatorsbears, fishermen, and birdsare constantly trying to eat you. Gameplay of <em>Salmon Run</em> for the Atari 8-bit computer family. The "swimming against the current" gameplay isn't just clever game design. Williams spent his life navigating his own treacherous currentshospital visits, treatments, and the constant struggle just to breathe. His personal battle with cystic fibrosis, characterized by chronic pain, infused Salmon Run with authentic meaning that transcends its simple pixels.In a world grappling with anxiety, uncertainty, and relentless pressures, Salmon Run feels especially timely to me. While not all of us face challenges of Williams' magnitude, I am sure anyone reading can attest that life isn't easy. It isn't a passive processit's a deliberate, ongoing work of labor. We constantly get pushed back by the current. And all the while, both metaphorical and literal bears are trying to eat us. The Atari 800 home computer, as seen in an Atari promotional brochure. Credit: Atari In a way, the inherent struggles and dangers of life make the ostensibly non-violent gameplay of Salmon Run even more enjoyable. Unlike most Atari games, you're not blasting aliens or dodging maze ghosts; instead, you're navigating a natural, down-to-earth challenge.I'm not alone in my appreciation for this gem. As one Atari Mania reviewer named JSUK wrote: "Bill Williams' first game shows why he is so revered. The concept is simple but the execution is perfect. Controls are responsive, the sound effects replicate ocean waves better than you'd imagine the A8 hardware could, and there's even a little animated reward after each level. Magical."The digital rapids of sound designFor fun, I have recently been developing a modern computer game for myself set in the rainy, natural outdoors, and I was trying to figure out the best way to make rain sound effects. That had me looking back at Salmon Run. How did Williams achieve what he did? According to the Digital Antiquarian, it turns out that Williams' sound effects in Salmon Run were so highly regarded that he was asked to write a regular "Atari Sound" column for Softline Magazine in the early 1980s.The water sounds in Salmon Run weren't just impressive for their realismthey showed a deep understanding of the Atari's sound capabilities. In his Softline columns, Williams explained how noise could create a wide range of natural sounds, from "the soothing sounds of wind and surf" to "the pitter-patter of raindrops on a window." This wasn't just random beepingit required careful manipulation of the Atari's POKEY sound chip and its various noise patterns, which generate certain frequencies to make white noise, pink noise, and brown noise (what audio engineers call "colors of noise").By controlling both the randomness and the frequency range of these sounds, he could create everything from gentle burbles to rushing cascades. "We live in an audible universe," Williams wrote, explaining why sound design mattered so much in games. "The correct blend of the visual and auditory makes good games good." A photo of the author's brother and the next-door neighbor playing Atari 800 games circa 1985. Credit: Benj Edwards The Atari POKEY chip might seem primitive by today's standardswith just four 8-bit sound channelsbut in Williams' hands, it sang like a mountain stream. While many developers at the time settled for simple beeps and boops, Williams coaxed naturalistic environmental sounds from the silicon that modern audio designers, working with gigabytes of sampled audio, would still appreciate.While popular memory of retro sound tends to fixate on the chiptune melodies of the NES era, Williams was pioneering environmental sound design years earlier. The rushing water in Salmon Run doesn't just sound realisticit creates genuine atmosphere, pulling players into its pixelated river in a way few games of the era managed. I still play the game sometimes just to hear that water.Swimming against the currentIn some ways, it's amazing that Salmon Run was Williams' first game. Williams saw an advertisement for Atari's pioneering Atari Program Exchange (APX) division, which promised to publish games from talented amateurssort of like an indie game store at the time. Salmon Run became one of APX's most popular titles and launched Williams into the games industry.APX deserves more credit in gaming history. While today's indie scene has digital storefronts and game jams, APX pioneered the concept of giving amateur creators a distribution platform decades before Steam or itch.io. The program created space for unique voices like Williams' to enter game development, embracing games that major publishers might have dismissed as too weird or niche.Williams' success with APX led him to create several games for Synapse Software, including the beloved Alley Cat and the incomprehensible fantasy masterpiece Necromancer, before moving to the Amiga, where he created the experimental Mind Walker and his ambitious "cultural simulation" Knights of the Crystallion.Necromancer, Williams' later creation for the Atari 800, plays like a fever dreamyou control a druid fighting off spiders while growing magic trees and battling an undead wizard. It makes absolutely no sense by conventional standards, but it's brilliant in its otherworldliness."The first games that I did were very hard to explain to people and they just kind of bought it on faith," Williams said in a 1989 interview with YAAM (Yet Another Amiga Magazine), suggesting this unconventional approach started early. That willingness to create deeply personal, almost surreal experiences defined Williams' work throughout his career. An Atari 800 that Benj Edwards set up to play M.U.L.E. at his mom's house in 2015, for nostalgia purposes. Credit: Benj Edwards After a brief stint making licensed games (like Bart's Nightmare) for the Super Nintendo at Sculptured Software, he left the industry entirely to pursue his calling as a pastor, attending seminary in Chicago with his wife Martha, before declining health forced him to move to Rockport, Texas. Perhaps reflecting on the choices that led him down this path, Williams had noted years earlier in that 1989 interview, "Sometimes in this industry we tend to forget that life is a lot more interesting than computers."Bill Williams died on May 28, 1998, just one day before his 38th birthday. He died young, but he outlived his doctors' prediction that he wouldn't reach age 13, and created cultural works that stand the test of time.Like Sam the Salmon, Williams pushed forward relentlesslyin his case, creating powerful digital art that was uniquely his own.In our current era of photorealistic graphics and cinematic game experiences, Salmon Run's blocky pixels might seem quaint. But its core themespersistence, natural beauty, and finding purpose against long oddsremain as relevant as ever. We all face bears in lifewhether they come from natural adversity or from those who might seek to do us harm. The beauty of Williams' game is in showing us that, despite their menacing presence, there's still a reward waiting upstream for those willing to keep swimming.If you want to try Salmon Run yourself, you can potentially play it in your browser through an emulated Atari 800, hosted on The Internet Archive. Press F1 to start the game.Benj EdwardsSenior AI ReporterBenj EdwardsSenior AI Reporter Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC. 0 Comments

Anything can happen What were expecting from Nintendos Switch 2 announcement Wednesday We take some wild stabs ahead of the big "Nintendo Direct" presentation. Kyle Orland Apr 1, 2025 4:12 pm | 8 Credit: Nintendo Credit: Nintendo Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWith its planned Switch 2 Direct presentation scheduled for Wednesday morning, Nintendo is set to finally fully pull back the curtain on a console we've been speculating about for years now. We'll have plenty of reporting and analysis of whatever Nintendo announces in the days to come. In the meantime, though, we thought it would be fun to put down a marker on some of the key announcements we expect Nintendo to make tomorrow.Rather than limiting ourselves to a single prediction, though, we've broken things down into increasingly outlandish categories of "Likely," "Possible," and "Implausible." Consider this an exercise in expectation-setting for one of the most important moments in Nintendo's recent history, and be sure to let us know what you think will happen in the comments section below.Price Yen per US dollar, charted. Credit: MacroTrends Yen per US dollar, charted. Credit: MacroTrends Likely: A $399 MSRP would reflect some of the eight years of inflation-related erosion that Nintendo has seen in the (seemingly unmovable) $299 price of the original Switch. That price point would also put the Switch 2 at rough parity with the market-proven price point of the (older, non-portable) Xbox Series X and PS5.Possible: Nintendo could surprise everyone and launch the Switch 2 at the same $299 price point that the Switch has enjoyed since 2017. Such a move, paired with the first-ever price drop for the original Switch, would supercharge interest in the new console and likely make initial Switch 2 supplies that much harder to find on store shelves.Implausible: A price of $449 or more would be pretty out of character for Nintendo, which tends to launch its consoles at the lower end of the prevailing price distribution.Release date It's beginning to look a lot like a holiday launch. Credit: Aurich Lawson It's beginning to look a lot like a holiday launch. Credit: Aurich Lawson Likely: Back in 2017, there were two months between Nintendo's wider reveal of the Switch in January 2017 and that console's launch in March 2017. The same pattern would point to a June launch for the Switch 2, timing that also lines up with the conclusion of Nintendo's currently scheduled Switch 2 hands-on experiences.Possible: Nintendo might push the Switch 2 launch to the 2025 holiday season in order to give its developers and third-party partners a little more time to work on games (and manufacturing partners a little more time to make hardware). That later launch would still capture the all-important end-of-year sales period, which represents a good chunk of all game industry sales most years.Implausible: Nintendo could try to end its Direct presentation by surprise-announcing a launch right now (or within a few days), just as Sega tried to do with the ill-fated E3 debut of the Saturn in 1995. But such a shocking move would be even tougher to pull off in today's tightly integrated online media and retail market and would give Nintendo precious little time to build the launch-day marketing juggernaut it likely wants.Launch games It has taken nearly 8 years. What's another few months for the galaxy's top bounty hunter? Credit: Nintendo It has taken nearly 8 years. What's another few months for the galaxy's top bounty hunter? Credit: Nintendo Likely: A new Mario Kart was already shown briefly during Nintendo's Switch 2 teaser in January, and the long-awaited Metroid Prime 4 seems increasingly likely to launch, at least with an enhanced Switch 2 "Edition" alongside a scaled-down original Switch version. A new 3D Mario title also seems likely for the Switch 2 launch, given Nintendo's on-and-off tradition of launching new hardware with Mario games (and how long it has been since 2017's incredibly popular Super Mario Odyssey).Possible: Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the surprise Switch hit of the early pandemic lockdowns. A new Animal Crossing game would be a good way to draw some of those lapsed Switch players back for a new, more powerful Switch 2.Implausible: Long-suffering Earthbound fans have been hoping for a new game in the series (or even an official localization of the Japan-exclusive Mother 3) for literal decades now. Personally, though, I'm hoping for a surprise revisit to the Punch-Out series, following on its similar surprise return on the Wii in 2009.Screen This compressed screenshot of a compressed video is by no means the resolution of the Switch 2 screen, but it's going to be higher than the original Switch. Credit: Nintendo This compressed screenshot of a compressed video is by no means the resolution of the Switch 2 screen, but it's going to be higher than the original Switch. Credit: Nintendo Likely: While a 720p screen was pretty nice in a 2017 gaming handheld, a full 1080p display is much more standard in today's high-end gaming portables. We expect Nintendo will follow this trend for what looks to be a nearly 8-inch screen on the Switch 2.Possible: While a brighter OLED screen would be nice as a standard feature on the Switch 2, we expect Nintendo will follow the precedent of the Switch generation and offer this as a pricier upgrade at some point in the future.Implausible: The Switch 2 would be the perfect time for Nintendo to revisit the glasses-free stereoscopic 3D that we all thought was such a revelation on the 3DS all those years ago.C Button C-ing is believing. Credit: Nintendo C-ing is believing. Credit: Nintendo Likely: The mysterious new button labeled "C" on the Switch 2's right Joy-Con could serve as a handy way to "connect" to other players, perhaps through a new Miiverse-style social network.Possible: Recent rumors suggest the C button could be used to connect to a second Switch console (or the TV-connected dock) for a true dual-screen experience. That would be especially fun and useful for Wii U/DS emulation and remasters.Implausible: The C stands for Chibi-Robo! and launches a system-level mini-game focused on the miniature robot.New featuresLikely: After forcing players to use a wonky smartphone app for voice chat on the Switch, we wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo finally implements full on-device voice chat for online games on the Switch 2at least between confirmed "friends" on the system.Possible: Some sort of system-level achievement tracking would bring Nintendo's new console in line with a feature that the competition from Sony and Microsoft has had for decades now.Implausible: After killing it off for the Switch generation, we'd love it if Nintendo brought back the Virtual Console as a way to buy permanent downloadable copies of emulated classics that will carry over across generations. Failing that, how about a revival of the 3DS's StreetPass passive social network for Switch 2 gamers on the go?Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 8 Comments