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

This is only a test First tokamak component installed in a commercial fusion plant A tokamak moves forward as two companies advance plans for stellarators. John Timmer Apr 1, 2025 5:05 pm | 13 Credit: Commonwealth Fusion Credit: Commonwealth Fusion Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThere are a remarkable number of commercial fusion power startups, considering that it's a technology that's built a reputation for being perpetually beyond the horizon. Many of them focus on radically new technologies for heating and compressing plasmas, or fusing unusual combinations of isotopes. These technologies are often difficult to evaluatethey can clearly generate hot plasmas, but it's tough to determine whether they can get hot enough, often enough to produce usable amounts of power.On the other end of the spectrum are a handful of companies that are trying to commercialize designs that have been extensively studied in the academic world. And there have been some interesting signs of progress here. Recently, Commonwealth Fusion, which is building a demonstration tokamak in Massachussets, started construction of the cooling system that will keep its magnets superconducting. And two companies that are hoping to build a stellarator did some important validation of their concepts.Doing donutsA tokamak is a donut-shaped fusion chamber that relies on intense magnetic fields to compress and control the plasma within it. A number of tokamaks have been built over the years, but the big one that is expected to produce more energy than required to run it, ITER, has faced many delays and now isn't expected to achieve its potential until the 2040s. Back in 2015, however, some physicists calculated that high-temperature superconductors would allow ITER-style performance in a far smaller and easier-to-build package. That idea was commercialized as Commonwealth Fusion.The company is currently trying to build an ITER equivalent: a tokamak that can achieve fusion but isn't large enough and lacks some critical hardware needed to generate electricity from that reaction. The planned facility, SPARC, is already in progress, with most of the supporting facility in place and superconducting magnets being constructed. But in late March, the company took a major step by installing the first component of the tokamak itself, the cryostat base, which will support the hardware that keeps its magnets cool.Alex Creely, Commonwealth Fusion's tokamak operations director and SPARC's chief engineer, told Ars that the cryostat's materials have to be chosen to be capable of handling temperatures in the area of 20 Kelvin, and be able to tolerate neutron exposure. Fortunately, stainless steel is still up to the task. It will also be part of a structure that has to handle an extreme temperature gradient. Creely said that it only takes about 30 centimeters to go from the hundreds of millions of degrees C of the plasma down to about 1,000 C, after which it becomes relatively simple to reach cryostat temperatures.He said that construction is expected to wrap up about a year from now, after which there will be about a year of commissioning the hardware, with fusion experiments planned for 2027. And, while ITER may be facing ongoing delays, Creely said that it was critical for keeping Commonwealth on a tight schedule. Not only is most of the physics of SPARC the same as that of ITER, but some of the hardware will be as well. "We've learned a lot from their supply chain development," Creely said. "So some of the same vendors that are supplying components for the ITER tokamak, we are also working with those same vendors, which has been great."Great in the sense that Commonwealth is now on track to see plasma well in advance of ITER. "Seeing all of this go from a bunch of sketches or boxes on slidesclip art effectivelyto real metal and concrete that's all coming together," Creely said. "You're transitioning from building the facility, building the plant around the tokamak to actually starting to build the tokamak itself. That is an awesome milestone."Seeing stars?The plasma inside a tokamak is dynamic, meaning that it requires a lot of magnetic intervention to keep it stable, and fusion comes in pulses. There's an alternative approach called a stellarator, which produces an extremely complex magnetic field that can support a simpler, stable plasma and steady fusion. As implemented by the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany, this meant a series of complex-shaped magnets manufactured with extremely low tolerance for deviation. But a couple of companies have decided they're up for the challenge.One of those, Type One Energy, has basically reached the stage that launched Commonwealth Fusion: It has made a detailed case for the physics underlying its stellarator design. In this instance, the case may even be considerably more detailed: six peer-reviewed articles in the Journal of Plasma Physics. The papers detail the structural design, the behavior of the plasma within it, handling of the helium produced by fusion, generation of tritium from the neutrons produced, and obtaining heat from the whole thing.The company is partnering with Oak Ridge National Lab and the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a demonstration reactor on the site of a former fossil fuel power plant. (It's also cooperating with Commonwealth on magnet development.) As with the SPARC tokamak, this will be a mix of technology demonstration and learning experience, rather than a functioning power plant.Another company that's pursuing a stellarator design is called Thea Energy. Brian Berzin, its CEO, told Ars that the company's focus is on simplifying the geometry of the magnets needed for a stellarator and is using software to get them to produce an equivalent magnetic field. "The complexity of this device has always been really, really limiting," he said, referring to the stellarator. "That's what we're really focused on: How can you make simpler hardware? Our way of allowing for simpler hardware is using really, really complicated software, which is something that has taken over the world."He said that the simplicity of the hardware will be helpful for an operational power plant, since it allows them to build multiple identical segments as spares, so things can be swapped out and replaced when maintenance is needed.Like Commonwealth Fusion, Thea Energy is using high-temperature superconductors to build its magnets, with a flat array of smaller magnets substituting for the three-dimensional magnets used at Wendelstein. "We are able to really precisely recreate those magnetic fields required for accelerator, but without any wiggly, complicated, precise, expensive, costly, time-consuming hardware," Berzin said. And the company recently released a preprint of some testing with the magnet array.Thea is also planning on building a test stellarator. In its case, however, it's going to be using deuterium-deuterium fusion, which is much less efficient than deuterium-tritium that will be needed for a power plant. But Berzin said that the design will incorporate a layer of lithium that will form tritium when bombarded by neutrons from the stellarator. If things go according to plan, the reactor will validate Thea's design and be a fuel source for the rest of the industry.Of course, nobody will operate a fusion power plant until sometime in the next decadeprobably about at the same time that we might expect some of the first small modular fission plants to be built. Given the vast expansion in renewable production that is in progress, it's difficult to predict what the energy market will look like at that point. So, these test reactors will be built in a very uncertain environment. But that uncertainty hasn't stopped these companies from pursuing fusion.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. 13 Comments

Not a priority Apple enables RCS messaging for Google Fi subscribers at last Apple only supported RCS on the big three carriers in the first iOS18 releases. Ryan Whitwam Apr 1, 2025 4:22 pm | 3 Credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto Credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreApple spent years ignoring RCS, allowing iPhones to offer a degraded messaging experience with Android users. This made Android folks unwelcome in many a group chat, but Apple finally started rectifying this issue last year with the addition of RCS support in iOS. It has been a slow rollout, though, with Google's mobile service only now getting support.While Apple supports RCS messaging on iPhones now, it has not exactly been enthusiastic about it. Anyone using Google Fi on an iPhone was left in the lurch even after Apple changed course. The first RCS update rolled out in iOS 18 last fall, but it only supported postpaid plans on the big three carriers. Everyone else was left waiting, including Google Fi, as confirmed to Ars last year. It was a suitably amusing outcome, considering Google is largely responsible for reviving the RCS standard and runs the Jibe back-end servers through which many iPhone RCS messages flow.Slowly but surely, Apple is making good on its promises to enable RCS. The company released iOS 18.4 this week, and hiding amid the control center tweaks and priority notifications is support for RCS on Google Fi and other T-Mobile MVNOs. Some users spotted this feature in the recent beta releases, but the servers that handle RCS for Google's mobile service were not yet connectable. With the final release, Google has confirmed that RCS is ready at last.With RCS, iPhone users can converse with non-Apple users without losing the enhanced features to which they've become accustomed in iMessage. That includes longer messages, HD media, typing indicators, and much more. Google Fi has several different options for data plans, and the company notes that RCS does use mobile data when away from Wi-Fi. Those on the "Flexible" Fi plan pay for blocks of data as they go, and using RCS messaging could inadvertently increase their bill.If that's not a concern, it's a snap for Fi users to enable RCS on the new iOS update. Head to Apps > Messages, and then find the Text Messaging section to toggle on RCS. It may, however, take a few minutes for your phone number to be registered with the Fi RCS server.In hindsight, the way Apple implemented iMessage was clever. By intercepting messages being sent to other iPhone phone numbers, Apple was able to add enhanced features to its phones instantly. It had the possibly intended side effect of reinforcing the perception that Android phones were less capable. This turned Android users into dreaded green bubbles that limited chat features. Users complained, and Google ran ads calling on Apple to support RCS. That, along with some pointed questions from reporters prompted Apple to announce the change in late 2023. It took some time, but you almost don't have to worry about missing messaging features in 2025.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. 3 Comments

States sue RFK Jr. RFK Jr. illegally rescinded $11B in public health grants, states lawsuit says RFK Jr. killed grants "with no warning or legally valid explanation," states say. Jon Brodkin Apr 1, 2025 4:37 pm | 0 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks with President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday, March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Washington Post Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks with President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday, March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Washington Post Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreNearly half of US states sued the federal government and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today in a bid to halt the termination of $11 billion in public health grants. The lawsuit was filed by 23 states and the District of Columbia."The grant terminations, which came with no warning or legally valid explanation, have quickly caused chaos for state health agencies that continue to rely on these critical funds for a wide range of urgent public health needs such as infectious disease management, fortifying emergency preparedness, providing mental health and substance abuse services, and modernizing public health infrastructure," said a press release issued by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.The litigation is led by Colorado, California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington. The other plaintiffs are Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.Nearly all of the plaintiffs are represented by a Democratic attorney general. Kentucky and Pennsylvania have Republican attorneys general and are instead represented by their governors, both Democrats.The complaint, filed in US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, is in response to the recent cut of grants that were originally created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. "The sole stated basis for Defendants' decision is that the funding for these grants or cooperative agreements was appropriated through one or more COVID-19 related laws," the states' lawsuit said.The lawsuit says the US sent notices to states that grants were terminated "for cause" because "the grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out."An HHS public statement last week said, "The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago. HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump's mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again."Programs will have to be dissolved or disbandedBut the funding approved by Congress was not limited to the period of the COVID-19 emergency, the states' lawsuit said. "And after the pandemic was declared over, Congress reviewed the COVID-19 related laws, rescinded $27 billion in funds, but determined not to rescind any of the funding at issue here," the states told the court.The end of the pandemic is not a lawful basis to end the grants because for-cause terminations may only be "based on the grant recipient's 'material failure' to comply with the agreement," the lawsuit said. The lawsuit asks the court to declare illegal and vacate the grant terminations, and "preliminarily and permanently enjoin Defendants from implementing or enforcing the Public Health Terminations or reinstituting the terminations for the same or similar reasons and without required statutory or regulatory process."The grant terminations raise significant public health risks, the lawsuit said."If the funding is not restored, key public health programs and initiatives that address ongoing and emerging public health needs of Plaintiffs (collectively, 'Plaintiff States') will have to be dissolved or disbanded," the lawsuit said. "Large numbers of state and local public health employees and contractors have been, or may soon be, dismissed from their roles. The result of these massive, unexpected funding terminations is serious harm to public health, leaving Plaintiff States at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services."We contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services about the lawsuit and will update this article if it provides a response.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. 0 Comments

Genetic privacy FTC: 23andMe buyer must honor firms privacy promises for genetic data Agency issues warning about privacy of genetic information and DNA samples. Jon Brodkin Apr 1, 2025 1:40 pm | 23 23andMe headquarters in Sunnyvale, California on March 25, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Anadolu 23andMe headquarters in Sunnyvale, California on March 25, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Anadolu Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreFederal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he's keeping an eye on 23andMe's bankruptcy proceeding and the company's planned sale because of privacy concerns related to genetic testing data. 23andMe and its future owner must uphold the company's privacy promises, Ferguson said in a letter sent yesterday to representatives of the US Trustee Program, a Justice Department division that oversees administration of bankruptcy proceedings."As Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, I write to express the FTC's interests and concerns relating to the potential sale or transfer of millions of American consumers' sensitive personal information," Ferguson wrote. He continued:As you may know, 23andMe collects and holds sensitive, immutable, identifiable personal information about millions of American consumers who have used the Company's genetic testing and telehealth services. This includes genetic information, biological DNA samples, health information, ancestry and genealogy information, personal contact information, payment and billing information, and other information, such as messages that genetic relatives can send each other through the platform.23andMe's recent bankruptcy announcement set off a wave of concern about the fate of genetic data for its 15 million customers. The company said that "any buyer of 23andMe will be required to comply with our privacy policy and with all applicable law with respect to the treatment of customer data." Many users reacted to the news by deleting their data, though tech problems apparently related to increased website traffic made that process difficult.23andMe's ability to secure user data is also a reason for concern. Hackers stole ancestry data for 6.9 million 23andMe users, the company confirmed in December 2023.The bankruptcy is being overseen in US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.FTC: Bankruptcy law protects customersFerguson's letter points to several promises made by 23andMe and says these pledges must be upheld. "The FTC believes that, consistent with Section 363(b)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code, these types of promises to consumers must be kept. This means that any bankruptcy-related sale or transfer involving 23andMe users' personal information and biological samples will be subject to the representations the Company has made to users about both privacy and data security, and which users relied upon in providing their sensitive data to the Company," he wrote. "Moreover, as promised by 23andMe, any purchaser should expressly agree to be bound by and adhere to the terms of 23andMe's privacy policies and applicable law, including as to any changes it subsequently makes to those policies."23andMe has "commit[ed] to its users that they are in control of their data, and that users can decide how their information is used and for what purposesincluding honoring the right of users to delete their personal information at any time," Ferguson wrote. The firm says that explicit authorization from users is needed to disclose genetic information to third parties.Ferguson's letter said that 23andMe tells customers "that it restricts the use and sharing of personal information to what is necessary to provide its services," and that it shares the personal data "with a limited number of service providers who are contractually bound to protect the confidentiality and security of user personal information." The company says in its privacy statement "that it does not share personal information with insurance companies, employers, public databases, or law enforcement, absent a valid court order, subpoena, or search warrant," Ferguson wrote."Importantly, 23andMe promises users that these protections (and its entire Privacy Statement) shall apply continuously to their personal information, even if the data is sold or transferred in a bankruptcy proceeding," the FTC chair wrote.Ferguson said he is "pleased to see" that 23andMe has indicated since its bankruptcy filing that it will continue to honor its privacy promises. But the letter serves as a reminder that the FTC can take action when companies fail to live up to their promises.Just how active Ferguson will be in the 23andMe bankruptcy process isn't clear. President Trump has attempted to limit FTC authority by issuing an executive order declaring that it and similar agencies are no longer independent and must be supervised by the president.Trump also fired both Democratic FTC commissioners despite a US law and a 1935 Supreme Court ruling stating that the president cannot do so without good cause. The Democrats are challenging the firings in court, but for now the FTC has only Republican commissioners. Ferguson backed Trump in the firings, and his FTC reportedly instructed staff to stop describing the agency as "independent" in official filings.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. 23 Comments

Op-ed Cheap TVs incessant advertising reaches troubling new lows Op-ed: TV screensavers shouldn't show immigration ads from the Trump administration. Scharon Harding Apr 1, 2025 2:19 pm | 23 Credit: Getty Credit: Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreTVs offer us an escape from the real world. After a long day, sometimes theres nothing more relaxing than turning on your TV, tuning into your favorite program, and unplugging from the realities around you.But what happens when divisive, potentially offensive messaging infiltrates that escape? Even with streaming services making it easy to watch TV commercial-free, it can still be difficult for TV viewers to avoid ads with these sorts of messages.Thats especially the case with budget brands, which may even force controversial ads onto TVs when theyre idle, making users pay for low-priced TVs in unexpected, and sometimes troubling, ways.Vizio TVs reportedly show Trump immigration messaging when in standbyAn experience recently shared by an apparent Vizio TV owner illustrates how ads delivered via TV operating systems (OSes) can take ads from annoying to intrusive and offensive.Reddit user DoubleJumps claimed last week that when their Vizio TV is idle, it plays calming nature video, calming music, and then loops a message from the [T]rump admin[istration] telling illegal immigrants to gtfo over and over and over again. They explained:I left the [TV] idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing [US Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over. I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips.The user added that when trying to replicate this, the TV played the video again after about 20 minutes, but only once.As Distractify detailed, the video in question includes Noem telling people who live outside of the US that the US government will hunt you down if they enter the country illegally. Noem also claims in the video that weak leadership has left our borders wide open, flooding our communities with drugs, human trafficking, and violent criminals.This TV will be out of my house by the end of the week. Fucking dystopian bullshit company," DoubleJumps said.Ars Technica hasnt been able to replicate this internally. We also havent seen other reports of Vizio TV owners seeing this ad. Vizio and parent company Walmart didnt respond to requests for comment.However, what DoubleJumps detailed is completely within the scope of Vizios advertising efforts. Vizio TVs have something called Scenic Mode, which has the sets show, per Vizio, relaxing, ambient content when your TV is idle for a period of time," along with ads. Scenic Mode can be disabled, but if it's enabled, the ads cannot be turned off. Vizio says the ads help it pay for things like the TVs free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and help keep Vizio TV prices low.Vizio also has ties to political ads. It has previously boasted about its work with "a political candidate on an ad campaign that combined CTV ads with our Household Connect omnichannel feature to reach potential voters both on their TV sets and on other opted in devices." The company says it can play a "powerful role... in helping political campaigns reach their intended audiences."The possibility that the ad placement was a mistake doesn't bring that much comfort either. If TV OS operators want to be so dependent on the advertising business, they owe it to customers to at least make sure errors like this (assuming this was an error) don't happen.Idle TVs are advertisers playthingsEven though Vizio TV owners can turn off Scenic Mode, a company marketing screensaver ads as an experience that adds to the environment of your home or office shows how far some TV brands are willing to go to make advertising dollars. Selling screensaver ad space to politicians delivering threats and associating immigration with drugs, human trafficking, and violence suggests a lack of discernment over what sort of ads are shown where. A political ad shown during a TV commercial break is reasonable. However, seeing one when using a TV functionality that's supposed to offer relaxing, ambient content seems wholly misguided.But TV brands, especially more budget ones like Vizio, are increasingly looking for new places to show ads. And one of the biggest opportunities for more ad space is idle TVs.TV OS operators besides Vizio are trying to seize that opportunity. For example, in 2022, Roku launched Roku City, a screensaver for devices using Roku OS that shows an animated city with advertisements in the form of logos splattered across the city. Roku claims that Roku City reaches 38.5 million streaming households a week on average. A shot of a Roku City screensaver. Credit: Roku A shot of a Roku City screensaver. Credit: Roku Smart TVs and streaming devices running Amazons Fire OS have screensaver ads, too. Even LG, which is considered a more premium brand, launched screensaver ads in September, but users can disable them.Startup Telly is a standout example of a company trying to monetize idle TV time. Announced in 2023, Telly TVs have a secondary screen that can show ads when the TV is not in use. Telly TVs are free to purchase in exchange for providing the company with user data, including disclosing your favorite news outlets, film and TV genres, foods, and services, your gender and race, and other information before youre able to order the TV. The free Telly 4K TV has a second screen for showing ads. Credit: Telly The free Telly 4K TV has a second screen for showing ads. Credit: Telly After theyre set up, Telly TVs track user behavior, including what they watch and for how long, what they search for, and where they put their Telly. If users opt out of tracking, Telly charges them for the TV.Glance is another company demonstrating the strong interest advertisers have in TV screensavers. Glance is known for custom lock screens for phones that show things like news and weather. In December, it announced Glance TV, which essentially brings the same capability to TVs with Glance TV embedded into their OS. In addition to offering a different idle screen, Glance TV delivers targeted advertising and shoppable content to TVs when they go idle. Glance TV only delivers content from Glance's partners and doesnt gather information from the web, Digital Trends previously reported.Currently, Airtel Xstream streaming boxes and sticks, which use Android TV OS and are available in India, are the only devices supporting Glance TV.Bad ad choices make cheap TVs a harder sellBuying a budget TV means accepting some tradeoffs. Those tradeoffs have historically been around things like image quality and feature sets. But companies like Vizio are also asking customers to accept questionable advertising decisions as they look to create new paths to ad revenue.Numerous factors are pushing TV OS operators deeper into advertising. Brands are struggling to grow profits as people buy new TVs less frequently. As the TV market gets more competitive, hardware is also selling for cheaper, with some companies selling TVs at a loss with hopes of making up for it with ad sales. Theres concern that these market realities could detract from real TV innovation. And as the Secretary Noem ad reportedly shown to Vizio TV owners has highlighted, another concern is the lack of care around which ads are being shown to TV ownersespecially when all they want is simple ambient background noise.Today, people can disable ambient mode settings that show ads. But with some TV brands showing poor judgement around where they sell and place ads, we wouldnt bank on companies maintaining these boundaries forever. If the industry cant find a way to balance corporate needs with appropriate advertising, people might turn off not only their TVs more often, but also unplug from those brands completely.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 23 Comments

Dogleg Four private astronauts launch on first human mission to fly over the poles "I call it the last frontier of unexplored territory in low-Earth orbit." Stephen Clark Apr 1, 2025 12:23 pm | 4 With thunderstorms just offshore, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket streaks into the sky over Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin the all-private Fram2 mission. Credit: SpaceX With thunderstorms just offshore, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket streaks into the sky over Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin the all-private Fram2 mission. Credit: SpaceX Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreFour adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire.The private astronauts rocketed into orbit atop a Falcon 9 booster from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:46 pm EDT Monday (01:46 UTC Tuesday). Instead of heading to the northeast in pursuit of the International Space Station, the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft departed Launch Complex 39A and arced to the southeast, then turned south on a flight path hugging Florida's east coast.The unusual trajectory aligned the Falcon 9 with a perfectly polar orbit at an inclination of 90 degrees to the equator, bringing the four-person crew directly over the North or South Pole every 45 minutes.Chun Wang, born in China and now a citizen of Malta, paid SpaceX an undisclosed sum for the opportunity to fly to space and bring three hand-picked crewmates along with him. SpaceX likely charged between $100 million and $200 million for the flight. Chun made his fortune as a crypto pioneer, co-founding F2Pool, once the world's largest bitcoin mining company. He named his mission Fram2 in honor of the Norwegian exploration ship Fram used for polar expeditions at the turn of the 20th century.No one saw Earth's poles from space in the more than 400 human spaceflight missions preceding Fram2. The closest any crew mission has gotten to the poles was the Soviet Union's Vostok 6 mission in 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova's spacecraft reached a latitude of 65.1 degrees.Something newChun didn't want to pay for a mission to repeat the well-trodden path to the International Space Station, or fly in a higher-altitude orbit as SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission did last year with billionaire commander Jared Isaacman and three crewmates. He wanted to try something new."Jared spent a lot of effort trying to fly as high as possible because he has a pilot background," Chun said in response to a question from Ars. "But here on this mission, we have a group of polar explorers. We will do this from an explorer's perspective. I dont want to repeat the same mission profile again and again. I have less interest in flying to ISS because every previous mission flies to the ISS again, again and again."Chun was inspired by Isaacman's first foray into orbit on the Inspiration4 mission in 2021. That was the first fully commercial human spaceflight to low-Earth orbit without any significant government involvement. Isaacman is President Trump's nominee to become the next NASA administrator."So, if we do not challenge Jared, if we do not repeat the previous mission, where else we can go given our current hardware we have in 2025? What Dragon can do is to fly into low-Earth orbit, and there is a big bunch of area in low-Earth orbit that hasnt been explored." Eric Philips, Rabea Rogge, Chun Wang, and Jannicke Mikkelsen make up the Fram2 crew. Credit: SpaceX Chun is a prolific traveler, logging each flight in great detail with his social media posts. Less than an hour before liftoff Monday night, he posted on X: "36th flight of 2025: SpaceX Fram2 from LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, via the South Pole and the North Pole, to Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles or Oceanside. Crew Dragon C207 'Resilience.' This is my 1,000th flight of all time."The Fram2 mission will last between three-and-a-half and five-and-a-half days, ending with a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California.Chun takes the role of mission commander for Fram2. Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian filmmaker and cinematographer, is the vehicle commander. During launch, she monitored the progress of the ascent on the Dragon spacecraft's touchscreen displays. The vehicle's pilot is Rabea Rogge, a robotics researcher from Germany. Mission specialist Eric Philips of Australia rounds out the crew. He is a veteran polar explorer and guide who has completed dozens of ski expeditions to the North and South Poles.All four crew members share an interest in adventure and polar exploration. Mikkelsen lives on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago inside the Arctic Circle. Before going to space, she worked on feature films, David Attenborough nature documentaries, and an immersive 3D concert experience with Queen, among other projects.Now, she's in command of the Dragon spacecraft as it loops some 267 miles (430 kilometers) over the poles, traveling at nearly 5 miles per second. "I call it the last frontier of unexplored territory in low-Earth orbit," Mikkelsen said.The firsts of Fram2Fram2 is breaking new ground in other areas, too. It's the first human spaceflight mission to low-Earth orbit without a trained pilot onboard, and the first crewed spaceflight without an American, Russian, or Chinese astronaut.Later this week, Fram2 will become SpaceX's first Crew Dragon mission to splash down off the West Coast. SpaceX announced last year it would relocate its fleet of recovery ships from Florida to California, allowing Dragon capsules to return to the Pacific.This move will resolve concerns about Dragon's unpressurized trunk section reentering the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. All Crew Dragon flights to dateFram2 is SpaceX's 17th crew missionjettisoned the disposable trunk in orbit before reentry and splashdown off the coast of Florida.The trunk lacks a propulsion system, so atmospheric drag pulls it out of orbit several weeks or months later. The reentry of the trunk is unpredictable, and a few missions have scattered debris over land. With the switch to the West Coast, SpaceX will keep the trunk attached to the Dragon capsule until just before reentry, when it will cast away the trunk to fall into the remote Pacific Ocean.Chun and his crewmates hope to view Antarctica and the North Pole through Dragon's windows. With ideal viewing conditions, astronauts on the ISS occasionally capture images showing the edges of Greenland and Antarctica at oblique angles. Satellites flying over the poles routinely observe the poles, but Fram2 will offer Dragon's four-person crew the human experience. The Fram2 mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. Credit: SpaceX "Fram2 isnt just about going to space, its about pushing boundaries and sharing knowledge," Chun said.Mikkelsen will use her expertise to shoot immersive, 3D imagery from Dragon. She got an assist on camera settings from NASA astronaut Don Pettit, a master of spaceflight photography who currently resides on the ISS."I'm looking forward to being the first human in history to be able to point my camera at the North Pole and South Pole from space," Mikkelsen said. "There will be a lot of specific moments, specifically focusing on the aurora. This is also a mission where people on the ground on planet Earth can attend, and we've reached out to 2.2 million auroral citizen scientists. Anyone can join, where you go outside and if there is aurora where you live, you note where you live, and you register on the SolarMaX mission website, and you will take a photo of the aurora at the same time as we in Fram2 fly over the aurora."Mikkelsen built mockups of the Dragon spacecraft to practice her shooting method. Now in space, Mikkelsen has a finite time period to complete her photography."Being a cinematographer in space is not easy," she said. "It is not like filming on planet Earth, and it's quite comparable to being a cinematographer in the North Pole region, where it is exceptionally hazardous to work. Battery life is extremely hard to maintain when you work in the cold in the polar regions, and we actually have a limit for how much battery power we can safely bring with us in Dragon."The Fram2 astronauts carry with them 22 experiments from eight countries, primarily addressing physiological and psychological questions like the brain's response to the space environment, astronaut cognition and crew cohesion, and measure the crew's radiation exposure. On balance, a trajectory like Fram2's path over the poles will subject the astronauts to higher radiation levels than the International Space Station."These... experiments really deal with two questions, I would say," said Rogge, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "One is, 'How does the human adapt to extreme environments? In our case, its space. But we have a lot of studies that are looking at comparing space to other extreme environments. That could be the polar environments, which we are very familiar with. That could be even COVID as an extreme isolation environment, right? The goal is to learn how we can best operate."And the second question really is also about accessibility because right now, I think the stereotype of an astronaut is that you have to be this super-human, medically perfect," Rogge said. "But we should really flip this question and be like, 'OK, how do we design for living and working in space for everyone?"In this vein, Fram2's crew will test a "portable gym" for exercise inside Dragon. The space station has large exercise devices that won't fit inside the limited volume of Dragon. Fram2 carries a Starlink laser terminal to link up with SpaceX's broadband network and provide high-speed Internet to the crew.The mission will also grow mushrooms in space for the first time. "Theyre not the ones youre thinking," Philips quipped.Fram2 is SpaceX's third all-private crew missions, following Isaacman's two commercial flights in 2021 and 2024. Isaacman is an experienced pilot of high-performance aircraft, and in some ways, fits the mold of a professional NASA astronaut.With Fram2, SpaceX is flying a crew of space enthusiasts and polar explorers who are used to working in extreme environments. But none came to SpaceX with proficiencies in human spaceflight."From a crew training perspective, we've really started to refine how do we train four folks that have no traditional background in spaceflight to get ready for a mission," said Jon Edwards, SpaceX's vice president of Falcon and Dragon programs. "We figured out, how do we train these extraordinary individuals to hop in a capsule, get flung at 17,500 miles per hour under 1 million pounds of propellant, and be calm about it."Being calm about it.From her station in the commander's seat of the Dragon spacecraft named ResilienceMikkelsen rattled off the standard radio callouts, noting milestones throughout Fram2's climb into space. If all goes according to plan, the entire flight will be automated from liftoff through splashdown."Dragon is an autonomous vehicle, and we need to understand how she talks to us," Mikkelsen said before the launch. "Resilience, to me, she is a female, and she is going to have her own personality, and we are learning how to navigate the systems. We are learning how to set her up to best way possible operate autonomously, and we know that we have Mission Control with us at all times." A polar view from SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft shortly after launching on the Fram2 mission. Credit: SpaceX Chun pitched his idea for a polar orbit mission to SpaceX a few weeks after he traveled to South Texas to witness the first test flight of the company's enormous Starship rocket, intended to be the eventual replacement for Falcon 9 and Dragon. SpaceX announced the Fram2 mission last August, when the crew was already well into training.SpaceX fitted the Dragon spacecraft with a cupola window, the same one that flew on the Inspiration4 mission in 2021, to provide the astronauts more expansive views than they would get through the capsule's smaller porthole windows.From space, Rogge hopes to spot some of the research stations that dot the frozen landscape of Antarctica. But the crew won't get a clear view of the South Pole itself, the home of a National Science Foundation research station. Fram2 was supposed to launch before the end of last year, when it would have soared over Antarctica when the Sun was highest in the sky and casting long shadows across the icepack.Now, a couple of weeks after the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere, the Sun has set on the South Pole until September."We're on the dark side of the equinox. We don't really have that opportunity," Philips said. "I did actually apply to the National Science Foundation to see if they could light the station up with everything that they've got, so that we could have the opportunity to see it, but that wasn't granted."But there are plenty more sights to see. "We're orbiting over the North and South Poles. The Earth is slowly rotating underneath us, (so) we will fly over every part of Earth."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. 4 Comments

clamming up DeepMind is holding back release of AI research to give Google an edge A tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy make it harder to publish. Melissa Heikkil and Stephen Morris, Financial Times Apr 1, 2025 9:28 am | 9 Credit: Jacob Porczyki/Nurphoto Credit: Jacob Porczyki/Nurphoto Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreGoogles artificial intelligence arm DeepMind has been holding back the release of its world-renowned research, as it seeks to retain a competitive edge in the race to dominate the burgeoning AI industry.The group, led by Nobel Prize-winner Sir Demis Hassabis, has introduced a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy that made it harder to publish studies about its work on AI, according to seven current and former research scientists at Google DeepMind.Three former researchers said the group was most reluctant to share papers that reveal innovations that could be exploited by competitors, or cast Googles own Gemini AI model in a negative light compared with others.The changes represent a significant shift for DeepMind, which has long prided itself on its reputation for releasing groundbreaking papers and as a home for the best scientists building AI.Meanwhile, huge breakthroughs by Google researcherssuch as its 2017 transformers paper that provided the architecture behind large language modelsplayed a central role in creating todays boom in generative AI.Since then, DeepMind has become a central part of its parent companys drive to cash in on the cutting-edge technology, as investors expressed concern that the Big Tech group had ceded its early lead to the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI.I cannot imagine us putting out the transformer papers for general use now, said one current researcher.Among the changes in the companys publication policies is a six-month embargo before strategic papers related to generative AI are released. Researchers also often need to convince several staff members of the merits of publication, said two people with knowledge of the matter.A person close to DeepMind said the changes were to benefit researchers who had become frustrated spending time on work that would not be approved for strategic or competitive reasons. They added that the company still publishes hundreds of papers each year and is among the largest contributors to major AI conferences.Concern that Google was falling behind in the AI race contributed to the merger of London-based DeepMind and California-based Brain AI units in 2023. Since then, it has been faster to roll out a wide array of AI-infused products.The company has shifted to one that cares more about product and less about getting research results out for the general public good, said one former DeepMind research scientist. Its not what I signed up for.DeepMind said it had always been committed to advancing AI research and we are instituting updates to our policies that preserve the ability for our teams to publish and contribute to the broader research ecosystem.While the company had a publication review process in place before DeepMinds merger with Brain, the system has become more bureaucratic, according to those with knowledge of the changes.Former staffers suggested the new processes had stifled the release of commercially sensitive research to avoid the leaking of potential innovations. One said publishing papers on generative AI was almost impossible.In one incident, DeepMind stopped the publication of research that showed Googles Gemini language model is not as capable or is less safe than rivals, especially OpenAIs GPT-4, according to one current employee.However, the employee added it had also blocked a paper that revealed vulnerabilities in OpenAIs ChatGPT, over concerns the release seemed like a hostile tit-for-tat.A person close to DeepMind said it did not block papers that discuss security vulnerabilities, adding that it routinely publishes such work under a responsible disclosure policy, in which researchers must give companies the chance to fix any flaws before making them public.But the clampdown has unsettled some staffers, where success has long been measured through appearing in top-tier scientific journals. People with knowledge of the matter said the new review processes had contributed to some departures.If you cant publish, its a career killer if youre a researcher, said a former researcher.Some ex-staff added that projects focused on improving its Gemini suite of AI-infused products were increasingly prioritized in the internal battle for access to data sets and computing power.In the past few years, Google has produced a range of AI-powered products that have impressed the markets. This includes improving its AI-generated summaries that appear above search results, to unveiling an Astra AI agent that can answer real-time queries across video, audio, and text.The companys share price has increased by as much as a third over the past year, though those gains pared back in recent weeks as concern over US tariffs hit tech stocks.In recent years, Hassabis has balanced the desire of Googles leaders to commercialize its breakthroughs with his life mission of trying to make artificial general intelligenceAI systems with abilities that can match or surpass humans.Anything that gets in the way of that he will remove, said one current employee. He tells people this is a company, not a university campus; if you want to work at a place like that, then leave.Additional reporting by George Hammond. 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.Melissa Heikkil and Stephen Morris, Financial TimesMelissa Heikkil and Stephen Morris, Financial Times 9 Comments

surfing the infoscape MCP: The new USB-C for AI thats bringing fierce rivals together Model context protocol standardizes how AI uses data sources, supported by OpenAI and Anthropic. Benj Edwards Apr 1, 2025 7:30 am | 11 Credit: NanoStockk Credit: NanoStockk Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWhat does it take to get OpenAI and Anthropictwo competitors in the AI assistant marketto get along? Despite a fundamental difference in direction that led Anthropic's founders to quit OpenAI in 2020 and later create the Claude AI assistant, a shared technical hurdle has now brought them together: How to easily connect their AI models to external data sources.The solution comes from Anthropic, which developed and released an open specification called Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024. MCP establishes a royalty-free protocol that allows AI models to connect with outside data sources and services without requiring unique integrations for each service."Think of MCP as a USB-C port for AI applications," wrote Anthropic in MCP's documentation. The analogy is imperfect, but it represents the idea that, similar to how USB-C unified various cables and ports (with admittedly a debatable level of success), MCP aims to standardize how AI models connect to the infoscape around them.So far, MCP has also garnered interest from multiple tech companies in a rare show of cross-platform collaboration. For example, Microsoft has integrated MCP into its Azure OpenAI service, and as we mentioned above, Anthropic competitor OpenAI is on board. Last week, OpenAI acknowledged MCP in its Agents API documentation, with vocal support from the boss upstairs."People love MCP and we are excited to add support across our products," wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X last Wednesday.MCP has also rapidly begun to gain community support in recent months. For example, just browsing this list of over 300 open source servers shared on GitHub reveals growing interest in standardizing AI-to-tool connections. The collection spans diverse domains, including database connectors like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and vector databases; development tools that integrate with Git repositories and code editors; file system access for various storage platforms; knowledge retrieval systems for documents and websites; and specialized tools for finance, health care, and creative applications.Other notable examples include servers that connect AI models to home automation systems, real-time weather data, e-commerce platforms, and music streaming services. Some implementations allow AI assistants to interact with gaming engines, 3D modeling software, and IoT devices.What is context anyway?To fully appreciate why a universal AI standard for external data sources is useful, you'll need to understand what "context" means in the AI field.With current AI model architecture, what an AI model "knows" about the world is baked into its neural network in a largely unchangeable form, placed there by either an initial procedure called "pre-training," which calculates statistical relationships between vast quantities of input data ("training data"like books, articles, and images) and feeds it into the network as numerical values called "weights." Later, a process called "fine-tuning" might adjust those weights to alter behavior (such as through reinforcement learning like RLHF) or provide examples of new concepts.Typically, the training phase is very expensive computationally and happens either only once in the case of a base model, or infrequently with periodic model updates and fine-tunings. That means AI models only have internal neural network representations of events prior to a "cutoff date" when the training dataset was finalized.After that, the AI model is run in a kind of read-only mode called "inference," where users feed inputs into the neural network to produce outputs, which are called "predictions." They're called predictions because the systems are tuned to predict the most likely next token (a chunk of data, such as portions of a word) in a user-provided sequence.In the AI field, context is the user-provided sequenceall the data fed into an AI model that guides the model to produce a response output. This context includes the user's input (the "prompt"), the running conversation history (in the case of chatbots), and any external information sources pulled into the conversation, including a "system prompt" that defines model behavior and "memory" systems that recall portions of past conversations. The limit on the amount of context a model can ingest at once is often called a "context window," "context length, " or "context limit," depending on personal preference.While the prompt provides important information for the model to operate upon, accessing external information sources has traditionally been cumbersome. Before MCP, AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude could access external data (a process often called retrieval augmented generation, or RAG), but doing so required custom integrations for each serviceplugins, APIs, and proprietary connectors that didn't work across different AI models. Each new data source demanded unique code, creating maintenance challenges and compatibility issues.MCP addresses these problems by providing a standardized method or set of rules (a "protocol") that allows any supporting AI model framework to connect with external tools and information sources.How does MCP work?To make the connections behind the scenes between AI models and data sources, MCP uses a client-server model. An AI model (or its host application) acts as an MCP client that connects to one or more MCP servers. Each server provides access to a specific resource or capability, such as a database, search engine, or file system. When the AI needs information beyond its training data, it sends a request to the appropriate server, which performs the action and returns the result.To illustrate how the client-server model works in practice, consider a customer support chatbot using MCP that could check shipping details in real time from a company database. "What's the status of order #12345?" would trigger the AI to query an order database MCP server, which would look up the information and pass it back to the model. The model could then incorporate that data into its response: "Your order shipped on March 30 and should arrive April 2."Beyond specific use cases like customer support, the potential scope is very broad. Early developers have already built MCP servers for services likeGoogle Drive, Slack, GitHub, and Postgres databases. This means AI assistants could potentially search documents in a company Drive, review recent Slack messages, examine code in a repository, or analyze data in a databaseall through a standard interface.From a technical implementation perspective, Anthropic designed the standard for flexibility by running in two main modes: Some MCP servers operate locally on the same machine as the client (communicating via standard input-output streams), while others run remotely and stream responses over HTTP. In both cases, the model works with a list of available tools and calls them as needed.A work in progressDespite the growing ecosystem around MCP, the protocol remains an early-stage project. The limited announcements of support from major companies are promising first steps, but MCP's future as an industry standard may depend on broader acceptance, although the number of MCP servers seems to be growing at a rapid pace.Regardless of its ultimate adoption rate, MCP may have some interesting second-order effects. For example, MCP also has the potential to reduce vendor lock-in. Because the protocol is model-agnostic, a company could switch from one AI provider to another while keeping the same tools and data connections intact.MCP may also allow a shift toward smaller and more efficient AI systems that can interact more fluidly with external resources without the need for customized fine-tuning. Also, rather than building increasingly massive models with all knowledge baked in, companies may instead be able to use smaller models with large context windows.For now, the future of MCP is wide open. Anthropic maintains MCP as an open source initiative on GitHub, where interested developers can either contribute to the code or find specifications about how it works. Anthropic has also provided extensive documentation about how to connect Claude to various services. OpenAI maintains its own API documentation for MCP on its website.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. 11 Comments

A rock and a hard place Tuesday Telescope: A close-up of the magical camera at the end of a robotic arm Wait, the Daily Telescope is back? Sort of. Eric Berger Apr 1, 2025 8:00 am | 5 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWelcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough lighta little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. Well let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, well take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.We're back! A long-time reader and subscriber recently mentioned in the Ars Forums that they "kind of" missed the Daily Telescope posts that I used to write in 2023 and 2024. Although I would have preferred that everyone desperately missed the Daily Telescope, I appreciate the sentiment. I really do.I initially stopped writing these posts about a year ago because it just became too much to commit to writing one thing every day. I mean, I could have done it. But doing so on the daily crossed over the line from enjoyable to drudgery, and one of the best things about working for Ars is that it tends very much toward the enjoyable side. Anyway, writing one of these posts on a weekly basis feels more sustainable. I guess we'll find out!Today's image comes to you all the way from Mars. One of the most powerful tools on NASA's Perseverance rover is the WATSON camera attached to the end of the rover's robotic arm. In the fine tradition of tortured acronyms at the space agency, WATSON stands for Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering. And because of course it is, WATSON is located on the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument. Seriously, NASA must stand for Not Another Screwball Acronym.This photograph shows the WATSON camera taking a close-up image of a rock on Mars (here's the rock, by the way). The raw image from NASA was processed by Kevin M. Gill, who runs an exceptional Bluesky account and has a great Flickr page worth checking out. The detail is excellent.Speaking of Perseverance, the rover has now been operating on the surface of Mars for more than four years. It's a reminder that although things may seem pretty messed up here on Earth, there's some rad stuff going on elsewhere in the Solar System.Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin M. GillDo you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope?Reach out and say hello.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. 5 Comments

WAGON! WAGON! WAGON! The 2025 BMW M5 Touring review: Way more power, way too much weight BMW has been making M5s for 40 years, but the latest one has lost its way somewhat. Bradley Iger Mar 31, 2025 1:04 pm | 26 At long last, BMW has brought the M5 Touring to the US. But does the latest M5 match up to the previous iterations? Credit: Bradley Iger At long last, BMW has brought the M5 Touring to the US. But does the latest M5 match up to the previous iterations? Credit: Bradley Iger Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWhen BMW introduced the original M5 to the European motoring public in 1984, the automaker effectively established a new vehicle segment. By combining the practical and understatedly rakish E28 5-Series with the motorsport-derived six-cylinder engine from the M1 supercar, the automaker had created a do-it-all performance machine, a vehicle that could serve as a tasteful and luxurious sedan one moment and a charismatic sports car the next.Its a concept that has guided the development of not only subsequent generations of the M5 but also all of the other sports sedans that have dared to go toe to toe with it over the past forty years. For decades, its been the benchmark by which all big, fast four-doors have been judged, but after spending a week with the all-new $125,275 G99-generation M5 Touring, I cant help but wonder if that era is coming to a close.A range of factors have contributed to this seismic shift. While other automakers have been chasing the M5s ghost around the Nrburgring, BMW has purposely started to reposition its M Division vehicles as the pinnacle representation of the brand rather than the pinnacle representation of BMW performance. Its a move that has yielded models like the XM, a vehicle that certainly has plenty of firepower under the hood but ultimately prioritizes style over substance. The iconic sport sedan badge returns with a burly hybrid powertrain and an array of high-tech hardware designed to mask its substantial heft, but the end result has me longing for the past. Bradley Iger The iconic sport sedan badge returns with a burly hybrid powertrain and an array of high-tech hardware designed to mask its substantial heft, but the end result has me longing for the past. Bradley Iger Practical but heavy. Bradley Iger Practical but heavy. Bradley Iger The iconic sport sedan badge returns with a burly hybrid powertrain and an array of high-tech hardware designed to mask its substantial heft, but the end result has me longing for the past. Bradley Iger Practical but heavy. Bradley Iger And as BMW contends with customers undying thirst for more, it must also contend with an array of European regulations aimed at quelling everything from emissions to road noise. From an engineering standpoint, this creates a significant challenge: How do you make your new sports sedan more capable and engaging than the last one while still adhering to the rule of law? For BMW, the answer appears to come in the form of a vast array of technologies aimed at convincing you that the experience is more thrilling than it actually is.I dont mean to imply that the new M5 is a bad car, or even bad at executing the mission of an M5. In some respects, theres cause for celebration: For the first time in the M5s history, the Touring model has made its way stateside to do battle with the RS 6 Avant, Audis high-performance wagon. Opting for the longroof not only scores you an arguably more stylish M5; it also expands its cargo capacity to a crossover-like 57.6 cubic feet (1,631 L) with the rear seats down.But the pursuit of more seems to have been a core priority during the development of the new M5, and more doesnt always equate to a better automobile. Credit: Bradley Iger For example, theres quite a bit more power on tap than in the outgoing M5. Under the hood is a 4.4 L twin-turbocharged V8 that dishes out 577 hp (430 kW) and 553 lb-ft (750 Nm) of torque, and for the first time in an M5, its paired up with a permanently excited synchronous electric motor thats integrated into the eight-speed transmission.The electric motor can deliver up to 194 hp (145 kW) and 207 lb-ft (280 Nm) on its own, and with a 14.8 kWh battery pack onboard, it can provide roughly 25 miles (40 km) of all-electric range. All in, the M Hybrid powertrain delivers a grand total of 717 hp (535 kW) and 738 lb-ft (1,000 Nm) of torque to all four wheels.But while gains of 100 hp (75 kW) and 185 lb-ft (250 Nm) over the outgoing M5 Competition are substantial, they come at a significant cost to the M5s curb weight. Now tipping the scales at an almost unbelievable 5,400 lbs (2,449 kg), the latest M5 weighs roughly a thousand pounds more than the outgoing model and is actually heavier than its all-electric counterpart, the i5. That equates to an M5 with a power-to-weight ratio thats worse than its predecessors, along with an official 060 mph time that, at a still furiously quick 3.4 seconds, is two-tenths slower.The hybrid system isnt entirely to blame for the additional heft, though. The latest M5 has also grown in proportion by more than four inches (101 mm) in length and two and a half inches (63 mm) in width. With flared fenders, huge air intakes, and a hunkered-down stance, it gives the M5 significant visual presence on the road, but behind the wheel, it sometimes feels more like youre driving a low-slung SUV than a svelte sports sedan. Credit: Bradley Iger M5-specific front seats, unique lighting treatments, and a flat-bottomed steering wheel with chunky paddle shifters and a pair of bright red M buttons bring a sense of occasion to the cabin, but its the 14.9-inch touchscreen infotainment display that will capture the majority of drivers attention. As weve seen in other recent BMW models, were left with only a small collection of capacitive buttons, a rotary knob, and (mercifully) a volume dial on the center console.Basic functions like adjusting the fan speed of the air conditioning system require taking your attention off of the road to call up the comfort settings on the display, and if you dare to venture further down the rabbit hole to adjust something else, youll find an app drawer-style menu filled with ambiguously named icons that rarely get you where you want to go the first time out.Do I change the damper stiffness by pressing the M Mode button on the center console, or is it in the Drivetrain and chassis submenu under Driving Settings? The answer is neither. (In fact, you should use iDrives excellent voice commands so you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the roadEd.)With adjustments for throttle response, brake regeneration, steering weight, brake pedal responsiveness, transmission behavior, all-wheel drive system modes, simulated engine noise volume, and other performance-related features, you can create literally hundreds of different combinations of vehicle settings, but thankfully, the aforementioned M1 and M2 buttons on the steering wheel provide an easy way to call up one of your two favorite presets on the fly. The bigger concern, though, is how all of these augmentations and enhancements seem to conspire to hide the shortcomings of BMWs design decisions but arent successful in doing so. This will be the last generation of BMW iDrive to use a rotary controller, and we'll miss it. Bradley Iger This will be the last generation of BMW iDrive to use a rotary controller, and we'll miss it. Bradley Iger CarPlay is present and correct. And not at an additional upcharge. Bradley Iger CarPlay is present and correct. And not at an additional upcharge. Bradley Iger This will be the last generation of BMW iDrive to use a rotary controller, and we'll miss it. Bradley Iger CarPlay is present and correct. And not at an additional upcharge. Bradley Iger Chassis upgrades are a prerequisite for an M car, and with an M-tuned adaptative suspension, additional structural bracing, massive brake discs with six-piston calipers up front, four-wheel steering, and torque vectoring all on board as standard, the M5 certainly isnt short on them. Given that, its reasonable to expect that an M model will have a firmer ride quality than its garden-variety counterpart.But the vehicle has an additional measure of harshness as compared to previous M5 models, even under normal driving situations with the dampers set to their most relaxed mode, which I theorize is related to the suspension tuning needed to keep body motions controlled and maintain a sport-oriented feel despite the weight involved.Dont get me wrong, this is still a grand tourer of the highest order. Triple-digit speeds can be accessed with a brief stab of the throttle, and thanks to the improved ergonomics of the latest 5-Series and the model-specific sport seats that are both comfortable and supportive, the M5 will still devour highway miles with the best of them. At times when both the electric motor and the V8 are working together, the hybridized powertrain also delivers the kind of instant-on throttle response thats typically reserved for EVs.The realities of physics become harder to ignore when the going gets twisty, though. BMW engineers deserve significant praise for making a vehicle that weighs the better part of three tons handle the way this M5 does, but the car still feels burdened by the additional heft.Even when the array of settings youve chosen indicate that youre ready to roll out of pit lane at Laguna Seca, the steering remains devoid of feedback, mid-corner bumps often result in multiple suspension oscillations before the car fully regains its composure, and the pads that are equipped with optional carbon ceramic brakes get hot enough to smell after just a few minutes of hustling through the canyons. And despite the fact that the M5s various enhancements and augmentations assure you that this spirited drive is going swimmingly, the M2youre chasing down your favorite backroad continues to fade into the distance. Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger Bradley Iger The M5 seats are easier to get in and out of than the carbon buckets in the M5 CS we tested. Bradley Iger The M5 seats are easier to get in and out of than the carbon buckets in the M5 CS we tested. Bradley Iger The M5's back seats. Bradley Iger The M5's back seats. Bradley Iger The M5 seats are easier to get in and out of than the carbon buckets in the M5 CS we tested. Bradley Iger The M5's back seats. Bradley Iger One could argue that these compromises are unavoidable in the pursuit of more, and in this rapidly evolving automotive landscape, progress can be quantified in a number of different ways. But if youre the kind of enthusiast who values the driving experience over the figures on the spec sheet, you might actually find yourself wishing for less. 26 Comments

Tweets "warrant further discussion" Even Trump may not be able to save Elon Musk from his old tweets Court win for investors may sway SECs probe of Elon Musks Twitter purchase. Ashley Belanger Mar 31, 2025 2:52 pm | 8 This video grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account of billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, following his takeover. Credit: Photo by -/Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP via Getty Images This video grab taken from a video posted on the Twitter account of billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk on October 26, 2022 shows himself carrying a sink as he enters the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, following his takeover. Credit: Photo by -/Twitter account of Elon Musk/AFP via Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBack in December, Elon Musk accused the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of launching a purely politically motivated probe into his Twitter purchase. In a letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, Musk alleged that the SEC gave him 48 hours to accept a settlement or face fraud charges. Musk refused to pay the fine, demanding to know "who directed these actions," suspecting either former SEC Chair Gary Gensler or Joe Biden's White House.Once the SEC lawsuit was filed in January, Musk's condemnation of the settlement was echoed in his claims that the SEC was "totally broken." These comments seemed to further his feud with the agency following a contentious 2018 Tesla settlement over Musk's tweets that resulted in the Supreme Court declining to hear Musk's arguments against his tweets being monitored by the SEC.But after Donald Trump issued a February executive order declaring sweeping powers over independent agenciesincluding the SEC, which was accused of launching politically motivated investigationsit appeared that Musk might instead have been setting up the narrative to possibly get the probe squashed.And while that still appears to be a possibility, it now seems that a persistent lawsuit raised by Twitter investors that's linked to the SEC probe may end up being the hurdle that possibly blocks Musk's efforts to evade the SEC's investigation. And once again, it's perhaps Musk's tweets that may force the billionaire to potentially end up paying fines to settle chargesrecently deemed plausibly showing intent to deceive.On Friday, US District Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr., gave Twitter investors a big win by mostly denying Musk's motion to dismiss. The judge agreed that it seemed plausible that Musk and other defendants concocted a scheme to spend "over $2.6 billion to secretly purchase over 70 million shares" at an artificially lower price. Plaintiffs had argued the scheme saved Musk "over $200 million" while allegedly harming investors whose shares could have sold at higher prices during the time the supposed scheme was in action.At the core of the lawsuit is a claim that Musk "deliberately" or "recklessly" delayed filing notices that would have alerted investors about his plans to take over Twitter before he purchased a large stake in the company. Part of the alleged deceptions included tweets where Musk appears to mislead the public about his intentions to buy Twitter.Two of those tweets, Carter wrote, "warrant further discussion." In one, Musk responds to a user urging him to "just buy Twitter" and "change the bird logo to a doge" icon representing the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. That tweet can be reasonably read as "a statement meant to misdirect the public to think that buying Twitter was just a fantasy," Carter concluded, since Musk perhaps conveniently left out "critical information that he already owned nearly 10 percent of the company."In the other tweet, Musk responded to a user asking if he would consider building his own social media platform, writing, "Am giving serious thought to this." This can be read "as an affirmative representation that Musk had no interest in Twitter, but was rather building out a rival platform," Carter wrote.Musk had hoped to convince the court that these tweets were simply "teasing" and that his allegedly deceptive SEC filings were a "mistake." But Carter suggested that Twitter investors' allegations that the tweets were posted to "deceive the public about, or distract the public from looking further into" the secret trading scheme is "at least as compelling" as Musk's claims of "nonfraudulent intent."And "more compelling" than Musk's claims he made a "mistake," Carter wrote, were investors' claims that Musk and other defendants intentionally delayed filing forms confirming Musk's intent to buy Twitter in order to acquire millions of shares at a lower price. Investors met their burden that the delay sent a "false pricing signal to the market," leading Carter to conclude "that the facts surrounding the trading strategy evince a deceptive act in furtherance of a scheme to defraud."A loss in the investors' and SEC's suits could force Musk to disgorge any ill-gotten gains from the alleged scheme, estimated at $150 million, as well as potential civil penalties.The SEC and Musk's X (formerly Twitter) did not respond to Ars' request to comment. Investors' lawyers declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.SEC purge may slow down probesUnder the Biden administration, the SEC alleged that "Musks violation resulted in substantial economic harm to investors selling Twitter common stock." For the lead plaintiffs in the investors' suit, the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System, the scheme allegedly robbed retirees of gains used to sustain their quality of life at a particularly vulnerable time.Musk has continued to argue that his alleged $200 million in savings from the scheme was minimal compared to his $44 billion purchase price. But the alleged gains represent about two-thirds of the $290 million price the billionaire paid to support Trump's election, which won Musk a senior advisor position in the Trump administration, CNBC reported. So it's seemingly not an insignificant amount of money in the grand scheme.Likely bending to Musk's influence, one of Trump's earliest moves after taking office, CNBC reported, was reversing a 15-year-old policy allowing the SEC director of enforcement to launch probes like the one Musk is currently battling. It allowed the Tesla probe, for example, to be launched just seven days after Musk's allegedly problematic tweets, the SEC boasted in a 2020 press release.Now, after Trump's rule change, investigations must be approved by a vote of SEC commissioners. That will likely slow down probes that the SEC had previously promised years ago would only speed up over time in order to more swiftly protect investors.SEC expected to reduce corporate finesFor Musk, the SEC has long been a thorn in his side. At least two top officials (1, 2) cited the Tesla settlement as a career highlight, with the agency seeming especially proud of thinking "creatively about appropriate remedies," the 2020 press release said. Monitoring Musk's tweets, the SEC said, blocked "potential harm to investors" and put control over Musk's tweets into the SEC's hands.The SEC's enforcement division has drastically fewer resources at its disposal to pursue such creative remedies now. But even while Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is currently overhauling the SEC, and Trump is threatening to tamp down on any investigations deemed politically motivated, the investors' suit perhaps shows how hard it will be for courts and officials to ignore the potential power of Musk's tweets deemed misleading to manipulate markets. With the lawsuits linked, it will be interesting to see how officials navigate the politics.During the prior administration, an SEC lawyer had accused Musk of using delay tactics and supposed gamesmanship that must cease for the case to proceed with urgency. And the current SEC, packed with officials seemingly ready to loosen regulation of tech companies, doesn't seem to think the case against Musk can be dropped, even as experts note that it's not the most egregious case of alleged fraud ever filed. Last week Reuters revealed that the SEC held a closed-door vote to decide if the lawsuit should even be filed, with four out of five commissioners agreeing to move forward with the probe.The sole stand-out, acting head of the SEC Mark Uyeda, could perhaps still hold sway over the probe, though. Following the vote, he apparently took the unusual step of asking enforcement staffreportedly the hardest hit by DOGE cuts and buyoutsto sign pledges denying that the investigation had political motivations, Reuters reported. (Significant cuts in the enforcement and office of general counsel divisions are also expected to delay investigations and constrain litigation.)Under Uyeda, legal experts expect the SEC to reduce fines for infringing activity that companies have long protested as burdening the US economy after the prior regime's fines reached record highs. And incoming SEC Chair Paul Atkins has already praised DOGE's cuts, promising to cooperate with Musk's team and potentially personally warming to Trump's advisor.That could mean that Musk's rejection of the settlement last December, at the very least, may have spared him a higher fine, which was perhaps yet another effective delay tactic in an SEC lawsuit fixated on delay tactics.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. 8 Comments

Vapes are so hot right now Lithium-ion battery waste fires are increasing, and vapes are a big part of it Tiny batteries and "disposable" e-cigs remain big risks for waste handlers. Kevin Purdy Mar 31, 2025 3:23 pm | 50 Fire Rover's automated suppression system soaks the area around a lithium-ion battery fire on a crowded tipping floor at a recycling and waste facility. Credit: Fire Rover/YouTube Fire Rover's automated suppression system soaks the area around a lithium-ion battery fire on a crowded tipping floor at a recycling and waste facility. Credit: Fire Rover/YouTube Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn more2024 was "a year of growth," according to fire-suppression company Fire Rover, but that's not an entirely good thing.The company, which offers fire detection and suppression systems based on thermal and optical imaging, smoke analytics, and human verification, releases annual reports on waste and recycling facility fires in the US and Canada to select industry and media. In 2024, Fire Rover, based on its fire identifications, saw 2,910 incidents, a 60 percent increase from the 1,809 in 2023, and more than double the 1,409 fires confirmed in 2022.Publicly reported fire incidents at waste and recycling facilities also hit 398, a new high since Fire Rover began compiling its report eight years ago, when that number was closer to 275.Lots of things could cause fires in the waste stream, long before lithium-ion batteries became common: "Fireworks, pool chemicals, hot (barbecue) briquettes," writes Ryan Fogelman, CEO of Fire Rover, in an email to Ars. But lithium-ion batteries pose a growing problem, as the number of devices with batteries increases, consumer education and disposal choices remain limited, and batteries remain a very easy-to-miss, troublesome occupant of the waste stream.All batteries that make it into waste streams are potentially hazardous, as they have so many ways of being set off: puncturing, vibration, overheating, short-circuiting, crushing, internal cell failure, overcharging, or inherent manufacturing flaws, among others. Fire Rover's report notes that the media often portrays batteries as "spontaneously" catching fire. In reality, the very nature of waste handling makes it almost impossible to ensure that no battery will face hazards in handling, the report notes. Tiny batteries can be packed into the most disposable of itemseven paper marketing materials handed out at conferences.Fogelman estimates, based on his experience and some assumptions, that about half of the fires he's tracking originate with batteries. Roughly $2.5 billion of loss to facilities and infrastructure came from fires last year, divided between traditional hazards and batteries, he writes.Ars previously covered a likely lithium-ion caused fire in a suburban Chicago truck that spread to the truck's compressed natural gas (CNG) tanks, causing an explosion that injured firefighters and damaged nearby homes. Fire Rover also adds a February 2025 fire in a Camden, New Jersey, scrapyard, caused by a battery "wrongly delivered to EMR and undetectably concealed within scrap metal," according to the company, requiring more than 15 fire companies' response and damaging the site and putting nearby residents out of their homes.The vape effectBatteries as a whole are a growing concern, but there's a reason Fire Rover's report has an image of an exploding electronic vape pen on its cover, with the superimposed message "We are at war 2024." Fogelman sees a notable shift in publicly reported fire datanot from Fire Rover's own detection, but from news and other reports and sourcesfrom the 20162021 period to 20222024. Something is causing this shift, and Fogelman's most likely culprit is e-cigarettes, vapes, and other battery-powered nicotine devices.But that safe, evenly distributed vape disposal network does not exist. As previously noted, you can make a rather powerful e-bike from the vapes left behind at a festival in the UK. In the US, the EPA directs people to bring their e-cigarettes to household hazardous waste (HHW) sites or pick-up events, which are "typically" free."Not only are their batteries being improperly discarded in waste and recycling bins, but the vape industry has done the bare minimum to invest in the technology needed to address the 1.2 billion vapes entering our waste and recycling streams annually," the report states.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. 50 Comments

The stories we almost missed this month Research roundup: 2,400-year-old clay puppets; this is your brain on Klingon Also: testing the efficacy of WWI "dazzle" camouflage; how the male blue-lined octopus survives deadly mating ritual. Jennifer Ouellette Mar 31, 2025 3:49 pm | 12 Credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymaska/PASI Credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymaska/PASI Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIt's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection of such stories. March's list includes fascinating papers on such topics as how the brain responds to speaking Klingon (or Dothraki, or Navi), the discovery of creepy preclassic Salvadoran puppets, the effectiveness of "dazzle camouflage," and how male blue-lined octopuses manage not to be cannibalized by their chosen mates.Wind Caves rocks fluoresce under black light Several fluorescence measurements of a zebra calcite in Wind Cave were taken using portable spectrometers. Credit: Joshua Sebree South Dakota's Wind Cave gets its name from the flow of air moving continually through its many passages and equalizing the atmospheric pressure between the air inside and outsidealmost like the cave is "breathing." Its rock and mineral formations also boast a unique chemistry that fluoresces when exposed to black light, according to talks presented at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego. That fluorescence could shed light on how life can thrive in extreme environments, including that of Jupiter's moon, Europa.University of Northern Iowa astrobiologist Joshua Sebree and several students have been mapping new areas of Wind Cave (as well as other caves in the US), recording the passages, rock formations, minerals, and lifeforms they encounter in the process. They noticed that under UV light, certain parts of Wind Cave took on otherworldly hues, thanks to different concentrations of organic and inorganic fossilized chemical compounds. Those areas seem to indicate where water once flowed, carrying minerals into the cave from the surface 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to their analysis of the fluorescent spectra. Sebree et al. found that Wind Cave was likely carved out by waters rich in manganese, producing zebra stripes that glow pink under UV light, revealing the calcites that grew within as a result of those waters.The physics of swing-top beer bottles Three frames of a high-speed recording after popping a homebrewed bottle of beer. Credit: Max Koch So-called kitchen science is all the rage these days, with champagne, wine, and beer being particularly favorite subjects for experimentation. German physicist Max Koch of the University of Goettingen is as passionate about home brewing as he is about fluid dynamics. So naturally, Koch became fascinated by the distinctive "pop and slosh" sounds produced whenever he opened one of his home-brewed swing-top beer bottles. His experiments used a high-speed camera to capture the acoustics and underlying physics, augmented by audio recording and computer simulations.Rather than producing a single shockwave, Koch and his co-authors discovered that the unique sound occurs because popping the lid produces a vibrating standing wave, thanks to condensation within the bottleneck, according to a paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids. They were surprised to find that the frequency of the pop was significantly lower than the resonance produced by blowing across the open bottle top, which they attributed to the sudden expansion of the carbon dioxide and a strong cooling effect that reduces sound speed. The sloshing is due to the bottle's motion, and it's possible that the lid hitting the glass after popping could produce more bubbles and hence gushing.Physics of Fluids, 2025. DOI: 10.1063/5.0248739 (About DOIs).How effective was WWI dazzle paint? A painting by Norman Wilkinson of a moonlit convoy wearing the dazzle camouflage he invented, 1918. Credit: Public domain During World War I, ships were often painted with complex geometric shapes in contrasting and intersecting colors, dubbed "dazzle camouflage" and usually attributed to British marine artist Norman Wilkinson. The objective was to confuse enemy U-boat captains trying to determine the speed and direction of those ships, and a 1919 study seemed to support that hypothesis. Aston University researchers have revisited that original study and concluded that the horizon effectin which ships viewed from a distance seem to be traveling along the horizonis a more effective means of confusing enemy combatants, according to a paper published in the journal i-Perception.The author of the 1919 study was an MIT marine engineering student named Leo Blodgett, who painted model ships in those geometric patterns and observed them with a model periscope in a mechanical test theater to see if he could determine whether an observer's perception of the direction of travel was markedly different from the actual direction. He concluded that this was indeed the case and therefore dazzle paint was effective.But according to the Aston scientists, Blodgett's experiment did not have a solid control condition to warrant such a conclusion. So they revisited his 105-year-old data and ran their own version of Blodgett's experiment, comparing results from his photographs showing the original dazzle camouflage with versions that had the camouflage patterns edited out. The results: the dazzle camouflage did work via a twist on perspective, but it was a small effect. The horizon effect had a much stronger confounding effect.i-Perception, 2025. DOI: 10.1177/20416695241312316 (About DOIs).Early Salvadoran clay puppets These Bolinas figures were found in a Salvadoran pyramid. Credit: J. Przedwojewska-Szymaska/PASI Archaeologists excavating the San Isidro pyramid in El Salvador have discovered five carved clay figurines dating back to around 400 BCE that may have been controlled with string like modern marionettes. Such "Bolinas" figures have also been found at a Mayan burial site in Guatemala, suggesting the two areas may have shared culture and civilization, according to a paper published in the journal Antiquity.Three of the puppets were about a foot tall, with the other two measuring about 18 centimeters. The larger ones had adjustable heads connected to their bodies via matching sockets. The carved faces feature tongues, tattoos, and facial expressions that shift depending on the viewing angle: fearful when viewed from below and grinning from above, for example. The authors suggest that these puppets weren't used as toys, but as "clay actors" in ritualistic funeral performances. "The universal impetus for creating scaled-down humanoid figures appears to be mimeticthat is, imbuing these handheld objects with deeper meanings that are readily decoded by the intended audience," they concluded, although the shared cultural "code" for interpreting those meanings has been lost.Antiquity, 2025. DOI:10.15184/aqy.2025.37 (About DOIs).This is your brain on Esperanto and Klingon Worf, son of Mogh, is surprised by new fMRI study. Credit: Paramount+ J.R.R. Tolkien invented two Elvish languages (Quenya and Sindarin) when writing The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Star Trek has Klingon, the Avatar films have Na'vi, and Game of Thrones boasts two constructed languages, or conlangs: Dothraki and High Valyrian. There are even hardcore fans who have diligently become proficient in those invented languages. And apparently conlangs activate the same parts of the brain as their native tongues, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.MIT neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko previously spearheaded studies on how the brain responds to stimuli that share certain language featuresmusic, gestures, facial expressions, and computer programming languages like Python. None seemed to engage the language-processing areas of the brain. Curious about what makes natural language unique, Fedorenko et al. turned to conlangs. They organized a weekend conference featuring conlang creators as speakers and invited people fluent in Esperanto, Klingon, Na'vi, Dothraki, and High Valyrian to participate. They scanned 44 conlang speakers with fMRI as they listened to sentences in both their chosen conlang and their native tongue, performing nonlinguistic tasks as a control.The results: The same language regions lit up regardless of whether they were speaking in their chosen conlang or native natural language. This helped the group determine that language responses appear to be driven in part by how they convey meaning about the interior and exterior worldobjects, properties of objects, events, etc. Python, by contrast, is highly symbolic and abstract, disconnected from the everyday "real" world we experience. The group next plans to study how the brain responds to a different conlang called Lojban, created in the 1990s, to learn more about which language features activate the brain's language centers.PNAS, 2025. DOI:10.1073/pnas.2313473122 (About DOIs).Venom as a protective strategy for male octopuses Male blue-lined octopuses inject females with venom during sex to avoid being eaten. Credit: Wen-Sung Chung/University of Queensland Sexual cannibalismin which a female of the species consumes the male after copulatingis a very real thing in nature, seen in insect species like mantises and spiders, certain crustaceans and gastropods, and even certain species of octopus. Case in point: the blue-lined octopus (Hapalochlaena fasciata), a tiny creature found in shallow waters whose venom can be quite deadly, especially to humans. The females of the species might be the size of golf balls, but they are nonetheless significantly larger than the males and have a tendency to eat their mates.Fortunately, the males have developed an effective defense strategy, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology: They inject their chosen females with tetrodotoxin (a venom also produced by pufferfish) just before mating, temporarily paralyzing the females so the males can avoid being eaten. Scientists at the University of Queensland studied the behavior of mating blue-lined octopuses in the lab and noticed that males would bite the females near the aorta as the mating ritual commenced, flooding their systems with the venom.This immobilized the females for the duration of the mating sessions (which lasted between 40 and 75 minutes); they largely stopped breathing, turned pale, and did not respond to visual stimuli during that time. The males actually increased their respiration rate as they used a specialized mating arm to deposit their sperm into the females' oviducts to fertilize the eggs. The effects of the venom eventually wore off sufficiently for the females to push the males away without suffering any permanent effects. The authors suggest that female blue-lined octopuses may have evolved a tolerance to tetrodotoxin, ensuring they survive to lay their eggs and propagate the species.Current Biology, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.01.027 (About DOIs).Rubber hand illusion alleviates pain A rubber hand is perceived as part of your own body when you can't see your own. Credit: Damian Gorczany One of the many strange things to come out of 21st-century neuroscience is the so-called rubber hand illusion, in which a subjects hand is hidden and replaced by a rubber hand in the position where the real hand would be. When both the real and fake hands are stroked simultaneously, subjects respond as if the rubber hand were part of their body. Threaten the rubber hand by attempting to stab it with a dagger, for instance, and the participants exhibit an involuntary startle or fear response. Its the combination of visual and tactile feedback that does it, and it only takes a few seconds for the illusion to kick in. And it's not a purely psychological effect; there have been measurable physiological responses as well.Scientists in Bochum, Germany, have now shown that the rubber hand illusion can also alleviate pain, according to a paper published in the journal Pain Reports. They recruited 34 right-handed subjects, evaluated their individual pain thresholds, then placed the subjects' left hands behind a screen. A left rubber hand was placed in front of the subjects, which could be lit from below with red light. Then heat was applied at different temperatures to the hidden hand, while red light increased on the visible rubber hand. Subjects were asked to rate their pain in response.The results: subjects' perception of pain decreased noticeably when the rubber hand illusion was used, compared to control conditions. The authors don't yet know what the underlying mechanism might be but suggest it could be related to visual analgesia, in which pain is considered less intense if someone can see the part of the body that is being hurt.Pain Reports, 2025. DOI: 10.1097/PR9.0000000000001252 (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. 12 Comments

Video Synthesis With new Gen-4 model, Runway claims to have finally achieved consistency in AI videos The new model is rolling out to paid users starting today. Samuel Axon Mar 31, 2025 5:07 pm | 19 Runway's new Gen-4 model claims to support consistency characters and objects. Credit: Runway Runway's new Gen-4 model claims to support consistency characters and objects. Credit: Runway Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAI video startup Runway announced the availability of its newest video synthesis model today. Dubbed Gen-4, the model purports to solve several key problems with AI video generation.Chief among those is the notion of consistent characters and objects across shots. If you've watched any short films made with AI, you've likely noticed that they're either dream-like sequences of thematically but not realistically connected imagesmood pieces more than consistent narratives.Runway claims Gen-4 can maintain consistent characters and objects, provided it's given a single reference image of the character or object in question as part of the project in Runway's interface.The company published example videos including the same woman appearing in various different shots across different scenes, and the same statue appearing in completely different contexts, looking largely the same in a variety of environments and lighting conditions.Likewise, Gen-4 aims to allow filmmakers who use the tool to get coverage of the same environment or subject from multiple angles across several shots in the same sequence. With Gen-2 and Gen-3, this was virtually impossible. The tool has in the past been good at maintaining stylistic integrity, but not at generating multiple angles within the same scene.The last major model update at Runway was Gen-3, which was announced just under a year ago in June 2024. That update greatly expanded the length of videos users could produce from just two seconds to 10, and offered greater consistency and coherence than its predecessor, Gen-2.Runways unique positioning in a crowded spaceRunway released the first publicly available version of its video synthesis product to users in February 2023. Gen-1 creations tended to be more curiosities than anything useful to creatives, but subsequent optimizations have allowed the tool to be used in limited ways in real projects.For example, it was used in producing the sequence in the film Everything Everywhere All At Once, where two rocks with googly eyes had a conversation on a cliff, and it has also been used to make visual gags for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.Whereas many competing startups were started by AI researchers or Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Runway was founded in 2018 by art students at New York University's Tisch School of the ArtsCristbal Valenzuela and Alejandro Matamala from Chil, and Anastasis Germanidis from Greece.It was one of the first companies to release a usable video-generation tool to the public, and its team also contributed in foundational ways to the Stable Diffusion model.It is vastly outspent by competitors like OpenAI, but while most of its competitors have released general-purpose video creation tools, Runway has sought an Adobe-like place in the industry. It has focused on marketing to creative professionals like designers and filmmakers, and has implemented tools meant to make Runway a support tool into existing creative workflows.The support tool argument (as opposed to a standalone creative product) helped Runway secure a deal with motion picture company Lionsgate, wherein Lionsgate allowed Runway to legally train its models on its library of films, and Runway provided bespoke tools for Lionsgate for use in production or post-production.That said, Runway is, along with Midjourney and others, one of the subjects of a widely publicized intellectual property case brought by artists who claim the companies illegally trained their models on their work, so not all creatives are on board.Apart from the announcement about the partnership with Lionsgate, Runway has never publicly shared what data is used to train its models. However, a report in 404 Media seemed to reveal that at least some of the training data included video scraped from the YouTube channels of popular influencers, film studios, and more.Time will tell for Gen-4The claimed improvements in Gen-4 target complaints from the creatives who use the tools, saying that these video synthesis tools are limited in their usefulness because they have limited consistency or understanding of a scene. Competing tools like OpenAI's Sora have also tried to improve on these limitations, but with limited results.Runway's announcement says that Gen-4 is rolling out to "all paid plans and Enterprise customers" today. However, when I logged into my paid account, Gen-4 is listed in the model picker but with the word "Soon" next to it, and it's not selectable yet. Runway may be rolling the model out to accounts slowly to avoid problems with server load. Gen-4 is listed as an option, but not yet usable, as of this article's publication. Credit: Samuel Axon Whenever it arrives for all users, it will only be available with a paid plan. Individual, non-enterprise plans start at $15 per month and scale up to as much as $95 per month, though there is a 20 percent discount for signing up for an annual plan instead. An Enterprise account runs $1,500 per year.The plans provide users with up to 2,250 credits monthly, but because generating usable AI video is an act of curation, you probably can't generate too many usable videos with that amount. There is an "Explore Mode" in the $95 per month individual plan that allows unlimited generations at a relaxed rate, which is meant as a way to gradually find your way to the output you want to invest in.Samuel AxonSenior EditorSamuel AxonSenior Editor Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and heis a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development. 19 Comments

DOGE's tentacles spread DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected Report: IT officials who fought DOGE access put on leave and under investigation. Jon Brodkin Mar 31, 2025 4:00 pm | 24 Elon Musk at a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP Elon Musk at a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Jim Watson/AFP Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreElon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gained access "to a payroll system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across dozens of agencies," despite "objections from senior IT staff who feared it could compromise highly sensitive government personnel information" and lead to cyberattacks, The New York Times reported today.The system at the Interior Department gives DOGE "visibility into sensitive employee information, such as Social Security numbers, and the ability to more easily hire and fire workers," the NYT wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. DOGE workers had been trying to get access to the Federal Personnel and Payroll System for about two weeks and succeeded over the weekend, the report said."The dispute came to a head on Saturday, as the DOGE workers obtained the access and then placed two of the IT officials who had resisted them on administrative leave and under investigation, the people said," according to the NYT report. The agency's CIO and CISO are reportedly under investigation for their "workplace behavior."When contacted by Ars today, the Interior Department said, "We are working to execute the President's directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President Trump's Executive Orders."DOGE's access to federal systems continues to grow despite court rulings that ordered the government to cut DOGE off from specific records, such as those held by the Social Security Administration, Treasury Department, Department of Education, and Office of Personnel Management.DOGE's new access at Interior allows "at least two DOGE employees, Stephanie Holmes and Katrine Trampe... to make changes to employment status, compensation level, health benefits and morewith no additional oversight or approval required," the NYT report said.Memo warned against DOGE accessThe NYT obtained a memo written by senior career employees who objected to DOGE's access. "Such elevated access to critical high-value asset systems is rare with respect to individual systems and no single DoI official presently has access to all HR, payroll and credentialing systems," the memo reportedly said.The memo "also warned that individuals with the elevated access to the system could become prime targets for cybersecurity attacks by terrorists, nations or other malicious actors," the NYT wrote. The memo reportedly said that such access "typically requires training and certification... Without formal qualifications, the Department may experience significant failure because of operator error."Musk told Fox News last week that DOGE is working on "reconciling all the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud. These databases don't talk to each other... it's frankly painful homework, but it has to be done and it will greatly improve the efficiency of government systems."A federal appeals court ruled last week that Musk and DOGE don't have to turn over information related to their government cost-cutting operations, reversing a district court judge's previous decision. The case was brought by 14 states alleging that "President Trump has delegated virtually unchecked authority to Mr. Musk without proper legal authorization from Congress and without meaningful supervision of his activities."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. 24 Comments

Preparing update... Apple updates all its operating systems, brings Apple Intelligence to Vision Pro Updates bring new emoji, Mail organization for Macs, easier Mac setup, and more. Andrew Cunningham Mar 31, 2025 4:26 pm | 0 Credit: Apple Credit: Apple Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreApple dropped a big batch of medium-size software updates for nearly all of its products this afternoon. The iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, tvOS 18.4, and visionOS 2.4 updates are all currently available to download, and each adds a small handful of new features for their respective platforms.A watchOS 11.4 update was also published briefly, but it's currently unavailable.For iPhones and iPads that support Apple Intelligence, the flagship feature in 18.4 is Priority Notifications, which attempts to separate time-sensitive or potentially important notifications from the rest of them so you can see them more easily. The update also brings along the handful of new Unicode 16.0 emoji, a separate app for managing a Vision Pro headset (similar to the companion app for the Apple Watch), and a grab bag of other fixes and minor enhancements.The Mac picks up two major features in the Sequoia 15.4 update. Users of the Mail app now get the same (optional) automated inbox sorting that Apple introduced for iPhones and iPads in an earlier update, attempting to tame overgrown inboxes using Apple Intelligence language models.The Mac is also getting a long-standing Quick Start setup feature from the Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. On those devices, you can activate them and sign in to your Apple ID by holding another compatible Apple phone or tablet in close proximity. Macs running the 15.4 update finally support the same feature (though it wont work Mac-to-Mac, since a rear-facing camera is a requirement).The Mail features are part of Apple Intelligence and so won't be supported on Intel Macs, but it's not clear whether Quick Start will be available.The Mac version of Apple Intelligence continues to trail the iPhones version by an update or two. Apple isnt adding the Priority Notifications feature from iOS 18.4 to the Mac just yet.The VisionOS 2.4 update brings Apple Intelligence features to the Vision Pro headset, which has always had the hardware necessary to support them (it uses an Apple M2) but didn't get them at the same time as iPhones, iPads, and Macs did. This makes it the fourth of Apple's software platforms to support generative AI features like Genmoji, Image Playgrounds, Writing Tools, notification summaries, and more. The update also adds a demo-friendly Spatial Gallery app that will show off a rotating Apple-approved gallery of sample spatial images.For people more interested in digging into the guts of the updates and finding out about security patches, Apple published release notes for developers (iOS/iPadOS, macOS) and security researchers that are more granular than the public release notes you'll see when you grab the updates.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

shake the cobwebs out Theres a new benchmark in town for measuring performance on Windows 95 PCs Did you want to see how fast your ancient computer was? Because now you can! Andrew Cunningham Mar 31, 2025 1:15 pm | 16 Credit: Microsoft Credit: Microsoft Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreIf you're still using a computer you bought during the Clinton administration, interesting news: Crystal Dew World, developers of apps like CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark, have released an update to their CrystalMark Retro benchmark (as spotted by Tom's Hardware). The most interesting aspect of the update for retro computing enthusiasts is expanded operating system support: the app will now run on Windows 95, Windows 98, and old versions of Windows NT like 3.51 and 4.0. The previous version of the app only went as far back as Windows XP.The app spits out benchmarking scores for five things: single-core CPU performance, multi-core CPU performance, 2D graphics performance using GDI, 3D graphics performance using OpenGL, and disk speed (broken into four sub-benchmarks for sequential and random read and write performance).The app will also run on current systems, including 64-bit x86 and Arm-based PCs, and the results database is dominated by those modern systems. But searching by operating system allows you to zero in on those retro results, including nine (as of this writing) for Windows 95, six for Windows 98, and five for Windows NT 3.51. CrystalMark Retro running on a modern system inside a Windows 95 virtual machine. Credit: Crystal Dew World Benchmarks are often used to test brand-new components, so people can see how much faster their new PC is than their old one, or just for bragging rights. So why should retro computing enthusiasts care that they've got a new benchmarking app? As we've written, benchmarks are also a good way to make sure a PC is performing as expected, something that could be particularly useful for people building a PC out of heavily used hand-me-down parts. Vintage benchmarks also don't have the benefit of an online results database for easy comparisons to other people'ssystems.PCs running these operating systems are obviously far past their sell-by dates, but vibrant retro computing communities exist all over the Internet for virtually every era of MS-DOS and Windows. "New" systems like the Pocket386 and Book 8088 laptops also point to ongoing interest in '80s- and '90s-era PCs.If you're bringing an old Windows 95 or Windows 98 PC back online so you can run some benchmarks, remember to grab all the latest ancient updates for your operating system using something like the Windows Update Restored project. Or, better yet, please try to keep it from accessing the Internet directly, since it's not particularly safe and you won't be able to do much with period-accurate browsers and apps.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. 16 Comments

Apple's App Tracking Transparency France fines Apple 150M for excessive pop-ups that let users reject tracking Requiring "double consent" for user tracking is too much, French agency says. Jon Brodkin Mar 31, 2025 1:25 pm | 28 An iPhone 15 Pro and a MacBook Pro in 2023. Credit: Getty Images | dontree_m An iPhone 15 Pro and a MacBook Pro in 2023. Credit: Getty Images | dontree_m Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreFrance's competition regulator fined Apple 150 million, saying the iPhone maker went overboard in its implementation of pop-up messages that let users consent to or reject tracking that third-party applications use for targeted advertising.The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework used by Apple on iPhones and iPads since 2021 makes the use of third-party applications too complex and hurts small companies that rely on advertising revenue, said a press release today by the Autorit de la concurrence (Competition Authority). The system harms "smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on third-party data collection to finance their business," the agency said.User consent obtained via the ATA framework "authorizes the application in question to collect user data for targeted advertising purposes," the agency said. "If consent is given, the application can access the Identifier for Advertisers ('IDFA'), the identifier by which each device can be tracked through its use of third-party applications and sites." The French investigation was triggered by a complaint lodged by advertising industry associations.The intent of ATT "is not problematic in terms of the likely benefits for users as regards privacy protection," but "how the framework is implemented is abusive within the meaning of competition law," the agency said. Apple's "implementation methods artificially complicate the use of third-party applications and distort the neutrality of the framework to the detriment of small publishers financed by advertising," it said.Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said. "The result is that multiple consent pop-ups are displayed, making the use of third-party applications in the iOS environment excessively complex."A typical ATT pop-up asks a user whether to allow an app "to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites," and says that "your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you."Agency: Double consent too cumbersomeThe agency said there is an "asymmetry" in which user consent for Apple's own data collection is obtained with a single pop-up, but other publishers are "required to obtain double consent from users for tracking on third-party sites and applications." The press release notes that "while advertising tracking only needs to be refused once, the user must always confirm their consent a second time."The system was said to be less harmful for big companies like Meta and Google and "particularly harmful for smaller publishers that do not enjoy alternative targeting possibilities, in particular in the absence of sufficient proprietary data." Although France's focus is on how ATT affects smaller companies, Apple's privacy system has also been criticized by Facebook.The 150 million fine won't make much of a dent in Apple's revenue, but Apple will apparently have to make some changes to comply with the French order. The agency's press release said the problem "could be avoided by marginal modifications to the ATT framework."Benoit Coeure, the head of France's competition authority, "told reporters the regulator had not spelled out how Apple should change its app, but that it was up to the company to make sure it now complied with the ruling," according to Reuters. "The compliance process could take some time, he added, because Apple was waiting for rulings on regulators in Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania who are also investigating the ATT tool."Apple said in a statement that the ATT "prompt is consistent for all developers, including Apple, and we have received strong support for this feature from consumers, privacy advocates, and data protection authorities around the world. While we are disappointed with today's decision, the French Competition Authority (FCA) has not required any specific changes to ATT."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. 28 Comments

A near miss Europes first private launch company is learning to embrace failure "Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch." Stephen Clark Mar 31, 2025 12:26 pm | 1 A fireball rises over Andya after the crash of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket. Credit: Isar Aerospace A fireball rises over Andya after the crash of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket. Credit: Isar Aerospace Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea.If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn't be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion."Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch," Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. "Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now."Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar's Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit.But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. Isar Aerospace's first Spectrum rocket climbs away from Andya Spaceport in Norway. Credit: Isar Aerospace/Brady Kenniston/NASASpaceflight.com Duck and coverThe launch began with liftoff from Andya Spaceport at 12:30 pm local time (6:30 am EDT, or 10:30 UTC). The rocket's nine engines, burning a mix of liquid propane and liquid oxygen, throttled up to generate more than 150,000 pounds (675 kilonewtons) of thrust as Spectrum began a vertical climb from the launch pad.The first visual sign of trouble appeared about 15 seconds later as the 92-foot-tall (28-meter) rocket started to wobble on its axis. The exhaust plume from Spectrum's main engines also appeared to oscillate, suggesting that the rocket's steering system was trying to keep it on track.After a brief struggle, the rocket lost control and somersaulted, the engines shut down, and the vehicle fell into the sea about 40 seconds after launch. With its propellant tanks nearly full, the rocket's impact created a brilliant fireball and mushroom cloud over the craggy snow-covered landscape of Andya, which means "island of the ducks" in Norwegian.There were no injuries, and Isar said its seaside launch pad was intact following the accident. This was the first orbital launch attempt from a launch pad in Western Europe.A livestream of the test flight provided by Isar and its media partner, NASASpaceflight.com, showed the Spectrum rocket as it lifted off and lost control but cut away before impact. The livestream ended a few moments later.Within a few hours, Isar and NASASpaceflight released several replays of the launch, including a drone view that captured the entirety of Spectrum's 40-second flight. This showed a degree of transparency other launch companies should emulate.You can watch a replay of the live launch webcast in the YouTube stream embedded here."Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success," Metzler said in a press release. "We demonstrated that we can not only design and build but also launch rockets. I could not be prouder of our entire team for working so hard over the past seven years to reach this important milestone."Metzler founded Isar Aerospace in 2018 with two classmates at Technical University of Munich. Isar is one of a half-dozen or so European launch startups that could fly their orbital-class rockets in the next couple of years. Of this group, Isar has raised the most money, reporting more than 400 million euros (about $430 million at today's exchange rates) of fundraising, primarily from venture capital sources.The European Space Agency, the German government, and the NATO Innovation Fund have also invested in Isar Aerospace. ESA and other institutions want to foster Europe's nascent private launch industry to offer an alternative to Arianespace, the continent's sole operational launch provider, which operates the Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets developed with billions of euros of government funding.Last week, ESA released a solicitation to industry for the European Launcher Challenge, the agency's first competition to award commercial service contracts to European launch companies. This is a step toward jumpstarting Europe's commercial launch industry, similar to the way NASA was the anchor customer for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft some 15 years ago. Isar Aerospace is one of the top contenders in the competition.In a post-flight press briefing, Isar officials said the company is building the second and third Spectrum rockets at its factory near Munich but didn't offer a timeline for when it might launch again. The launch site apparently escaped significant damage, which should help expedite Isar's recovery."Today, we laid the foundation to cater to the rising global demand for flexible satellite launch services. Now its time to analyze all data, learn, iterate, and be back on the launch pad as soon as possible," he said.Success or failure?Isar declared the launch a success in its public statements, but was it?As Metzler said Monday, Isar's engineers are chewing on oodles of data. With just 30 seconds of powered flight, the company has more information about the performance of its rocket than any other European launch provider, apart from Arianespace.And first flights are risky. By one common measure, around half of inaugural flights of new orbital-class rockets end prematurely, before they reach orbital velocity. The recent success rate of debut flights of privately developedrockets is even lower.That's why Isar didn't put a customer's satellite onboard the first Spectrum rocket. The "payload" on Sunday's launch was the data. It would have been more difficult to characterize the outcome of Sunday's flight in a favorable light if the rocket came crashing down directly on its launch pad. A rebuild of the launch site would have set Isar back by months or years. The Spectrum rocket's Flight Termination System cut thrust from its nine main engines after the vehicle lost control. Credit: Isar Aerospace/NASASpaceflight.com Officials from ESA offered words of support after Isar's first launch."A test flight is exactly that: a test to gather data, learn and improve," said Josef Aschbacher, ESA's director general, in a statement. "Everything Isar Aerospace achieved today is remarkable, and they will have lots of data to analyze. I applaud the teams for getting this far and I am confident that we will see the next Spectrum on the launch pad ready for test flight 2 liftoff soon."Robert Habeck, Germany's vice chancellor and economy minister, said Europe's "unhindered access to space is strategically crucial.""With the first launch of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket, Germany has impressively demonstrated that it is an important location for the development of innovative space technologies," Habeck wrote on LinkedIn. "The first flight provided important data and experience for the rocket's next flight... Isar Aerospace can and will make a decisive contribution to securing Europe's independent access to space!"The Spectrum rocket is the largest launch vehicle primarily built in Germany, supplanting the V-2 missile from World War II.In the last few months, European government officials have emphasized their desire to break free of relying on other countries for defense and space technology. Europe was a longtime customer for Russia's Soyuz rocket, but the partnership ended in 2022 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Delays in the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket and failures with the smaller Vega rocket forced European governments to sign contracts with SpaceX to launch several scientific and security-related satellites. Daniel Metzler, co-founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace, speaks at an event in Munich on January 12, 2024. Credit: Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images Metzler, Isar's chief executive, was asked last year what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum."For me, the first flight will be a success if we dont blow up the launch site," he said at the Handelsblatt innovation conference. "That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time."This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX's first flight of the Starship rocket in 2023.By this measure, Isar officials can be content with Sunday's result. The company is modeling its test strategy on SpaceX's iterative development cycle, where engineers test early, make fixes, and fly again. This is in stark contrast to the way Europe has traditionally developed rockets. The alternative to Isar's approach could be to "spend 15 years researching, doing simulations, and then getting it right the first time," Metzler said.With the first launch of Spectrum, Isar has tested the rocket. Now, it's time to make fixes and fly again. That, Isar's leaders argue, will be the real measure of success."Were super happy," Metzler said in a press call after Sunday's flight. "Its a time for people to be proud of, and for Europe, frankly, also to be proud of."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. 1 Comments

+25% Trump on car tariffs: I couldnt care less if they raise prices Consumers will have to pay the price of the president's unnecessary trade war. Jonathan M. Gitlin Mar 31, 2025 9:09 am | 90 Credit: Getty Images Credit: Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLate last week, President Donald Trump decided to upend the automotive industry by levying a new 25 percent import tariff on all imported cars, which goes into effect on April 2. An additional 25 percent tariff on car parts is set to go into effect within the next month, which promises to make US-made cars more expensive as well, as many parts and subassemblies used in domestic manufacturing come from suppliers in Canada or Mexico.During the election campaign (and in the years preceding it), Trump repeatedly claimed that the cost of tariffs would be borne by the exporters. But tariffs don't work that waythey're paid by the importer, at the time of import.The White House does not appear to have any concerns about this, despite a report in The Wall Street Journal last week claiming that Trump had warned automakers not to pass the costs on to their customers.Relying on only anonymous sources, the WSJ quoted "people with knowledge of the call," saying that the president told them to be grateful for eliminating a so-called EV mandatereally just tougher emissions and fuel economy standards that Trump and his party opposeand then followed that with "a lengthy pitch for how they would actually benefit from tariffs."However, those claims were directly contradicted by Trump this weekend."No, I never said that. I couldn't care less if they raise prices, because people are going to start buying American-made cars," Trump told an NBC interviewer."The message is congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, youre going to make a lot of money. If you dont, youre going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff," Trump said, apparently unaware that even the Teslas built by his benefactor Elon Musk in Texas and California contain a significant percentage of parts made in Mexico and Canada, parts that will cost 25 percent more as of next month.Trump also told NBC that his tariffs will be permanent, although in the past we have seen the president flip-flop on such matters. Analysts are still trying to reach consensus on how much the Trump tariff will add to the prices of domestic and imported cars, but expect prices to rise by thousands of dollars as automakers and dealerships try to preserve some of their profit margins.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. 90 Comments

Feeling pressured Big brands are spending small sums on X to stay out of Musks crosshairs Its whatever amount is enough to stay off the naughty list, says ad executive. Hannah Murphy, Cristina Criddle, and Daniel Thomas, Financial Times Mar 31, 2025 9:19 am | 50 Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreBig brands are allocating small amounts of their advertising budget to Elon Musks X, seeking to avoid being seen as boycotting the social media platform and triggering a public fallout with its billionaire owner.Multiple marketing executives told the Financial Times that companies have felt pressure to spend a nominal sum on X following Musks high-profile role in US President Donald Trumps administration.They said Musks pursuit of legal action against groups that have stopped advertising since his $44 billion acquisition in late 2022 had also sparked alarm. X last month added about half a dozen more companies to its case including Shell, Nestl, Pinterest, and Lego.Its whatever amount is enough to stay off the naughty list, said Lou Paskalis, chief executive of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America.Its not because the brand safety risk has gone away. But the far greater risk is that a comment [from Musk] in the press sends your stock price tumbling, and instead of a multimillion-dollar risk youre facing a multibillion-dollar risk.The move comes as X was this week bought by Musks artificial intelligence group xAi in a deal that valued the social media platform at $45 billion, including debt. Musk said that he would combine the data, models, and talent of the two companies.Investors have been buoyed by Musks proximity to the Trump administration as well as signs that his cost-cutting approach has been effective and revenues are improving.Musk and X chief executive Linda Yaccarino have set a goal that aims to boost advertising revenues back to 2022 levels, according to two people familiar with the matter. They believe this is the minimum X should be bringing in without the hit caused by brands boycotting or avoiding the platform over its political bent, the people said.According to data from Emarketer, Xs revenue will increase to $2.3 billion this year compared with $1.9 billion a year ago. However, global sales in 2022, when the group was known as Twitter and taken over by Musk, were $4.1 billion.Total US ad spend on X was down by 2 percent in the first two months of 2025 compared with a year ago, according to data from market intelligence group Sensor Tower, despite the recent return of groups such as Hulu and Unilever.American Express also rejoined the platform this year but its ad spend is down by about 80 percent compared with the first quarter of 2022, Sensor Tower said.However, four large ad agenciesWPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group, and Publicishave recently agreed on deals, or are in talks, to set annual spending targets with X in so-called upfront deals, where advertisers commit to purchasing slots in advance.X, WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis declined to comment. Interpublic Group did not respond to a request for comment.Fears have risen within the advertising industry after X filed a federal antitrust lawsuit last summer against Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a coalition of brands, ad agencies, and some companies including Unilever, accusing them of coordinating an illegal boycott under the guise of a brand safety initiative. The Republican-led House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary has also leveled similar accusations.Unilever was dropped from Xs lawsuit after it restarted advertising on the social media platform in October.Following discussions with their legal team, some staff at WPPs GroupM now feel concerned about what they put in writing about X or communicate over video conferencing given the lawsuit, according to one person familiar with the matter.Another advertising executive noted that the planned $13 billion merger between Omnicom and Interpublic had been delayed by a further request for information from a US watchdog this month, holding the threat of regulatory intervention over the deal.Sensor Tower said that 35 of Xs top advertisers in 2025 did not advertise on the platform in 2023, which highlighted it is attracting a new swath of advertisers. These included Maga merchandise shop Rock Paper Sizzle, caffeine drinks brand Celsius, and telehealth group Hims & Hers.X insiders pointed to the increasing number of small brands using self-serve tools, as well as new artificial intelligence tools offered by Xs Grok chatbot to generate an ads campaign.Theyll get back there [to past levels of advertising revenue], it just wont be the same mix of advertisers, the person said.Mark Penn, chief executive of New York-based agency Stagwell, said X was a revived and increasingly vibrant platform.He added: The political boycotts and things are dissipating because companies are realizing that taking one side and the other is a dangerous place to be.In documents obtained by the Financial Times, Omnicom Media Group told brands this year that X was a compelling opportunity for our clients, touting improvements in brand safety as well as its ads offering, particularly new video formats.It also said potential return on investment was at an all-time high, in part because the agency had negotiated the most favorable discounts with the platform.The idea of a high return on investment is laughable, said a rival media buyer. You get what you pay for. If you want cheap, that is cheap media that you are getting.Ruben Schreurs, chief executive of Ebiquity, which measures how much money is being spent by brands on different platforms, said he did not see an imminent return to prior scale in terms of ad budgets being flown through to X.But he added: It will not surprise me, personally, if we at some point in the near future will see the president actually calling for brand advertisers to return to X. 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.Hannah Murphy, Cristina Criddle, and Daniel Thomas, Financial TimesHannah Murphy, Cristina Criddle, and Daniel Thomas, Financial Times 50 Comments

quantum controversy Overblown quantum dot conspiracy theories make important points about QLED TVs Lawsuits and allegations are creating doubt around quantum dot TVs' use of QDs. Scharon Harding Mar 31, 2025 7:00 am | 16 Credit: Getty Credit: Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreQLED TV manufacturers have dug themselves into a hole.After years of companies promising that their quantum dot light-emitting diode TVs use quantum dots (QDs) to boost color, some industry watchers and consumers have recently started questioning whether QLED TVs use QDs at all. Lawsuits have been filed, accusing companies like TCL of using misleading language about whether their QLED TVs actually use QDs.In this article, we'll break down why new conspiracy theories about QLED TVs are probably overblown. We'll also explore why misleading marketing from TV brands is responsible for customer doubt and how it all sets a bad precedent for the future of high-end displays, including OLED TVs and monitors.What QLED TVs are supposed to doTVs that use QDs are supposed to offer wider color gamuts and improved brightness over their QD-less LCD-LED counterparts. Just ask Samsung, which saysthat QLED displays deliver a wider range of colors, better color coverage, and a brighter picture. TCL will tell you that its QLED TVs use billions of Quantum Dot nanocrystals and deliver industry-leading color palette and brightness.To be clear, properly manufactured QD TVs that use a sufficient quantity of QDs are legit. Excellent examples, which command higher prices than QD-free rivals, successfully deliver bright pictures with wide color gamuts and impressive color volume (the number of colors a TV displays at various levels of brightness). A TV with strong color volume can depict many light and dark shades of green, for example.Technology reviews site RTINGS, which is known for its in-depth display testing, explains that a TV with good color volume makes "content look more realistic," while "TVs with poor color volume don't show as many details." This is QLED's big selling point. A proper QLED TV can be brighter than an OLED TV and have markedly better color volume than some high-end, non-QD LCD-LED displays.Let's take a look at some quality QLED TVs for an idea of where the color performance bar should be.The 2024 Sony Bravia 9, for example, is a $2,500 Mini LED TV with QDs. Thats expensive for a non-OLED TV, but the Bravia 9 covers an impressive 92.35 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, per RTINGS' testing. RTINGS tests color volume by comparing a screens Rec. 2020 coverage to a TV with a peak brightness of 10,000 nits. A good value, the publication says, is over 30 percent. The Bravia 9 scored 54.4 percent.Another well-performing QLED TV is the 2024 Hisense U8. The Mini LED TV has 96.27 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 51.9 percent color volume, according to RTINGS.Even older QLED TVs can impress. The Vizio M Series Quantum from 2020, for example, has 99.18 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 34 percent color volume, per RTINGS standards.These days, TV marketing most frequently mentions QDs to suggest enhanced color, but its becoming increasingly apparent that some TVs marketed as using QDs arent as colorful as their QLED labels might suggest.QLED generally implies superior colors, but some QLED models have been reported to cover less than 90 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut, Guillaume Chansin, associate director of displays and XR at Counterpoint Research, told Ars Technica.QD TVs accused of not having QDsRecently, Samsung shared with Ars testing results from three TVs that TCL markets as QLEDs in the US: the 65Q651G, 65Q681G, and 75Q651G. The TVs have respective MSRPs of $370, $480, and $550 as of this writing.Again, TCL defines QLED TVs as a type of LED/LCD that uses quantum dots to create its display.These quantum dots are nano-sized molecules that emit a distinct colored light of their own when exposed to a light source, TCL says. But the test results shared by Samsung suggest that the TVs in question dont use cadmium or indium, two types of chemicals employed in QD TVs. (You dont need both cadmium and indium for a set to be considered a QD TV, and some QD TVs use a combination of cadmium and indium.)However, per the testing provided by Samsung and conducted by Intertek, a London-headquartered testing and certification company, none of the tested TVs had enough cadmium to be detected at a minimum detection standard of 0.5 mg/kg. They also reportedly lacked sufficient indium for detection at a minimum standard of 2 mg/kg. Intertek is said to have tested each TV sets optical sheet, diffuser plate, and LED modules, with testing occurring in the US.When reached for comment about these results, a TCL spokesperson said TCL cannot comment on specifics due to current litigation but that it stands behind [its] high-performance lineup, which provides uncompromised color accuracy. TCL is facing a class-action complaint about its QLED TVs' performance and use of QDs.TCL's spokesperson added:TCL has definitive substantiation for the claims made regarding its QLED televisions and will respond to the litigation in due course. We remain committed to our customers and believe in the premium quality and superior value of our products. In the context of the ongoing litigation, TCL will validate that our industry-leading technologies meet or exceed the high bar that TV viewers have come to expect from us.This is not good for the industryA manufacturer not telling the truth about QDs in its TVs could be ruinous to its reputation. But a scheme requiring the creation of fake, QD-less films would be expensivealmost as costly as making real QD films, Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence, previously told Ars.What's most likely happening is that the TVs in question do use QDs for colorbut they employ cheaper phosphors to do a lot of the heavy lifting, too. However, even that explanation raises questions around the ethics of classifying these TVs as QLED.Counterpoint's Chansin said that the TCL TV test results that Samsung shared with Ars point to the three TVs using phosphors for color conversion instead of quantum dots.He added:While products that have trace amounts could be said to "contain" quantum dots, it would be misleading to state that these TVs are enhanced by quantum dot technology. The use of the term "QLED" is somewhat more flexible, as it is a marketing term with no clear definition. In fact, it is not uncommon for a QLED TV to use a combination of quantum dots and phosphors.Analysts that I spoke with agreed that QD TVs that combine QDs and phosphors are more common among lower-priced TVs with low margins."Manufacturers have been trying to lower the concentration of quantum dots to cut costs, but we have now reached undetectable levels of quantum dots," Chansin said. "This is not good for the industry as a whole, and it will undermine consumers' confidence in the products."Phosphors fostering confusionTCL TVs' use of phosphors in conjunction with QDs has been documented before. In a 2024 video, Pete Palomaki, owner and chief scientist at QD consultant Palomaki Consulting, pried open TCLs 55S555, a budget QLED TV from 2022. Palomaki concluded that the TV had QDs incorporated within the diffuser rather than in the standalone optical film. He also determined that a red phosphor called KSF and a green phosphor known as beta sialon contributed to the TV's color.In his video, Palomaki said, In the green spectrum, I get about less than 10 percent from the QD and the remaining 90-plus percent from the phosphor. Palomaki said that about 75 percent of the TV's red reproduction capabilities came from KSF, with the rest attributed to QDs. Palomaki emphasized, though, that his breakdowns dont account for light recycling in the backlight unit, which would probably boost up the contribution from the quantum dot.Palomaki didnt clarify how much more QD contribution could be expected and declined to comment on this story.Another video shows an example of a TCL QLED TV that Palomaki said has phosphors around its LEDs but still uses QDs for the majority of color conversion.TCL isnt the only TV brand that relies on phosphors to boost the color capabilities of its QLED TVs and likely reduce manufacturing costs.There is an almost full continuum of TV designs, ranging from using only phosphors to using only QDs, with any type of mix in between, Virey told Ars.Even Samsung, the company crying foul over TCLs lack of detectable QDs, has reportedly used phosphors to handle some of the color work handled entirely by QDs in full QD TVs. In 2023, Palomaki pulled apart a 2019 Samsung QN75Q7DRAF. He reported that the TV's color conversion leverages a very cheap phosphor known as yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG), which is not very good for color gamut."A TV using QDs for color conversion should produce an optical spectrogram with narrow peak widths. As QD supplier Avantama explains, narrower bandwidths translate to purer colors with higher levels of efficiency and vice versa. In the QN75Q7DRAF's optical spectrogram that Palomaki provided, you can see that the peaks are sharper and more narrow when measuring the full film stack with the phosphors versus the QD film alone. This helps illustrate the TV's reliance on phosphors to boost color. Credit: NanoPalomaki/YouTube Ars asked Samsung to comment on the use of phosphors in its QD TVs, but we didn't receive a response.TV brands have become accustomed to slapping a QLED label on their TVs and thinking that's sufficient to increase prices. It also appears that TV manufacturers are getting away with cutting back on QDs in exchange for phosphors of various levels of quality and with varied performance implications.It's a disappointing situation for shoppers who have invested in and relied on QLED TVs for upper-mid-range performance. But it's important to emphasize that the use of phosphors in QD TVs isnt necessarily a bad thing.According to Virey:There are a lot of reasons why display engineers might want to use phosphors in conjunction with QDs. Having phosphors in a QD TV doesnt necessarily imply low performance. It can provide a little boost in brightness, improve homogeneity, etc. Various types of phosphors can be used for different purpose. Phosphors are found in many high-performanceeven flagshipdisplays.Virey noted that in cases where QLED TVs appear to have no detectable QD content and sit at the lower end of a manufacturers QD TV offerings, cost is clearly the driver for using phosphors.Better testing, pleaseSo why don't TCL and Samsung provide optical spectrograms of the TVs in question to prove whether or not color conversion is occurring as the manufacturer claims? In September, TCL did provide a spectrogram, which it claimed proved the presence of QDs in its TVs. But its unclear which model was tested, and the results dont seem to address red or green. You can view TCLs spectrogram here.The company declined to comment on why it hasn't provided more testing results, including for its QLED TVs' color gamut and accuracy. Samsung didn't respond to Ars' request for comment regarding additional testing.Providing more informative test results would help shoppers better understand what they can expect from a QLED TV." But that level of detail is absent from recent accusations againstand defenses ofQLED TVs. The type of test results that have been shared, meanwhile, have succeeded in delivering greater shock value.In the interest of understanding the actual performance of one of the TVs in question, lets take another look at the TCL 65Q651G that Samsung had Intertek test. The $370 65Q651G is named in litigation accusing TCL of lying about its QLED TVs.RTINGS measured the TV's DCI-P3 coverage at 88.3 percent and its color volume at 26.3 percent (again, RTINGS considers anything above 30 percent on the latter good). Both numbers are steps down from the 99.2 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 34 percent color volume that RTINGS recorded for the 2020 Vizio M Series Quantum. Its also less impressive than TCLs QM8, a Mini LED QLED TV currently going for $900. That TV covers 94.59 percent of DCI-P3 and has a color volume of 49.2 percent, per RTINGS testing.Growing suspicionPerhaps somewhat due to the minimal availability of credible testing results, consumers are increasingly suspicious about their QLED TVs and are taking their concerns to court.Samsung, seemingly looking to add fuel to the fire surrounding rivals like TCL, told Ars that it used Intertek to test TCL TVs because Intertek has been a credible resource for quality assurance and testing services for the industry for more than a century. But another likely reason is the fact that Intertek previously tested three other TCL TVs and concluded that they lacked materials required of QD TVs.We covered those test results in September. Hansol Chemical, a Seoul-headquartered chemical manufacturer and distributor and Samsung supplier, commissioned the testing of three TCL TVs sold outside of the US: the C755,C655, and C655 Pro. Additionally, Hansol hired Geneva-headquartered testing and certification company SGS. SGS also failed to detect indium, even with a higher minimum detection standard of 5 mg/kg and cadmium in the sets.Its important to understand the potential here for bias. Considering its relationship with Samsung and its status as a chaebol, Hansol stands to benefit from discrediting TCL QD TVs. Further, the South Korean government has reportedly shown interest in the global TV market and pushed two other chaebols, Samsung and LG, to collaborate in order to maintain market leadership over increasingly competitive Chinese brands like TCL. Considering Hansols ties to Samsung, Samsungs rivalry with TCL, and the unlikely notion of a company going through the effort of making fake QD films for TVs, it's sensible to be skeptical about the Hansol-commissioned results, as well as the new ones that Samsung supplied.Still, a lawsuit (PDF) filed on February 11 seeking class-action certification accuses TCL of "marketing its Q651G, Q672G, and A300W televisions as having quantum dot technology when testing of the foregoing models showed that either: (i) the televisions do not have QLED technology, or (ii) that if QLED technology is present, it is not meaningfully contributing to the performance or display of the televisions, meaning that they should not be advertised as QLED televisions. The complaint is based on the Intertek and SGS testing results provided in September.Similarly, Hisense is facing a lawsuit accusing it of marketing QD-less TVs as QLED (PDF). "These models include, but are not necessarily limited to, the QD5 series, the QD6 series, QD65 series, the QD7 series, the U7 series, and the U7N series," the lawsuit, which is also seeking class-action certification, says.Interestingly, the U7N named in the lawsuit is one of the most frequently recommended QLED TVs from reviews websites, including RTINGS, Digital Trends, Toms Guide, and Ars sister site Wired. Per RTINGS testing, the TV covers 94.14 percent of DCI-P3 and has a color volume of 37 percent. Thats good enough performance for it to be feasible that the U7N uses someQDs, but without further testing, we cant know how much of its color capabilities are reliant on the technology.Both of the lawsuits named above lack evidence to prove that the companies are lying about using QDs. But the litigation illustrates growing customer concern about getting duped by QD TV manufacturers. The complaints also bring to light important questions about what sort of performance a product should deliver before it can reasonably wear the QLED label.A marketing-made messWhile some Arsians may relish digging into the different components and chemicals driving display performance, the average customer doesnt really care about whats inside their TV. What actually impacts TV viewers lives is image quality and whether or not the TV does what it claims.LG gives us a good example of QD-related TV marketing that is likely to confuse shoppers and could lead them to buy a TV that doesnt align with their needs. For years, LG has been promoting TVs that use QNED, which the company says stands for "quantum nano-emitting diode." In marketing materials viewable online, LG says QNED TVs use tiny particles called quantum dots to enhance colors and brightness on screens.It's easy to see the potential for confusion as customers try to digest the TV industrys alphabet soup, which includes deciphering the difference between the QNED and QLED marketing terms for QD TVs.But LG made things even more confusing in January when it announced TVs that it calls QNED but which dont use QDs. Per LGs announcement of its 2025 QNED Evo lineup, the new TVs use a new proprietary wide color gamut technology, Dynamic QNED Color Solution, which replaces quantum dots.LG claims its Dynamic QNED Color Solution enables light from the backlight to be expressed in pure colors that are as realistic as they appear to the eye in general life and that the TVs are 100 percent certified by global testing and certification organization Intertek for Color Volume, measuring a screens ability to display the rich colors of original images without distortion.But without benchmark results for individual TV models or a full understanding of what a Dynamic QNED Color Solution is, LGs QNED marketing isnt sufficient for setting realistic expectations for the TVs performance. And with QNED representing LGs QD TVs for years, its likely that someone will buy a 2025 QNED TV and think that it has QDs.Performance matters mostWhat should really matter to a TV viewer is not how many quantum dots a TV has but how strong its image quality is in comparison to the manufacturers claims, the TV's price, and the available alternatives. But the industrys overuse of acronyms using the letter Q and terms like quantum has made it difficult to tell the performance potential of so-called QD TVs.The problem has implications beyond the upper-mid range price point of QLED TVs. QDs have become a major selling point in OLED TVs and monitors. QDs are also at the center of one of the most anticipated premium display technologies, QDEL, or quantum dot electroluminescent displays. Confusion around the application and benefits of QDs could detract from high-end displays that truly leverage QDs for impressive results. Worse, the current approach to QD TV marketing could set a precedent for manufacturers to mislead customers while exploiting the growing popularity of QDs in premium displays.Companies don't necessarily need to start telling us exactly how many QDs are in their QLED TVs. But it shouldn't be too much to ask to get some clarity on the real-life performance we can expect from these devices. And now that the industry has muddied the definition of QLED, some are calling for a cohesive agreement on what a QD TV really is.Ultimately, if the industry wants to maintain some credibility behind that label, it will need to agree on some sort of standard and do some serious self-policing, Yole's Virey said.For now, a reckoning could be coming for TV brands that are found to manipulate the truth about their TVs components and composition. The current lawsuits still need to play out in the courts, but the cases have brought attention to the need for TV brands to be honest about the capabilities of their QD TVs.Things have escalated to the point where TV brands accuse one another of lying. The TV industry is responsible for creating uncertainty around QDs, and its starting to face the consequences.Scharon HardingSenior Technology ReporterScharon HardingSenior Technology Reporter Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She's been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Toms Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK. 16 Comments

GONE SILENT FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado Indiana University quietly removes profile of tenured professor and refuses to say why. Dan Goodin Mar 30, 2025 3:41 pm | 21 Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreA prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data. I have personally spoken to him on three occasions for articles here, here, and here."None of this is in any way normal"In recent weeks, Wang's email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university's Library Technologies division.According to the Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma and located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. The station said that both a resident and an attorney for the resident were on scene during at least part of the search.Attempts to locate Wang and Ma have so far been unsuccessful. An Indiana University spokesman didn't answer emailed questions asking if the couple was still employed by the university and why their profile pages, email addresses and phone numbers had been removed. The spokesman provided the contact information for a spokeswoman at the FBI's field office in Indianapolis. In an email, the spokeswoman wrote: "The FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity at homes in Bloomington and Carmel Friday. We have no further comment at this time."Searches of federal court dockets turned up no documents related to Wang, Ma, or any searches of their residences. The FBI spokeswoman didn't answer questions seeking which US district court issued the warrant and when, and whether either Wang or Ma is being detained by authorities. Justice Department representatives didn't return an email seeking the same information. An email sent to a personal email address belonging to Wang went unanswered at the time this post went live. Their resident status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is currently unknown.Fellow researchers took to social media over the weekend to register their concern over the series of events."None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Mastodon. He continued: "Has anyone been in contact? I hear hes been missing for two weeks and his students cant reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???"In the same thread, Matt Blaze, a McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University said: "It's hard to imagine what reason there could be for the university to scrub its website as if he never worked there. And while there's a process for removing tenured faculty, it takes more than an afternoon to do it."Local news outlets reported the agents spent several hours moving boxes in an out of the residences. WTHR provided the following details about the raid on the Carmel home:Neighbors say the agents announced "FBI, come out!" over a megaphone.A woman came out of the house holding a phone. A video from a neighbor shows an agent taking that phone from her. She was then questioned in the driveway before agents began searching the home, collecting evidence and taking photos.A car was pulled out of the garage slightly to allow investigators to access the attic.The woman left the house before 13News arrived. She returned just after noon accompanied by a lawyer. The group of ten or so investigators left a few minutes later.The FBI would not say what they were looking for or who is under investigation. A bureau spokesperson issued a statement: I can confirm we conducted court-authorized activity at the address in Carmel today. We have no further comment at this time.Investigators were at the house for about four hours before leaving with several boxes of evidence. 13News rang the doorbell when the agents were gone. A lawyer representing the family who answered the door told us they're not sure yet what the investigation is about.This post will be updated if new details become available. Anyone with first-hand knowledge of events involving Wang, Ma, or the investigation into either is encouraged to contact me, preferably over Signal at DanArs.82. The email address is: dan.goodin@arstechnica.com. 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. 21 Comments

searching for biosignatures NASAs Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars Its a significant finding in the search for alienlife. Derek Ward-Thompson and Megan Argo, The Conversation Mar 30, 2025 7:00 am | 4 The Curiosity rover near the site of Mont Mercou on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The Curiosity rover near the site of Mont Mercou on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreNASAs Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells.Scientists think that, if life ever emerged on Mars, it was probably microbial in nature. Because microbes are so small, its difficult to be definitive about any potential evidence for life found on Mars. Such evidence needs more powerful scientific instruments that are too large to be put on a rover.The organic molecules found by Curiosity consist of carbon atoms linked in long chains, with other elements bonded to them, like hydrogen and oxygen. They come from a 3.7-billion-year-old rock dubbed Cumberland, encountered by the rover at a presumed dried-up lakebed in Marss Gale Crater. Scientists used the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on the NASA rover to make their discovery.Scientists were actually looking for evidence of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and therefore key components of life as we know it. But this unexpected finding is almost as exciting. The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.Among the molecules were decane, which has 10 carbon atoms and 22 hydrogen atoms, and dodecane, with 12 carbons and 26 hydrogen atoms. These are known as alkanes, which fall under the umbrella of the chemical compounds known as hydrocarbons.Its an exciting time in the search for life on Mars. In March this year, scientists presented evidence of features in a different rock sampled elsewhere on Mars by the Perseverance rover. These features, dubbed leopard spots and poppy seeds, could have been produced by the action of microbial life in the distant past, or not. The findings were presented at a US conference and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.The Mars Sample Return mission, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, offers hope that samples of rock collected and stored by Perseverance could be brought to Earth for study in laboratories. The powerful instruments available in terrestrial labs could finally confirm whether or not there is clear evidence for past life on Mars. However, in 2023, an independent review board criticised increases in Mars Sample Returns budget. This prompted the agencies to rethink how the mission could be carried out. They are currently studying two revised options.Signs of life?Cumberland was found in a region of Gale Crater called Yellowknife Bay. This area contains rock formations that look suspiciously like those formed when sediment builds up at the bottom of a lake. One of Curiositys scientific goals is to examine the prospect that past conditions on Mars would have been suitable for the development of life, so an ancient lakebed is the perfect place to look for them. The Martian rock known as Cumberland, which was sampled in the study. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The researchers think that the alkane molecules may once have been components of more complex fatty acid molecules. On Earth, fatty acids are components of fats and oils. They are produced through biological activity in processes that help form cell membranes, for example. The suggested presence of fatty acids in this rock sample has been around for several years, but the new paper details the full evidence.Fatty acids are long, linear hydrocarbon molecules with a carboxyl group (COOH) at one end and a methyl group (CH3) at the other, forming a chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms.A fat molecule consists of two main components: glycerol and fatty acids. Glycerol is an alcohol molecule with three carbon atoms, five hydrogens, and three hydroxyl (chemically bonded oxygen and hydrogen, OH) groups. Fatty acids may have 4-36 carbon atoms; however, most of them have 12-18. The longest carbon chains found in Cumberland are 12 atoms long.Organic molecules preserved in ancient Martian rocks provide a critical record of the past habitability of Mars and could be chemical biosignatures (signs that life was once there).The sample from Cumberland has been analyzed by the Sam instrument many times, using different experimental techniques, and has shown evidence of clay minerals, as well as the first (smaller and simpler) organic molecules found on Mars, back in 2015. These included several classes of chlorinated and sulphur-containing organic compounds in Gale crater sedimentary rocks, with chemical structures of up to six carbon atoms. The new discovery doubles the number of carbon atoms found in a single molecule on Mars.The alkane molecules are significant in the search for biosignatures on Mars, but how they actually formed remains unclear. They could also be derived through geological or other chemical mechanisms that do not involve fatty acids or life. These are known as abiotic sources. However, the fact that they exist intact today in samples that have been exposed to a harsh environment for many millions of years gives astrobiologists (scientists who study the possibility of life beyond Earth) hope that evidence of ancient life might still be detectable today.It is possible the sample contains even longer chain organic molecules. It may also contain more complex molecules that are indicative of life, rather than geological processes. Unfortunately, Sam is not capable of detecting those, so the next step is to deliver Martian rock and soil to more capable laboratories on the Earth. Mars Sample Return would do this with the samples already gathered by the Perseverance Mars rover. All thats needed now is the budget.Derek Ward-Thompson, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Central Lancashire, and Megan Argo, Senior Lecturer in Astronomy, University of Central Lancashire. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.Derek Ward-Thompson and Megan Argo, The Conversation The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community. Our team of editors work with these experts to share their knowledge with the wider public. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and hopefully improve the quality of public discourse on them. 4 Comments

a strong musky smell What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase. A safe and proper rewrite should take years not months. Makena Kelly, wired.com Mar 29, 2025 10:08 am | 32 Credit: Tigermad Credit: Tigermad Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administrations (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the systemand the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans relyat risk.The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.Under any circumstances, a migration of this size and scale would be a massive undertaking, experts tell WIRED, but the expedited deadline runs the risk of obstructing payments to the more than 65 million people in the US currently receiving Social Security benefits.Of course one of the big risks is not underpayment or overpayment per se but [its also] not paying someone at all and not knowing about it. The invisible errors and omissions, an SSA technologist tells WIRED.The Social Security Administration did not immediately reply to WIREDs request for comment.SSA has been under increasing scrutiny from President Donald Trumps administration. In February, Musk took aim at SSA, falsely claiming that the agency was rife with fraud. Specifically, Musk pointed to data he allegedly pulled from the system that showed 150-year-olds in the US were receiving benefits, something that isnt actually happening. Over the last few weeks, following significant cuts to the agency by DOGE, SSA has suffered frequent website crashes and long wait times over the phone, The Washington Post reported this week.This proposed migration isnt the first time SSA has tried to move away from COBOL: In 2017, SSA announced a plan to receive hundreds of millions in funding to replace its core systems. The agency predicted that it would take around five years to modernize these systems. Because of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the agency pivoted away from this work to focus on more public-facing projects.Like many legacy government IT systems, SSA systems contain code written in COBOL, a programming language created in part in the 1950s by computing pioneer Grace Hopper. The Defense Department essentially pressured private industry to use COBOL soon after its creation, spurring widespread adoption and making it one of the most widely used languages for mainframes, or computer systems that process and store large amounts of data quickly, by the 1970s. (At least one DOD-related website praising Hopper's accomplishments is no longer active, likely following the Trump administrations DEI purge of military acknowledgements.)As recently as 2016, SSAs infrastructure contained more than 60 million lines of code written in COBOL, with millions more written in other legacy coding languages, the agencys Office of the Inspector General found. In fact, SSAs core programmatic systems and architecture havent been substantially updated since the 1980s when the agency developed its own database system called MADAM, or the Master Data Access Method, which was written in COBOL and Assembler, according to SSAs 2017 modernization plan.SSAs core logic is also written largely in COBOL. This is the code that issues social security numbers, manages payments, and even calculates the total amount beneficiaries should receive for different services, a former senior SSA technologist who worked in the office of the chief information officer says. Even minor changes could result in cascading failures across programs.If you weren't worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead, says Dan Hon, principal of Very Little Gravitas, a technology strategy consultancy that helps government modernize services, about completing such a migration in a short timeframe.Its unclear when exactly the code migration would start. A recent document circulated amongst SSA staff laying out the agencys priorities through May does not mention it, instead naming other priorities like terminating non-essential contracts and adopting artificial intelligence to augment administrative and technical writing.Earlier this month, WIRED reported that at least 10 DOGE operatives were currently working within SSA, including a number of young and inexperienced engineers like Luke Farritor and Ethan Shaotran. At the time, sources told WIRED that the DOGE operatives would focus on how people identify themselves to access their benefits online.Sources within SSA expect the project to begin in earnest once DOGE identifies and marks remaining beneficiaries as deceased and connecting disparate agency databases. In a Thursday morning court filing, an affidavit from SSA acting administrator Leland Dudek said that at least two DOGE operatives are currently working on a project formally called the Are You Alive Project targeting what these operatives believe to be improper payments and fraud within the agencys system by calling individual beneficiaries. The agency is currently battling for sweeping access to SSAs systems in court to finish out this work. (Again, 150-year-olds are not collecting social security benefits. That specific age was likely a quirk of COBOL. It doesnt include a date type, so dates are often coded to a specific reference pointMay 20, 1875, the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mtre.)In order to migrate all COBOL code into a more modern language within a few months, DOGE would likely need to employ some form of generative artificial intelligence to help translate the millions of lines of code, sources tell WIRED. DOGE thinks if they can say they got rid of all the COBOL in months then their way is the right way and we all just suck for not breaking shit, says the SSA technologist.DOGE would also need to develop tests to ensure the new systems outputs match the previous one. It would be difficult to resolve all of the possible edge cases over the course of several years, let alone months, adds the SSA technologist.This is an environment that is held together with bail wire and duct tape, the former senior SSA technologist working in the office of the chief information officer tells WIRED. The leaders need to understand that theyre dealing with a house of cards or Jenga. If they start pulling pieces out, which theyve already stated theyre doing, things can break.This story originally appeared on wired.com.Makena Kelly, wired.com Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what's next, delivering the most original and complete take you'll find anywhere on innovation's impact on technology, science, business and culture. 32 Comments

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show.A CDC spokesperson told ProPublica in a written statement that the agency decided against releasing the assessment because it does not say anything that the public doesnt already know. She added that the CDC continues to recommend vaccines as the best way to protect against measles.But what the nations top public health agency said next shows a shift in its long-standing messaging about vaccines, a sign that it may be falling in line under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines:The decision to vaccinate is a personal one, the statement said, echoing a line from a column Kennedy wrote for the Fox News website. People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential risks and benefits associated with vaccines.ProPublica shared the new CDC statement about personal choice and risk with Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. To her, the shift in messaging, and the squelching of this routine announcement, is alarming.Im a bit stunned by that language, Nuzzo said. No vaccine is without risk, but that makes it sound like its a very active coin toss of a decision. Weve already had more cases of measles in 2025 than we had in 2024, and its spread to multiple states. It is not a coin toss at this point.For many years, the CDC hasnt minced words on vaccines. It promoted them with confidence. One campaign was called Get My Flu Shot. The agencys website told medical providers they play a critical role in helping parents choose vaccines for their children: Instead of saying What do you want to do about shots?, say Your child needs three shots today.Nuzzo wishes the CDCs forecasters would put out more details of their data and evidence on the spread of measles, not less. The growing scale and severity of this measles outbreak and the urgent need for more data to guide the response underscores why we need a fully staffed and functional CDC and more resources for state and local health departments, she said.Kennedys agency oversees the CDC and on Thursday announced it was poised to eliminate 2,400 jobs there.When asked what role, if any, Kennedy played in the decision to not release the risk assessment, HHSs communications director said the aborted announcement was part of an ongoing process to improve communication processesnothing more, nothing less. The CDC, he reiterated, continues to recommend vaccination as the best way to protect against measles.Secretary Kennedy believes that the decision to vaccinate is a personal one and that people should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine, Andrew G. Nixon said. It is important that the American people have radical transparency and be informed to make personal healthcare decisions.Responding to questions about criticism of the decision among some CDC staff, Nixon wrote, Some individuals at the CDC seem more interested in protecting their own status or agenda rather than aligning with this Administration and the true mission of public health.The CDCs risk assessment was carried out by its Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which relied, in part, on new disease data from the outbreak in Texas. The CDC created the center to address a major shortcoming laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic. It functions like a National Weather Service for infectious diseases, harnessing data and expertise to predict the course of outbreaks like a meteorologist warns of storms.Other risk assessments by the center have been posted by the CDC even though their conclusions might seem obvious.In late February, for example, forecasters analyzing the spread of H5N1 bird flu said people who come in contact with potentially infected animals or contaminated surfaces or fluids faced a moderate to high risk of contracting the disease. The risk to the general US population, they said, was low.In the case of the measles assessment, modelers at the center determined the risk of the disease for the general public in the US is low, but they found the risk is high in communities with low vaccination rates that are near outbreaks or share close social ties to those areas with outbreaks. The CDC had moderate confidence in the assessment, according to an internal Q&A that explained the findings. The agency, it said, lacks detailed data about the onset of the illness for all patients in West Texas and is still learning about the vaccination rates in affected communities as well as travel and social contact among those infected. (The H5N1 assessment was also made with moderate confidence.)The internal plan to roll out the news of the forecast called for the expert physician whos leading the CDCs response to measles to be the chief spokesperson answering questions. It is important to note that at local levels, vaccine coverage rates may vary considerably, and pockets of unvaccinated people can exist even in areas with high vaccination coverage overall, the plan said. The best way to protect against measles is to get the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine.This week, though, as the number of confirmed cases rose to 483, more than 30 agency staff were told in an email that after a discussion in the CDC directors office, leadership does not want to pursue putting this on the website.The cancellation was not normal at all, said a CDC staff member who spoke anonymously for fear of reprisal with layoffs looming. Ive never seen a rollout plan that was canceled at that far along in the process.Anxiety among CDC staff has been building over whether the agency will bend its public health messages to match those of Kennedy, a lawyer who founded an anti-vaccine group and referred clients to a law firm suing a vaccine manufacturer.During Kennedys first week on the job, HHS halted the CDC campaign that encouraged people to get flu shots during a ferocious flu season. On the night that the Trump administration began firing probationary employees across the federal government, some key CDC flu webpages were taken down. Remnants of some of the campaign webpages were restored after NPR reported this.But some at the agency felt like the new leadership had sent a message loud and clear: When next to nobody was paying attention, long-standing public health messages could be silenced.On the day in February that the world learned that an unvaccinated child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in the U.S. since 2015, the HHS secretary downplayed the seriousness of the outbreak. We have measles outbreaks every year, he said at a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump.In an interview on Fox News this month, Kennedy championed doctors in Texas who he said were treating measles with a steroid, an antibiotic and cod liver oil, a supplement that is high in vitamin A. Theyre seeing what they describe as almost miraculous and instantaneous recovery from that, Kennedy said.As parents near the outbreak in Texas stocked up on vitamin A supplements, doctors there raced to assure parents that only vaccination, not the vitamin, can prevent measles.Still, the CDC added an entry on Vitamin A to its measles website for clinicians.On Wednesday, CNN reported that several hospitalized children in Lubbock, Texas, had abnormal liver function, a likely sign of toxicity from too much vitamin A.Texas health officials also said that the Trump administrations decision to rescind $11 billion in pandemic-related grants across the country will hinder their ability to respond to the growing outbreak, according to The Texas Tribune.Measles is among the most contagious diseases and can be dangerous. About 20 percent of unvaccinated people who get measles wind up in the hospital. And nearly 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications. The virus can linger in the air for two hours after an infected person has left an area, and patients can spread measles before they even know they have it.This week Amtrak said it was notifying customers that they may have been exposed to the disease this month when a passenger with measles rode one of its trains from New York City to Washington, DC.

Just say "I don't know" Why do LLMs make stuff up? New research peers under the hood. Claude's faulty "known entity" neurons sometime override its "don't answer" circuitry. Kyle Orland Mar 28, 2025 6:33 pm | 19 Which of those boxes represents the "I don't know" part of Claude's digital "brain"? Credit: Getty Images Which of those boxes represents the "I don't know" part of Claude's digital "brain"? Credit: Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOne of the most frustrating things about using a large language model is dealing with its tendency to confabulate information, hallucinating answers that are not supported by its training data. From a human perspective, it can be hard to understand why these models don't simply say "I don't know" instead of making up some plausible-sounding nonsense.Now, new research from Anthropic is exposing at least some of the inner neural network "circuitry" that helps an LLM decide when to take a stab at a (perhaps hallucinated) response versus when to refuse an answer in the first place. While human understanding of this internal LLM "decision" process is still rough, this kind of research could lead to better overall solutions for the AI confabulation problem.When a known entity isn'tIn a groundbreaking paper last May, Anthropic used a system of sparse auto-encoders to help illuminate the groups of artificial neurons that are activated when the Claude LLM encounters internal concepts ranging from "Golden Gate Bridge" to "programming errors" (Anthropic calls these groupings "features," as we will in the remainder of this piece). Anthropic's newly published research this week expands on that previous work by tracing how these features can affect other neuron groups that represent computational decision "circuits" Claude follows in crafting its response.In a pair of papers, Anthropic goes into great detail on how a partial examination of some of these internal neuron circuits provides new insight into how Claude "thinks" in multiple languages, how it can be fooled by certain jailbreak techniques, and even whether its ballyhooed "chain of thought" explanations are accurate. But the section describing Claude's "entity recognition and hallucination" process provided one of the most detailed explanations of a complicated problem that we've seen.At their core, large language models are designed to take a string of text and predict the text that is likely to followa design that has led some to deride the whole endeavor as "glorified auto-complete." That core design is useful when the prompt text closely matches the kinds of things already found in a model's copious training data. However, for "relatively obscure facts or topics," this tendency toward always completing the prompt "incentivizes models to guess plausible completions for blocks of text," Anthropic writes in its new research.Fine-tuning helps mitigate this problem, guiding the model to act as a helpful assistant and to refuse to complete a prompt when its related training data is sparse. That fine-tuning process creates distinct sets of artificial neurons that researchers can see activating when Claude encounters the name of a "known entity" (e.g., "Michael Jordan") or an "unfamiliar name" (e.g., "Michael Batkin") in a prompt. A simplified graph showing how various features and circuits interact in prompts about sports stars, real and fake. Credit: Anthropic A simplified graph showing how various features and circuits interact in prompts about sports stars, real and fake. Credit: Anthropic Activating the "unfamiliar name" feature amid an LLM's neurons tends to promote an internal "can't answer" circuit in the model, the researchers write, encouraging it to provide a response starting along the lines of "I apologize, but I cannot..." In fact, the researchers found that the "can't answer" circuit tends to default to the "on" position in the fine-tuned "assistant" version of the Claude model, making the model reluctant to answer a question unless other active features in its neural net suggest that it should.That's what happens when the model encounters a well-known term like "Michael Jordan" in a prompt, activating that "known entity" feature and in turn causing the neurons in the "can't answer" circuit to be "inactive or more weakly active," the researchers write. Once that happens, the model can dive deeper into its graph of Michael Jordan-related features to provide its best guess at an answer to a question like "What sport does Michael Jordan play?"Recognition vs. recallAnthropic's research found that artificially increasing the neurons' weights in the "known answer" feature could force Claude to confidently hallucinate information about completely made-up athletes like "Michael Batkin." That kind of result leads the researchers to suggest that "at least some" of Claude's hallucinations are related to a "misfire" of the circuit inhibiting that "can't answer" pathwaythat is, situations where the "known entity" feature (or others like it) is activated even when the token isn't actually well-represented in the training data.Unfortunately, Claude's modeling of what it knows and doesn't know isn't always particularly fine-grained or cut and dried. In another example, researchers note that asking Claude to name a paper written by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy causes the model to confabulate the plausible-sounding but completely made-up paper title "ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks." Asking the same question about Anthropic mathematician Josh Batson, on the other hand, causes Claude to respond that it "cannot confidently name a specific paper... without verifying the information." Artificially suppressing Claude's the "known answer" neurons prevent it from hallucinating made-up papers by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy. Credit: Anthropic Artificially suppressing Claude's the "known answer" neurons prevent it from hallucinating made-up papers by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy. Credit: Anthropic After experimenting with feature weights, the Anthropic researchers theorize that the Karpathy hallucination may be caused because the model at least recognizes Karpathy's name, activating certain "known answer/entity" features in the model. These features then inhibit the model's default "don't answer" circuit even though the model doesn't have more specific information on the names of Karpathy's papers (which the model then duly guesses at after it has committed to answering at all). A model fine-tuned to have more robust and specific sets of these kinds of "known entity" features might then be able to better distinguish when it should and shouldn't be confident in its ability to answer.This and other research into the low-level operation of LLMs provides some crucial context for how and why models provide the kinds of answers they do. But Anthropic warns that its current investigatory process still "only captures a fraction of the total computation performed by Claude" and requires "a few hours of human effort" to understand the circuits and features involved in even a short prompt "with tens of words." Hopefully, this is just the first step into more powerful research methods that can provide even deeper insight into LLMs' confabulation problem and maybe, one day, how to fix it.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. 19 Comments