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Researchers in Google's Threat Analysis Group have been as busy as ever, with discoveries that have led to the disclosure of three high-severity zero-day vulnerabilities under active exploitation in Apple OSes and the Chrome browser in the span of 48 hours.

Apple on Thursday said it was releasing security updates fixing two vulnerabilities present in iOS, macOS, and iPadOS. Both of them reside in WebKit, the engine that drives Safari and a wide range of other apps, including Apple Mail, the App Store, and all browsers running on iPhones and iPads. While the update applies to all supported versions of Apple OSes, Thursday’s disclosure suggested in-the-wild attacks exploiting the vulnerabilities targeted earlier versions of iOS.

“Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7.1,” Apple officials wrote of both vulnerabilities, which are tracked as CVE-2023-42916 and CVE-2023-42917.

Enlarge / macOS Mojave's wallpaper. (credit: Apple)

Valve Software's Steam gaming marketplace and app will drop support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and 10.14 (Mojave), according to a support page post. The change will go into effect on February 15, 2024.

What will happen exactly? Valve writes:

After that date, existing Steam Client installations on these operating systems will no longer receive updates of any kind including security updates. Steam Support will be unable to offer users technical support for issues related to the old operating systems, and Steam will be unable to guarantee continued functionality of Steam on the unsupported operating system versions.

macOS 10.14 (dubbed Mojave by Apple) shipped more than five years ago, and time has a way of marching on, so this might not seem that momentous at first glance. But there's a reason it's particularly noteworthy as these things go: this change means the end of support for the last versions of macOS that could run 32-bit games.

Enlarge / Haven Mercer's prototype front assembly for an automatic bike transmission. (credit: Haven Mercer)

Depending on how you look at it, either a lot or not very much has changed about the way bikes shift gears since the mid-19th century.

A lot has been refined along the transmission path, in which your feet push cranks, those cranks turn a big gear, and a chain connects that big gear to a smaller gear on the rear wheel. Shifting has picked up lots of improvements, be they electronic or wireless, as have derailleurs and internal gearboxes. Materials and tolerances have only improved over the decades.

But in almost all cases, you're still manually adjusting something to move the chain and change gears, depending on the resistance you're feeling on the bike. Even the most outlandish recent ideas still involve indexed movement between different-sized gears.

Enlarge / It will probably be a while before you see these on the road, but some Tesla stores now have display Cybertrucks. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

On Thursday afternoon, Tesla delivered the first 10 production Cybertrucks to customers at an event livestreamed on X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's social media network. A demo video featured shots of the Cybertruck negotiating barren wildernesses, including one that was meant to look like Mars. Musk, who has mostly made headlines in recent weeks for endorsing virulent antisemtitic theories on his social media platform, took to the stage almost half an hour late, initially delivering his presentation from the back of a truck with his face hidden in shadow.

Musk claimed the Cybertruck is better than any other truck but also more of a sports car than any other sports car, made of a "special Tesla designed steel alloy" that he claimed will never rust and which cannot be stamped but which can also be produced in volume.

Mindful of the window-breaking debacle during the truck's debut in 2019, Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen came on stage to throw baseballs at its windows. Unlike last time (when presenters used metal balls), the allegedly bulletproof glass did not shatter. Musk made a point of the fact that in a crash with another vehicle, the Cybertruck—which weighs 6,603–6,843 lbs (2,995–3,104 kg)—will destroy the other vehicle.

Enlarge / Left: Reddit's old logo. Right: Reddit's new logo. (credit: Reddit)

Writing a long comment providing detail about Reddit's refreshed logo, mascot, and typeface this week, a Reddit employee seemingly rethought the post and opted to conclude it with choice words. The post's last line currently reads:

"Edit: Obligatory 'Fuck Spez' for karma."

The Reddit employee, going by Acidtwist on Reddit and known as Tavish, says they're Reddit's head of brand creative (Reddit says it doesn't disclose the real identities of its workers on Reddit).