Month: December 2018

Enlarge (credit: https://arstechnica.com/author/aurich-lawson/)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is famous for the use of his Twitter feed, where he often engages with his almost 24 million followers. Sometimes it gets him in trouble—as with the case of the infamous "420" tweet that landed both him and Tesla with $20 million in fines. Sometimes it gets him dates, as was the case with a bizarre theory involving an artificial intelligence that some people believe will one day torture digital replicas of people who knew about the intelligence but failed to help usher it into existence. (Yes, really.) And sometimes, Musk just uses Twitter to tell the world what his engineers have cooking.

On Sunday evening, a few hours before appearing on 60 Minutes, Musk engaged in the last of these. First, he just wanted to remind owners of the most recent Tesla vehicle about the most recent update, Navigate on Autopilot:

If you have a Tesla built in past 2 years, definitely try Navigate on Autopilot. It will blow your mind. Automatically passes slow cars & takes highway interchanges & off-ramps.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2018

But then came more momentous news:

Enlarge (credit: Getty | UniversalImagesGroup )

Bladder cancer is among the most common and deadly of cancers. Because of its high recurrence rate (50-80 percent), patients must be monitored frequently for recurrence or progression of the disease. This monitoring currently consists of visual analysis of cells taken from the patient's bladder. It is uncomfortable, it is expensive, and it is not even especially accurate, detecting only around 60 percent of low-grade tumors.

Now, scientists have figured out how to use atomic force microscopy (AFM) to detect bladder cancer in urine samples. By analyzing only five cells, it can achieve 94 percent accuracy.

Use the force

Atomic force microscopy differs from optical microscopy in that it doesn't produce an image of the sample. Instead, a probe scans the sample and produces a topographical map of its surface with nanoscale resolution. In engineering, atomic force microscopy is usually used to describe surfaces like ceramic and glass, as it can analyze different properties of the surface, like its roughness, fractal nature, or magnetic behavior.

Enlarge / A Chinese woman reacts while setting up the facial recognition feature on her iPhone X inside an Apple showroom in Beijing in 2017. Qualcomm says a Chinese court has banned iPhone X sales in China. (credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

Qualcomm says it has scored an important victory in its long-running global patent battle with Apple over patent rights. According to Qualcomm, a Chinese court ruled that several recent iPhone models infringe multiple Qualcomm software patents and has ordered a ban on iPhone sales. Apple says it has already appealed the ruling.

The ruling occurred on November 30, but Qualcomm announced the ruling today.

Apple has downplayed the ruling's significance, telling media outlets that the ban has not yet taken effect and that it only applies to older versions of iOS software, not to the current version, iOS 12. The ruling also only applies to older iPhone models—including the iPhone 8 and iPhone X—but not to the iPhone XS and XR.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | courtneyk)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the use of stolen identities in public comments on the government's repeal of net neutrality rules, BuzzFeed News reported Saturday.

The investigation focuses on "whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people's identities were posted to the FCC's website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules," the report said.

"Two organizations told BuzzFeed News, each on condition that they not be named, that the FBI delivered subpoenas to them related to the comments," BuzzFeed wrote.

Enlarge / The Google Plus (G+, or Google +) social network logo is seen in the company's offices behind Android toys on August 21, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. (credit: Adam Berry/Getty Images)

Two months after disclosing an error that exposed the private profile data of almost 500,000 Google+ users, Google on Monday revealed a new leak that affects more than 52 million people. The programming interface bug allowed developers to access names, ages, email addresses, occupations, and a wealth of other personal details even when they were set to be nonpublic.

The bug was introduced in a release that went live at an undisclosed date in November and was fixed a week later, Google officials said in a blog post. During the time the bug was active, developers of apps that requested permission to view profile information that a user had added to their Google+ profile received permission to view profile information about that user even when the details were set to not-public. What’s more, apps with access to users’ Google+ profile data had permission to access non-public profile data that other Google+ users shared with the consenting user. In all, the post said, 52.5 million users are affected.

“The bug did not give developers access to information such as financial data, national identification numbers, passwords, or similar data typically used for fraud or identity theft,” Monday’s post said. “No third party compromised our systems, and we have no evidence that the developers who inadvertently had this access for six days were aware of it or misused it in any way.”

Romero Games Ltd.

John Romero—co-creator of the classic and influential 1990s first-person shooter Doom—has announced that he will release 18 new levels for the game for its 25th anniversary next year.

Scheduled for a mid-February 2019 release, the free megawad of levels will be called "Sigil." Romero's website describes it as "the spiritual successor" to the fourth episode of Doom, picking up "where the original left off." It will include nine single-player levels and nine multi-player Deathmatch levels.

Enlarge (credit: TechBargains)

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by deals on a suite of Amazon products.

While these discounts aren't quite as steep as those offered on Black Friday, there are still some good prices available. The deals do include the first major drop for the newest (and waterproof) Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, which is down to $100 for its usual $130. The Fire HD 8, arguably the only tablet under $100 worth buying, is down to $60 from its usual $80, while the latest Echo Dot and Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K are $20 and $15 off, respectively. Just note that a couple items are backordered and may not arrive until after Christmas.

If Echo and Fire devices aren't your thing, though, we also have noteworthy deals on Apple's latest 9.7-inch iPad, Microsoft's Xbox One X, Razer's well-reviewed DeathAdder Elite gaming mouse, Google Home Mini bundles, and much more. If you still have some holiday gadget gifting to do, have a look for yourself below.