Month: July 2019

Enlarge / The Antarctic Ozone Hole on September 13, 2014, as observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite. (credit: NASA)

Good news for the ozone layer was widely reported in November 2018: global efforts to phase out ozone-depleting substances had resulted in a slow but persistent recovery. Should that continue, even the worst damage could be on track to be repaired in the next 50 years or so.

But all that good news is not necessarily going to continue. A paper in Nature Geoscience this week identifies quite a few possible spanners in the works, all of which could delay ozone recovery by anything from years to decades.

A growing, then shrinking, hole

Roughly 90% of the ozone in our atmosphere can be found between 15km and 35km above the Earth's surface, in a band that plays a crucial role in absorbing harmful ultraviolet sunlight. In 1985, scientists detected dropping ozone levels in the stratosphere—the layer of the atmosphere that contains the ozone layer.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Greetings, Arsians! The Dealmaster is back with another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a deal on Dell's latest XPS 13 ultrabook: a variant with a Core i7-8565U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD is down to $1,150 with the code "50OFF699" at checkout. That's about $200 off its usual going rate, a decent discount, but the deal also includes a $200 Visa prepaid card. Assuming you use it, the card brings the effective price down to $950, making this a good value.

We liked the XPS 13 enough to deem it the best option for most people in our recent Windows ultrabook buying guide. The XPS 13 line has been a critical favorite for years, but this latest model, the XPS 13 9380, finally (finally) fixed the series' longest-running flaw by putting the notebook's webcam above the display. Besides removing those under-the-nose shots, the notebook still features a wonderfully thin (0.46 in) and light (2.7 lb) chassis, strong performance relative to other ultrabooks, a comfortable keyboard, trackpad, and wrist rest, solid battery life, and a vibrant display. Its 16:9 display and lack of any USB-A ports could be hangups for some, but all told, it remains a powerful yet easily portable device.

If you don't need a new laptop, we also have games like Marvel's Spider-Man and God of War down to $20, Roku's Streaming Stick+ down to $50, deals on computer speakers and portable hard drives, and much more. Have a look for yourself below.

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  Fig. 1: The PS4 is the fastest home console to reach the 100 million sales milestone, though the Nintendo DS was a bit faster.

Here at Ars, we haven't been putting a lot of regular time and effort lately into updating Ars readers on the continuing sales battle between Sony's PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. It has been abundantly clear for a while now that Sony's system is heavily outpacing Microsoft's in worldwide sales. In fact, the PS4 is also still outselling the Nintendo Switch on an annual basis despite being many years older.

But with Sony announcing last night that the PS4 had passed the 100 million sales mark in under six years, we thought it was worth putting that nine-figure milestone into some context. Here are some comparisons to help your mind grasp how significant this sales level (and pace) really is.

• 67 months: Time for the PlayStation 4 to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
• 69 months: Time for the PlayStation 2 to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
• 79 months: Time for the Wii to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)
• 113 months: Time for the original PlayStation to sell 100 million units worldwide. (Source)

Enlarge / The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (credit: Omar Chatriwala | Getty Images)

Nobody likes auto-playing video or sites that keep scrolling away infinitely when you're just trying to reach the bottom of the page. But you probably don't hate either "feature" as much as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who introduced a bill today to ban these and other "exploitative" practices.

While the ban on infinite scroll is the most amusing part, the proposed SMART Act (PDF), a backronym for the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, seeks to ban online companies from using a wide array of tactics that "exploit human psychology or brain physiology" to reduce user choice.

The SMART Act is really trying to target dark patterns: interfaces deliberately designed to trick, confuse, or pull a user deeper into something than they otherwise would be. Those designs, Hawley argues, fuel social media addiction.

A24 just keeps churning out smart, intriguing, thought-provoking films, and today the studio dropped the first trailer for its latest offering in the horror genre, The Lighthouse. At first glance, what sets this apart is the choice to shoot entirely on 35mm black-and-white film—better to evoke a bygone age.

Set in 1890, Director Robert Eggers' vision was inspired by a real-life 1801 tragedy involving two Welsh lighthouse keepers trapped in a storm. It was inspired as well by classic tales by Herman Melville, H.P. Lovecraft, and Algernon Blackwood. It's kind of a ghost story, featuring two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) on a remote and mysterious New England island, and both gradually go mad from the isolation.

The Lighthouse made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to rave reviews, earning a best movie honor from the International Federation of Film Critics—a first for A24. Eggers described the film to Deadline Hollywood as “something a little weirder” than his 2015 breakout film, The Witch, calling it “more dreadful than horror.”