Month: March 2020

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

What shape will the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) take later this year, when it's scheduled to land in Los Angeles starting June 9? That question appears to be more complicated with every month that passes, starting with this week's surprise announcement that the show just lost its latest creative directors.

iam8bit, a gaming merchandise and events company that we've written about at Ars in the past, announced on Thursday that it will no longer serve as E3's creative director. The Twitter post cited "mixed emotions" and claimed that the company had planned "what was to be an evolutionary E3 2020 floor experience." After saying "it was a dream" to work on E3, the post concluded by "wish[ing] the organizers the best of luck."

Curiously, this resignation is the first we've heard that iam8bit was working in a "creative director" capacity for E3. Only five weeks ago, the company's involvement with E3 was announced by its showrunners at the Electronic Software Association (ESA) in a much vaguer manner. "We're collaborating with industry insiders and new creative partners, including the tastemakers at iam8bit, to reinvigorate the show and, frankly, to shake things up," the ESA's January 30 statement said.

A modern-day social activist finds herself traveling back in time to the 1800s in Antebellum, a new horror drama written and directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. It's produced by Sean McKittrick, who also co-produced Get Out (2017) and Us (2019). McKittrick and company have been holding their cards pretty close to their chest regarding specific details about the film, and this latest trailer is no exception. But what little we do know about the premise bears a striking resemblance to science fiction author Octavia E. Butler's 1979 novel Kindred.

The official premise is short and sweet: "Successful author Veronica Henley (Janelle Monáe) finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late." When the first teaser dropped last November, it didn't shed much more light on the matter. It was little more than ominous music playing over brief glimpses of footage and a voiceover asking repeatedly, "9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

It was clear, however, that Veronica was shifting between the 1800s and the present day. The cast also includes Marque Richardson II, Eric Lange, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons, Tongayi Chirisa, Gabourey Sidibe, Rob Aramayo, Lily Cowles, and Jena Malone, although their specific roles remain unknown.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko)

Two Republicans and two Democrats in the US Senate have proposed a law that aims to combat sexual exploitation of children online, but critics of the bill call it a "Trojan horse" that could harm Americans' security by reducing access to encryption.

The EARN IT (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies) Act "would create incentives for companies to 'earn' liability protection for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material," an announcement by the bill's supporters said today.

Under current law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides website operators broad legal immunity for hosting third-party content. A 2018 law known as FOSTA-SESTA chipped away at that immunity for content related to prostitution and sex trafficking, and the EARN IT Act would further weaken immunity for website operators who fail to take certain to-be-determined measures to find and remove child sexual-abuse material.

Enlarge / An 8th-generation Intel Core Processor. (credit: Intel)

Virtually all Intel chips released in the past five years contain an unfixable flaw that may allow sophisticated attackers to defeat a host of security measures built into the silicon. While Intel has issued patches to lessen the damage of exploits and make them harder, security firm Positive Technologies said the mitigations may not be enough to fully protect systems.

The flaw resides in the Converged Security and Management Engine, a subsystem inside Intel CPUs and chipsets that’s roughly analogous to AMD’s Platform Security Processor. Often abbreviated as CSME, this feature implements the firmware-based Trusted Platform Module used for silicon-based encryption, authentication of UEFI BIOS firmware, Microsoft System Guard and BitLocker, and other security features. The bug stems from the failure of the input-output memory management unit—which provides protection preventing the malicious modification of static random-access memory—to implement early enough in the firmware boot process. That failure creates a window of opportunity for other chip components, such as the Integrated Sensor Hub, to execute malicious code that runs very early in the boot process with the highest of system privileges.

Jeopardizing Intel’s root of trust

Because the flaw resides in the CSME mask ROM, a piece of silicon that boots the very first piece of CSME firmware, the vulnerability can’t be patched with a firmware update.

Enlarge (credit: Mark Jones)

Tens of thousands of ancient paintings adorn rock outcrops and shelters in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. At some sites, layers of art on rock walls record a sequence of styles and motifs that changed over thousands of years. In about the middle of that sequence, a style called Gwion depicts people in elaborate clothes and headdresses; the figures are often carrying boomerangs, spears, bags, and ornaments.

"The paintings are like a diary to me and my people," Ian Waina, a member of the Kwini traditional owners of the region, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But neither the region's traditional owners nor archaeologists are sure exactly how old the Gwion figures are or just where they fit into the timeline relative to other types of rock art in the area. "Everyone wants to find out how old the painting is," Waina told ABC. "They just say this is from the 'old people.' They know the stories, they are keeping those stories, but who is that story from? Is it from our older, older, older people?"

To figure out a more exact age, University of Melbourne archaeologist Damien Finch and his colleagues—including the land's traditional owners, the Kwini and the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation—turned to an unlikely source: the remains of mud-wasp nests.

Enlarge / Android, on the iPhone. (credit: Forbes)

Android can run on just about everything—phones, watches, TVs, cars, microwaves, the Nintendo Switch—but one thing it really hasn't been able to run on in a while is the iPhone. A third-party effort called Project Sandcastle is setting out to change that and build Android for the iPhone. The group already has beta builds out for the iPhone 7 and 7+.

You might recall, many years ago, that a Linux and Android on iPhone port was in the works for the original iPhone. This project is being brought to you by David Wang and Chris Wade, the same people who did that original port. Wang and Wade are the co-founders of Corellium, a company that is currently being sued by Apple for selling access to virtual machines that run iOS. The two say Corellium's iPhone VM and debugging helped the project get up and running quickly.

Android ports often get a big development boost thanks to the shared hardware of the ARM ecosystem. Something like the Nintendo Switch normally wouldn't have a scrap of pre-existing Android code to its name, but the Switch's Nvidia Tegra SoC is also used in Android devices, and this shared hardware means there's already a considerable codebase to start from. This is true of most devices, since Qualcomm, Nvidia, Mediatek, and others all sell their SoC to a wide consumer base—if you want to port Android to something, a good first step is to find another device with similar hardware that already runs Android and start with that code base. This strategy doesn't work for the iPhone, though—it has an Apple SoC, which is only used in Apple devices, so there is truly no pre-existing Android code to work from. You've got to write drivers from scratch.

Enlarge / Anthony Levandowski leaves court in September 2019. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the center of the recent legal battle between Google's Waymo and Uber, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move comes shortly after a California federal judge confirmed that Levandowski owed Waymo $179 million for theft of trade secrets.

Levandowski was an early member of Google's self-driving car team, earning tens of millions of dollars for his efforts. Then in early 2016, he left Google to co-found a self-driving startup called Otto. A few months later, Uber acquired Otto in a deal reportedly worth around $680 million.

But a forensic investigation by Google revealed that Levandowski had taken thousands of confidential technical documents with him on his way out the door—including schematics for Google's cutting-edge lidar technology. Google sued Levandowski and Uber for theft of trade secrets. Google and Uber settled their lawsuit in 2018, but Google's battle with Levandowski continued.