Month: March 2020

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty)

A coronavirus vaccine may not arrive for at least a year—so what are the chances of finding a useful therapy that could stave off the worst effects of the virus in the meantime?

Earlier coronavirus outbreaks like SARS and MERS raised warning flags for public health officials. Fortunately, they also alerted the biological research community that this large family of viruses was worth studying in more detail. Recent research has built on a large body of knowledge about coronaviruses that have long caused significant diseases in livestock, and so SARS-CoV-2 does not arrive as a total unknown. Indeed, we are actually in a decent position to understand what might make a good potential therapy.

While some of the therapies being tested may seem random—we're trying chloroquine, an antimalarial drug?—there's serious biology behind what's being done.

Enlarge / New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. (credit: Shannon Finney/Getty Images)

Three New Hampshire residents have sued Gov. Chris Sununu arguing that a ban on gatherings larger than 50 people in the state violates their constitutional rights.

The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that one of the plaintiffs, Eric Couture, attends services three times a week at a Baptist church in Nashua.

"Anyone can choose not to exercise their God-given unalienable rights,” Couture said. “We can choose not to assemble if that is our desire. What cannot occur is one man in a position of power deciding to strip us of our rights in the name of safety and without due process.”

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Netflix and YouTube are both reducing video-streaming quality in Europe to reduce the stress on residential broadband networks caused by the coronavirus pandemic forcing people to stay home.

Netflix is reducing the bit rate on video streams, but not the resolution, for the next 30 days in the EU and UK, the BBC reported. The BBC said that "movies will still be high-definition or ultra-high definition 4K" despite the bit-rate decrease, but other news sources suggest that resolution could be cut, too. It's not clear what the exact changes in bit rates are—we asked Netflix to clarify these points but haven't gotten an answer yet.

After discussions with a European government official who called for lowered video quality, "Netflix has decided to begin reducing bit rates across all our streams in Europe for 30 days," Netflix said in a statement quoted by The Verge. "We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25 percent while also ensuring a good quality service for our members."

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  *Insert Tarzan scream*

When Bethesda announced that Doom Eternal would be using Denuvo protection for its digital rights management, industry watchers assumed it would buy the game at least a short period of retail availability without a piratable "cracked" version showing up on the Internet. When the game launched, though, users quickly discovered the Bethesda Launcher version apparently included a DRM-free copy of the game's executable sitting in plain sight amid the download package.

Forum users on Reddit and ResetEra were among the first yesterday to report on the "official" DRM-free leak, which sat in a sub-folder titled "Original" for the Bethesda Launcher version of the game. That 67MB file can reportedly replace the 370MB, DRM-protected executable in the main game folder with minimal effort and no practical effect on playability.

Ars has been unable to independently verify these reports, as a subsequent patch has apparently removed the DRM-free executable. But the trackers at CrackWatch and repackers in the cracking community have confirmed that the DRM-free version was distributed and working shortly after launch. And while the DRM-free version still requires a Bethesda account login the first time it's run, forum reports suggest crackers have already discovered a simple method to patch that check for a completely offline pirated experience.