Month: March 2021

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a notable deal on the Nintendo Switch Lite. As of this writing, those who purchase Nintendo's portable game console at its usual MSRP of $199 can receive another $20 in-store credit at no extra cost.

At GameStop and Best Buy, this comes in the form of an e-gift card that will be emailed to you after your purchase. At Amazon, you'll have to use the code "8RLOZI4Z5INC" to redeem a $20 promotional credit, either at checkout or through a drop-down on the Switch Lite's product page. Amazon will then apply the credit to your account within seven days. Just note that Amazon's terms and conditions say the credit will expire 60 days after it's been applied, so you'll want to spend it shortly after taking advantage of the deal. Either way, this is a good opportunity for those who have been interested in the console to pick up a nifty bonus along the way, as traditional discounts on the Switch Lite have been exceedingly rare since the device launched in late 2019.

As a refresher, the Switch Lite is the lighter and more portable version of Nintendo's ultrapopular game machine. It offers a 5.5-inch display compared to the standard Switch's 6.2-inch panel and weighs about 30 percent less. The main functional difference is that it's an entirely portable machine—its "Joy-Con" controllers aren't detachable, it doesn't have a kickstand or vibration motor, and it can't be docked up to a TV or monitor. The smaller size means it loses a little bit of battery life compared to the latest model of the normal Switch, too—about 3-7 hours here, compared to 4.5-9 hours on the bigger model. But the rest of its internal hardware is virtually identical to the regular Switch, meaning it can play the same library of games with no drop in performance (games that require a detached Joy-Con to be played notwithstanding).

Enlarge / Breaking in the computer. (credit: Getty Images)

Email-management provider Mimecast has confirmed that a network intrusion used to spy on its customers was conducted by the same advanced hackers responsible for the SolarWinds supply chain attack.

The hackers, which US intelligence agencies have said likely have Russian origins, used a backdoored update for SolarWinds Orion software to target a small number of Mimecast customers. Exploiting the Sunburst malware sneaked into the update, the attackers first gained access to part of the Mimecast production-grid environment. They then accessed a Mimecast-issued certificate that some customers use to authenticate various Microsoft 365 Exchange web services.

Tapping Microsoft 365 connections

Working with Microsoft, which first discovered the breach and reported it to Mimecast, company investigators found that the threat actors then used the certificate to “connect to a low single-digit number of our mutual customers’ M365 tenants from non-Mimecast IP address ranges.”

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The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress may have a lock on the title for oldest active-duty US military aircraft. But it only has two years on the Air Force's other senior citizen, an aircraft that will likely keep flying for as long as the B-52: the venerable Boeing 707.

While the Air Force is working on phasing out the KC-135 refueling plane (which was developed alongside the 707 by Boeing in 1956), the 707 lives on in many other guises. There's the Air Force's E-6 AWACS and E-8 JSTARS command and control aircraft, as well as the US Navy's E-6B Mercury strategic command and control aircraft (also known as the "doomsday plane"), all based on the 707 airframe. And as much as the Air Force might want to send its 707-based aircraft off to the boneyard—most of those aircraft were delivered before most active service members were even born!—the US Congress recently made that goal more difficult to achieve.

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  Toyota now offers a choice of engines for the 2021 GR Supra. The white car has a 3.0 L straight-six engine and a lot of power, and the yellow car has a 2.0 L four-cylinder with less power. [credit: Toyota ]

The Toyota GR Supra is a divisive car among enthusiasts. Its fans will point to the fact that it's wild-looking, with similarly wild manners if you know where to look, and all for a price that wouldn't even get you in the door of a Porsche 718. Detractors can't get past the fact that it shares a platform with the BMW Z4 and that it's not available with a manual transmission. Or that it's not even built in Japan, but alongside the German two-seater in Austria. Some might be tempted to split the difference, labeling the Supra "a land of contrasts." Well, forget that. I'm here to tell you that the haters are wrong—the Supra is the real deal.

We've actually trodden this ground before. When Ars contributor Jim Resnick drove the Supra in 2020, he explained that the realities of the early 21st-century car industry meant that a collaboration was the only way the folks in Toyota's accounting department would sign off. And he was glad they did.

Even though its turbocharged inline-six cylinder engine was less powerful than when installed in BMW's Z4, the 2020 Supra was more than quick enough. More than that, it was fun to drive, with crisp handling and a traditional approach to front-engine, rear-wheel-drive vehicle dynamics. Even BMW's iDrive infotainment, masquerading under the name Supra Command, was a welcome bit of badge engineering.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Milan_Jovic)

In a new article titled "A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16," Vice reporter Joseph Cox detailed how the white-hat hacker—an employee at a security vendor—was able to redirect all of his text messages and then break into online accounts that rely on texts for authentication.

This wasn't a SIM swap scam, in which "hackers trick or bribe telecom employees to port a target's phone number to their own SIM card," Cox wrote. "Instead, the hacker used a service by a company called Sakari, which helps businesses do SMS marketing and mass messaging, to reroute my messages to him."

This method tricked T-Mobile into redirecting Cox's text messages in a way that might not have been readily apparent to an unsuspecting user. "Unlike SIM jacking, where a victim loses cell service entirely, my phone seemed normal," Cox wrote. "Except I never received the messages intended for me, but he did."

Enlarge / Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra, which includes a 5G modem. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Huawei plans to start charging big smartphone-makers like Samsung and Apple royalties for use of its various 5G-related patents, according to CNBC.

Huawei is seeking to make up some of the losses it has experienced as a result of the US government's moves to sanction the company and limit its ability to sell products in the American market. The US government says national security concerns have driven the policy.

Apple and Samsung would each have to pay up to $2.50 per smartphone sold, with Huawei promising to cap it there and keep rates lower than competitors like Qualcomm or Nokia. For example, Nokia has capped its licensing rate at around $3.58 per unit.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

When the value of cryptocurrencies soared back in 2017, it created a huge shortage of graphics cards, as the parallel processing capabilities of a graphics card make it ideal for mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (but not bitcoin). That created a financial windfall for the leading graphics card makers, but it also angered gamers, the companies' traditional customers.

In recent months, cryptocurrencies have once again been soaring to record highs, which has driven another spike in graphics card prices. So when Nvidia rolled out its RTX 3060 graphics card last month, the company deliberately limited the card's capacity for mining cryptocurrency. Our quick-and-dirty test suggested that Nvidia reduced the card's mining capacity by roughly half. The hope was that miners would leave the card alone, ensuring that some cards would continue to be available for the gaming market.

Unfortunately, the mining limitation appears to have been implemented in the software. And Nvidia accidentally released a new driver that unlocked the 3060's mining capacity. Nvidia acknowledged the mistake in a statement to the Verge.