Month: April 2021

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  All of those cracked helmets behind our hero look identical. There's a reason. Returnal sees its players die and retry as an explorer of a strange alien planet. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Housemarque ]

Ahead of next week's launch of the PlayStation 5 exclusive Returnal, Sony has given me an opportunity to show exactly how the game looks and plays via stream before I start writing a review.

For some video games, this kind of "Twitch it early" opportunity is a no-brainer, like when I got to test Diablo II: Resurrected ahead of its closed beta earlier this month. Returnal is a trickier one, since it's for a console that a lot of readers say they've struggled to buy. And it's a brand-new IP, so you may look at the headline and ask what the heck a Returnawhatzit is.

But after playing a few hours of the game already, I'm compelled to connect my PS5 to my streaming rig and show you what Returnal is all about. This is partially because I've watched the game's official, weirdly edited video previews since its announcement last year and not understood what is going on in this procedurally generated sci-fi shooter. Seeing the game in action helps a lot. Its earliest moments feel like a refined Housemarque classic—this studio has previously impressed with games like Resogun and Nex Machina—but Returnal is supercharged with the exploration, production values, and dark mystery of Metroid Prime. Some good chocolate-and-peanut-butter right there.

Enlarge (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple is facing two class-action lawsuits over the meaning of the words “rent” and “buy.”

In the first suit, lead plaintiff David Andino argues that Apple’s definition of the two words is deceptive since the company can terminate people’s Apple IDs and, along with them, access to content they purchased using the “buy” button. Thus, Andino is arguing that Apple allows consumers to rent content rather than purchase it outright. If he had known that his access could be cut off at any time, he says he would have not spent as much on iTunes content.

“Just like Best Buy cannot come into a person’s home to repossess the movie DVD that such person purchased from it, [Apple] should not be able to remove digital content from its customers’ Purchased folders,” the suit says.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster includes a solid deal on Apple's latest MacBook Air, as the entry-level model is currently down to $899 at various retailers. That's $100 off its typical going rate and tied for the lowest price we've tracked. While this model only comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage, making it better suited for more casual usage, it's also equipped with Apple's new M1 silicon, which our review found to provide supremely impressive value in terms of both speed and battery life. That's on top of the typically sturdy hardware we've come to expect from non-butterfly-keyboard MacBooks.

Elsewhere, our deals roundup has a rare $10 discount on Sony's DualSense wireless controller for the PlayStation 5, good prices on wireless noise-canceling headphones and USB-C chargers we like, and much more. You can peruse the full selection below.

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

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  Aftermath of the liftoff of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission taking four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

In three months, NASA will come upon the 10th anniversary of the final space shuttle flight, a period that was surely melancholy for the space agency.

When the big, white, winged vehicles touched down for the final time in July 2011, NASA surrendered its ability to get humans into space. It had to rely on Russia for access to the International Space Station. And the space agency had to fight the public perception that NASA was somehow a fading force, heading into the sunset.

Now we know that will not be the case, and the future appears bright for the space agency and its international partners. On Friday morning, NASA and SpaceX launched the third mission of Crew Dragon that has carried astronauts into space. After nearly a decade with no human orbital launches from the United States, there have been three in less than 11 months. Another successful mission further confirmed that the combination of Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft is a reliable means of getting crews to the International Space Station.

Enlarge (credit: Sam Whitney | Wired | Getty Images)

“Basically, I'm going to keep talking to you, but I’m going to disappear," longtime security researcher Katie Moussouris told me in a private Clubhouse room in February. “We'll still be talking, but I'll be gone.” And then her avatar vanished. I was alone, or at least that's how it seemed. “That’s it," she said from the digital beyond. "That's the bug. I am a fucking ghost.”

It's been more than a year since the audio social network Clubhouse debuted. In that time, its explosive growth has come with a panoply of security, privacy, and abuse issues. That includes a newly disclosed pair of vulnerabilities, discovered by Moussouris and now fixed, that could have allowed an attacker to lurk and listen in a Clubhouse room undetected or verbally disrupt a discussion beyond a moderator's control.

The vulnerability could also be exploited with virtually no technical knowledge. All you needed was two iPhones that had Clubhouse installed and a Clubhouse account. (Clubhouse is still only available on iOS.) To launch the attack, you would first log in to your Clubhouse account on Phone A and then join or start a room. Then you'd log in to your Clubhouse account on Phone B—which would automatically log you out on Phone A—and join the same room. That's where the problems started. Phone A would show a login screen but wouldn't fully log you out. You'd still have a live connection to the room you were in. Once you “left” that same room on Phone B, you would disappear but could maintain your ghost connection on Phone A.