Month: July 2021

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Like most Internet-of-things devices these days, Amazon’s Echo Dot gives users a way to perform a factory reset so, as the corporate behemoth says, users can “remove any ... personal content from the applicable device(s)” before selling or discarding them. But researchers have recently found that the digital bits that remain on these reset devices can be reassembled to retrieve a wealth of sensitive data, including passwords, locations, authentication tokens, and other sensitive data.

Most IoT devices, the Echo Dot included, use NAND-based flash memory to store data. Like traditional hard drives, NAND—which is short for the boolean operator "NOT AND"—stores bits of data so they can be recalled later, but whereas hard drives write data to magnetic platters, NAND uses silicon chips. NAND is also less stable than hard drives because reading and writing to it produces bit errors that must be corrected using error correcting code.

Reset but not wiped

NAND is usually organized in planes, blocks, and pages. This design allows for a limited number of erase cycles, usually in the neighborhood of between 10,000 to 100,000 times per block. To extend the life of the chip, blocks storing deleted data are often invalidated rather than wiped. True deletions usually happen only when most of the pages in a block are invalidated. This process is known as wear-leveling.

Enlarge / In an aerial view from a drone, the bottom of the Salton Sea becomes exposed as its waters recede on February 13, 2021, near Calipatria, California. (credit: David McNew / Getty Images)

The world's automakers are going to need a jaw-dropping amount of lithium as they transition to building electric vehicles en masse. Lithium isn't exactly rare, but analysts say that the mining industry isn't really prepared for the coming level of demand as companies like Tesla seek to lock up tens of thousands of tons of lithium salts a year from places like Australia and China.

On Friday, General Motors announced that some of its lithium supply may come from much closer to home. GM will invest in and collaborate with Controlled Thermal Resources in order to exploit lithium salts from the Salton Sea in California, naming the project "Hell's Kitchen."

The company is about to unleash an array of new battery EVs built using a common battery platform. Known as Ultium batteries, the cells will be built in Ohio at a $2.3 billion joint-venture factory with LG Chem. GM has previously stated that it wants to domestically source as many of the raw materials as possible for its new EVs.

Enlarge / Paper Beast. (credit: Pixel Reed, PID Games)

The latest rendition of Steam's annual Summer Sale has been underway for about a week now, and, as usual, it's discounted virtually everything on the PC games store. But while the Halos, Grand Theft Autos, and other mega-hits of the world may get the most front-page attention, the sheer breadth of the sale means that a truckload of lesser-known but more-than-worthwhile games have dropped to more approachable prices as well. To assist those who'd like to expand their interactive palate, I've rounded up a collection of recent under-the-radar games that are both worth your time and nicely discounted.

To be clear, this list isn't comprehensive. There are several thousand games on sale, and, unfortunately, we can't play everything. (As always, feel free to share your own recommendations below.) Definitions of "under-the-radar" may differ, but the vast majority of this list consists of games we haven't covered previously on Ars, and I've generally tried to avoid more well-publicized indies like Ars GOTY winners Hades and Celeste. So, allow us to shine a light on some good games that may not immediately seem laudable. Steam's sale ends on July 8, but you can consider these recommendations valid for afterwards as well.

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