Month: November 2021

Enlarge / A man walks by the building entrance of Israeli cyber company NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert on November 11, 2021, in Sapir, Israel. (credit: Amir Levy | Getty Images)

Apple is suing NSO Group Technologies, the Israeli military-grade spyware manufacturer that created surveillance software used to target the mobile phones of journalists, political dissidents, and human rights activists, to block it from using Apple products.

The iPhone maker’s lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in federal court in California, alleged that NSO, the largest known Israeli cyber warfare company, had spied on and targeted Apple users. It is seeking damages as well as an order stopping NSO from using any Apple software, device, or services.

NSO develops and sells its spyware, known as Pegasus, which exploits vulnerabilities in iPhones and Android smartphones and allows those who deploy it to infiltrate a target’s device unnoticed.

Enlarge / Mario loves us. We love Mario. (credit: BEHROUZ MEHRI / Getty Images)

Ars Technica Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher has a rule: If you have a dumb, fun conversation in the Ars Slack that lasts for more than 10 minutes, it's probably worth turning that conversation into some kind of article. And that's how a weekday water-cooler-style discussion about Platonic idealism and Mario became what you're reading now!

For people of a certain age—which, dear readers, most of us are—"video games" and "Nintendo" meant practically the same thing. (There are even a few of us who are older than a certain age, who came from the Great Long Long Ago time when "video games" meant "Atari," and even those few acknowledge Nintendo's culture-changing dominance in the mid-to-late 1980s.) So all of us have played at least a few different games featuring the world's most famous plumber, Mario Mario. (Yeah, his last name is also Mario. Which means his brother's name is Luigi Mario. Which means that calling Luigi "Green Mario" is actually correct! Vindication!)

A few Ars staffers volunteered to brave the inevitable slings and arrows of the comments section to put down their thoughts on a simple question: out of every video game in which Mario made an appearance, which one is your absolute top-shelf favorite, and why?