Month: February 2022

Enlarge / Quarterback Aaron Rodgers #12 of the Green Bay Packers warms up prior to the game against the Minnesota Vikings at Lambeau Field on January 02, 2022 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (credit: Getty | Patrick McDermott)

In what may be the worst bait-and-switch in the history of bait-and-switches, sports fans tuned in to The Pat McAfee show Tuesday in anticipation that one of his regular guests, NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers, might deliver significant news on the future of his career. But, there was no such news. Instead, Rodgers gave a hearty endorsement for a horrifying 12-day cleanse that can sometimes involve oily enemas, bloodletting, and forced vomiting.

"There will be no news today," Rodgers said to McAfee on the show. "No decision on my future. As I was texting with you yesterday, I just got out of a 12-day panchakarma. Look that up. I know you did after we talked. It’s a cleanse that originated in India. It’s been going on for thousands of years, and it’s something I’ve done in the offseason. So I’m just getting my hand above the sand now and seeing what’s going on there."

Panchakarma is described as a cleansing and purification technique in Ayurvedic medicine, which is a longstanding, pseudoscientific Indian medicine system. The system is not based on science and has little scientific evidence backing it, according to the National Institutes of Health. The most that can be said for it is that scant data suggests Ayurvedic herbal mixtures may help people relieve osteoarthritis pain and manage type II diabetes. But, more data is needed to solidify those benefits, and evidence is lacking for benefits of any other conditions.

Enlarge / Drive through the Lands Between in style... (credit: Aurich Lawson / Tesla / FromSoft)

Since Tesla first introduced in-car gaming with a 2019 port of Cuphead, the list of games available on its "Tesla Arcade" platform has slowly grown to include just under 20 games. Now, though, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed interest in expanding that list of Tesla-compatible games to include the tens of thousands of titles available on the Steam gaming platform.

In true Musk style, the informal announcement of those plans came via a thrown-off tweet in a thread expressing admiration for CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 (a game that has previously been demoed running on the infotainment system for the Model S Plaid). "We’re working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles," Musk wrote. "Former is obviously where we should be long-term."

A car's infotainment center may seem like an odd fit for many of the high-end games available on Steam. But Tesla cars have long sported high-end graphics cards at the heart of both its Media Control Unit (for the infotainment console) and the Electronic Control Unit used to power the car's autopilot self-driving systems.

Enlarge / Behold the Pixel 7 Pro. It looks just like the Pixel 6. (credit: OnLeaks x Smartprix)

The Pixel 6 is just a few months old, but the first leaks of the Pixel 7 designs are out. Google seems to have sent the CAD files to the case manufacturing industry recently, since both Steve Hemmerstoffer (aka OnLeaks) and David Kowalski (aka xleaks7) have posted Pixel 7 renders today.

These unofficial render leaks are usually based on measurements Google needs to send to third parties in order to have accessories (like cases) ready for their release dates. That means the shape of everything should be accurate down to the millimeter, but finer details (like materials, colors, or the placement of camera lenses inside a camera block) could still be up in the air.

Even with those caveats, there's no getting around the big picture presented by both renders: the Pixel 7 looks like the Pixel 6. We loved the Pixel 6 design, so bringing that forward to the Pixel 7 is the best outcome we could have hoped for. The upcoming mid-range Pixel 6a is expected to also follow the same design motif. We actually ended the Pixel 6 review by saying, "Hopefully, this is a new beginning for Google Hardware: the start of a stable, cohesive product roadmap, consistent hardware design, and significant year-to-year process." So far, it looks like we're getting all that stability and consistency that we were hoping for.

Enlarge / Trump decided to make his own social network after being banned from Twitter. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)

The rollout of Donald Trump's social network has predictably been a disaster. Truth Social's debut on Monday was marred by technical problems and a gigantic waiting list, while some people who actually were able to use the service complained of being "censored."

Truth Social "has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a 300,000-person waitlist," The Washington Post wrote yesterday. Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes said on a Fox News show that Truth Social's goal is to be "fully operational at least within the United States" by the end of March. The waiting list is now over 500,000.

Truth Social is available only on iOS. I used the iOS app to sign up on Monday, to test whether I could create an account despite all the technical problems. My account was created, but I am still #188,221 on the waiting list. An Android app is supposedly "coming soon" to the Play Store. A status-update page said Monday that Truth Social developers have "stabilized the account creation process" and "are working to increase the rate of new account creation." Truth Social was built using Mastodon open source software.

Enlarge / Russia's chief of spaceflight, Dmitry Rogozin, is barred by US sanctions from traveling to the United States. (credit: Yuri SmityukTASS via Getty Images)

On Wednesday morning, the sprawling Russian corporation that oversees the country's space activities, Roscosmos, issued a statement from its general director on Twitter that appeared to speak both to NASA as well as Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

"We value highly our professional relations with NASA, but as an (ethnic) Russian and a citizen of Russia I am very unhappy with the openly hostile policy of the USA toward my country," said the statement by Dmitry Rogozin, who heads Russian space policy and interfaces directly with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

What prompted the statement from Rogozin is not immediately clear. On Monday, he tweeted, "Glory to Russia" following Putin's speech on Ukraine and Russia's right to occupy territories of the former Soviet Union. Rogozin is a member of Putin's inner circle, having previously served as a deputy prime minister in the government before leading Roscosmos.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Hackers for one of Russia’s most elite and brazen spy agencies have infected home and small-office network devices around the world with a previously unseen malware that turns them into attack platforms that can steal confidential data and target other networks.

Cyclops Blink, as the advanced malware has been dubbed, has infected about 1 percent of network firewall devices made by network device manufacturer Watchguard, the company said on Wednesday. The malware is able to abuse a legitimate firmware update mechanism found in infected devices in a way that gives it persistence, meaning it survives reboots.

Like VPNFilter, but stealthier

Cyclops Blink has been circulating for almost three years and replaces VPNFilter, the malware that in 2018 researchers found infecting about 500,000 home and small office routers. It contained a veritable Swiss Army Knife that allowed hackers to steal or manipulate traffic and to monitor some SCADA protocols used by industrial control systems. The US Department of Justice linked the hacks to the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, typically abbreviated as the GRU.