Month: May 2022

Enlarge / An artist's impression of a neutron star getting ready to blast its neighbor with radiation. (credit: NASA)

Our Sun is on its own in this galaxy, without a nearby companion orbiting with it. But binary star systems are pretty common, and our nearest neighbor appears to be a three-star system. Given how many different types of stars there are, many multistar systems have a strange membership mix, with giant, unstable stars orbiting next to relatively mundane ones.

In Wednesday's issue of Nature, researchers report on a rarity: a "black widow" neutron star that's close enough to its companion to be blasting it with radiation. Should the process continue, it will ultimately lead to the star's evaporation and death. And, just for good measure, the pair also has a distant companion that's an old and rare dwarf star.

Searching for oddities

The work started in the archives of the Zwicky Transient Facility. The ZTF is designed to scan the entire sky in the Northern Hemisphere any two days and uses software to pick out anything that changes. Often, this would mean something blew up: A star suddenly brightens (in some cases becoming visible from Earth for the first time) because it has become visible from Earth for the first time.

Enlarge / TurboTax products sit on display at Costco on January 28, 2016, in Foster City, California. (credit: Getty Images | Kimberly White )

TurboTax owner Intuit "will pay $141 million in restitution to millions of consumers across the nation who were unfairly charged" and stop its "free, free, free" ad campaign "that lured customers with promises of free tax preparation services, only to deceive them into paying," New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Wednesday. Intuit is accused of steering customers away from the IRS Free File program that is free to 70 percent of taxpayers while using misleading ads to promote a separate "freemium" TurboTax product that isn't actually free to most people.

Intuit agreed to the settlement with all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. "Intuit cheated millions of low-income Americans out of free tax filing services they were entitled to," James said in the settlement announcement. "For years, Intuit misled the most vulnerable among us to make a profit. Today, every state in the nation is holding Intuit accountable for scamming millions of taxpayers, and we're putting millions of dollars back into the pockets of impacted Americans."

Specifically, "Intuit will provide restitution to nearly 4.4 million consumers who started using TurboTax's Free Edition for tax years 2016 through 2018 and were told that they had to pay to file even though they were eligible to file for free using the IRS Free File program offered through TurboTax." Payments will be about $30 for each tax year and "impacted consumers will automatically receive notices and a check by mail," the announcement said.

Enlarge / A special 100th-version splash page appears on the first launch of a new Firefox installation. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Firefox released its 100th update, and some fanfare accompanied the release on Mozilla's blog about the web browser. Firefox 100 is available this week for both desktop and mobile versions.

To celebrate, Mozilla says it will be regularly sharing fan art inspired by Firefox throughout May. But while that 100 number carries some symbolic weight, the update itself isn't particularly monumental.

On the desktop, subtitles and captions are now supported in Firefox's picture-in-picture mode for videos. Three key websites officially support subtitles and captions in PIP: YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video. Plus, the feature works on websites that support the WebVTT standard, like Twitter.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The Activision-Blizzard shareholders' response to a whirlwind of news over the past year—which include disturbing, company-wide allegations of sexual harassment and pay disparity, followed by a $68.7 billion acquisition proposal—reached a new head at the end of April in the form of a sweeping lawsuit.

As first reported by Axios on Wednesday, the April 26 civil suit, as filed by the New York City Employees' Retirement System and other NYC retirement and pension systems, hinges upon allegations that Activision-Blizzard has failed to properly open its books. Its plaintiffs, which include longstanding Activision-Blizzard shareholders, contend in Delaware court that fuller disclosure from Activision-Blizzard is required to answer their allegations about "breaches of fiduciary duty."

"Escape liability and accountability"

Those include the shareholders' belief that executives acted in their own interests, as opposed to those of company shareholders, in failing for years to inform them about the original California state lawsuit's allegations. The suit also alleges that the board is accelerating efforts to complete a proposed merger with Microsoft to "extinguish highly valuable derivative claims" against all Activision-Blizzard board members and longtime company CEO Bobby Kotick.

Enlarge / Sonos Beam soundbar. (credit: Sonos)

According to a report from The Verge on Wednesday, Sonos is launching a voice assistant on June 1. The publication cited "people familiar with the company's plans" who claim the feature will bring voice control to Sonos' home audio products.

A Sonos rep told Ars Technica that the company doesn't comment on rumors or speculation when asked for comment.

Currently, Sonos' products, like Bluetooth speakers and soundbars, support Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Now, it's reportedly interested in equipping its products with its own voice assistant.

Enlarge (credit: YouTube)

YouTube Go is probably not an app that many of our US readers are familiar with, given its singular focus on the developing world, but it scored more than 500 million downloads in its six years of existence. It's also dead. YouTube recently announced the app will be shutting down this August.

YouTube Go was the herald for Google's "next billion users" plan in 2016. When you're as big as Google and count "most Internet users" as your customer base, the best way to chase growth is to get more people on the Internet. The result was several "Go"-branded products, which targeted low-end devices with limited Internet access. One of the biggest developing markets was India.

With YouTube Go shutting down, YouTube cites improvements in the main YouTube app as the primary reason. The company says the main app has seen "improved performance for entry-level devices or those that watch YouTube on slower networks." YouTube says the main app also has "a better overall user experience [and] offers features that aren’t available on YouTube Go that many have asked for—such as the ability to comment, post, create content, and use dark theme."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Earth Day was April 22nd, and its usual message—take care of our planet—has been given added urgency by the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars is taking a look at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to chipmaking, and finding out how we can boost their sustainability and minimize their climate impact.

Gone are the days of going to Blockbuster to pick out a film for a night in. Physical media like CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, Sony’s weird PlayStation Portable UMDs, and countless other formats have been thoroughly dethroned thanks to a barrage of streaming services like Netflix—itself ailing at the moment—Amazon Prime, and Spotify.

For the first time in the past 17 years, CDs saw an increase in sales—of 1.1 percent, or 40.59 million units in 2021, compared to 40.16 million units the year prior. In 2021, people purchased 1.2 billion pieces of physical video media, compared to 6.1 billion a decade prior. Meanwhile, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, revenue from music streaming grew 13.4 percent to $10.1 billion in 2020.