Month: July 2022

Enlarge / Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. (credit: Pool / Pool | Getty Images North America)

“Protestors are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?”

This text from White House correspondent Michael D. Shear to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is one of thousands preserved from the January 6 attack on the Capitol showing that when the trouble started, people with power immediately turned to their phones to do what they could to stop it.

There are many more deleted texts, though, that would have shown how former President Donald Trump acted before the attack and how he responded to urgent requests to de-escalate the violence in the middle of it. First, the Secret Service confirmed in December 2021 that thousands of their texts were deleted in an agency-wide phone reset. Now, The Washington Post reports that senior Department of Homeland Security officials—acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli—also lost text messages from that day, blaming a government phone reset that happened during the transition to the Biden administration in January 2021.

Enlarge (credit: Peter Zelei Images)

Early last week, the UK experienced something it is very much not known for—extremely hot and dry weather. The heatwave shattered all-time national records, surpassing a 38.6° C (101.5° F) mark set in 2019 by crossing 40° C (104° F) for the very first time.

The scientists behind the World Weather Attribution project use a standardized (and peer-reviewed) method to rapidly analyze weather extremes like this in the context of climate change. While there is more nuance to this science than saying an event should or shouldn’t be blamed on climate change, we can say something about the role that climate change plays. And for heatwaves, that role is often quite clear: In a warming world, the statistics of heatwaves will necessarily shift toward hotter temperatures.

The analysis of this event involves two complementary steps. First, the historical data is used to calculate the rarity of this extreme weather event in today’s climate—and what it would have been before the world warmed by about 1.2° C (2.2° F). Second, large collections of climate model simulations with and without human-caused warming are similarly examined for trends in the type of regional weather pattern that produced the event.

Enlarge (credit: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/Getty)

For years, the anonymity service Tor has been the best way to stay private online and dodge web censorship. Much to the ire of governments and law enforcement agencies, Tor encrypts your web traffic and sends it through a chain of computers, making it very hard for people to track you online. Authoritarian governments see it as a particular threat to their longevity, and in recent months, Russia has stepped up its long-term ambition to block Tor—although not without a fight.

In December 2021, Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, enacted a 4-year-old court order that allows it to order Internet service providers (ISPs) to block the Tor Project website, where the Tor Browser can be downloaded, and restrict access to its services. Since then, censors have been locked in a battle with Tor’s technical team and users in Russia, who are pushing to keep the Tor network online and allow people to access the uncensored web, which is otherwise heavily restricted in the country.

Enlarge / One of my better data traces. (credit: Blazepod)

Fans of Formula 1 may have noticed that many drivers engage in reaction training before getting into their cars at the start of a race. For some, this is as simple as working with a trainer and some tennis balls. But you might have noticed 2021 champion Max Verstappen slapping some illuminated pods, like a wireless version of the old Simon game from the late 1970s.

They're called Blazepods, and they're Bluetooth-linked training lights that have their roots in an interactive playground in Israel. Blazepod's founder developed a series of exercises for the system, like capture the flag and relay races. "It was such a success, they knew they needed to make this wireless," explained Brian Farber, Blazepod's director of business development. "And then they started implementing [them] and understanding what the benefits were—everything from the cognitive to connecting the brain and the body together, decision-making, reaction time, and then actual analytics. It just kind of took off from there."

Max Verstappen might be Blazepod's highest-profile user. (credit: Blazepod)

Blazepod offered to send Ars a set to test, and since I've been in the middle of a fitness kick, and some distant part of my brain still thinks it can be a racing driver, I took the company up on the offer.

Enlarge / Every Analogue Pocket system will function as a "dev kit," but this special developer version of the portable system will be sent to interested FPGA "core" developers starting this week as a freebie to encourage their contributions to Analogue's new, not-quite-open OpenFPGA standard. (credit: Analogue)

Upon its launch in December, the portable Analogue Pocket system immediately stood out as a supercharged way to play classic portable cartridges from Game Boys. While its design borrows heavily from the Gunpei Yokoi original, its physical makeup is attractive and modern, and its mix of FPGA hardware and overkill, high-resolution IPS screen do wonders for old-school games.

But Analogue dropped the ball on part of its sales pitch: a sweeping "1.1" system update that was supposed to launch in "January 2022." Analogue never said why this patch was delayed. Was it a matter of its developers struggling to deliver? Was Analogue biding its time while shipments of the $199 Pocket hardware, and its companion $99 Analogue Dock for TVs, remained scarce, partly due to a global chip shortage?

Whatever the reason, the 1.1 update finally arrives today as a free download—and it sees Analogue taking its boldest steps yet into new territory. In a conversation with Ars Technica, Analogue CEO Christopher Taber suggested that the company's prior emphasis on console-specific FPGA systems (like the Super Nt and Mega Sg) may give way to a more open, MiSTer-like approach.