Month: August 2022

Enlarge / Nothing fancy, but solid construction and lots of bonuses like fenders and a rack. (credit: John TImmer)

As someone who's not a car person, being told that a new offering is "the Honda Accord of e-bikes" doesn't have a lot of resonance. As near as I can tell, the implication here is that the bike is just a bit more expensive than low-end offerings yet provides something a lot closer to a high-end experience.

Even if that wasn't the intended message, it does seem to be what the bike—the $1,299 Velotric Discover 1—delivers. There's nothing especially exciting about the ride, and the bike won't turn heads or invite questions. But in terms of the overall experience, it delivers something a bit closer to a high-end e-bike at a cost that's much closer to a no-frills budget option.

What you get

The Discover 1 has a standard U-shaped frame. There's no top bar, which makes getting on and off the seat simpler—and easier for people with limited mobility. If, like me, you have been irreversibly trained to throw your leg over the top bar when getting on a bike, it will lead to awkward moments halfway through the process where you realize you don't need to complete the movements your brain has just automatically started. In any case, the lack of a top bar means that the bike's other tubes and joints have to be significantly stronger to maintain a stable frame. This produces a pretty heavy bike unless you move up in price to where carbon fiber is an option—and it's not for the Velotric.

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards / Getty Images)

Japan's newly appointed Minister of Digital Affairs, Taro Kono, has declared war on the floppy disk and other forms of obsolete media, which the government still requires as a submission medium for around 1,900 types of business applications and other forms. The goal is to modernize the procedures by moving the information submission process online.

Kono announced the initiative during a press conference in Japan on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. Legal issues have prevented the modernization to cloud data storage in the past, and Japanese government offices often use CDs, MiniDiscs, or floppy disks to accept submissions from the public and businesses. For example, Japan's Mainichi newspaper reported in December 2021 that Tokyo police lost two floppy disks containing information on 38 public housing applicants. A digital task force group led by Kono will announce how to fix those issues by the end of the year.

Shortly after taking office earlier this month, Kono announced his desire to modernize technology in the Japanese government, speaking out about Japan's reliance on hanko hand stamps during the COVID-19 pandemic and fax machines instead of email. He's also been outspoken about the subject on Twitter.

Enlarge / This moment from The Last Of Us Pt 1 was captured as a real-time cinematic on PlayStation 5. All images of the PS5 version were directly captured by Ars Technica, except where noted (though Sony's own supplied screens are in line with how the game looks on current-gen hardware). (credit: Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment)

A little over a decade ago, developer Naughty Dog diverged from its base of amusing, swashbuckling video games by revealing its most intense project yet: The Last of Us. The game's first-look trailer, which premiered at E3 2012, appeared almost too good to be true.

In some ways, this new series looked like the stunning Uncharted games we'd already seen on the PlayStation 3. It was full of realistic characters, detailed environments, and convincing movie-like dialogue. But this wasn't a shooting gallery interrupted by wild train sequences and epic climbs up mountains. Instead, TLOU appeared to host the tensest and most brutal combat ever seen on a gaming console. A camera dramatically swung around two survivors of an apocalypse, and these resource-starved protagonists tiptoed around dangerous foes (humans and zombies alike), always one low-on-ammo gun jam or wrong step away from certain doom.

One year later, the game launched to accolades and high sales figures, but it didn't quite resemble that dramatically staged "real gameplay" trailer. The final game's enemy AI, battle choreography, and presentation of player choices felt more video gamey than we saw in the trailer.

I remembered that old sense of disappointment while I played The Last Of Us Pt. 1, this week's PS5 remake of the 2013 original. Honestly, there were moments while I tested this note-for-note remake where I felt adrift, enough so that I saw cracks in its handsome, "current-gen" facade. This is not a perfect remake, and it may leave both brand-new players and Naughty Dog diehards disappointed in some respects.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Macs don't have visible anti-malware software built-in, at least not in the same way that Microsoft does with Windows' highly visible Defender software. But Apple began to include rudimentary anti-malware protections with macOS versions with Snow Leopard in 2009. Called "XProtect," this system service downloaded and installed new malware definitions in the background in between major macOS security updates, mostly to protect against the installation of known, in-the-wild malware.

Since then, Apple has added multiple anti-malware features to macOS, though they're not always branded that way. Gatekeeper, app notarization, System Integrity Protection, the Signed System Volume, and access controls for hardware and software are all, one way or another, about proactively protecting system files from being tampered with and making sure that installed apps do what they say they're doing. Another under-the-hood tool, the Malware Removal Tool (MRT), acts more like a traditional anti-malware scanner, periodically receiving definitions updates from Apple so that it could scan for and remove malware already present on your system.

Howard Oakley at the Eclectic Light Company makes a habit of tracking updates to XProtect and the MRT, and he maintains several utilities that check the versions of your definitions (as well as your installed firmware and other Mac esoterica that Apple regularly updates but rarely mentions). And he says that Apple's anti-malware tools have undergone a dramatic but mostly silent change over the last few months.

Enlarge (credit: We Are via Getty Images)

To his more than 150,000 followers on Instagram, Dr. Martin Jugenburg is Real Dr. 6ix, a well-coiffed Toronto plastic surgeon posting images and video of his work sculpting the decolletage, tucking the tummies and lifting the faces of his primarily female clientele.

Jugenburg’s physician-influencer tendencies led to a six-month suspension of his Ontario medical license in 2021 after he admitted to filming patient interactions and sharing images of procedures without consent. He apologized for the lapse and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from female patients who say their privacy was violated.

But on Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, and in roughly a dozen sponsored posts scattered across the web, Jugenburg’s career and controversial history was eclipsed by a new identity. On those platforms, he was DJ Dr. 6ix, a house music producer who’s celebrated for his “inherent instinctual ability for music composition” and who “assures his followers that his music is absolutely unique.”