Month: November 2022

Enlarge (credit: IBM)

Today, IBM announced the latest generation of its family of avian-themed quantum processors, the Osprey. With more than three times the qubit count of its previous-generation Eagle processor, Osprey is the first to offer more than 400 qubits, which indicates the company remains on track to release the first 1,000-qubit processor next year.

Despite the high qubit count, there's no need to rush out and re-encrypt all your sensitive data just yet. While the error rates of IBM's qubits have steadily improved, they've still not reached the point where all 433 qubits in Osprey can be used in a single algorithm without a very high probability of an error. For now, IBM is emphasizing that Osprey is an indication that the company can stick to its aggressive road map for quantum computing, and that the work needed to make it useful is in progress.

On the road

To understand IBM's announcement, it helps to understand the quantum computing market as a whole. There are now a lot of companies in the quantum computing market, from startups to large, established companies like IBM, Google, and Intel. They've bet on a variety of technologies, from trapped atoms to spare electrons to superconducting loops. Pretty much all of them agree that to reach quantum computing's full potential, we need to get to where qubit counts are in the tens of thousands, and error rates on each individual qubit are low enough that these can be linked together into a smaller number of error-correcting qubits.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images News)

Before layoffs began at Twitter, employees had already filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Twitter violated federal and California laws by not giving staff proper notice before termination. This lawsuit was widely reported, but it’s still unlikely that every employee affected by layoffs is aware they’re eligible to join the lawsuit. That’s a problem, according to Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer representing Twitter staff suing, who says that any employee who doesn’t join the lawsuit might end up agreeing to a worse separation deal than Twitter originally promised them.

“We have amended our class-action complaint against Twitter,” Liss-Riordan told Ars. “Since we originally filed the complaint last Thursday, it has now become clear that Twitter has broken promises to employees.”

According to Liss-Riordan, Twitter told laid-off employees they “would receive the same severance pay and benefits they would have received under Twitter’s previous ownership,” but it now appears that’s not true. Twitter’s prior policy was to provide “at least two months' severance (or more, based on years of service), as well as bonuses, equity, and other benefits,” Liss-Riordan said, but Musk’s Twitter told employees given the official termination date of January 4, 2023, that they would only get one month’s severance pay.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images News)

Before layoffs began at Twitter, employees had already filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Twitter violated federal and California laws by not giving staff proper notice before termination. This lawsuit was widely reported, but it’s still unlikely that every employee affected by layoffs is aware they’re eligible to join the lawsuit. That’s a problem, according to Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lawyer representing Twitter staff suing, who says that any employee who doesn’t join the lawsuit might end up agreeing to a worse separation deal than Twitter originally promised them.

“We have amended our class-action complaint against Twitter,” Liss-Riordan told Ars. “Since we originally filed the complaint last Thursday, it has now become clear that Twitter has broken promises to employees.”

According to Liss-Riordan, Twitter told laid-off employees they “would receive the same severance pay and benefits they would have received under Twitter’s previous ownership,” but it now appears that’s not true. Twitter’s prior policy was to provide “at least two months' severance (or more, based on years of service), as well as bonuses, equity, and other benefits,” Liss-Riordan said, but Musk’s Twitter told employees given the official termination date of January 4, 2023, that they would only get one month’s severance pay.

Enlarge / Volvo's designers have evolved the distinctive "Thor's hammer" headlights. (credit: Volvo)

On Wednesday, Volvo gathered media together in Sweden to reveal a new car. It's called the EX90, and it's a battery-electric SUV that goes on sale in early 2024 alongside the conventionally powered XC90 SUV as the brand's new flagship.

"The Volvo EX90 is a statement for where we are, and where we are going. It's fully electric with a range of up to 300 miles on a single charge, designed to further raise our safety standards, the first Volvo car to be truly defined by its software and part of a wider ecosystem, connecting to your home and your other devices. The Volvo EX90 is the start of something new for Volvo Cars in many ways," said Volvo CEO Jim Rowan.

Volvo says it will be purely EV-only by 2030. (credit: Volvo)

Immediately recognizable as a Volvo SUV thanks to its distinctive silhouette and light signatures, the EX90 uses the same new SPA2 electric vehicle architecture as the forthcoming Polestar 3 SUV, which like the EX90 will be built at Volvo's factory in Charleston, South Carolina.

Enlarge / This is a rendering of an earlier version of the Long March 9 rocket, with an expendable design and side mounted boosters. (credit: Adrian Mann/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images)

When China started to get serious about sending its astronauts to the Moon in the middle of the last decade, the country's senior rocket scientists began to plan a large booster to do the job.

In 2016 the country's state-owned rocket developer, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, began designing the "Long March 9" rocket. It looked more or less like the large heavy lifter NASA was designing at the time, the Space Launch System. Like NASA's large rocket, the Long March 9 had a core stage and boosters and was intended to be fully expendable.

There were some key differences, particularly in propellants—the Long March 9 would use kerosene, instead of liquid hydrogen—but the general idea was the same. China would build a single-use, super heavy lift rocket to launch its astronauts to the Moon. The country set a goal of flying the rocket by 2030.

Enlarge / Plugable claims its latest adapter lets you connect four monitors to Macs. (credit: Plugable)

Dock-maker Plugable says it has come up with a way to increase the number of external monitors M1- and M2-based Macs support. While Apple says Macs with these chips can support just one to two external monitors, Redmond, Washington-based Plugable's new USB-to-HDMI adapter claims to enable support for as many as four monitors.

According to Apple, the Mac Mini, which has Apple's M1 processor, can support up to two monitors. However, all other M1- and M2-based devices are limited to one external display.

Appearing to address this limitation, Plugable released its USB-C or USB 3.0 to Quad HDMI Adapter (USBC-768H4) on Tuesday, saying it supports up to four monitors via HDMI, including for M1 and M2 Macs. The adapter requires you to use Windows 10 or macOS 11 and later.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)

This fall, Microsoft claimed to have addressed anticompetitive cloud infrastructure complaints from a few smaller cloud services providers in Europe. In a blog, the company announced it would be partnering with small to mid-sized cloud providers to give Microsoft customers more options for non-Microsoft cloud infrastructure. Notably, these Microsoft licensing changes excluded its biggest cloud competitors, Google and Amazon, from participating as partners. This, unsurprisingly, drew prompt criticism from a trade group with members that include both the smaller cloud providers as well as Amazon. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) group claimed that Microsoft’s response failed to “show any progress in addressing Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior.”

Now, CISPE has filed a complaint, urging the European Commission to open a formal investigation into how Microsoft is allegedly “irreparably damaging the European cloud ecosystem and depriving European customers of choice in their cloud deployments.”

According to CISPE, the group had no choice but to file the complaint because Microsoft allegedly has “not provided the detail, clarity or assurance that it truly intends to bring a swift end to its anti-competitive licensing practices.” Rather than address complaints from smaller cloud providers like OVHcloud and Aruba—which are also CISPE members—CISPE suggests that Microsoft added new unfair practices this fall. These changes, CISPE Secretary General Francisco Mingorance told Ars, created “an existential issue for many of our members and without an investigation and action, it could spell the end of a European cloud infrastructure sector.”

Microsoft Account sign-up prompts, now in the sign-in menu. (credit: @thebookisclosed on Twitter)

Microsoft is always adding new stuff to Windows 11, but some of those changes are more positive than others. Case in point: Twitter user Albacore has spotted new prompts in Windows 11 nudging users toward using Microsoft Accounts and backing up their files with Microsoft OneDrive. These have been tucked into the operating system's sign-in menu, using an orange "pay attention to me" indicator dot like the one used on the power button to signal that Windows Updates are ready to install.

We haven't seen these messages on our own Windows 11 machines, but Microsoft does regularly A/B test UI tweaks like this, even in the release builds of Windows 11 (some of our PCs have a new Search menu with the word "Search" spelled out while others only have the magnifying glass icon, even though both systems are running the latest version of Windows 11 22H2). It's possible that this is only affecting some Windows Insider builds or a limited subset of Windows 11 PCs. This Twitter user also has a history of exposing buried functionality in both old and new builds of Windows.

These kinds of prompts aren't totally unique to Windows 11 or Microsoft. Apple's Settings app on iPhones and iPads will encourage you to set up an Apple ID or Apple Pay if you haven't already done so, and Chrome and Android will do the same thing with Google accounts and other services.