Month: December 2022

Enlarge / The distinctive ruins at Nan Madol. (credit: Patrick Nunn / Wikimedia Commons)

Even by the standards of enigmatic ancient ruins, Nan Madol is strange. Constructed primarily of "logs" made of volcanic rock, the site consists of dozens of small artificial islands separated by canals that are flushed by the tides. It's built on the shores of the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, which has an enigmatic history, seemingly remaining unpopulated as islands to the north and south were settled during the Polynesian expansion.

Now, a team of researchers is offering a single explanation that accounts for many of these oddities: The island of Pohnpei is slowly sinking, taking evidence of an earlier settlement beneath the waves. And, if their estimate of its subsidence is accurate, Nan Madol would have been above the waves at the time of its construction.

Ups and downs

The human expansion into the scattered islands of the Pacific started over 3,000 years ago and primarily took place upon two parallel routes north and south of the equator. The southern route was peopled by the ancestors of the Polynesians, while the northern route was derived from people who likely originated in the Philippines. There were islands between the two along the equator, but those weren't settled until roughly a thousand years later when the descendants of the first wave expanded from the islands they had initially populated.

Enlarge / Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Our take on the fifth-generation version of Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Extreme is—spoiler—pretty much the same as what we said about the fourth-generation version. It runs hot and it's expensive, but it’s powerful and arguably a better choice than Dell’s XPS 15 for people whose laptop is their primary computer rather than a sidecar for a desktop workstation or gaming PC, thanks to an expanded port selection and more powerful GPU options.

It also changes even less than is typical for a year-over-year laptop refresh, adding Intel’s 12th-generation Alder Lake CPUs but sticking to the same RTX 3000-series GPUs from Nvidia and similar memory and storage configurations. We’ll point you to last year’s review for extended commentary on the keyboard, ports, and general look and feel, which haven’t changed much year to year. It uses the typical comfortable Lenovo laptop keyboard plus the pointing nub and trackpad, all among the best you can get in a laptop from Lenovo, Dell, Apple, or any other company.

The X1 Extreme is also reasonably easy to upgrade and repair compared to thinner and lighter laptops, with easily accessible DDR5 RAM slots and a pair of M.2 SSD slots. In our review model, one had a 1TB SSD in it, and the other was open for upgrades. Lenovo still publishes a hardware maintenance manual (PDF) to help people perform those and other upgrades and repairs.

Enlarge (credit: VIEW press / Contributor | Corbis News)

About two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, 10 gamers from California, New Jersey, and New Mexico have banded together to file a lawsuit against Microsoft.

Echoing many of the FTC’s concerns, the gamers are hoping to pressure and prevent Microsoft from closing “the largest tech deal ever in the video gaming market” and, thus, swallowing up its biggest competitor in the game industry.

In their complaint, plaintiffs describe Activision Blizzard as a crucial rival that drives industry-wide innovation and price competition. If the acquisition is allowed, the public could suffer loss and damages because Microsoft would supposedly wield more market power than it already has—suddenly granted “the ability to foreclose rivals, limit output, reduce consumer choice, raise prices, and further inhibit competition."

Enlarge / Our Creative Director didn't know that I have a fondness for the Ford Ka and still miss the one I sold before moving to America, but I like that he chose one for this graphic. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

As I look back on Ars' automotive year and the new cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks that we drove in 2022, I have started coming to a conclusion of sorts. And it's this: Forget the top-of-the-line, fully loaded, superduper electric vehicle; what you want is the least powerful, least expensive variant. And that's true whether you want an EV because you want to drive something that's very efficient or if you're a driving enthusiast who's going electric.

It's a thought I've alluded to more than once this year, and the effect can be seen when you look at a pair of first drives that bookended this year: the Kia EV6 (which starts at $48,500 for the EV6 Wind) and the Kia EV6 GT (a hefty $61,400). The extra $12,900 buys you a much quicker 0–60 time, and a twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain with much more power. But the GT uses the same battery as the cheapest rear-wheel drive EV6, and with its bigger wheels it only has a range of 206 miles compared to the RWD EV6 Wind, which can do 310 miles on the same number of kWh.

OK, so score one for the hypermilers. And for the enthusiasts, I have to report that the cheaper car I drove in January was more fun on the back roads. Because it's more fun to drive a slow car quickly than a quick car slowly.

Enlarge / NEW ORLEANS, LA - FEBRUARY 03: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers scrambles for a first down against the Baltimore Ravens during Super Bowl XLVII at Mercedes-Benz Superdome on February 3, 2013 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Ravens won 34-31. (credit: Al Pereira / Getty Images)

Update: The deal is done. The NFL has announced YouTube will be the new home of NFL Sunday Ticket. The deal starts with the 2023 NFL Season, which will kick off sometime in September.

The distribution is a bit of a surprise, here's what the NFL says:

Starting next season, NFL Sunday Ticket will be available on two of YouTube's growing subscription businesses as an add-on package on YouTube TV and standalone a-la-carte on YouTube Primetime Channels.

YouTube TV basically replicates the experience of bundled cable TV channels, just over the Internet, so a Sunday Ticket package on top of the $65-a-month service was expected. What's not expected is that you don't have to buy YouTube TV at all; you can just order Sunday Ticket (still for all 32 teams bundled together) without forking over money for the usual cable channels first. YouTube "Primetime Channels" is just the YouTube.com storefront where you can buy or rent hollywood movies, and now Sunday Ticket will show up as an option there. So there are options for cord cutters that want to keep the cable TV experience (YouTube TV) and an option for people that just want football.

Enlarge / Eufy's security arm has publicly addressed some of the most important claims about the company's local-focused systems, but those who bought into the "no clouds" claims may not be fully assured. (credit: Eufy)

Eufy, the Anker brand that positioned its security cameras as prioritizing "local storage" and "No clouds," has issued a statement in response to recent findings by security researchers and tech news sites. Eufy admits it could do better but also leaves some issues unaddressed.

In a thread titled "Re: Recent security claims against eufy Security," "eufy_official" writes to its "Security Cutomers and Partners." Eufy is "taking a new approach to home security," the company writes, designed to operate locally and "wherever possible" to avoid cloud servers. Video footage, facial recognition, and identity biometrics are managed on devices—"Not the cloud."

This reiteration comes after questions have been raised a few times in the past weeks about Eufy's cloud policies. A British security researcher found in late October that phone alerts sent from Eufy were stored on a cloud server, seemingly unencrypted, with face identification data included. Another firm at that time quickly summarized two years of findings on Eufy security, noting similar unencrypted file transfers.