Month: January 2023

Enlarge / Screenshots you can hear.

Update (5:35 ET pm): As user Cuesport77 points out on Reddit, Nintendo offers a system-level button remapping function that can get around most of the issues highlighted in this piece. Going into the Switch's system settings and swapping the left and right analog stick inputs (as well as the inputs for any other buttons you want) can help provide more standardized "dual stick" controls for the game.

This isn't the most convenient option, as players will have to undo the customizations when switching from GoldenEye to any other Switch game (and then back when going back to GoldenEye). These customizations also don't seem to be available on any controller connected to the system when in portable mode.

Nonetheless, Ars regrets not recognizing this option existed before publishing the below story, which is included in its original form (with a few noted updates) below.

Enlarge (credit: Robert Trevis-Smith)

It's pretty easy to link humans' intelligence to our success as a species. Things like agriculture, building cities, and surviving in harsh environments require a large collection of mental skills, from good memory to the ability to communicate and work together. But it's often less clear what role intelligence plays in species with less obvious mental capabilities. In many cases, it's hard to even measure mental capacities; in other cases, it's hard to guess which capacities might improve survival.

A new study looks at a bird species that doesn't have much of a reputation for braininess: the pheasant. But the researchers behind the study find that pheasants have substantial differences in spatial thinking, and some aspects of that spatial capacity make a difference when the birds are released into the wild. Those birds that do well with navigating a complex maze adopted a larger home territory and did better at avoiding being eaten. And, almost as an accident, the study finds that the birds tend to get eaten more often when they wander out of familiar territory.

Can’t outfox the foxes

Parrots and corvids have reputations as the brainiacs of the bird world. Pheasants, not so much. But they do have advantages for the study of mental abilities. They're easy to raise in captivity, where they can be given various tests, and will adjust easily if released into the wild. They're also big enough that it's easy to attach tracking devices to see what they're doing after they've been released.

Enlarge / An iteration of what happens when your site gets shut down by a DDoS attack.

Threat actors loyal to the Kremlin have stepped up attacks in support of its invasion of Ukraine, with denial-of-service attacks hitting German banks and other organizations and the unleashing of a new destructive data wiper on Ukraine.

Germany's BSI agency, which monitors cybersecurity in that country, said the attacks caused small outages but ultimately did little damage.

“Currently, some websites are not accessible,” the BSI said in a statement to news agencies. “There are currently no indications of direct effects on the respective service and, according to the BSI's assessment, these are not to be expected if the usual protective measures are taken.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear)

Paul Hansmeier, who is serving a 14-year prison sentence for filing sham copyright infringement lawsuits and extorting money from victims, has lost an attempt to enforce copyrights from prison. In a ruling Monday, a federal judge rejected Hansmeier's request to prevent the government from enforcing mail-wire fraud and money laundering laws against him. Hansmeier wanted an injunction so that he could file copyright lawsuits without facing new charges.

Hansmeier, who is also appealing his conviction despite having pleaded guilty, will be familiar to Ars readers as one of the principals behind the notorious "copyright troll" firm Prenda Law. He was sentenced in June 2019 "for an elaborate fraud scheme that involved uploading pornographic videos to file-sharing networks and then threatening to sue people who downloaded them," as our reporting at the time said. Prenda Law's strategy involved seeking settlements of a few thousand dollars from each victim.

Prenda Law founder John Steele pleaded guilty in 2017 to charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering and cooperated in the investigation into Hansmeier. Hansmeier ultimately pleaded guilty to the same charges in August 2018. Steele was sentenced to five years in prison in July 2019.

In 2011, a horticulturist named Mathias Maier stumbled across an unusual mutant of a Venus flytrap, a carnivorous plant that traps and feeds on insects. Scientists recently discovered that the typical Venus flytrap can actually "count" to five, sparking further research on how the plant manages this remarkable feat. The mutant flytrap might hold the key. According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, this mutant flytrap doesn't snap closed in response to stimulation like typical Venus flytraps.

"This mutant has obviously forgotten how to count, which is why I named it Dyscalculia (DYSC)," said co-author Rainer Hedrich, a biophysicist at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany. (It had previously been called "ERROR.")

As we've reported previously, the Venus flytrap attracts its prey with a pleasing fruity scent. When an insect lands on a leaf, it stimulates the highly sensitive trigger hairs that line the leaf. When the pressure becomes strong enough to bend those hairs, the plant will snap its leaves shut and trap the insect inside. Long cilia grab and hold the insect in place, much like fingers, as the plant begins to secrete digestive juices. The insect is digested slowly over five to 12 days, after which the trap reopens, releasing the dried-out husk of the insect into the wind.

Enlarge / Nintendo's promotional key art for the launch of GoldenEye 007 on Switch. (credit: Nintendo)

Today marks the long-awaited rerelease of the Nintendo 64 classic GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo Switch. As was announced before the launch, the game supports widescreen. When I learned that, my first thought wasn't "Oh, nice!" Rather, it was "OK, but what about the rest of the library?"

To be clear, there's no easy way to make old 4:3 games fill up a modern 16:9 aspect ratio, and that's not something I would recommend in this case. But the solution used by the rest of the library of old games running within the Nintendo Switch Online service—enclosing every game in horribly distracting and potentially destructive gray borders—is, well, awful.

So as Nintendo finally adds one of the most beloved Nintendo 64 games to Switch Online, allow me a moment to vent some frustration on behalf of many players.

Enlarge / Apple will pay you less for this iPhone 13 Pro Max than it used to. (credit: Samuel Axon)

As spotted by MacRumors on Wednesday, Apple has cut the trade-in values of iPhones by up to $80, with the biggest cuts coming to the iPhone 13 Pro Max ($570 trade-in value versus $650 before) and the iPhone 13 Pro ($470 versus $550).

And while trade-in values for many base models (iPhone 7, 8, X, and 11) and some of their sibling releases (iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max) remain unchanged, nine out of the 20 iPhones listed now have a reduced trade-in value. According to MacRumors, most Android smartphones also saw a reduction in trade-in value.

Apple has cut trade-in values as recently as November and has done so over the years without explaining why. The devices naturally losing value could be one factor, and the most recent change to Apple's trade-in values follows an abysmal year for smartphone sales. According to market intelligence firm IDC, sales dropped 11.3 percent from 2021 to 2022. The year saw the lowest number of phones shipped (1.21 billion) since 2013. Apple saw a 4 percent drop (226.4 million versus 235.8 million).