Month: February 2023

Enlarge / On the left, a nickel cobalt manganese battery cell; on the right, a lithium iron phosphate cell. (credit: Ford)

The US is getting yet another new electric vehicle battery factory. On Monday afternoon, Ford announced that it will spend $3.5 billion to build a new plant in Marshall, Michigan. Significantly, this new site will make lithium iron phosphate (also known as LFP) cells, which are both cheaper and longer-lived than lithium-ion chemistries like nickel cobalt manganese (NCM), albeit at the cost of some energy density and cold weather performance.

"Ford's electric vehicle lineup has generated huge demand. To get as many Ford EVs to customers as possible, we're the first automaker to commit to build both NCM and LFP batteries in the United States. We're delivering on our commitments as we scale LFP and NCM batteries and thousands, and soon millions, of customers will begin to reap the benefits of Ford EVs with cutting-edge, durable battery technologies that are growing more affordable over time," said Jim Farley, Ford president and CEO.

Although LFP cells were originally invented in North America, patent licensing deals have meant that, until now, they've mostly been the preserve of Chinese-market EVs. In this case, Ford has signed a licensing agreement with Chinese battery firm CATL, allowing it to make LFP cells.

Enlarge (credit: CHUYN / Getty Images)

Nearly 11,000 websites in recent months have been infected with a backdoor that redirects visitors to sites that rack up fraudulent views of ads provided by Google Adsense, researchers said.

All 10,890 infected sites, found by security firm Sucuri, run the WordPress content management system and have an obfuscated PHP script that has been injected into legitimate files powering the websites. Such files include “index.php,” “wp-signup.php,” “wp-activate.php,” “wp-cron.php,” and many more. Some infected sites also inject obfuscated code into wp-blog-header.php and other files. The additional injected code works as a backdoor that’s designed to ensure the malware will survive disinfection attempts by loading itself in files that run whenever the targeted server is restarted.

“These backdoors download additional shells and a Leaf PHP mailer script from a remote domain filestack[.]live and place them in files with random names in wp-includes, wp-admin and wp-content directories,” Sucuri researcher Ben Martin wrote. “Since the additional malware injection is lodged within the wp-blog-header.php file it will execute whenever the website is loaded and reinfect the website. This ensures that the environment remains infected until all traces of the malware are dealt with.”

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

Apple is releasing minor updates to all of its major software platforms today to address one high-priority security vulnerability and to fix a handful of other device- and service-specific issues. The iOS 16.3.1, iPadOS 16.3.1, and macOS 13.2.1 updates all patch an "actively exploited" arbitrary code execution vulnerability in WebKit/Safari, and a second kernel vulnerability that isn't known to be actively exploited.

Those updates also fix an issue that could cause iCloud to become unresponsive and a Siri bug that was keeping it from working properly with the Find My feature. A HomePod 16.3.2 OS update also fixes some Siri problems that could cause smart home requests to fail. Detailed release notes aren't available for watchOS 9.3.1 or tvOS 16.3.2, but those updates are also available to download and presumably fix similar problems.

For iPhone 14 models, the iOS 16.3.1 update makes further tweaks to the Crash Detection safety feature. Meant to automatically contact first responders in the event of a car crash or sudden fall, Crash Detection has also made headlines for the false positives that it can generate—riding rollercoasters, skiing, dropping the phone at high velocities, and other activities have all set off Crash Detection.

Enlarge / Google's corporate headquarters. (credit: Alex Tai | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images)

When Google's ChatGPT competitor event was announced for last week, we wrote that it seemed like a rush job designed to reassure investors, and since then, that event happened and went worse than anyone could have imagined. Google's event did the opposite of what it wanted, with the stock down nearly 12 percent since the recent high just before the event. Even Google employees are starting to take notice, with CNBC's Jennifer Elias writing that, internally, employees are criticizing CEO Sundar Pichai for what they call a ‘rushed, botched’ announcement of Google's new chatbot.

CNBC says it was able to view several messages from Google's internal "Memegen" employee forum, and while these are normally lighthearted, the report says "the posts after the Bard announcement struck a more serious tone and even went directly after Pichai."

“Dear Sundar," started one post, "the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook.” Another highly upvoted post said, "Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI. They are being comically short sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus.’” A "Perf NI" refers to the lowest employee performance rating of "Needs Improvement," as if anyone rates Pichai's performance as CEO.

Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

Samsung has released a firmware update for its newest 990 Pro SSDs today. While the company didn't provide official release notes, Tom's Hardware reports that the update is likely intended to fix an issue that caused the drives to report that they were wearing out and failing at an accelerated rate.

Samsung’s previous-generation 980 Pro SSD also received a firmware update for an unrelated reliability issue in January. Boutique PC-maker Puget Systems called attention to the problems recently when it announced it would be using other manufacturers’ SSDs in its high-end workstation PCs going forward.

The downside of the 990 Pro firmware update (version number 1B2QJXD7) is that it doesn’t reset the wear percentage counter on any SSD that has been affected by the bug; if you’ve got a drive that's reporting 72 percent wear, the firmware fix will keep that number from continuing to rise faster than it should, but it won’t make the number go back down. This could be because the bug was causing the drives to degrade at an accelerated rate, or because the drive simply can’t tell the difference between “real” wear on the drive caused by normal usage and wear caused by the firmware bug.

Enlarge / For the first time since their 2011 launch, ChromeOS devices are seemingly going to allow custom keyboard shortcuts for navigation, browsing, and other functions. (credit: Google)

ChromeOS devices have become far more useful since the Cr-48. With Linux and Android apps, and "web only" being far less of a hindrance these days, they're compelling as a secondary machine. But having to learn a whole separate set of keyboard shortcuts to use them efficiently is always going to be painful.

But help is on the way, if some experimental features in the latest beta ChromeOS release (111) are any indication. As spotted in Kevin Tofel's About Chromebooks blog, an updated version of the shortcut viewer in the Settings app—first seen in October 2022—has the early makings of a shortcut changing and adding mechanism.

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  ChromeOS' keyboard shortcuts viewer, with experimental flags enabled and showing lock icons next to shortcuts, along with "Reset all shortcuts" button. [credit: Kevin Purdy ]

Clicking on a shortcut brings up a dialogue that allows you to, at the moment, add alternative shortcuts to common shortcuts for manipulating tabs, windows and desktops, system settings, accessibility, and other utilities. A small "lock" icon next to each suggests that you might also be able to unlock these shortcuts to remove or alter their defaults. A "Reset all shortcuts" button offers another hint. Sadly, none of the shortcuts you add seem to work for the moment, though the promise is there.

Enlarge / The styling changes to the Volvo XC60 as part of its midlife refresh are much more subtle than the engineering changes. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Back in 2018 we tested the Volvo XC60 plug-in hybrid, Sweden's midsize electrified crossover. A handsome thing, it has mostly supplanted the trusty Volvo station wagon, as car buyers prefer the loftier driving position but want to keep a generous cargo capacity and a handy rear hatch. Last year, Volvo gave the crossover its midlife refresh, adding a hefty bump in battery capacity—and therefore electric driving range—in the process.

At the time, I wrote that the XC60 made a compelling case for itself, but is that still true five years later?

Visually, the Volvo's facelift appears extremely subtle. The XC60 was already a handsome-looking machine—I find most of the current Volvos to be easy on the eyes—but I would struggle to tell you what has changed when comparing photos of the older and newer cars. It's perhaps a case of "don't fix it if it's not broken."

Warner Bros. released the official trailer for The Flash during Sunday's Super Bowl LVII, and Michael Keaton's confirmed return as Batman (from the beloved Tim Burton era) pretty much set the Internet on fire. For many, Keaton was the definitive Batman for decades until The Dark Knight trilogy (with Christian Bale donning the cape) kicked off in 2005. So naturally, it was kind of a thrill to see Keaton and Ben Affleck's Batman from the Zack Snyder era join forces to repair a timeline that was disastrously altered due to some pretty poor decision-making on the part of The Flash (Ezra Miller).

The original plans for a Flash-centric film date back to the late 1980s, but the current incarnation began development in late 2004, when Warner Bros. hired David Goyer to write, direct, and produce such a movie. Goyer eventually left the project over the usual "creative differences," and so did several others over the ensuing years, until Andy Muschietti (It, It: Chapter 2) signed on to direct in 2019. Miller's The Flash had already made his DC Extended Universe debut with cameo appearances in Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad in 2016 and as a co-star in 2017's Justice League. And the wider DC multiverse was confirmed when Miller made a cameo in the Arrowverse TV crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019–2020).

A tale of two Barrys: "You stole my face!" (credit: YouTube/Warner Bros.)

Earlier scripts focused on adapting the Flashpoint crossover storyline from the comic books, in which the Scarlet Speedster goes back in time to keep his mother from being murdered, thereby altering the entire timeline. In that alternate world, a young Bruce Wayne is killed rather than his parents. Thomas Wayne becomes Batman, Martha Wayne becomes The Joker, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are bitter enemies, and Superman is a prisoner. Muschietti kept several of the Flashpoint story elements while acknowledging that this would be a different version. And he wanted to include not just Keaton's Batman but Ben Affleck's too, since he thought Barry's relationship with the latter would make Keaton's inclusion even more powerful.

Composite X-ray, visible-light, and radio image of the X-ray binary Circinus X-1. This object is a neutron star in mutual orbit with an ordinary star. Such systems could have been responsible for the reionization of the cosmos in the era of the first stars and galaxies. (credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S.Heinz et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA)

Forget archaeologists and their lost civilizations, or paleontologists with their fossils—astrophysicist Heloise Stevance studies the past on an entirely different scale. When astronomers catch a glimpse of an unusual signal in the sky, perhaps the light from a star exploding, Stevance takes that signal and rewinds the clock on it by billions of years. Working at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, she traces the past lives of dead and dying stars, a process she calls stellar genealogy. “There’s a lot of drama in the lives of stars,” she says.

On August 17, 2017, astrophysicists witnessed two dead stars’ remnant cores, known as neutron stars, colliding into each other in a distant galaxy. Known as a neutron star merger, they detected this event via ripples in spacetime—known as gravitational waves—and light produced by the resulting explosion. This marked the first and only time scientists had seen such an event using gravitational waves. From those signals, they deduced that the neutron stars were 1.1 to 1.6 times the mass of the Sun. They also figured out that such collisions create some of the heavier natural elements found in the Universe, such as gold and platinum. But overall, the signals presented more puzzles than answers.