Month: August 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

For three days, system administrators have been troubleshooting errors that have prevented Windows users from running applications such as QuickBooks and Avatax. We now know the cause: an unannounced move or glitch by Microsoft that removed a once-widely used digital certificate in Windows.

The removed credential is known as a root certificate, meaning it anchors the trust of hundreds or thousands of intermediate and individual certificates downstream. The root certificate—with the serial number 18dad19e267de8bb4a2158cdcc6b3b4a and the SHA1 fingerprint 4EB6D578499B1CCF5F581EAD56BE3D9B6744A5E5—was no longer trusted in Windows. Because that root was tied to certificates that certify their authenticity and trust, people trying to use or install the app received the error.

Just minutes before this post was scheduled to go live, researchers learned that the certificate had been restored in Windows. It’s unclear how or why that occurred. The certificate immediately below this paragraph shows the certificate's status on Thursday. The one below that shows the status as of Friday.

Enlarge / Cherry's new MX2A mechanical switches (from left to right): Red, Blue, Brown, Black, Speed Silver, Silent Red. (credit: Scharon Harding)

For 20 years, Cherry's patent on mechanical switches made it the only player around. That patent's expiration around 2014, though, released the floodgates and allowed countless copycats and switches with varying levels of modification to the cross-stem design to pour in. Typically, consumer choice is a good thing, and there are companies making switches that offer much different (sometimes better) experiences than the switches Cherry makes.

But there are many mechanical switches these days that don't add anything to the market. Some rip off what Cherry already offers with a cheaper price tag or only help mechanical keyboard makers save money by not paying another company for switches.

Seemingly in response, Cherry announced its MX2A series of mechanical switches this week. The new switches are almost identical to the company's MX Red, Silent Red, Blue, Brown, Speed Silver, and Black counterparts. The differences are inside the switches. In most cases, I noticed improvements to the feel of the new switches, but are they enough to warrant the introduction of even more switches and, likely, confusion?

Enlarge / The medium is the message, even within the third-party homebrew restoration of that medium. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

There were only a few news channels where former US president Donald J. Trump's mug shot, from his indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, would not be seen after its Thursday afternoon release.

This included the Nintendo Wii News Channel. If you still have a Wii console hooked up in your living room, you can, with an exploit, an SD card, and some patience, still have an active News Channel on your Wii. If you were checking 2023's news on your 2006 console Thursday, you could have seen Trump's image in all its fuzzy, compressed notoriety. This inadvertent performance art was made possible by RiiConnect24, a service that has been providing Wii owners with online connectivity for a longer period than even Nintendo originally offered.

Full disclosure: I am a sincerely soft target for a loosely organized crew of hackers keeping a service running long beyond its corporate end of life. RiiConnect24 certainly falls in that category. Nintendo shut off WiiConnect24 in June 2013, ending the ability to receive forecasts and news, share Mii avatars and messages, participate in the "Everybody Votes Channel," and use the network aspects of certain games.

Enlarge / WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, looks on during a press conference at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, on December 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | FABRICE COFFRINI)

With global attention and anxiety locked onto the latest coronavirus omicron subvariant BA.2.86, health officials and experts are still mostly in the dark about how the highly mutated virus will play out.

At the start of the week, amid a flurry of headlines, researchers had only six genetic sequences of the virus in the public repository GISAID, even though the virus had already spread to at least four countries (Denmark, Israel, UK, and the US). As of the time of publication of this article on Friday, there are still only 10 sequences from five countries (Denmark, Israel, UK, US, and South Africa). According to the World Health Organization, the variant has also appeared in wastewater sampling from Thailand and Switzerland.

As Ars reported Monday, BA.2.86 gained attention for having a large number of mutations compared with BA.2, the omicron subvariant from which it descended. The number of mutations in BA.2.86's critical spike protein is over 30, rivaling the number seen in the original omicron subvariant, BA.1, which went on to cause a tidal wave of cases and hospitalizations. BA.2.86's spike mutations appear geared toward evading neutralizing antibody protections built up from past infections and vaccinations. But with such scant and spotty detection, it's impossible to say whether this variant can outspread its many omicron-subvariant cousins to cause a wave of infection. It's also still not possible to determine if it can cause more severe disease than other variants. So far, severe disease symptoms have not been reported from the 10 cases—but that is not enough data to draw any conclusions. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in a risk assessment Wednesday, it's "too soon to know" the impact of BA.2.86 on transmission and disease severity.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Benj Edwards)

Meta is adding another Llama to its herd—and this one knows how to code. On Thursday, Meta unveiled "Code Llama," a new large language model (LLM) based on Llama 2 that is designed to assist programmers by generating and debugging code. It aims to make software development more efficient and accessible, and it's free for commercial and research use.

Much like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot Chat, you can ask Code Llama to write code using high-level instructions, such as "Write me a function that outputs the Fibonacci sequence." Or it can assist with debugging if you provide a sample of problematic code and ask for corrections.

As an extension of Llama 2 (released in July), Code Llama builds off of weights-available LLMs Meta has been developing since February. Code Llama has been specifically trained on source code data sets and can operate on various programming languages, including Python, Java, C++,  PHP, TypeScript, C#, Bash scripting, and more.

Enlarge / SpaceX conducted a second static fire test of Booster 9 on Friday. (credit: SpaceX webcast)

SpaceX conducted a second hot fire test of its Super Heavy booster on Friday afternoon, likely taking a key step toward the next launch of its massive new rocket.

A few minutes after the test firing, SpaceX founder Elon Musk characterized it as "successful" on the social media network formerly known as Twitter. SpaceX later confirmed that all 33 Raptor engines ignited during the test and that all but two ran for the full six-second duration.

This Super Heavy booster, the largest and most powerful rocket to ever fly, serves as the first stage of SpaceX's mega-rocket, which pushes the Starship upper stage into orbit.