Month: August 2023

Enlarge (credit: NicoElNino)

On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that it chose the first two sites to host facilities that will pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and permanently store it underground. The sites in Louisiana and Texas will be funded by money set aside in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was passed early in President Biden's term in office. They represent a major step for the US, as they're not linked to a specific source of carbon emissions, and the CO₂ they capture won't be used for extracting fossil fuels.

They also represent a major step globally, as each facility is expected to have 250 times the capacity of the largest currently in operation.

In the long-term, it's hoped that these facilities will operate as a service to reverse a century of unchecked carbon emissions. The danger, however, is that they'll eventually be used to offset ongoing emissions and provide a rationale for the continued use of fossil fuels.

Enlarge / MLS (Multiple Listing Service). (credit: Getty Images)

Home buyers, sellers, real estate agents, and listing websites throughout the US have been stymied for five days by a cyberattack on a California company that provides a crucial online service used to track home listings.

The attack, which commenced last Wednesday, hit Rapottoni, a software and services provider that supplies Multiple Listing Services to regional real estate groups nationwide. Better known as MLS, it provides instant access to data on which homes are coming to the market, purchase offers, and sales of listed homes. MLS has become essential for connecting buyers to sellers and to the agents and listing websites serving them.

“If you're an avid online refresher on any real estate website, you may have noticed a real nosedive in activity the last couple of days,” Peg King, a realty agent in California’s Sonoma County, wrote in an email newsletter she sent clients on Friday. “Real estate MLS systems across the country have been unusable since Wednesday after a massive cyberattack against major MLS provider, Rapattoni Corporation. This means that real estate markets (like ours!) can't list new homes, change prices, mark homes as pending/contingent/sold, or list open houses.”

Enlarge (credit: Dell)

Dell's Australia arm has been slapped with a $10 million AUD (about $6.49 million) fine for "making false and misleading representations on its website about discount prices for add-on computer monitors," the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced today. The Australian regulator said the company sold 5,300 monitors this way.

As Ars Technica previously reported, the ACCC launched litigation against Dell Australia in November. In June, the Australian Federal Court declared that Dell Australia made shoppers believe monitors would be cheaper if bought as an add-on item.

Here's how the "misleading representations" worked. Shoppers of Dell Australia's website who were buying a computer would see an offer for a Dell display with a lower price next to a higher price with a strikethrough line. That suggested to shoppers that the price they'd pay for the monitor if they added it to their cart now would be lower than the monitor's usual cost. But it turns out the strikethrough prices weren't the typical costs. Sometimes, the lower price was actually higher than what Dell Australia typically charged.

Enlarge / Netflix's growing games division wants to be available as many places as possible, so now it's rolling out tests of TV and browser-based games (at least on Mac and PC). (credit: Netflix)

Having quietly released a phone-based TV game controller for iOS devices last week, Netflix has both made their ambition for streaming subscription gaming official—as well as expanding it to PCs and Macs through the web.

In a blog post today, Mike Verdu, vice president for games at Netflix, states that the streaming content company is rolling out "a limited beta test to a small number of members in Canada and the UK on select TVs starting today, and on PCs and Macs through Netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks."

The first two games available on bigger-than-mobile screens are the visual novel-esque adventure game Oxenfree 2, from Netflix-owned Night School Studio, and Molehew's Mining Adventure, described as a "gem-mining arcade game."

Enlarge / Netflix's growing games division wants to be available as many places as possible, so now it's rolling out tests of TV and browser-based games (at least on Mac and PC). (credit: Netflix)

Having quietly released a phone-based TV game controller for iOS devices last week, Netflix has both made their ambition for streaming subscription gaming official—as well as expanding it to PCs and Macs through the web.

In a blog post today, Mike Verdu, vice president for games at Netflix, states that the streaming content company is rolling out "a limited beta test to a small number of members in Canada and the UK on select TVs starting today, and on PCs and Macs through Netflix.com on supported browsers in the next few weeks."

The first two games available on bigger-than-mobile screens are the visual novel-esque adventure game Oxenfree 2, from Netflix-owned Night School Studio, and Molehew's Mining Adventure, described as a "gem-mining arcade game."

Enlarge / Youth plaintiffs are greeted by supporters as they arrive for the nation's first youth climate change trial at Montana's First Judicial District Court on June 12, 2023. (credit: William Campbell / Contributor | Getty Images North America)

A Montana state court today sided with young people who sued the state for promoting the fossil fuel industry through its energy policy, which they alleged prohibits Montana from weighing greenhouse gas emissions in approving the development of new factories and power plants. This prohibition, 16 plaintiffs ages 5 to 22 successfully argued, violates their constitutional right to a "clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations."

Experts previously predicted that a win for youths in Montana would set an important legal precedent for how courts can hold states accountable for climate inaction. The same legal organization representing Montana's young plaintiffs, Our Children's Trust, is currently pursuing similar cases in four other states, The Washington Post reported.

The Post described this landmark case as "the nation’s first constitutional and first youth-led climate lawsuit to go to trial."

Enlarge / The Apple Watch (seen here in its current iterations) is set to get a new look. (credit: Corey Gaskin)

Annual updates to the standard Apple Watch have been almost too small to mention for the past few years, and it looks like that trend will continue with the new wearables Apple plans to debut next month. But, according to a Bloomberg newsletter, a major Apple Watch overhaul is coming as soon as next year.

Dubbed "Watch X," it will be the 10th edition of the Apple Watch that was originally announced in 2014 and released in 2015. To commemorate the occasion, Apple is planning the most significant redesign of the Watch yet apart from the recently launched Ultra, which is more of a spinoff than a direct follow-up.

Of course, that's not saying much. Each year's update has typically brought one small change—like a slightly bigger screen, a modest CPU speed bump, or a new health tracking feature aimed at one specific ailment—such that there's little reason to upgrade even once every two or three years, much less annually.