Month: December 2023

Enlarge / The HP LaserJet M106w is one of the printer models that is mysteriously appearing for some users in Windows 10 and 11. (credit: HP)

Earlier this month, Microsoft posted a new entry in its list of known issues with fully up-to-date Windows 11 PCs: The HP Smart printer app was installing automatically on Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs whether they had an HP printer installed or not, changing the names and icons of their connected printers and causing error messages.

Affected PCs will usually appear to have an HP LaserJet M101-M106 connected, so look for that model number in your list of printers (people who actually own one of those HP LaserJets presumably won't have problems). All versions of Windows 11 are affected, plus all currently supported versions of Windows 10; Windows Server versions going back to 2012 can also be affected.

Microsoft continues to look into the issue, but in an update posted yesterday, the company stated unambiguously that HP was not to blame. The company also says that most printers should continue to work fine, and that they "will continue to use the expected drivers for printer operations." But if your printer relies on a third-party app for additional functionality, that may be broken.

Enlarge / The iPhone 15 Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

According to a report in Bloomberg, Tang Tan, vice president of Product Design, is leaving Apple, and his departure heralds a shuffle of executives heading up some of the company's most important products.

Sometimes, you might wonder just how much a specific executive influences the grand scheme of things, but the report claims that people within Apple see Tan's departure as "a blow," clarifying that he "made critical decisions about Apple's most important products." His team reportedly had "tight control" over the look and functionality of those products.

Tan oversaw major aspects of iPhone and Apple Watch design, and he was the executive overseeing accessories and AirPods, as well. He reported to John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, who is likely a more widely known name.

Enlarge / A Verizon logo at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019 on February 26, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. (credit: Getty Images | David Ramos)

Verizon Wireless gave a female victim's address and phone logs to an alleged stalker who pretended to be a police officer, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI special agent. The man, Robert Michael Glauner, was later arrested near the victim's home and found to be carrying a knife at the time, according to the affidavit submitted in court yesterday.

Glauner allegedly traveled from New Mexico to Raleigh, North Carolina, after finding out where she lived and, before arriving, sent a threatening message that said, "if I can't have you no one can." He also allegedly threatened to send nude photos of the victim to her family members.

Glauner was charged yesterday with stalking and fraud "in connection with obtaining confidential phone records" in US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. We aren't posting or linking directly to the court record because it seems to contain the victim's home address. The incident was previously reported by 404 Media.

Enlarge

Stealthy and multifunctional Linux malware that has been infecting telecommunications companies went largely unnoticed for two years until being documented for the first time by researchers on Thursday.

Researchers from security firm Group-IB have named the remote access trojan “Krasue,” after a nocturnal spirit depicted in Southeast Asian folklore “floating in mid-air, with no torso, just her intestines hanging from below her chin.” The researchers chose the name because evidence to date shows it almost exclusively targets victims in Thailand and “poses a severe risk to critical systems and sensitive data given that it is able to grant attackers remote access to the targeted network.

According to the researchers:

Enlarge / From left to right, the head of an actual worm, and the stolon of a male and female. (credit: Nakamura et. al.)

Some do it horizontally, some do it vertically, some do it sexually, and some asexually. Then there are some organisms that would rather grow a butt that develops into an autonomous appendage equipped with its own antennae, eyes, and brain. This appendage will detach from the main body and swim away, carrying gonads that will merge with those from other disembodied rear ends and give rise to a new generation.

Wait, what in the science fiction B-movie alien star system is this thing?

Megasyllis nipponica really exists on Earth. Otherwise known as the Japanese green syllid worm, it reproduces by a process known as stolonization, which sounds like the brainchild of a sci-fi horror genius but evolved in some annelid (segmented) worms to give future generations the best chance at survival. What was still a mystery (until now) was exactly how that bizarre appendage, or stolon, could form its own head in the middle of the worm’s body. Turns out this is a wonder of gene regulation.

Enlarge / Just some of the prizes you can win in this year's charity drive sweepstakes. (credit: Kyle Orland)

If you've been too busy playing Against the Storm to take part in this year's Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don't worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $2,500 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

So far, in the first three days of the drive, nearly 180 readers have contributed over $14,000 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child's Play as part of the charity drive (EFF is now leading in the donation totals by nearly $6,000). That's a long way from 2020's record haul of over $58,000, but there's still plenty of time until the Charity Drive wraps up on Tuesday, January 2, 2024.

That doesn't mean you should put your donation off, though. Do yourself and the charities involved a favor and give now while you're thinking about it.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Back in April, we ran a series of useful and/or somewhat goofy prompts through Google's (then-new) PaLM-powered Bard chatbot and OpenAI's (slightly older) ChatGPT-4 to see which AI chatbot reigned supreme. At the time, we gave the edge to ChatGPT on five of seven trials, while noting that "it's still early days in the generative AI business."

Now, the AI days are a bit less “early," and this week's launch of a new version of Bard powered by Google's new Gemini language model seemed like a good excuse to revisit that chatbot battle with the same set of carefully designed prompts. That's especially true since Google's promotional materials emphasize that Gemini Ultra beats GPT-4 in "30 of the 32 widely used academic benchmarks" (though the more limited “Gemini Pro" currently powering Bard fares significantly worse in those not-completely-foolproof benchmark tests).

This time around, we decided to compare the new Gemini-powered Bard to both ChatGPT-3.5—for an apples-to-apples comparison of both companies’ current “free" AI assistant products—and ChatGPT-4 Turbo—for a look at OpenAI’s current “top of the line" waitlisted paid subscription product (Google’s top-level “Gemini Ultra" model won’t be publicly available until next year). We also looked at the April results generated by the pre-Gemini Bard model to gauge how much progress Google’s efforts have made in recent months.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Google Podcasts has been sitting on Google's death row for a few months now since the September announcement. Now, a new support article details Google's plans to kill the product, with a shutdown coming in April 2024.

Google Podcasts (2016–2024) is Google's third attempt at a podcasting app after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). The product is being shut down in favor of podcast app No. 4, YouTube Podcasts, which launched in 2022.

Google support article details how you can take your subscriptions with you. If you want to move from Google Podcasts to YouTube Podcasts, Google makes that pretty easy with a one-click button at music.youtube.com/transfer_podcasts. If you want to leave the Google ecosystem for something with less of a chance of being shut down in three to four years, you can also export your Google Podcast subscriptions as an OPML file at podcasts.google.com/settings. Google says exports will be available until August 2024.