Month: August 2024

Enlarge / If you've formatted a disk in Windows in the last 30 years, you may have come across this dialog box. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

As we wait for this fall's Windows 11 24H2 update to be released to the general public, work continues on other new features that could be part of other future Windows updates. A new Canary channel Windows Insider build released yesterday fixes a decades-old and arbitrary limitation that restricted new FAT32 partitions to 32GB in size, even though the filesystem itself has a maximum supported size of 2TB (and Windows can read and recognize 2TB FAT32 partitions without an issue).

For now, this limit is only being lifted for the command-line formatting tools in Windows. The disk formatting UI, which looks more or less the same now as it did when it was introduced in Windows NT 4.0 almost 30 years ago, still has the arbitrary 32GB capacity restriction.

The 32GB limit can allegedly be pinned on former Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer, who occasionally shares stories about his time working on Windows in the 1990s and early 2000s. Plummer says that he wrote the file format dialog, intending it as a "temporary" solution, and arbitrarily chose 32GB as a size limit for disks, likely because it seemed big enough at the time (Windows NT 4.0 required a whopping 110MB of disk space).

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Bosca78)

A large Internet service provider wants the Supreme Court to rule that ISPs shouldn't have to disconnect broadband users who have been accused of piracy. Cable firm Cox Communications, which is trying to overturn a ruling in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony, petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case yesterday.

Cox said in a press release that a recent appeals court ruling "would force ISPs to terminate Internet service to households or businesses based on unproven allegations of infringing activity, and put them in a position of having to police their networks—contrary to customer expectations... Terminating Internet service would not just impact the individual accused of unlawfully downloading content, it would kick an entire household off the Internet."

The case began in 2018 when Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox, claiming that it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers. A US District Court jury in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels.

Those of us who collect classic game consoles and computers (here's looking at you, AI reporter Benj Edwards) know the difficulty of keeping all that hardware not just working but instantly accessible with a simple press of a power button. Too often, large hardware collections end up languishing, boxed up on shelves, or sitting loose and unconnected to a display for long periods.

Saudi Arabia's Ibrahim Al-Nasser grew tired of having that problem with his massive gaming collection, so he decided to hook 444 different gaming devices up to a single TV, earning a Guinness World Record in the process.

"After a while, I noticed that I had a big stack of gaming consoles that I couldn’t play," Al-Nasser said in a video filmed by Guinness. "The TV ports are limited, and if I want to play, I either unplug the existing consoles or I'll keep everything and add more switchers and of course more converters as well. By adding more switchers, the idea came to my mind to connect all of the gaming consoles I have to the TV, then contact Guinness World Records because this project is unique."

Enlarge (credit: Viktoriya Skorikova | Moment)

San Francisco's city attorney David Chiu is suing to shut down 16 of the most popular websites and apps allowing users to "nudify" or "undress" photos of mostly women and girls who have been increasingly harassed and exploited by bad actors online.

These sites, Chiu's suit claimed, are "intentionally" designed to "create fake, nude images of women and girls without their consent," boasting that any users can upload any photo to “see anyone naked” by using tech that realistically swaps the faces of real victims onto AI-generated explicit images.

"In California and across the country, there has been a stark increase in the number of women and girls harassed and victimized by AI-generated" non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) and "this distressing trend shows no sign of abating," Chiu's suit said.

Enlarge (credit: Anova)

Anova, a company that sells smart sous vide cookers, is getting backlash from customers after announcing that it will soon charge a subscription fee for the device's companion app.

Sous video cooking, per Ars Technica sister site Bon appétit, "is the process of sealing food in an airtight container—usually a vacuum sealed bag—and then cooking that food in temperature-controlled water." Sous vide translates from French to "under vacuum," and this cooking method ensures that the water stays at the desired temperature for the ideal cook.

Anova was founded in 2013 and sells sous vide immersion circulators. Its current third-generation Precision Cooker 3.0 has an MSRP of $200. Anova also sells a $149 model and a $400 version that targets professionals. It debuted the free Anova Culinary App in 2014.