Month: August 2024

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  The Hatch Restore 2 with one of its lighting options on. [credit: Scharon Harding ]

To say "I’m not a morning person" would be an understatement. Not only is it hard for me to be useful in the first hour (or so) of being awake, but it’s hard for me to wake up. I mean, really hard.

I’ve tried various recommendations and tricks: I've set multiple alarms and had coffee ready and waiting, and I've put my alarm clock far from my bed and kept my blinds open so that sunlight might wake me. But I’m still prone to sleeping through my alarm or hitting snooze until the last minute.

The Hatch Restore 2, a smart alarm clock with lighting that mimics sunrises and sunsets, seemed like a technologically savvy approach to realizing my dreams of becoming a morning person.

Enlarge / The Broadcom SoC used in the original 4GB and 8GB Raspberry Pi 5. The 2GB version uses an updated revision with several small but significant benefits. (credit: Raspberry Pi)

When Raspberry Pi introduced a new 2GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 board earlier this month, CEO Eben Upton said that the board would come with a slightly updated version of the board's Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC. By removing chip functionality that the Pi 5 didn't use, the new D0 stepping of the chip would use less silicon, reducing its cost.

Raspberry Pi enthusiast and YouTuber Jeff Geerling has performed some firsthand testing of the 2GB Pi 5. As Upton said, the new board is functionally identical to the older 4GB and 8GB boards, with identical performance (as long as whatever workload you're running doesn't benefit from extra RAM, anyway). The new silicon die is also about 33 percent smaller than the old one, which Geerling verified by removing the SoC's heat spreader to expose the silicon underneath and measuring by hand.

Geerling also demonstrated that the 2GB Pi 5 comes with a couple of unexpected benefits that Upton didn't mention in his announcement—that the 2GB Pi 5 runs a little cooler and uses a little less power than the 4GB and 8GB editions. The 2GB Pi used just 2.4 W or power at idle and 8.9 W during a CPU stress test, compared to 3.3 W and 9.8 W in the 4GB version. The SoC of the 2GB Pi measured 30° Celsius at idle and 59° under load, compared to 32° and 63° for the 2GB version. Those are all small but significant differences, given that nothing has changed other than the SoC.

Enlarge / Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, speaks earlier this year at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. (credit: USSPACECOM photo by John Philip Wagner Jr.)

The head of US Space Command said Wednesday he would like to see more transparency from the Chinese government on space debris, especially as one of China's newer rockets has shown a propensity for breaking apart and littering low-Earth orbit with hundreds of pieces of space junk.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, said he's observed some improvement in the dialogue between US and Chinese military officials this year. But the disintegration of the upper stage from a Long March 6A rocket earlier this month showed China could do more to prevent the creation of space debris, and communicate openly about it when it happens.

The Chinese government acknowledged the breakup of the Long March 6A rocket's upper stage in a statement by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 14, more than a week after the rocket's launch August 6 with the first batch of 18 Internet satellites for a megaconstellation of thousands of spacecraft analogous to SpaceX's Starlink network.

Enlarge / Any resemblance to the Dreamcast is completely coincidental, we're sure. (credit: IndieGogo)

If you're familiar with the name EmuDeck, you're likely a Steam Deck owner looking for an easy and user-friendly way to run emulators on your Steam Deck handheld. Now, one of the coders behind that software suite is dipping their toes into branded gaming hardware with the EmuDeck Machines project, now seeking funding on IndieGogo.

The EmuDeck Machines obviously come with EmuDeck software preinstalled to let users easily "play your retro games from your couch." But they also promise to let you run games from Steam and other popular PC launchers through the Linux-based, gaming-focused Bazzite OS. The vibe is definitely similar to that of Valve's own aborted Steam Machines effort from years back, albeit in a less "official" capacity.

"I used to be a PC guy but in the last 20 years I switched to the Mac and in the Apple ecosystem choosing a computer is easy," project lead DragoonDorise told Ars in an email. "But then I found myself wanting a gaming rig so I started my search and boy oh boy I was lost. The PC industry seems to be trying to trick you every step of the way, gazillions of options, hard to understand what's good and what's not. If you are tech savvy it's not hard, you know what to get and what to avoid. Then it hit me, I made emulation easy with EmuDeck, why not make hardware easy too?"

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)

The rise in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been one of the darkest Internet trends, but after years of covering CSAM cases, I've found that few of those arrested show deep technical sophistication. (Perhaps this is simply because the technically sophisticated are better at avoiding arrest.)

Most understand that what they are doing is illegal and that password protection is required, both for their devices and online communities. Some can also use tools like TOR (The Onion Router). And, increasingly, encrypted (or at least encrypted-capable) chat apps might be in play.

But I've never seen anyone who, when arrested, had three Samsung Galaxy phones filled with "tens of thousands of videos and images" depicting CSAM, all of it hidden behind a secrecy-focused, password-protected app called "Calculator Photo Vault." Nor have I seen anyone arrested for CSAM having used all of the following:

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Critics of spyware and exploit sellers have long warned that the advanced hacking sold by commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) represents a worldwide danger because they inevitably find their way into the hands of malicious parties, even when the CSVs promise they will be used only to target known criminals. On Thursday, Google analysts presented evidence bolstering the critique after finding that spies working on behalf of the Kremlin used exploits that are “identical or strikingly similar” to those sold by spyware makers Intellexa and NSO Group.

The hacking outfit, tracked under names including APT29, Cozy Bear, and Midnight Blizzard, is widely assessed to work on behalf of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, or the SVR. Researchers with Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which tracks nation-state hacking, said Thursday that they observed APT29 using exploits identical or closely identical to those first used by commercial exploit sellers NSO Group of Israel and Intellexa of Ireland. In both cases, the Commercial Surveillance Vendors’ exploits were first used as zero-days, meaning when the vulnerabilities weren’t publicly known and no patch was available.

Identical or strikingly similar

Once patches became available for the vulnerabilities, TAG said, APT29 used the exploits in watering hole attacks, which infect targets by surreptitiously planting exploits on sites they’re known to frequent. TAG said APT29 used the exploits as n-days, which target vulnerabilities that have recently been fixed but not yet widely installed by users.

Enlarge / The OpenAI logo. (credit: Getty Images)

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple is in talks to invest in OpenAI, the generative AI company whose ChatGPT will feature in future versions of iOS.

If the talks are successful, Apple will join a multi-billion dollar funding round led by Thrive Capital that would value the startup at more than $100 billion.

The report doesn't say exactly how much Apple would invest, but it does note that it would not be the only participant in this round of funding. For example, Microsoft is expected to invest further, and Bloomberg reports that Nvidia is also considering participating.