Month: September 2025

On Wednesday, Microsoft released the complete source code for Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Version 1.1, the 1978 interpreter that powered the Commodore PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Apple II through custom adaptations. The company posted 6,955 lines of assembly language code to GitHub under an MIT license, allowing anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the code that helped launch the personal computer revolution.

"Rick Weiland and I (Bill Gates) wrote the 6502 BASIC," Gates commented on the Page Table blog in 2010. "I put the WAIT command in."

For millions of people in the late 1970s and early 1980s, variations of Microsoft's BASIC interpreter provided their first experience with programming. Users could type simple commands like "10 PRINT 'HELLO'" and "20 GOTO 10" to create an endless loop of text on their screens, for example—often their first taste of controlling a computer directly. The interpreter translated these human-readable commands into instructions that the processor could execute, one line at a time.

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A federal judge sided with Harvard University in its lawsuit against the Trump administration, ordering the US government to un-freeze about $2.6 billion in funding.

The judge's ruling also criticized the Supreme Court for issuing orders that seem to set precedents aside "without much explanation." Like various other rulings against the Trump administration, the Harvard case will be appealed and could end up at the highest court.

The Trump administration said it pulled Harvard's funding because of antisemitism at the university. But "a review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country's premier universities," US District Judge Allison Burroughs wrote in yesterday's ruling.

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Bei Amazon gibt es die Bestseller-NAS von Ugreen derzeit im Angebot zum Bestpreis. Doch nicht nur das Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis überzeugt. (NAS, Storage)

At the end of last year, we learned that Honda was bringing back the Prelude. Although Honda has varied the ingredients over the years, the recipe for the Prelude remains the same: a sleek coupe body and some cutting-edge technology under the skin, like four-wheel steering, as rhapsodized by the verbose but usually insightful motoring writer LJK Setright. Today, the new car broke cover ahead of its arrival in showrooms later this fall.

It's a handsome shape, though I can't quite get over the resemblance to the Toyota Prius, at least as far as the nose of the car is concerned. Then again, I'm on record as adoring the shape of the current Prius—did you know its windshield is more steeply raked than a Lamborghini Huracan? But from other angles, the Prelude is more unique. The proportions are low and wide, with some details that signal its sportiness and others that suggest a focus on reducing drag and maximizing efficiency.

That makes sense when you know what's under the hood. It's the same 2.0 L Atkinson cycle engine and hybrid system from the Honda Civic, which, in the right hands, is capable of up to 50 mpg (4.7 L/100 km). We'll know the exact EPA fuel efficiency numbers closer to the car going on sale in late fall. Combined power is 200 hp (150 kW), with 232 lb-ft (315 Nm) of torque.

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We've been covering Philips' lineup of color-changing, Wi-Fi connected Hue lights since their earliest days, and their early success means they became integrated into many smart home setups just as smart thermostats, doorbells, smoke alarms, and speakers were really going mainstream.

For anyone embedded in the Hue ecosystem—or anyone who has stayed out because of the accessories' relatively high prices—today's large-scale overhaul of the lineup may be of interest. Philips and parent company Signify are introducing new flagship bulbs, light strips, a new hub, Matter-over-Thread support, and all kinds of other accessories; Hueblog has a comprehensive rundown.

For people who have stayed away from the Hue lineup because of high prices, the most important addition to the lineup is the new Hue Essential bulbs. These bulbs can't dim as low as the flagship Hue bulbs and don't support as wide a range of colors or white levels, but the standard A19/E26 versions are available for $25 per bulb individually or as low as $15 a bulb when bought in a four-pack, somewhere between one-half and one-quarter the typical price of a Hue bulb.

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Remember the first time you saw a SpaceX rocket nail a bullseye landing after hurtling back from space? How about the first time two boosters landed side by side, punctuating the inaugural launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket with thrilling synchrony?

Some of SpaceX's most defining moments happened on a piece of beachfront property at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This is where SpaceX first landed a reusable Falcon 9 booster coming back from space and, a few years later, landed two boosters side by side.

In all, SpaceX has landed 66 Falcon boosters at Landing Zones 1 and 2 since recovering the first Falcon 9 booster on December 21, 2015. Now, SpaceX is preparing to hand the landing zones back to the US Space Force, which owns the property and has reallocated the real estate to two startup launch companies.

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An influx of players excited for this morning's launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong are encountering widespread errors purchasing and downloading the game from Steam this morning. Ars Technica writers have encountered errors getting store pages to load, adding the game to an online shopping cart, and checking out once the game is part of the cart.

That aligns with widespread social media complaints and data from DownDetector, which saw a sudden spike of over 11,000 reports of problems with Steam in the minutes following Silksong's 10 am Eastern time release on Steam. The server problems don't seem to be completely stopping everyone, though, as SteamDB currently reports over 100,000 concurrent players for Silksong as of this writing.

Ars also encountered some significant delays and/or outright errors when downloading other games and updates and syncing cloud saves on Steam during this morning's server problems. The Humble Store page for Silksong currently warns North American purchasers that "We have run out of Steam keys for Hollow Knight: Silksong in your region, but more are on their way! As soon as we receive more Steam keys, we will add them to your download page. Sorry about the delay!"

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Schon früh gab es Zweifel an dem Vorfall mit dem Flugzeug der EU-Kommissionspräsidentin. Nun revidiert Bulgarien Aussagen zur GPS-Störung. (GPS, Navigationssystem)

In der neuen Finanzierungsrunde kommt N8n gut an. Nutzer können Workflows mit Drag-and-Drop in der KI-Plattform automatisieren. (Start-up, KI)

War in diesem Jahr noch nicht günstiger: Bei Amazon kann man sich die 1 TByte große Lexar NM790 SSD mit Heatsink zum Spitzenpreis sichern. (Solid State Drive, Speichermedien)