Author name: Kris Guyer

how-crypto-bros-wrested-flappy-bird-from-its-creator

How crypto bros wrested Flappy Bird from its creator

Imagine owning one of those funky birds as an NFT!

Enlarge / Imagine owning one of those funky birds as an NFT!

Fans of ultra-viral mobile gaming hit Flappy Bird who were stunned by the game’s sudden removal from the iOS App Store 10 years ago were probably even more stunned by last week’s equally sudden announcement that Flappy Bird is coming back with a raft of new characters and game modes. Unfortunately, the new version of Flappy Bird seems to be the result of a yearslong set of legal maneuvers by a crypto-adjacent game developer intent on taking the “Flappy Bird” name from the game’s original creator, Dong Nguyen.

“No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything,” Nguyen wrote on social media over the weekend in his first post since 2017. “I also don’t support crypto,” Nguyen added.

No, I have no related with their game. I did not sell anything.

I also don’t support crypto.

— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) September 15, 2024

Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed,” Nguyen said in a 2014 interview after removing the game from mobile app stores. “But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

“A decade-long, convoluted journey to get here”

So how can another company release a game named Flappy Bird without Nguyen’s approval or sale of the rights? Court filings show that a company called Gametech Holdings filed a “notice of opposition” against Nguyen with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in late 2023, seeking to invalidate his claim on the “Flappy Bird” name. When Nguyen, who lives in Vietnam, didn’t respond to that notice by November, the US Patent and Trademark Office entered a default judgment against him and officially canceled his trademark in January, allowing Gametech to legally claim the name.

But Gametech’s efforts to legally acquire the Flappy Bird name seem to go back much further than that. Back in 2014, an outfit called Mobile Media Partners tried to claim the Flappy Bird trademark in a filing made mere days after Nguyen pulled the game from the App Store. Coincidentally enough, the specific New Jersey address listed by Mobile Media Partners on that 2014 application matches an address used by Gametech Holdings in the paperwork for its 2023 legal efforts.

Mobile Media Partners’ 2014 application makes reference to a (now-defunct) FlappyBirdReturns.com and asserts that the company had “reserved/acquired the name from Apple in their Apps Store [sic].” It also claims that “Flappy Bird” is “not being used by any other companies and/or people,” taking quick advantage of Nguyen’s decision to take the game down.

A section from the USPTO's 2018 trademark certificate granting

Enlarge / A section from the USPTO’s 2018 trademark certificate granting “Flappy Bird” to “Mobile Media Partners.”

With this “evidence,” the USPTO actually granted Mobile Media Partners a Flappy Bird trademark in 2018, a fact that Gametech cited in its successful 2023 opposition to Nguyen’s use of the mark.

In a press release, a spokesperson for the newly formed Flappy Bird Foundation—which acquired the trademark from Gametech—summed this all up as “a decade-long, convoluted journey to get here.” The new company said it also acquired the legal rights to Piou Piou vs. Cactus, a little-known 2011 web game that seems to have heavily inspired Flappy Bird.

The newly launched FlappyBird.org website proudly refers to “the decade-long mission” to revive the game, which “involved acquiring legal rights.” The post also mentions “working with my predecessor to uncage me and re-hatch…” in phrasing that seems to imply a link to the original Flappy Bird but which could also reference the Piou Piou vs. Cactus acquisition.

How crypto bros wrested Flappy Bird from its creator Read More »

brazil-judge-seizes-cash-from-starlink-to-cover-fine-imposed-on-elon-musk’s-x

Brazil judge seizes cash from Starlink to cover fine imposed on Elon Musk’s X

Forced withdrawal —

Starlink and X treated as one economic group, forcing both to pay X fines.

A supporter of former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro holds a sign that has a picture of Elon Musk and the text,

Enlarge / Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro participate in an event in the central area of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2024. Bolsonaro backers called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

Brazil seized about $2 million from a Starlink bank account and another $1.3 million from X to collect on fines issued to Elon Musk’s social network, the country’s Supreme Court announced Friday.

Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes previously froze the accounts of both companies, treating them as the same de facto economic group because both are controlled by Musk. The Starlink and X bank accounts were unfrozen last week after the money transfers ordered by de Moraes.

Two banks carried out orders to transfer the money from Starlink and X to Brazil’s government. “After the payment of the full amount that was owed, the justice (de Moraes) considered there was no need to keep the bank accounts frozen and ordered the immediate unfreezing of bank accounts/financial assets,” the court said, as quoted by The Associated Press.

The suspension of X’s social platform, formerly named Twitter, remains in place. The dispute began several months ago when Musk said he would disobey an order from de Moraes to suspend dozens of accounts accused of spreading disinformation. De Moraes later ordered the X social platform to be blocked by Internet service providers. X closed its office in Brazil and did not pay the fines.

Starlink initially said it would refuse to block X on its broadband service until the government unfroze its assets. Starlink quickly backtracked, agreeing to block X, but said it would fight the asset freeze in court. The Brazil Supreme Court’s announcement of the money transfers said that Starlink and X missed a deadline to appeal the finding that they are part of the same de facto economic group.

Shotwell accused justice of “harassing Starlink”

Starlink has called the order to freeze its assets “an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell accused de Moraes of “harassing Starlink.”

X has said that de Moraes targeted the platform “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.” X also argued that it is not defying Brazilian law.

“We are absolutely not insisting that other countries have the same free speech laws as the United States. The fundamental issue at stake here is that Judge de Moraes demands we break Brazil’s own laws. We simply won’t do that,” X’s Global Government Affairs account wrote.

As noted by CNBC, Brazilian news agency UOL reported last week “that some of the accounts de Moraes ordered Musk to suspend at X belong to users who allegedly threatened federal police officers involved in a probe of former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.”

Bolsonaro was accused of instigating the January 8, 2023, attack on the Brazilian Congress that occurred after Bolsonaro’s election loss. Bolsonaro and his supporters praised Musk in April of this year after Musk’s decision to defy the orders to block X accounts associated with Bolsonaro supporters.

Brazil judge seizes cash from Starlink to cover fine imposed on Elon Musk’s X Read More »

ufo-50-is-the-best-retro-gaming-homage-i’ve-ever-played

UFO 50 is the best retro-gaming homage I’ve ever played

A blast from the future? —

Collection of 50 new ’80s-era game concepts brims with originality, care, and joy.

Just some of the inventive character designs included in <em>UFO 50</em>.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/ufo50_keyart-800×450.png”></img><figcaption>
<p><a data-height=Enlarge / Just some of the inventive character designs included in UFO 50.

Mossmouth

If you’ve spent any time with retro gaming emulators, you’re likely familiar with the joy of browsing through a long list of (legally obtained) ROMs and feeling overwhelmed at a wide range of titles you’ve never even heard of. Picking randomly through such a game list is like wandering through a foreign country, searching for hidden jewels among all the shovelware in the bewildering and wildly imaginative early video game history.

UFO 50 captures that feeling perfectly, combining the freewheeling inventiveness of old-school game design with modern refinements and more consistent baseline quality bred over the ensuing decades. The result is an extremely playable love letter to the gaming history that will charm even the most jaded retro game fan.

A loving homage

UFO 50 presents itself as a collection of 50 dusty game cartridges made by UFO Soft, a fictional developer that operated from 1982 to 1989. Working through the company’s catalog, you’ll see evolution in graphics, music, and gameplay design that mirror the ever-changing gaming market of the real-world ’80s. You’ll also see the same characters, motifs, and credited “developers” appearing over and over again, building a convincing world behind the games themselves.

The individual games in UFO 50 definitely wear their influences on their sleeves, with countless, almost overt homages to specific ’80s arcade and console games. But there isn’t a single title here that I’d consider a simple clone or knock-off of an old gaming concept; each sub-game brings its own twist or novel idea that makes it feel new.

  • Ah, the joys of marching through a cavern of hallways with perfect 90-degree angles.

    Mossmouth

  • Aw, you always get to be the shirtless muscle guy. Can I be Player 1 this time?

    Mossmouth

  • A giant animal wearing only high-top boots? Sure, why not?

    Mossmouth

  • The real-time positional strategy of Attactics feels like chess mixed with Advance Wars

    Mossmouth

  • The titular “UFO” appears in a lot of different UFO 50 games, naturally

    Mossmouth

Bubble Bobble homage Kick Club, for instance, replaces its inspiration’s bubble-blowing dinosaurs with a soccer player that has to constantly chase down his only weapon: a soccer ball. Vainger combines Metroid-style shooting and gated, maze-like exploration with the gravity-flipping of Metal Storm. Magic Garden combines the avoid-your-own-tail gameplay of Snake with items that let you eat up obstacles, Pac-Man-style.

Anyone who remembers playing games in the ’80s will instantly clock plenty of other clear references. A small sampling of ones I noticed includes: Bad Dudes, Blaster Master, Gradius, River City Ransom, Shadowgate, Super Dodge Ball, Smash TV, Space Harrier, and Super Sprint. And, just like any list of ’80s ROMs, you’ll also encounter plenty of grid-based puzzle games and shoot-em-ups, each with their own take on the popular genres.

But other UFO 50 offerings are retro-stylized versions of genres and games that didn’t really exist in the ’80s. If you ever wondered what a caveman-themed tower defense game would look like on the NES, Rock On! Island has the answer. Or if you want to see a positional arena fighter in the style of Super Smash Bros. (complete with original characters that sport their own moves and weapons) then Hyper Contender has you covered. Then there’s Velgress, which combines the retro run-and-gun platforming of the NES with the roguelike procedural generation of a modern classic like Downwell.

Still, other UFO 50 games squeeze completely original concepts (as far as I can tell) into the limited technology of the time period. Lords of Diskonia is a tactical battler that has you flinging units represented by Crokinole-style disks at the other side. Party House asks you to manage a Rolodex of party guests to maximize your money and popularity without attracting unwelcome attention from the cops. Waldorf’s Journey involves flinging the titular walrus on lengthy blind jumps while carefully adjusting his landing with hilarious, energy-consuming flaps of his flippers.

  • Hot Foot is an incredibly endearing and fun take on the Super Dodge Ball formula.

    Mossmouth

  • Magic Garden combines the addictive qualities of Snake and Pac-Man.

    Mossmouth

  • Each game comes complete with its own title screen, cut scenes, etc.

    Mossmouth

  • There are a lot of shoot-em-ups in UFO 50, as befits the time period.

    Mossmouth

  • It’s not all action. Night Manor is a full-fledged point-and-click adventure title.

    Mossmouth

The sheer variety of different gameplay ideas on offer here is incredible. There are real-time strategy games and cooperative two-player brawlers. There’s a full-fledged golf RPG and also a 2D golf game with pinball-style hazards. There’s a Dave the Diver-esque undersea exploration adventure and a couple of Final Fantasystyle RPGs. There’s a game that combines Crazy Taxi and the original, overhead Grand Theft Auto. There’s a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles homage that combines five different genres with five unique, fully realized anthropomorphic human-animal hybrids.

UFO 50 is the best retro-gaming homage I’ve ever played Read More »

also-releasing-today:-new-ios-17,-macos-14-updates-for-the-upgrade-averse

Also releasing today: New iOS 17, macOS 14 updates for the upgrade-averse

safe space —

Security updates without the headaches for the risk-averse (and bug-averse).

Also releasing today: New iOS 17, macOS 14 updates for the upgrade-averse

Today is the official release date for the public versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and a scad of other Apple software updates, the foundation that Apple will use for Apple Intelligence and whatever other features it wants to add between now and next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But for those who value stability and reliability over new features, you may not be excited to update to a new operating system with a version number ending in “0.”

For those of you who prefer to wait for a couple of bugfix updates before installing new stuff, Apple is also releasing security-only updates for a bunch of its (now) last-generation operating systems today. The iOS 17.7, iPadOS 17.7, and macOS 14.7 updates are either available now or should be shortly, along with a security update for 2022’s macOS 13 Ventura. An updated version of Safari 18 that runs on both macOS 13 and 14 should be available soon, though as of this writing is doesn’t appear to be available yet.

Apple has historically been pretty good about providing security updates to older macOS releases—you can expect them for about two years after the operating system is replaced by a newer version. But for iOS and iPadOS, the company used to stop updating older versions entirely after releasing a new one. This changed back in 2021, when Apple decided to start providing some security-only updates to older iOS versions to help people who were worried about installing an all-new potentially buggy OS upgrade.

Eventually, iOS and iPadOS users will need to install iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 to keep getting security updates. But for the handful of older iPads that can’t run iPadOS 18, Apple will usually keep supporting those specific devices with security updates for a year or two. Apple was still providing new security updates for 2022’s iOS 16 as recently as August, keeping older devices like the iPhone 8 and the first-generation iPad Pros reasonably secure even though they were incapable of running newer operating systems.

Also releasing today: New iOS 17, macOS 14 updates for the upgrade-averse Read More »

macos-15-sequoia:-the-ars-technica-review

macOS 15 Sequoia: The Ars Technica review

macOS 15 Sequoia: The Ars Technica review

Apple

The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as “the AI one” in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of “Apple Intelligence” features.

That’s funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that’s coming out today. A lot of it is coming “later this fall” in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won’t be ready until after that—rumors say image generation won’t be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet.

But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. Apple Intelligence is sucking up a lot of the media oxygen, but in most other ways, this is a typical 2020s-era macOS release, with one or two headliners, several quality-of-life tweaks, and some sparsely documented under-the-hood stuff that will subtly change how you experience the operating system.

The AI-free version of the operating system is also the one that all users of the remaining Intel Macs will be using, since all of the Apple Intelligence features require Apple Silicon. Most of the Intel Macs that ran last year’s Sonoma release will run Sequoia this year—the first time this has happened since 2019—but the difference between the same macOS version running on different CPUs will be wider than it has been. It’s a clear indicator that the Intel Mac era is drawing to a close, even if support hasn’t totally ended just yet.

macOS 15 Sequoia: The Ars Technica review Read More »

final-trailer-for-venom:-the-last-dance-introduces-knull,-god-of-symbiotes

Final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance introduces Knull, god of symbiotes

The end is near —

“This world can’t survive if you stay together.”

Tom Hardy returns for one more round as host of an alien symbiote, in Venom: The Last Dance.

Tom Hardy is back for one last hurrah as investigative journalist Eddie Brock, host of an alien symbiote that imparts superhuman powers to its host, in the final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance. The trailer has all the wise-cracking “buddy cop” vibes and fast-paced action we’ve come to expect from the franchise, including a trip to Vegas where Venom discovers the addictive allure of slot machines. But there are also hints of an inevitable bittersweet farewell—because this time they’ll face off against Knull, god-creator of the symbiotes.

(Spoilers for Venom and Venom: There Will Be Carnage below.)

As previously reported, the first film in the franchise served as an origin story for our antihero. A bioengineering firm called the Life Foundation discovered a comet covered with symbiotic lifeforms and brought four samples back to Earth. Brock’s then-fiancée, Anne Weying (Michelle Williams), showed him classified documents revealing that the foundation was conducting human/symbiote experiments. The symbiotes needed oxygen-breathing hosts to survive, but they invariably ended up killing those hosts.

Brock ended up infected with one of the symbiotes, named Venom. Venom revealed that the symbiotes are intent on taking over Earth by possessing/devouring all humans, but Brock ultimately struck up a bargain with Venom, and they decided to protect Earth instead. Together, they took on Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), infected with a symbiote called Riot. Naturally, they won.

Venom was released in October 2018 and was roundly panned by critics, several of whom specifically bemoaned the lack of a Spider-Man connection. Audiences, however, begged to differ. Venom racked up $856 million globally. Hardy had already committed to two sequels, and a mid-credits sequence featured Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady taunting Brock (who was interviewing Kasady for a story) from his cell. Kasady vowed to escape and bring “carnage,” leaving little doubt as to the villain’s identity in a sequel.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed by Andy Serkis, was released in 2021, also to mixed reviews and a strong box office, grossing $506.9 million worldwide. That film ended with Brock and Venom victorious over Kasady and heading off for a well-deserved vacation while the duo pondered their next steps. In a post-credits scene, Venom told Brock that he and his fellow symbiotes knew about other universes, at which point there was blinding light, and they were transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe—a direct result of the spell cast by Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home. (At the time, there were plans for a future crossover film with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.)

“With you to the end”

Serkis was unable to return as director for The Last Dance, but Kelly Marcel, who wrote the screenplay for Carnage, stepped in to make her directorial debut. Per the official premise:

In Venom: The Last Dance, Tom Hardy returns as Venom, one of Marvel’s greatest and most complex characters, for the final film in the trilogy. Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie’s last dance.

In addition to Hardy, Peggy Lu is back as convenience store owner Mrs. Chen, who befriended Eddie and Venom early on. Also returning is Stephen Graham as Detective Patrick Mulligan, who figured prominently in There Will Be Carnage and is now infected with his own symbiote named Toxin.

Cristo Fernández will reprise his role as the bartender in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man. Rhys Ifans played Curt Connors/Lizard in that film but will play a man named Martin in The Last Dance. Is there a secret connection? We’ll have to wait and see. (It seems after two outings, Williams won’t be reprising her role as Anne in the third and final film.) The cast also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as a soldier intent on capturing Venom; and Alanna Ubach and Clark Backo in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

Venom: The Last Dance hits theaters on October 25, 2024.

Listing image by YouTube/Sony Pictures

Final trailer for Venom: The Last Dance introduces Knull, god of symbiotes Read More »

google-rolls-out-voice-powered-ai-chat-to-the-android-masses

Google rolls out voice-powered AI chat to the Android masses

Chitchat Wars —

Gemini Live allows back-and-forth conversation, now free to all Android users.

The Google Gemini logo.

Enlarge / The Google Gemini logo.

Google

On Thursday, Google made Gemini Live, its voice-based AI chatbot feature, available for free to all Android users. The feature allows users to interact with Gemini through voice commands on their Android devices. That’s notable because competitor OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode feature of ChatGPT, which is similar to Gemini Live, has not yet fully shipped.

Google unveiled Gemini Live during its Pixel 9 launch event last month. Initially, the feature was exclusive to Gemini Advanced subscribers, but now it’s accessible to anyone using the Gemini app or its overlay on Android.

Gemini Live enables users to ask questions aloud and even interrupt the AI’s responses mid-sentence. Users can choose from several voice options for Gemini’s responses, adding a level of customization to the interaction.

Gemini suggests the following uses of the voice mode in its official help documents:

Talk back and forth: Talk to Gemini without typing, and Gemini will respond back verbally.

Brainstorm ideas out loud: Ask for a gift idea, to plan an event, or to make a business plan.

Explore: Uncover more details about topics that interest you.

Practice aloud: Rehearse for important moments in a more natural and conversational way.

Interestingly, while OpenAI originally demoed its Advanced Voice Mode in May with the launch of GPT-4o, it has only shipped the feature to a limited number of users starting in late July. Some AI experts speculate that a wider rollout has been hampered by a lack of available computer power since the voice feature is presumably very compute-intensive.

To access Gemini Live, users can reportedly tap a new waveform icon in the bottom-right corner of the app or overlay. This action activates the microphone, allowing users to pose questions verbally. The interface includes options to “hold” Gemini’s answer or “end” the conversation, giving users control over the flow of the interaction.

Currently, Gemini Live supports only English, but Google has announced plans to expand language support in the future. The company also intends to bring the feature to iOS devices, though no specific timeline has been provided for this expansion.

Google rolls out voice-powered AI chat to the Android masses Read More »

court-clears-researchers-of-defamation-for-identifying-manipulated-data

Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data

Evidence-supported conclusions aren’t defamation —

Harvard, however, will still face trial over how it managed the investigation.

A formal red brick building on a college campus.

Enlarge / Harvard Business School was targeted by a faculty member’s lawsuit.

Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations.

But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation—which is probably a very good thing for science.

Data and defamation

The researchers who had been sued, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons, run a blog called Data Colada where, among other things, they note cases of suspicious-looking data in the behavioral sciences. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, they published a series of blog posts describing an apparent case of fabricated data in four different papers published by the high-profile researcher Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School.

The researchers also submitted the evidence to Harvard, which ran its own investigation that included interviewing the researchers involved and examining many of the original data files behind the paper. In the end, Harvard determined that research misconduct had been committed, placed Gino on administrative leave and considered revoking her tenure. Harvard contacted the journals where the papers were published to inform them that the underlying data was unreliable.

Gino then filed suit alleging that Harvard had breached their contract with her, defamed her, and interfered with her relationship with the publisher of her books. She also added defamation accusations against the Data Colada team. Both Harvard and the Data Colada collective filed a motion to have all the actions dismissed, which brings us to this new decision.

Harvard got a mixed outcome. This appears to largely be the result that the Harvard Business School adopted a new and temporary policy for addressing research misconduct when the accusations against Gino came in. This, according to the court, leaves questions regarding whether the university had breached its contract with her.

However, most of the rest of the suit was dismissed. The judge ruled that the university informing Gino’s colleagues that Gino had been placed on administrative leave does not constitute defamation. Nor do the notices requesting retractions sent to the journals where the papers were published. “I find the Retraction Notices amount ‘only to a statement of [Harvard Business School]’s evolving, subjective view or interpretation of its investigation into inaccuracies in certain [data] contained in the articles,’ rather than defamation,” the judge decided.

Colada in the clear

More critically, the researchers had every allegation against them thrown out. Here, the fact that the accusations involved evidence-based conclusions, and were presented with typical scientific caution, ended up protecting the researchers.

The court cites precedent to note that “[s]cientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation” and concludes that the material sent to Harvard “constitutes the Data Colada Defendants’ subjective interpretation of the facts available to them.” Since it had already been determined that Gino was a public figure due to her high-profile academic career, this does not rise to the standard of defamation.

And, while the Data Colada team was pretty definitive in determining that data manipulation had taken place, its members were cautious about acknowledging that the evidence they had did not clearly indicate Gino was the one who had performed the manipulation.

Finally, it was striking that the researchers had protected themselves by providing links to the data sources they’d used to draw their conclusions. The decision cites a precedent that indicates “by providing hyperlinks to the relevant information, the articles enable readers to review the underlying information for themselves and reach their own conclusions.”

So, overall, it appears that, by couching their accusations in the cautious language typical of scientific writing, the researchers ended up protecting themselves from accusations of defamation.

That’s an important message for scientists in general. One of the striking developments of the last few years has been the development of online communities where scientists identify and discuss instances of image and data manipulation, some of which have ultimately resulted in retractions and other career consequences. Every now and again, these activities have resulted in threats of lawsuits against these researchers or journalists who report on the issue. Occasionally, suits get filed.

Ultimately, it’s probably good for the scientific record that these suits are unlikely to succeed.

Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data Read More »

unicode-16.0-release-with-new-emoji-brings-character-count-to-154,998

Unicode 16.0 release with new emoji brings character count to 154,998

right there with you, bags-under-eyes emoji —

New designs will roll out to phones, tablets, and PCs over the next few months.

Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji.

Enlarge / Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji.

The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard, the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998.

Of those 5,185 characters, the ones that will get the most attention are the eight new emoji characters, including a shovel, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish (formally classified as “root vegetable”), a harp, a purple splat that evokes the ’90s Nickelodeon logo, and a flag for the island of Sark. The standout, of course, is “face with bags under eyes,” whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into. Per usual, Emojipedia has sample images that give you some idea of what these will look like when they’re implemented by various operating systems, apps, and services.

Unicode 16.0 also adds support for seven new modern and historical scripts: the West African Garay alphabet; the Gurung Khema, Kirat Rai, Ol Onal, and Sunuwar scripts from Northeast India and Nepal; and historical Todhri and Tulu-Tigalari scripts from Albania and Southwest India, respectively.

We last got new emoji in 2023’s Unicode 15.1 update, though all of these designs were technically modifications of existing emoji rather than new characters—many emoji, most notably for skin and hair color variants, use a base emoji plus a modifier emoji, combined together with a “zero-width joiner” (ZWJ) character that makes them display as one character instead. The lime emoji in Unicode 15.1 was actually a lemon emoji combined with the color green; the phoenix was a regular bird joined to the fire emoji. This was likely because 15.1 was only intended as a minor update to 2022’s Unicode 15.0 standard.

Most of the Unicode 16.0 emoji, by contrast, are their own unique characters. The one exception is the Sark flag emoji; flag sequences are created by placing two “regional indicator letters” directly next to each other and don’t require a ZWJ character between them.

Incorporation into the Unicode standard is only the first step that new emoji and other characters take on their journey from someone’s mind to your phone or computer; software makers like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others need to design iterations that fit with their existing spin on the emoji characters, they need to release software updates that use the new characters, and people need to download and install them.

We’ve seen a few people share on social media that the Unicode 16.0 release includes a “greenwashing” emoji designed by Shepard Fairey, an artist best known for the 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” poster. This emoji, and an attempt to gin up controversy around it, is all an elaborate hoax: there’s a fake Unicode website announcing it, a fake lawsuit threat that purports to be from a real natural gas industry group, and a fake Cory Doctorow article about the entire “controversy” published in a fake version of Wired. These were all published to websites with convincing-looking but fake domains, all registered within a couple of weeks of each other in August 2024. The face-with-bags-under-eyes emoji feels like an appropriate response.

Unicode 16.0 release with new emoji brings character count to 154,998 Read More »

music-industry’s-1990s-hard-drives,-like-all-hdds,-are-dying

Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying

The spinning song —

The music industry traded tape for hard drives and got a hard-earned lesson.

Hard drive seemingly exploding in flames and particles

Enlarge / Hard drives, unfortunately, tend to die not with a spectacular and sparkly bang, but with a head-is-stuck whimper.

Getty Images

One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry’s vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are entirely unreadable.

Music industry publication Mix spoke with the people in charge of backing up the entertainment industry. The resulting tale is part explainer on how music is so complicated to archive now, part warning about everyone’s data stored on spinning disks.

“In our line of work, if we discover an inherent problem with a format, it makes sense to let everybody know,” Robert Koszela, global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives at Iron Mountain, told Mix. “It may sound like a sales pitch, but it’s not; it’s a call for action.”

Hard drives gained popularity over spooled magnetic tape as digital audio workstations, mixing and editing software, and the perceived downsides of tape, including deterioration from substrate separation and fire. But hard drives present their own archival problems. Standard hard drives were also not designed for long-term archival use. You can almost never decouple the magnetic disks from the reading hardware inside, so that if either fails, the whole drive dies.

There are also general computer storage issues, including the separation of samples and finished tracks, or proprietary file formats requiring archival versions of software. Still, Iron Mountain tells Mix that “If the disk platters spin and aren’t damaged,” it can access the content.

But “if it spins” is becoming a big question mark. Musicians and studios now digging into their archives to remaster tracks often find that drives, even when stored at industry-standard temperature and humidity, have failed in some way, with no partial recovery option available.

“It’s so sad to see a project come into the studio, a hard drive in a brand-new case with the wrapper and the tags from wherever they bought it still in there,” Koszela says. “Next to it is a case with the safety drive in it. Everything’s in order. And both of them are bricks.”

Entropy wins

Mix’s passing along of Iron Mountain’s warning hit Hacker News earlier this week, which spurred other tales of faith in the wrong formats. The gist of it: You cannot trust any medium, so you copy important things over and over, into fresh storage. “Optical media rots, magnetic media rots and loses magnetic charge, bearings seize, flash storage loses charge, etc.,” writes user abracadaniel. “Entropy wins, sometimes much faster than you’d expect.”

There is discussion of how SSDs are not archival at all; how floppy disk quality varied greatly between the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; how Linear Tape-Open, a format specifically designed for long-term tape storage, loses compatibility over successive generations; how the binder sleeves we put our CD-Rs and DVD-Rs in have allowed them to bend too much and stop being readable.

Knowing that hard drives will eventually fail is nothing new. Ars wrote about the five stages of hard drive death, including denial, back in 2005. Last year, backup company Backblaze shared failure data on specific drives, showing that drives that fail tend to fail within three years, that no drive was totally exempt, and that time does, generally, wear down all drives. Google’s server drive data showed in 2007 that HDD failure was mostly unpredictable, and that temperatures were not really the deciding factor.

So Iron Mountain’s admonition to music companies is yet another warning about something we’ve already heard. But it’s always good to get some new data about just how fragile a good archive really is.

Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying Read More »

evgo-and-gm-reveal-their-new-fast-charger-experience

EVgo and GM reveal their new fast charger experience

opens next year —

The layout and canopy are similar to a gas station.

A GM Energy/EVgo charging station

Enlarge / Are you getting gas station vibes? Because I’m getting gas station vibes.

GM

Several years ago, General Motors and EVgo teamed up to build out a network of fast chargers for electric vehicles. As Tesla proved, giving your customers confidence that they won’t be stranded on a long drive with a dead battery really helps sell EVs, and GM’s sometimes-shifting target currently stands at deploying 2,850 chargers. Today, the two partners showed off their concept for an improved charging experience, which they say will come to a number of flagship charger locations around the US.

The most obvious thing to notice is the large canopy, co-branded with EVgo and GM Energy, similar to those found at virtually every gas station across the country. The gas station vibes don’t end there, either. Ample lighting and security cameras are meant to combat the sometimes sketchy vibes that can be found at other banks of (often dimly lit) fast chargers after dark, located as they often are in the far reaches of a mall parking lot.

And the chargers are sited between the charging bays the same way gas pumps are located, allowing a driver to pull through. Most fast chargers require a driver to pull in or back into the space even when the chargers are located to one side, a fact that complicates long-distance towing with an EV.

The chargers will be rated for 350 kW so that 800 V EVs can minimize their charge times. And while the announcement did not mention charging plugs, given GM’s adoption of the J3400 (originally NACS) plug from the next model year and EVgo’s embrace of the new connnector, it seems likely to expect both J3400 and CCS1 plugs on each charger.

“The future of EV charging is larger stall count locations, high-power charging, and designing around features that customers love—such as pull-through access, canopies, and convenient amenities. Through this next evolution of EVgo and GM’s esteemed collaboration, the future of EV charging is here,” said Dennis Kish, EVgo’s president.

“Ensuring that our customers have seamless access to convenient and reliable charging is imperative, and this effort will take it to the next level,” said GM Energy VP Wade Sheffer. “Through our collaborations with industry leaders like EVgo, we continue to innovate and expand customer-centric charging solutions that will meet the evolving needs of EV drivers across the country.”

The first site opens next year

There won’t be a fixed number of chargers at each location—the companies say most sites will have “up to 20 stalls,” with some locations featuring significantly more. We also don’t know where the sites will be—GM and EVgo say “coast to coast, including in metropolitan areas in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Texas” and that the first location should open in 2025.

2025 was the original time frame for the full deployment of the GM Energy/EVgo fast charging network, which was also supposed to total 3,250 plugs by then—at least, that was the goal when Ars wrote about it in 2022. It appears as if the reduction in plugs freed up funds to pay for these fancier flagships.

That said, the network is not vaporware. EVgo and GM Energy deployed their 1,000th charger last summer and say they’ll reach the 2,000th by the end of this year. Additionally, the two are working together with Pilot Travel Centers to deploy another 2,000 chargers across the US at Pilot and Flying J travel centers—by the end of 2023, the first 17 of these were operational, with the goal of 200 sites by the end of this year.

EVgo and GM reveal their new fast charger experience Read More »

android-apps-are-blocking-sideloading-and-forcing-google-play-versions-instead

Android apps are blocking sideloading and forcing Google Play versions instead

Only way in now is through the roof —

“Select Play Partners” can block unofficial installation of their apps.

Image from an Android phone, suggesting user

Enlarge / It’s never explained what this collection of app icons quite represents. A disorganized app you tossed together by sideloading? A face that’s frowning because it’s rolling down a bar held up by app icons? It’s weird, but not quite evocative.

You might sideload an Android app, or manually install its APK package, if you’re using a custom version of Android that doesn’t include Google’s Play Store. Alternately, the app might be experimental, under development, or perhaps no longer maintained and offered by its developer. Until now, the existence of sideload-ready APKs on the web was something that seemed to be tolerated, if warned against, by Google.

This quiet standstill is being shaken up by a new feature in Google’s Play Integrity API. As reported by Android Authority, developer tools to push “remediation” dialogs during sideloading debuted at Google’s I/O conference in May, have begun showing up on users’ phones. Sideloaders of apps from the British shop Tesco, fandom app BeyBlade X, and ChatGPT have reported “Get this app from Play” prompts, which cannot be worked around. An Android gaming handheld user encountered a similarly worded prompt from Diablo Immortal on their device three months ago.

Google’s Play Integrity API is how apps have previously blocked access when loaded onto phones that are in some way modified from a stock OS with all Google Play integrations intact. Recently, a popular two-factor authentication app blocked access on rooted phones, including the security-minded GrapheneOS. Apps can call the Play Integrity API and get back an “integrity verdict,” relaying if the phone has a “trustworthy” software environment, has Google Play Protect enabled, and passes other software checks.

Graphene has questioned the veracity of Google’s Integrity API and SafetyNet Attestation systems, recommending instead standard Android hardware attestation. Rahman notes that apps do not have to take an all-or-nothing approach to integrity checking. Rather than block installation entirely, apps could call on the API only during sensitive actions, issuing a warning there. But not having a Play Store connection can also deprive developers of metrics, allow for installation on incompatible devices (and resulting bad reviews), and, of course, open the door to paid app piracy.

Google

“Unknown distribution channels” blocked

Google’s developer video about “Automatic integrity protection” (at the 12-minute, 24-second mark on YouTube) notes that “select” apps have access to automatic protection. This adds an automatic checking tool to your app and the “strongest version of Google Play’s anti-tamper protection.” “If users get your protected app from an unknown distribution channel,” a slide in the presentation reads, “they’ll be prompted to get it from Google Play,” available to “select Play Partners.”

Last year, Google introduced malware scanning of sideloaded apps at install time. Google and Apple have come out against legislation that would broaden sideloading rights for smartphone owners, citing security and reliability concerns. European regulators forced Apple earlier this year to allow for sideloading apps and app stores, though with fees and geographical restrictions in place.

Android apps are blocking sideloading and forcing Google Play versions instead Read More »