Author name: Kris Guyer

modder-re-creates-game-boy-advance-games-using-the-audio-from-crash-sounds

Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds

Game boy Advance, gaming, gba, hardware hacking, Nintendo, Pokémon, pokemon emerald, Reverse-engineering, ROMs, sound files / /

To truly catch them all —

Create a bootable, working Pokémon game by recording it crash multiple times.

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Game Boy Advance, modded, on display

Enlarge / Andrew Cunningham’s modded and restored Game Boy Advance could, with enough time, sing out all the data loaded into a cartridge.

Andrew Cunningham

Sometimes, a great song can come from great pain. The Game Boy Advance (GBA), its software having crashed nearly two hours ago, will, for example, play a tune based on the game inside it. And if you listen closely enough—using specialty hardware and code—you can tell exactly what game it was singing about. And then theoretically play that same game.

This was discovered recently by TheZZAZZGlitch, whose job is to “sadistically glitch and hack the crap out of Pokémon games.” It’s “hardly a ready-to-use solution,” the modder notes, as it requires a lot of tuning specific to different source formats. So while there are certainly easier ways to get GBA data from a cartridge, none make you feel quite so much like an audio datamancer.

TheZZAZZGlitch’s demonstration of re-creating Game Boy Advance ROM data using the sounds from a crashing system.

After crashing a GBA and recording it over four hours, the modder saw some telltale waveforms in a sound file at about the 1-hour, 50-minute mark. Later in the sound-out, you can hear the actual instrument sounds and audio samples the game contains, played in sequence. Otherwise, it’s 8-bit data at 13,100 Hz, and at times, it sounds absolutely deranged.

“2 days of bugfixing later,” the modder had a Python script ready that could read the audio from a clean recording of the GBA’s crash dump. Did it work? Not without more troubleshooting. One issue with audio-casting ROM data is that there are large sections of 0-byte data in the ROM, which are hard to parse as mute sounds. After running another script that realigned sections based on their location in the original ROM, the modder’s ROM was 99.76 percent accurate but “still didn’t boot tho.” TheZZAZZGlitch later disclaimed that, yes, this is technically using known ROM data to surface unknown data, or “cheating,” but there are assumptions and guesses one could make if you were truly doing this blind.

The next fix was to refine the sound recording. By recording three times and merging them with a “majority vote” algorithm, their accuracy notched up to 99.979 percent. That output ROM booted—but with glitched text and a title screen crash. After seven different recordings are meshed and filtered for blank spaces, they achieve 100 percent parity. That’s about the halfway point of the video; you should watch the rest to learn how it works on physical hardware, how it works with a different game (an ARM code mystery in a replica cartridge), and how to get the best recordings, including the use of a “cursed adapter” that mixes down to one channel the ugly way.

Modder re-creates Game Boy Advance games using the audio from crash sounds Read More »

will-demand-for-the-volkswagen-id-buzz-outstrip-supply?

Will demand for the Volkswagen ID Buzz outstrip supply?

Cars, Volkswagen, Volkswagen ID. Buzz, vw, VW ID. Buzz / /

can’t you see I’m Buzzy? —

The reimagined Microbus appeals to a far wider crowd than just car enthusiasts.

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A pair of Euro-spec ID Buzzes by a river in Copenhagen

Enlarge / You don’t have to get a two-tone paint job on your ID Buzz, but it helps.

Jonathan Gitlin

Volkswagen’s forthcoming electric minivan couldn’t be better named. Simply put, in the years that we’ve been writing about cars, nothing on four wheels has created quite as much buzz as the VW ID Buzz with its adorably retro styling. But if all that attention translates into actual buyers, the electric microbus may end up being oversubscribed, at least to begin with.

Charlie Hall, chairman of the Volkswagen National Dealer Advisory Council, says the US may only see 20,000 ID Buzzes imported this year, according to an interview today in Automotive News. “It sounds like we may have the opportunity for additional European capacity if we need it, but we’re still trying to sort out where the demand is going to be globally,” Hall said.

Years in the making

VW’s plan to resurrect the iconic T1 Microbus goes back to 2001 during the industry’s flirtation with retro car design. While vehicles like the new VW Beetle, Ford’s porthole-a-licious Thunderbird, and the ever-customizable Chrysler PT Cruiser made it to production, the Microbus concept never did.

The first VWs went on sale in the US almost exactly 75 years ago.

Enlarge / The first VWs went on sale in the US almost exactly 75 years ago.

Volkswagen

A decade later, VW had another go. This time, the Bulli concept was a battery electric vehicle (Bulli being the German nickname for the bus). But the specs for BEV concepts from 2011 look rather underwhelming with the advantage of time. The Bulli made do with a 40 kWh battery pack—described by Wired at the time as “huge”—which gave it a range of 185 miles (297 km), with a top speed of 87 mph (140 km/h) and a 0–62 (0–100 km/h) time of 11.5 seconds.

2016 brought us the VW BUDD-e, the third concept to reimagine the T1 in 15 years. VW was mired in its diesel emissions scandal at the time, and the company had found religion, pushing the fast-forward button on its development of alternative powertrains. VW took BUDD-e to CES that year, and the company said we would “see a car that looks a lot like this” using a new “modular electric toolkit” (also known as MEB, or Modularer E-Antriebs-Baukasten in German) by 2020.

Less than 18 months after that, the fourth and final concept appeared. Now bearing the ID Buzz name, it stole the 2017 New York International Auto Show, complete with a magnetically levitating gnome on the dashboard.

2020 was perhaps an ambitious goal for the ID Buzz to go into production; that was the year that VW’s first MEB-based BEV, called the ID.3, went on sale in Europe. The coronavirus pandemic didn’t help timelines, but the following year, the US saw its first MEB VW, the ID.4 crossover. But the question most people had was, “when’s the Buzz coming?”

Production starts

I do wonder how well this light-colored interior trim will stand up to family life.

Enlarge / I do wonder how well this light-colored interior trim will stand up to family life.

Volkswagen

In Europe, the answer was 2022, although with a shorter, two-row ID Buzz variant that won’t cross the Atlantic. We spent a day driving the Euro-spec Buzz, which was a definite attention-getter, if a little expensive—as much as 64,581 euro ($67,981 in 2022) for the five-seater passenger model before incentives.

The US-spec Buzz has a wheelbase that’s about 10 inches longer, and VW has used that extra space to add a larger-capacity battery (91 kWh) and a third row of seats. There’s also a new rear motor that’s larger and more powerful than before, giving a total output of 330 hp (246 kW), and VW did some small tweaks, like adding sliding windows and ventilation to the rear compartment.

VW tells Ars that the ID Buzz will “most likely” arrive here in North America in the fourth quarter of 2024, and we’ll have to wait until Q3 to find out how much the US version will cost. The automaker wouldn’t be drawn on production or supply numbers, so for now, we just have Hall’s comments to go by. Here’s hoping a mismatch between supply and demand doesn’t result in hefty markups at the dealerships.

Will demand for the Volkswagen ID Buzz outstrip supply? Read More »

elizabeth-holmes-barred-from-federal-health-programs-for-90-years

Elizabeth Holmes barred from federal health programs for 90 years

Elizabeth Holmes, exclusion, federal health program, fraud, health, HHS, Science / /

Excluded —

The former Theranos CEO is barred from receiving payments from federal health program.

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Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced and incarcerated founder of the infamous blood-testing startup Theranos—is barred from participating in federal health programs for nine decades, according to an announcement from the health department Friday.

The exclusion means that Holmes is barred from receiving payments from federal health programs for services or products, which significantly restricts her ability to work in the health care sector. It also prevents her from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs. With a 90-year term, the exclusion is lifelong for Holmes, who is currently 39.

The exclusion was announced by Inspector General Christi Grimm of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.

Holmes is serving an 11-year, three-month sentence for defrauding investors of her blood-testing startup, Theranos, which she founded in 2003. At the time, Holmes claimed to have developed proprietary technology that could perform hundreds of medical tests using just a small drop of blood from a finger prick. The remarkable claim helped her drive the company’s valuation to a stunning $9 billion in 2014, and set up lucrative partnerships. But, in reality, the technology never worked. The company collapsed in 2018, and she was convicted of fraud in 2022.

In today’s announcement, the health department noted that the statutory minimum on exclusions for convictions like Holmes’ is just five years. But other factors are considered when determining the term, including how long the fraud took place, the length of the prison sentence, and the amount of restitution ordered. In addition to her 11-year prison sentence, Holmes was ordered to pay approximately $452,047,200 in restitution, the HHS-OIG noted.

“Accurate and dependable diagnostic testing technology is imperative to our public health infrastructure. False statements related to the reliability of these medical products can endanger the health of patients and sow distrust in our health care system,” Grimm said. “As technology evolves, so do our efforts to safeguard the health and safety of patients, and HHS-OIG will continue to use its exclusion authority to protect the public from bad actors.”

HHS-OIG also excluded former Theranos President Ramesh Balwani from federal health programs for 90 years. Balwani was also convicted of fraud and is serving a nearly 13-year sentence.

Elizabeth Holmes barred from federal health programs for 90 years Read More »

wordpad-out;-80gbps-usb-support-and-other-win-11-features-in-testing-this-month

WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month

AI, chatgpt, copilot, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11 / /

Can’t stop won’t stop —

Microsoft’s next batch of Windows 11 feature updates is taking shape.

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Green USB-C cable

Windows 11’s big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system’s timeline for technical support and security updates but didn’t add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month’s Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF’s typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they’ll be included the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel’s 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We’d expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log into Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

The Copilot panel will only open by default on screens that meet minimum size and resolution requirements, things that Windows already detects and takes into account when setting your PC’s default zoom and showing available Snap Layouts, among other things. Microsoft says it’s testing the feature on screens that are 27 inches or larger with 1,920 or more horizontal pixels (for most screens, this means a minimum resolution of 1080p). For PCs without Copilot, including those that haven’t been signed into a Microsoft account, the feature will continue to be absent.

The

Enlarge / The “richer weather experience on the Lock screen,” seen in the bottom-center of this screenshot.

Microsoft

Other additions to the Dev Channel builds this month include easy Snipping Tool editing for Android screenshots from phones that have been paired to your PC, custom user-created voice commands, the ability to share URLs directly to services like WhatsApp and Gmail from the Windows share window, a new Weather widget for the Windows lock screen, and app install notifications from the Microsoft store.

Microsoft hasn’t publicized any of the changes it has made to its Canary channel builds since January 4—this is typical since it changes the fastest, and the tested features are the most likely to be removed or significantly tweaked before being released to the public. Most of the significant additions from that announcement have since made it out to the other channels, but there are a couple of things worth noting. First, there’s a new Energy Saver taskbar icon for desktop PCs without batteries, making it easier to tell when the feature is on without creating confusion. And the venerable WordPad app, originally marked for deletion in September, has also been removed from these builds and can’t be reinstalled.

Microsoft doesn’t publish Windows feature updates on an exact cadence beyond its commitment to deliver one with a new version number once per year in the fall. Last year’s first major batch of Windows 11 additions rolled out at the end of February, so a late winter or early spring launch window for the next batch of features could make sense.

WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month Read More »

big-pharma-hiked-the-price-of-775-drugs-this-year-so-far:-report

Big Pharma hiked the price of 775 drugs this year so far: Report

brand name drugs, drug pricing, health, merck, mounjaro, Ozempic, Pharmaceutical industry, sanders, Science / /

up and up —

Meanwhile, Senate to consider subpoenas to force pharma CEOs testify on prices.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Enlarge / Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Pharmaceutical companies have raised the list prices of 775 brand-name drugs so far this year, with a median increase of 4.5 percent, exceeding the rate of inflation, according to an analysis conducted for the Wall Street Journal.

Drugmakers typically raise prices at the start of the year, and Ars reported on January 2 that companies had plans to raise the list prices of more than 500 prescription medications. The updated analysis, carried out by 46brooklyn Research, a nonprofit drug-pricing analytics group, gives a clearer picture of pharmaceutical companies’ activities this month.

High-profile drugs Ozempic (made by Novo Nordisk) and Mounjaro (Eli Lilly), both used for Type II diabetes and weight loss, were among those that saw price increases. Ozempic’s list price went up 3.5 percent to nearly $970 for a month’s supply, while Mounjaro went up 4.5 percent to almost $1,070 a month. The annual inflation rate in the US was 3.4 percent for 2023.

The asthma medication Xolair (Novartis) and the Shingles vaccine Shingrix (GlaxoSmithKline) saw price increases above 7.5 percent, the Wall Street Journal noted. The highest prices were around 10 percent. For some drugs, the single-digit percentage increases can equal hundreds or even thousands of dollars. For instance, the cystic fibrosis treatment Trikafta (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) went up 5.9 percent to $26,546 for a 28-day supply. And the psoriasis therapy Skyrizi (AbbVie) saw an increase of 5.8 percent, bringing the price to $21,017.

Lawmakers’ responses

The list price is typically not the price that people and health insurance plans pay, and pharmaceutical companies say they sometimes don’t make more money from raising list prices. Instead, they argue that the higher list prices allow them to negotiate large discounts and rebates from pharmacy middle managers, whose revenue and dealings are opaque. Drugmakers who spoke with the Wall Street Journal attributed this year’s price hikes to market conditions, inflation, and the value the drugs provide. Overall, the tactics increase the cost of health care.

The hefty hikes come as the federal government is trying to crack down on the high prices of drugs in the US, which pays far more for prescription medications than other high-income countries. Last year, Medicare began, for the first time, negotiating the prices of 10 costly drugs. The negotiations were a provision of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And a provision in 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act now forces drugmakers to pay Medicaid large rebates if their drug price increases outpace inflation.

But, it’s not enough to provide Americans with relief from high drug prices. On Thursday, Stat reported that Senate health committee chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) took steps to subpoena pharmaceutical CEOs regarding a Congressional investigation on high drug prices. Sanders invited Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato, Merck CEO Robert Davis, and Bristol Myers Squibb CEO Chris Boerner to testify—but only Boerner agreed, and only on the condition that he would not be the only CEO testifying. The trio were invited to a hearing titled “Why Does the United States Pay, By Far, The Highest Prices In The World For Prescription Drugs?,” which was originally scheduled for January 25. Now, Sanders will hold a committee vote on January 31 on whether to issue subpoenas for the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck. If the committee votes in favor, it will be the first time it has issued a subpoena in more than 40 years.

All three companies have sued the federal government over the new regulations requiring them to negotiate prices with Medicare. J&J and Merck accused Sanders of calling them to testify as retribution for their legal action.

“You have opted not for the most effective way of securing information relevant to the Committee’s important work on drug prices, but for a broad-ranging public spectacle, with witnesses you can question on pending litigation you disagree with,” Merck wrote to Sanders.

Sanders called the two CEOs’ refusal to testify “absolutely unacceptable.”

Big Pharma hiked the price of 775 drugs this year so far: Report Read More »

everything-we-learned-today-about-vision-pro-configurations,-specs,-and-accessories

Everything we learned today about Vision Pro configurations, specs, and accessories

Apple, Apple M2, apple vision pro, M2, spatial computing, Tech / /

Spatial computing —

It’ll cost you $200 to double the storage of the base configuration.

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Apple's Vision Pro headset.

Enlarge / Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

Samuel Axon

Apple’s Vision Pro went up for preorder this morning at 8 am ET. As expected, shipment dates for preorders quickly backed up to March as initial supply was accounted for. Regardless of whether you’re in for the start or taking a wait-and-see approach with Apple’s ultra-pricey new device, though, we have access to a little more information about the device than we did before thanks to updates to the Apple Store website.

The product page for Vision Pro reveals configurations and pricing, and a new specs page clarifies answers to some questions we’ve had for a while now.

You’ll find all the relevant new information below. We’ve also updated our “What to expect from Apple Vision Pro” roundup with new information from the specs page.

Hardware specifications

As previously rumored, the Vision Pro has a variant of the M2 chip with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency), a 10-core GPU, and a 16-core NPU. It has 16GB of unified memory.

There’s also the new R1 chip, which Apple claims achieves “12‑millisecond photon‑to‑photon latency” and 256GB/s memory bandwidth.

As for the display, we didn’t learn too much new here. As Apple has stated before, the two displays push 23 million pixels combined. They support refresh rates of 90 Hz, 96 Hz, and 100 Hz, and support playback of 24 fps and 30 fps video. Apple claims 92 percent DCI-P3.

The specs page also reveals that Vision Pro supports AirPlay at up to 1080p on iPhones, Macs, Apple TVs, and AirPlay-capable smart TVs.

Storage comes in three configurations. The base 256GB model costs $3,499. Bumping up to 512GB adds $200, and going to 1TB adds another $200.

The device’s camera supports both spatial photo and video capture, and Apple lists the specs as an 18 mm, ƒ/2.00 aperture at 6.5 stereo megapixels.

Additionally, there are six world-facing tracking cameras, four eye-tracking cameras, a TrueDepth sensor, a lidar scanner, four inertial measurement units, a flicker sensor, and an ambient light sensor. The headset authenticates the user by looking at their iris.

On the audio front, we’re looking at a six-mic array for audio capture. Apple isn’t super specific on the specs page about the speakers, noting only that the device offers “spatial audio with dynamic head tracking” like AirPods Pro and “personalized Spatial Audio and audio ray tracing.” Vision Pro also supports low-latency, lossless audio with the second generation of AirPods Pro.

Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3.

Apple promises two hours of battery life for “general use” and says video watching can be up to 2.5 hours. The specs page also clarifies that Vision Pro can be used while charging the battery, which is something Apple had previously stated but then confusingly removed from its online documentation. This page seems to settle that.

The headset weighs between 21.2 and 22.9 ounces (600–650 g) depending on the light seal and headband used. That doesn’t include the battery pack, which weighs 353 g. That means Apple made the headset substantially lighter by pushing the battery to a separate unit.

Accessories and additional purchase options

As with its other hardware products, Apple offers AppleCare+ for Vision Pro. It’s $499 for two years, or $24.99 per month for perpetual coverage.

That price might seem awfully steep, but Apple lists the repair fees for the device on its service page and repairs without AppleCare+ will be even pricier—up to $2,399, depending on what’s broken. Any damage to the front glass panel will cost $799 to fix.

  • Apple Vision Pro Travel Case.

    Apple

  • Apple Vision Pro battery.

    Apple

  • Apple Vision Pro Solo Knit Band.

    Apple

  • Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band.

    Apple

  • Apple Vision Pro Light Seal.

    Apple

  • Apple Vision Pro Light Cushion.

    Apple

  • ZEISS Optical Inserts.

    Apple

  • Belkin Battery Holder for Apple Vision Pro.

    Apple

There are also a few optional accessories or replacement components you can buy, including:

  • Apple Vision Pro Travel Case ($199) – A pill-shaped case that contains and protects the headset along with its attachments and battery.
  • Apple Vision Pro Battery ($199) – A replacement for the battery that comes with the headset. You could also buy one of these to double your capacity while traveling, like for a long flight.
  • Apple Vision Pro Light Seal ($199) – The soft part of the headset that conforms to your face when you put the device on your head. This includes two light seal cushions, each in a different size.
  • Apple Vision Pro Light Seal Cushion ($29) – This attaches to the end of the light seal, and is intended to be removed for cleaning. It’s available in four sizes: N, N+, W, and W+.
  • Apple Vision Pro Solo Knit Band ($99) – One of two variations of the band that keeps Vision Pro on your head. This is the version that simply wraps around the back of your head. It’s available in three sizes: small, medium, and large.
  • Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band ($99) – The version that wraps around both the back of your head and the top. This also comes in small, medium, and large.
  • ZEISS Optical Inserts ($99+) – Lens inserts for those who wear glasses, as glasses won’t fit inside the device. Available in prescription and reader variations. You don’t need these if you wear soft contact lenses.
  • Belkin Battery Holder for Apple Vision Pro ($49.95) – A third-party accessory for either attaching Vision Pro’s battery to your belt or pants, or securing it with a cross-body strap.

Everything we learned today about Vision Pro configurations, specs, and accessories Read More »

convicted-murderer,-filesystem-creator-writes-of-regrets-to-linux-list

Convicted murderer, filesystem creator writes of regrets to Linux list

Biz & IT, file systems, Hans Reiser, Linux, Linux kernel, linux kernel mailing list, LKML, ReiserFS, Tech / /

Pre-release notes —

“The man I am now would do things very differently,” Reiser says in long letter.

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Hans Reiser letter to Fredrick Brennan

Enlarge / A portion of the cover letter attached to Hans Reiser’s response to Fredrick Brennan’s prompt about his filesystem’s obsolescence.

Fredrick Brennan

With the ReiserFS recently considered obsolete and slated for removal from the Linux kernel entirely, Fredrick R. Brennan, font designer and (now regretful) founder of 8chan, wrote to the filesystem’s creator, Hans Reiser, asking if he wanted to reply to the discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML).

Reiser, 59, serving a potential life sentence in a California prison for the 2006 murder of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, wrote back with more than 6,500 words, which Brennan then forwarded to the LKML. It’s not often you see somebody apologize for killing their wife, explain their coding decisions around balanced trees versus extensible hashing, and suggest that elementary schools offer the same kinds of emotional intelligence curriculum that they’ve worked through in prison, in a software mailing list. It’s quite a document.

What follows is a relative summary of Reiser’s letter, dated November 26, 2023, which we first saw on the Phoronix blog, and which, by all appearances, is authentic (or would otherwise be an epic bit of minutely detailed fraud for no particular reason). It covers, broadly, why Reiser believes his system failed to gain mindshare among Linux users, beyond the most obvious reason. This leads Reiser to detail the technical possibilities, his interpersonal and leadership failings and development, some lingering regrets about dealings with SUSE and Oracle and the Linux community at large, and other topics, including modern Russian geopolitics.

“LKML and Slashdot.org seem like reasonable places to send it (as of 2006)”

In a cover letter, Reiser tells Brennan that he hopes he can use OCR to import his lengthy letter and asks him to use his best judgment in where to send his reply. He also asks, if he has time, Brennan might send him information on “Reiser5, or any interesting papers on other Filesystems, compression (especially Deep Learning based compression), etc.”

Then Reiser addresses the kernel mailing list directly—very directly:

I was asked by a kind Fredrick Brennan for my comments that I might offer on the discussion of removing ReiserFS V3 from the kernel. I don’t post directly because I am in prison for killing my wife Nina in 2006.

I am very sorry for my crime–a proper apology would be off topic for this forum, but available to any who ask.

A detailed apology for how I interacted with the Linux kernel community, and some history of V3 and V4, are included, along with descriptions of what the technical issues were. I have been attending prison workshops, and working hard on improving my social skills to aid my becoming less of a danger to society. The man I am now would do things very differently from how I did things then.

ReiserFS V3 was “our first filesystem, and in doing it we made mistakes, because we didn’t know what we were doing,” Reiser writes. He worked through “years of dark depression” to get V3 up to the performance speeds of ext2, but regrets how he celebrated that milestone. “The man I was then presented papers with benchmarks showing that ReiserFS was faster than ext2. The man I am now would stat his papers … crediting them for being faster than the filesystems of other operating systems, and thanking them for the years we used their filesystem to write ours.” It was “my first serious social mistake in the Linux community, and it was completely unnecessary.”

Reiser asks that a number of people who worked on ReiserFS be included in “one last release” of the README, and to “delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited.” He says prison has changed him in conflict resolution and with his “tendency to see people in extremes.”

Reiser extensively praises Mikhail Gilula, the “brightest mind in his generation of computer scientists,” for his work on ReiserFS from Russia and for his ideas on rewriting everything the field knew about data structures. With their ideas on filesystems and namespaces combined, it would be “the most important refactoring of code ever.” His analogy at the time, Reiser wrote, was Adam Smith’s ideas of how roads, waterways, and free trade affected civilization development; ReiserFS’ ideas could similarly change “the expressive power of the operating system.”

Convicted murderer, filesystem creator writes of regrets to Linux list Read More »

study-finds-bigfoot-sightings-correlate-with-black-bear-populations

Study finds bigfoot sightings correlate with black bear populations

bears, bigfoot, crytozoology, Science, zoology / /

Bearly believable —

The big conclusion: “If bigfoot is there, it could be a bear.”

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A black bear standing on its hind paws surrounded by greenery in a forest with a blurry background

Enlarge / Black bears will frequently stand on their hind legs, which may increase their misidentification.

The idea that North America is home to a completely unknown primate species just doesn’t seem to go away. Years after everyone started walking around with high-quality cameras in their phones, there still haven’t been any clear images of a bigfoot. But that hasn’t stopped a steady flow of purported sightings.

Now, someone named Floe Foxon has followed up on an earlier analysis and checked for factors that could influence the frequency of bigfoot sightings throughout North America. The results suggest that there’s a strong correlation between sightings and the local black bear population—for every 1,000 bears, the frequency of bigfoot sightings goes up by about 4 percent.

Big (foot) data

It’s easy to see how black bears and bigfoot could be mistaken for each other. Despite their name, the bears come in a wide range of colors, from a golden brown through to a deep reddish one, as well as their namesake black. They’re also large animals and will frequently stand on their hind legs to get a better view of their surroundings. They also frequent the forested areas that are supposedly bigfoot’s favored terrain. Foxon even quotes a reported bigfoot sighting as saying that pictures were obtained but, “One of the pictures looks like a bear.”

Earlier work had used data from the Pacific Northwest to show that the presence of bears correlated with the frequency of bigfoot sightings. But Foxon decided to expand the analysis, bringing in the rest of the US and Canada.

The most recent comprehensive, peer-reviewed data on black bear populations dates from 2006, so the analysis was performed using data from that year. Even so, a number of states and provinces had to be excluded. Sadly for Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, there were no known black bear populations in those states in 2006. And good population numbers weren’t available for Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, and Nova Scotia. So, while the work is more comprehensive than the Pacific Northwest-only analysis, there were still considerable gaps.

Data for sightings came from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which maintains a geo-tagged database of reported sightings. National census data was used to determine the human populations in these areas, and estimates of the amount of forested area were also obtained from the Canadian and US governments.

All of these were combined into two different models. In both models, a larger human population was expected to increase the probability of sightings simply due to increased opportunity. Since bigfoot sightings tend to occur in forested areas—and it’s hard to see how a large primate could hide in most other terrains—forests and sightings were also expected to correlate.

Where the bears are

The key difference between the models was whether they included the local black bear population or not. The model with a bear variable provided a much better fit to the data, suggesting that mistaken identity is a factor in bigfoot sightings.

Overall, Foxon found that, with forested areas and the human population taken into account, there’s about one bigfoot sighting for every 5,000 black bears. Each additional 1,000 bears raises the probability of a sighting by about 4 percent. Hence, the conclusion that “if bigfoot is there, it could be a bear.”

That’s not to say bears account for everything. Foxon notes that there are states without a known breeding population of bears that still have bigfoot sightings. And the human population levels could contribute as a source of mistaken identities in addition to raising the opportunity for sightings.

The paper also suggests that this finding could be helpful for bear conservation, as the frequency of bigfoot sightings may provide a proxy measure for the number of black bears present and thus could provide an independent method of tracking population changes.

Journal of Zoology, 2024. DOI: 10.1111/jzo.13148  (About DOIs).

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inventor-of-ntp-protocol-that-keeps-time-on-billions-of-devices-dies-at-age-85

Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85

1985, ARPANET, Biz & IT, Dave Mills, FTP, internet history, Internet pioneers, network time protocol, NSFNET, NTP, Ping, retrotech, Tech, The Internet, Vint Cerf / /

A legend in his own time —

Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.

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A photo of David L. Mills taken by David Woolley on April 27, 2005.

Enlarge / A photo of David L. Mills taken by David Woolley on April 27, 2005.

David Woolley / Benj Edwards / Getty Images

On Thursday, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf announced that Dr. David L. Mills, the inventor of Network Time Protocol (NTP), died peacefully at age 85 on January 17, 2024. The announcement came in a post on the Internet Society mailing list after Cerf was informed of David’s death by Mills’ daughter, Leigh.

“He was such an iconic element of the early Internet,” wrote Cerf.

Dr. Mills created the Network Time Protocol (NTP) in 1985 to address a crucial challenge in the online world: the synchronization of time across different computer systems and networks. In a digital environment where computers and servers are located all over the world, each with its own internal clock, there’s a significant need for a standardized and accurate timekeeping system.

NTP provides the solution by allowing clocks of computers over a network to synchronize to a common time source. This synchronization is vital for everything from data integrity to network security. For example, NTP keeps network financial transaction timestamps accurate, and it ensures accurate and synchronized timestamps for logging and monitoring network activities.

In the 1970s, during his tenure at COMSAT and involvement with ARPANET (the precursor to the Internet), Mills first identified the need for synchronized time across computer networks. His solution aligned computers to within tens of milliseconds. NTP now operates on billions of devices worldwide, coordinating time across every continent, and has become a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure.

As detailed in an excellent 2022 New Yorker profile by Nate Hopper, Mills faced significant challenges in maintaining and evolving the protocol, especially as the Internet grew in scale and complexity. His work highlighted the often under-appreciated role of key open source software developers (a topic explored quite well in a 2020 xkcd comic). Mills was born with glaucoma and lost his sight, eventually becoming completely blind. Due to difficulties with his sight, Mills turned over control of the protocol to Harlan Stenn in the 2000s.

A screenshot of Dr. David L. Mills' website at the University of Delaware captured on January 19, 2024.

Enlarge / A screenshot of Dr. David L. Mills’ website at the University of Delaware captured on January 19, 2024.

Aside from his work on NTP, Mills also invented the first “Fuzzball router” for NSFNET (one of the first modern routers, based on the DEC PDP-11 computer), created one of the first implementations of FTP, inspired the creation of “ping,” and played a key role in Internet architecture as the first chairman of the Internet Architecture Task Force.

Mills was widely recognized for his work, becoming a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1999 and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2002, as well as receiving the IEEE Internet Award in 2013 for contributions to network protocols and timekeeping in the development of the Internet.

Mills received his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1971. At the time of his death, Mills was an emeritus professor at the University of Delaware, having retired in 2008 after teaching there for 22 years.

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Amazon’s purchase of Roomba-maker iRobot likely to be blocked by EU

amazon irobot, amazon roomba, irobot roomba, Policy / /

Amazon/iRobot merger —

Amazon was told at meeting that deal is likely to be rejected, WSJ reports.

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A store shelf holds several boxes that contain Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Getty Images | SOPA Images

European Union regulators intend to block Amazon’s attempt to purchase Roomba-maker iRobot, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

European Commission competition officials “met Thursday with representatives from Amazon to discuss the deal,” the Journal wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. “Amazon was told during the meeting that the deal was likely to be rejected,” according to one of the Journal’s sources.

Amazon announced the $1.7 billion deal in August 2022. The EC has a February 14 deadline to reach a decision. European officials have said that Amazon could restrict the availability of Roomba rivals on the Amazon online retail store.

A move to block the iRobot purchase “would still need formal approval from the commission’s 27 top political leaders before a final decision can be issued,” the WSJ article said. “Historically, that process is unlikely to overrule a recommendation from the bloc’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager.”

Amazon declined to comment when contacted by Ars today but pointed us toward a statement by lobby group Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA). “If the objective is to have more competition in the home robotics sector, this makes no sense,” CCIA President Matt Schruers said. “There is no plausible risk to competition from a US retailer acquiring a struggling US vacuum maker in a sector overtaken by dynamic Chinese manufacturers. Blocking this deal may well leave consumers with fewer options, and regulators cannot sweep that fact under the rug.”

EC told Amazon deal may restrict competition

In November 2023, the EC announced that it had “informed Amazon of its preliminary view that its proposed acquisition of iRobot may restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners.” The EC sent a statement of objections, a formal step in the process that could lead to a merger being blocked.

“Amazon may have the ability and the incentive to foreclose iRobot’s rivals,” the EC’s November statement said. The regulatory body said that Amazon could punish rival sellers of robot vacuum cleaners (RVCs) on its online store.

Possible Amazon tactics cited by the EC included “delisting rival RVCs; reducing visibility of rival RVCs in both non-paid (i.e., organic) and paid results (i.e., advertisements) displayed in Amazon’s marketplace; limiting access to certain widgets (e.g. ‘other products you may like’) or certain commercially attractive product labels (e.g. ‘Amazon’s choice’ or ‘Works With Alexa’); and/or directly or indirectly raising the costs of iRobot’s rivals to advertise and sell their RVCs on Amazon’s marketplace.”

Last week, Amazon missed a deadline to offer European officials remedies to address their concerns about the deal’s impact on competition.

As of this writing, iRobot’s stock price was down about 27 percent today. Amazon’s stock price was up around 1 percent.

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google-search-is-losing-the-fight-with-seo-spam,-study-says

Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

Google, google search, spam, Tech / /

Just wait until more AI sites arrive —

Study finds “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam.”

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Google search is losing the fight with SEO spam, study says

It’s not just you—Google Search is getting worse. A new study from Leipzig University, Bauhaus-University Weimar, and the Center for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence looked at Google search quality for a year and found the company is losing the war against SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spam.

The study, first spotted by 404media, “monitored Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo for a year on 7,392 product review queries,” using queries like “best headphones” to study search results. The focus was on product review queries because the researchers felt those searches were “particularly vulnerable to affiliate marketing due to its inherent conflict of interest between users, search providers, and content providers.”

Overall, the study found that “the majority of high-ranking product reviews in the result pages of commercial search engines (SERPs) use affiliate marketing, and significant amounts are outright SEO product review spam.” Search engines occasionally update their ranking algorithms to try to combat spam, but the study found that “search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO spam” and that there are “strong correlations between search engine rankings and affiliate marketing, as well as a trend toward simplified, repetitive, and potentially AI-generated content.”

The study found “an inverse relationship between a page’s optimization level and its perceived expertise, indicating that SEO may hurt at least subjective page quality.” Google and its treatment of pages is the primary force behind what does and doesn’t count as SEO, and to say Google’s guidelines reduce subjective page quality is a strike against Google’s entire ranking algorithm.

The bad news is that it doesn’t seem like this will get better any time soon. The study points out generative AI sites one or two times, but that was only in the past year. The elephant in the room is that generative AI is starting to be able to completely automate the processes of SEO spam. Some AI content farms can scan a human-written site, use it for “training data,” rewrite it slightly, and then stave off the actual humans with more aggressive SEO tactics. There are already people bragging about doing AI-powered “SEO heists” on X (formerly Twitter). The New York Times is taking OpenAI to court for copyright infringement, and a class-action suit for book publishers calls ChatGPT and LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI) “industrial-strength plagiarists.” Artists are in the same boat from tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Most websites do not have the legal capacity to take on an infinite wave of automated spam sites enabled by these tools. Google’s policy is to not penalize AI-generated content in its search results.

A Google spokesperson responded to the study by pointing out that Google is still doing better than its competition: “This particular study looked narrowly at product review content, and it doesn’t reflect the overall quality and helpfulness of Search for the billions of queries we see every day. We’ve launched specific improvements to address these issues – and the study itself points out that Google has improved over the past year and is performing better than other search engines. More broadly, numerous third parties have measured search engine results for other types of queries and found Google to be of significantly higher quality than the rest.”

This post was updated at 6: 00PM ET to add a statement from Google.

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ford’s-ceo-gives-us-a-ride-in-the-crazy-electric-transit-supervan-4.2

Ford’s CEO gives us a ride in the crazy electric transit Supervan 4.2

Cars, electric van, Ford Performance, Ford Supervan, racing, vantime / /

Its a bird, its a train, no it’s supervan —

You don’t often get the head of the company giving rides in an EV demonstrator.

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Ford Supervan 4.2 lights up its tires in the pitlane

Enlarge / Everyone loves a good van, and Supervan 4.2 is a very good van.

Ford

Concorde, NC—On Wednesday, Ford Performance held an official launch event for the 2024 season. The new GT3 version of the Mustang makes its competition debut at next weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, marking the start of a new approach to racing for the Blue Oval, one that involves selling customer race cars as a business line, not just a factory team. While we were there, we also rode in a new electric racing truck demonstrator, but the main reason I got on the short flight down to Charlotte was to check out one of the most delightfully weird race cars of the past few years, the Ford Transit Supervan 4.2.

It’s the latest in a line of wild demonstrator vehicles based on the venerable Transit van, Ford’s commercial workhorse in Europe and, increasingly, the US. Ford started making an electric version of the Transit a couple of years ago, and when we drove that electric van, I might have driven a couple of the engineers and PR people to tears by repeatedly asking them, “So, are you going to make a Supervan version of this, too?”

The first Supervan dates back to 1970 (or maybe 1971), when someone had the bright idea to stick a Transit body shell on a Ford GT40 race car chassis as a way to promote the new van. The 1980s and 1990s saw two new Supervans, this time using Formula 1 engines. Now that EVs are the new hotness, the appeal of an electric Supervan probably seemed obvious.

  • It’s definitely Transit-shaped.

    Ford

  • Supervan has a new livery compared to its Pikes Peak run.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • The wings and diffuser create more than 4,400 lbs (2,000 kg) of downforce.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • OK, you get less cargo volume than in a production Transit, thanks to the aerodynamic styling.

    Jonathan Gitlin

Ford worked with an Austrian motorsports company, STARD, to develop Supervan 4, which made its debut at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed. Last year, a heavily revised version, now called Supervan 4.2, was built for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, one of the more challenging races still held today and an event where EVs excel—unlike internal combustion engines, electric motors and batteries don’t lose any power as they climb into thin air above 14,000 feet (4,270 m).

Like the previous Supervans, this did not start with a production vehicle that got souped up; it’s a custom spaceframe with composite body panels that just happens to look mostly Transit-shaped, albeit with some wild aerodynamic appendages to keep all four wheels pressed to the ground. It does have some cargo capacity behind the two-seat cockpit, though, and a tow hook at the back. Strapped into the passenger seat, I couldn’t help noticing an infotainment screen from a Mustang Mach-E.

Supervan 4.2 is actually a little less powerful than the 2022 version, going from a 1,973-hp (1,471 kW) four-motor arrangement to a 1,408-hp (1,050 kW) three-motor configuration for Pikes Peak. The motors draw energy from a 50 kWh battery pack, complete with a CCS fast charging port capable of up to 350 kW fast charging. (At Charlotte Motor Speedway, the mechanics and engineers used a portable 60 kW fast-charger connected to a 600 kWh storage battery in the paddock to top up Supervan between sessions.)

  • The air jack (left) and CCS (right) charging port. The native port is CCS2, because Supervan 4.2 was built in Europe, but the crew had an adapter that lets them charge at US CC1 DC charging stations if necessary.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • I love the production infotainment screen from the Ford Mustang Mach-E, and the fact that it still uses the same user interface, even if the software modes are different.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • Yes, that’s a tow hitch.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • Supervan’s tires were probably warmer than the rest of us on a very chilly day in Charlotte.

    Jonathan Gitlin

Getting a ride in something cool like Supervan 4.2 is an occupational hazard in this job. What’s less common is being chauffeured for that ride by the company’s CEO. But our driver was indeed Ford CEO Jim Farley, who is rather handy behind the wheel.

“We don’t want to make generic vehicles at Ford anymore,” Farley told us that morning before explaining that the company’s new strategy is for Ford Performance to become a sustainable business and not just a marketing strategy that ebbs and flows depending on whether there are enough motorsport fans in the C-suite. After all, Ford got its start after Henry Ford proved his new creation in competition.

But Farley explained that he also learned from the late Ken Block that “he taught us… that in this world of enthusiasts, digital content is super-important for customers and brands. And so we continue to commit to doing demonstrators like the Supervan 4 and others that are there for one reason: to have fun. To generate digital content so people can just enjoy having fun in vehicles, and some of them don’t make any sense, like Supervan 4.”

My ride was brutal—1,900 lb-ft (2,576 Nm) has that effect—and rather brief—it took about 90 seconds to leave the pit lane, negotiate the relatively tight infield at Charlotte, then return back to the pits, where Farley brought us to a halt with a nicely executed 180-degree turn.

Come for a short ride with us in Ford’s Supervan 4.2 EV demonstrator.

Supervan 4.2’s next adventure is going to be a trip Down Under—Ford is taking it to Mount Panorama in Australia to put on demonstration runs ahead of this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour race. It won’t be defending its class win at Pikes Peak in June, but Farley told us to expect a different, as-yet unrevealed EV demonstrator for the 2024 event.

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