Paul Patrick – Page 12

Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report

climate change, doe, Energy, EPA, greenhouse gasses, lawsuit, Policy, Science / Paul Patrick / September 13, 2025

Meanwhile, Congress is trying to keep serious scientists from weighing in.

While the Trump administration has continued to refer to efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change as a scam, it has done almost nothing to counter the copious scientific evidence that demonstrates that climate change is real and doing real damage to the citizens of the US. The lone exception has been a draft Department of Energy report prepared by a handful of carefully chosen fringe figures that questioned the mainstream understanding of climate change. The shoddy work and questionable conclusions of that report were so extensive that an analysis of it required over 450 pages to detail all of its shortcomings.

But its shortcomings may not have been limited to the science, as a lawsuit alleges that its preparation violated a law that regulates the activities of federal advisory panels. Now, in an attempt to avoid dealing with that lawsuit, the Department of Energy is claiming that it dissolved the committee that prepared the report, making the lawsuit moot.

Meanwhile, Congress is also attempting to muddy the waters. In response to the DOE report, the National Academies of Science announced that it would prepare a report describing the current state of climate science. Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight have responded by announcing an investigation of the National Academies “for undermining the EPA.”

The vanishing committee

As we noted in our original coverage, the members of the advisory group that prepared the DOE report were carefully chosen for having views that are well outside the mainstream of climate science. Based on their past public statements, they could be counted on to produce a report that would question the severity of climate change and raise doubts about whether we had any evidence it was happening. The report they produced went beyond that by suggesting that the net effect of our carbon emissions was likely to be a positive for humanity.

Not only was that shoddy science, but a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that it was likely illegal. Groups like the one that wrote the report, the suit alleges, fall under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which (among other things) dictates that these groups must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” rather than be selected in order to reinforce a single point of view.

The “among other things” that the law dictates is that the advisory groups have public meetings that are announced in advance, be chartered with a well-defined mission, and all of their records be made available to the public. In contrast, nobody within the Department of Energy, including the contrarians who wrote the report, acknowledged the work they were doing publicly until the day the draft report was released.

The suit alleges that the work of this group fell under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and the group violated the act in all of the above ways and more. The act asks the courts to force the DOE to disclose all the relevant records involved with the preparation of the report, and to cease relying on it for any regulatory actions. That’s significant because the Environmental Protection Agency cited it in its attempts to roll back its prior finding that greenhouse gases posed a danger to the US public.

This week, the DOE responded in court by claiming the panel that produced the report had been dissolved, making the suit moot. That does not address the fact that the EPA is continuing to rely on the report in its attempts to argue there’s no point in regulating greenhouse gases. It also leaves the report itself in a weird limbo. Its release marked the start of a period of public comment, and said comments were supposed to be considered during the revisions that would take place before the draft was finalized.

Failure to complete the revision process would leave the EPA vulnerable to claims that it’s relying on an incomplete draft report for its scientific justifications. So, while the DOE’s tactics may protect some of its internal documents, it may ultimately cause larger problems for the Trump administration’s agenda.

Attacking the academies

Earlier this year, we were critical of the US’s National Academies of Science for seemingly refusing to respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. That reticence appeared to end in August with the release of the DOE climate report and the announcement that the EPA was using that report as the latest word on climate science, which it argued had changed considerably since the initial EPA decisions on this issue in 2009.

In response, the National Academies announced that it would fast-track a new analysis of the risks posed by greenhouse gases, this one done by mainstream scientists instead of a handful of fringe figures. The goal was to get it done before the EPA closed its public comment period on its proposal to ignore greenhouse gases.

Obviously, this poses a threat to the EPA’s planned actions, which apparently prompted Republicans in Congress to step in. Earlier this month, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), announced he was investigating the National Academies for preparing this report, calling it “a blatant partisan act to undermine the Trump Administration.”

Comer has also sent a letter to the National Academies, outlining his concerns and demanding a variety of documents. Some of these are pretty convoluted: “The study is led by a National Academies member who serves as an external advisor to the Science Philanthropy Alliance, which has ties to the left-wing group Arabella Advisors through the New Venture Fund, an organization that promotes a variety of progressive causes and funds major climate litigation,” Comer says, suggesting … it’s not entirely clear what. Another member of the study panel had the audacity to endorse former President Biden for his climate policies. Separately, Comer says he’s concerned about the source of the funds that will pay for this study.

Some of Comer’s demands are consistent with this, focusing on funding for this review. But he goes well beyond that, demanding a list of all the National Academies’ sources of funding, as well as any internal communications about this study. He’s also going on a bit of a witch hunt within the federal government, demanding any communications the NAS has had with government employees regarding the DOE’s report or the EPA’s greenhouse gas decisions.

It’s pretty clear that Comer recognizes that any unbiased presentation of climate science is going to undercut the EPA’s rationale for reversing course on greenhouse gas regulations. So, he’s preparing in advance to undercut that presentation by claiming it’s rife with conflicts of interest—and he’s willing to include “supporting politicians who want to act on climate change” as a conflict.

All of this maneuvering is taking place before the EPA has even finalized its planned U-turn on greenhouse gases, a step that will undoubtedly trigger additional investigations and lawsuits. In many ways, this is likely to reflect many of these parties laying the groundwork for the legal fight to come. And, while some of this is ostensibly about the state of the science that has supported the EPA’s past policy decisions, it’s clear that the administration and its supporters are doing their best to minimize science’s impact on their preferred course of action.

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

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Over three decades later, Nintendo remembers the Virtual Boy exists

3D, Classic, gaming, Nintendo, retro, stereoscopic, virtual boy / Paul Patrick / September 12, 2025

It’s been a long wait

Nintendo says 14 Virtual Boy titles will be made available to Switch Online Expansion Pack subscribers over time. The eventual software list includes cult-classic Nintendo first-party titles like Virtual Boy Wario Land and Mario’s Tennis, as well as extremely hard-to-find third-party games like Jack Bros. and Virtual Bowling, which can command hundreds or thousands of dollars for an original cartridge.

The fact that Nintendo is officially acknowledging these games at all is a bit surprising after all these years of neglect. Even the 3DS Virtual Console—which would have seemed like a natural place for a Virtual Boy resurgence—never got official support for the retro system. Instead, fans of Nintendo’s least successful console (it’s estimated to have sold fewer than 800,000 units) have either had to track down rare original hardware and software or resort to unofficial emulators (one of which recently added full-color support beyond the usual red tints displayed by the original console).

The Nintendo Switch will eventually host a large majority of the entire library of official software released for the Virtual Boy. Credit: Nintendo

The Switch-docking strategy Nintendo is using for stereoscopy here is more than a bit reminiscent of 2019’s Nintendo Labo VR, which slotted the original Switch into a lens-equipped cardboard sleeve for a low-resolution, bare bones introduction to the idea of VR. At the time, we called that experiment a “fine, serviceable, decent” introduction to virtual reality seemingly designed for small children.

Today’s Virtual Boy announcement, of course, comes with a hefty added dose of nostalgia and represents a long-overdue official recognition of an often-ignored part of Nintendo history. For all its faults, the Virtual Boy was a prime example of Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy of “lateral thinking with withered technology,” as Ars’ own Benj Edwards laid out in detail when contributing to a book-length treatise on the console.

Over three decades later, Nintendo remembers the Virtual Boy exists Read More »

New pathway engineered into plants lets them suck up more CO₂

biochemistry, Biology, carbon dioxide, metabolism, photosynthesis, plants, Science / Paul Patrick / September 12, 2025

And, well, it worked remarkably well. The plants carrying all the genes for the McG cycle weighed two to three times as much as control plants that only had some of the genes. They had more leaves, the leaves themselves were larger, and the plants produced more seeds. In a variety of growing conditions, the plants with an intact McG cycle incorporated more carbon, and they did so without increasing their water uptake.

Having a two-carbon output also worked as expected. By feeding the plants radioactive bicarbonate, they were able to trace the carbon showing up in the expected molecules. And imaging confirmed that the plants were making so many lipids that their cells formed internal pockets containing nothing but fatty materials. Triglyceride levels increased by factors of 100 or more.

So, by a variety of measures, the plants actually did better with an extra pathway for fixing carbon. There are a number of cautions, though. For starters, it’s not clear whether what we’re learning using a small weed will also apply to larger plants or crops, or really anything much beyond Arabidopsis at the moment. It could be that having excess globs of fat floating around the cell has consequences for something like a tree. Plants grown in a lab also tend to be provided with a nutrient-rich soil, and it’s not clear whether all of this would apply to a range of real-world conditions.

Finally, we can’t say whether all the excess carbon these plants are sucking in from the atmosphere would end up being sequestered in any useful sense. It could be that all the fat would just get oxidized as soon as the plant dies. That said, there are a lot of approaches to making biofuel that rely on modifying the fats found in plants or algae. It’s possible that this can eventually help make biofuels efficient so they actually have a net positive effect on the climate.

Regardless of practical impacts, however, it’s pretty amazing that we’ve now reached the point where we can fundamentally rewire a bit of metabolism that has been in operation for billions of years without completely messing up plants.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adp3528 (About DOIs).

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Small, affordable, efficient: A lot to like about the 2026 Nissan Leaf

car review, Cars, First drive, nissan leaf / Paul Patrick / September 12, 2025

Smaller on the outside, bigger on the inside, and it goes farther on a single charge.

The color is called Seabreeze Blue Pearl, and isn’t it great it’s not silver or grey? Credit: Nissan

SAN DIEGO—The original Nissan Leaf was a car with a mission. Long before Elon Musk set his sights on Tesla selling vast numbers of electric vehicles to the masses, then-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn wanted Nissan to shift half a million Leafs a year in the early 2010s. That didn’t quite come to pass, but by 2020, it had sold its 500,000th EV, which went from its factory in Sunderland, England, to a customer in Norway.

Pioneering though they were, both first- and second-generation Leafs were compromised. They were adapted from existing internal combustion engine platforms, with the electric powertrains shoehorned inside. The cars’ real handicaps were a lack of liquid cooling for the battery packs. Like an older Porsche 911, the Leaf was air-cooled, albeit with none of the collector value. That’s all changed for generation three.

The new Leaf is built on a dedicated EV platform shared with Nissan’s alliance partners Renault and Mitsubishi, and which we have previously seen used to good effect in the Nissan Ariya. The benefits of using a platform purpose-designed for electric propulsion are obvious from the space efficiency. The new car is 3 inches (75 mm) shorter from the outside, but offers nearly 9 inches (221 mm) more rear leg room (yes, really), making it a much more suitable place to put adults.

Is it a sedan? Is it a crossover? Nissan

Although the new Leaf is 0.8 inches (20 mm) wider, it’s a few mm shorter and has a lower drag coefficient (Cd 0.26), so the overall effect is a more efficient shape. The nose bears a family resemblance to the Ariya, and the body style is sort of a crossover, sort of a fastback sedan, depending on your frame of reference.

Here and there, you’ll notice iconography that calls out the automaker’s name: two vertical stripes (ni in Japanese), then three horizontal ones (san in Japanese). I’m told that if you look, there are some ginkgo leaves as Easter eggs hidden in the design, but I did not find them during our hours with the car.

For now, there’s one powertrain option: a 214 hp (160 kW), 262 lb-ft (355 Nm) motor (packaged together with its inventor and reducer), powered by a 75 kWh (net) lithium-ion battery pack. The battery pack is integrated into the car’s thermal management system, which also loops in the chiller, the motor, and the HVAC system. It can fast-charge at up to 150 kW via the NACS port built into its left side (or using a CCS1 adapter here) and should charge from 10–80 percent in 35 minutes. On the driver’s side is a J1772 port for AC charging that can also work bidirectionally to send up to 1.5 kW of AC power to an external device via an adapter.

Nissan said it kept the J1772 port because it expects to sell the new Leaf to a lot of legacy customers who already have their own home charger, and it wanted to minimize the number of adapters necessary.

Let’s talk trim levels

How far it goes on a single charge depends on which trim level you’re in. Nissan brought some preproduction Leaf Platinum+ models to the first drive. These are very highly equipped, with an electrochromic dimming roof, the LED head- and taillights you see in the images, a couple of AC outlets inside the car (with the ability to power up to 3.4 kW across two outlets), and a better sound system. But it also comes on 19-inch alloy wheels, and as we all know, bigger wheels mean smaller range. Indeed, the Leaf Platinum+ has a range of 259 miles (417 km) on a single charge.

The $34,230 SV+ loses the panoramic roof and the interior V2L outlets, and you’ll have to manually open and close the tailgate at the back. And the alloy wheels are an inch smaller, which increases the range to 288 miles (464 km).

But it keeps the heated front seats and the twin 14.3-inch displays (one for your instruments, one for infotainment) with Google built in. For the Platinum+ and SV+, that means onboard Google Maps with a route planner that will take into account your state of charge and which can precondition the battery if it knows your destination is a fast charger.

19-inch Nissan Leaf wheel — Big wheels have their drawbacks. Credit: Nissan

Nissan is only including the Google connected services for the first year, though—after that, owners will have to pay a monthly fee, although Nissan wasn’t able to tell us how much that is. Conveniently, both wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included and will continue to work after the year’s trial. And you can manually precondition the battery for charging, but automatic preconditioning via the infotainment system will not work without an active subscription.

The SV+ and Platinum can also be optioned with a heat pump ($300).

But the $29,990 S+ cannot. And it lacks the twin displays of the car you see in the images, which means no automatic battery preconditioning, although like the more expensive trims it does still have wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You also get 18-inch steel wheels with aero hubcaps, and a range of 303 miles (487 km) on a single charge. See what I mean about wheel size and range?

How does it drive?

A Nissan Leaf — Turning over a new leaf. Credit: Nissan

I’d very much like to spend some time in an S+ and an SV+, if only to see what difference a larger tire sidewall makes to the ride comfort. On 19-inch wheels, the ride was firm and translated bumps and divots through the suspension and into the cabin. There wasn’t much body roll, but your progress will be limited by the grip available to the low rolling-resistance tires—push too hard and the result is plenty of understeer.

But this is not a “push too hard” kind of EV. With just 214 hp, it accelerates quickly enough to get out of its own way, but it’s telling that Nissan did not share a 0–60 mph time during the briefing. (If I had to guess, I’d say between 5–6 seconds, which used to be considered very rapid.)

It has four drive modes—Eco, Normal, Sport, and Personal—with three different throttle maps and two steering weights to choose from. And there are now four levels of lift-off regenerative braking, which you toggle on with the left steering wheel paddle and off with the right paddle. You can’t turn regen completely off, so like General Motors’ family of EVs, the Leaf will not really coast and loses a few mph even on downhill stretches, as it converts some kinetic energy to electrical energy.

There’s also an e-Step button on the dash, which turns on maximum regen braking and may add some friction braking to the mix. Unlike using the paddles, this setting should remain on the next time you start the car. But neither of the full regen settings is able to bring the car to a complete stop—we were told that the feature is viewed with suspicion in some markets, including Japan, and like pop-out door handles, it appears that China is in the process of banning one-pedal driving entirely.

There are plenty of real buttons and switches in here. Nissan

Both e-Step and max-regen work very well in traffic or on a twisty road, where they simulate engine braking. But given the choice, I would use the paddles to control regen braking. That’s because, like the Mercedes EQ family of EVs, in this mode the brake pedal moves toward the firewall as the car slows. The engineer’s excuse for this is that the pedal moves by the same distance it would have moved had the driver used it to slow the car by the amount it has just slowed. But my rebuttal is that the brake pedal should always be where I expect to find it in an emergency, and if that’s an inch farther away, that’s not cool.

That’s really a minor gripe, though; no one says you have to push the e-Step switch on the dash. Slightly more annoying—but only slightly—is the wind noise from the sideview mirrors, which is noticeable even at 45 mph (72 km/h), although easily drowned out if you’re listening to something on the audio system.

For a daily driver, the third-generation Leaf is rather compelling, especially the S+, although the lack of heated front seats in that model might be too much of a deal-breaker, considering how important seat heaters are to EV efficiency in winter. (Because it’s more efficient to heat the driver than warm all the air in the car.)

The SV+ is more likely to be the sweet spot—this trim level can have the Seabreeze paint you see here or a white pearl, which are alternatives to the four shades available to the S+. The Hyundai Kona EV and Kia Niro EV are probably the Leaf’s two closest rivals, both of which are compelling cars. And the forthcoming Kia EV3 will probably also be cross-shopped. All of which is good news if you’re looking for a smaller, affordable electric car.

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

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Ex-DVD company employee gets 4 years for leaking Spider-Man Blu-ray

Blu-ray, dvd, movie leaks, movie piracy, online piracy, Policy, Spider-Man: no way home / Paul Patrick / September 12, 2025

Hale, a 38-year-old with prior felony convictions for armed robbery, risked a potential sentence of 15 years for these crimes, but he reduced his sentence to a maximum of five years through his plea deal. At the time, the DOJ credited him for taking “responsibility,” arguing that he deserved a maximum reduction partly because the total “infringement amount” was likely no more than $40,000, not the “tens of millions” the DOJ claimed in today’s release.

Ultimately, Hale pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement, while agreeing to pay restitution (the exact amount is not clarified in the release) and return “approximately 1,160 stolen DVDs and Blu-rays” that the cops seized to his former employer. Hale also pleaded guilty to “being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm,” the DOJ noted, after cops uncovered that he “unlawfully possessed a pistol that was loaded with one live round in the chamber and 13 rounds in the magazine.”

Combining the DVD theft and firearm charges, the US District Court in Tennessee sentenced Hale to 57 months, just short of the five-year maximum sentence he could have faced.

In the DOJ’s press release, acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti claimed the win, while warning that “today’s sentencing signals our commitment to protecting American innovation from pirates that would exploit others’ work for a quick profit, which, in this case, cost one copyright owner tens of millions of dollars.”

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OpenAI and Microsoft sign preliminary deal to revise partnership terms

AI, AI development, AI ethics, AI law, AI regulation, AI research, API, Artificial Intelligence, Biz & IT, Bret Taylor, chatbots, chatgpt, generative ai, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, openai, sam altman, Satya Nadella / Paul Patrick / September 12, 2025

On Thursday, OpenAI and Microsoft announced they have signed a non-binding agreement to revise their partnership, marking the latest development in a relationship that has grown increasingly complex as both companies compete for customers in the AI market and seek new partnerships for growing infrastructure needs.

“Microsoft and OpenAI have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership,” the companies wrote in a joint statement. “We are actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement. Together, we remain focused on delivering the best AI tools for everyone, grounded in our shared commitment to safety.”

The announcement comes as OpenAI seeks to restructure from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity, a transition that requires Microsoft’s approval, as the company is OpenAI’s largest investor, with more than $13 billion committed since 2019.

The partnership has shown increasing strain as OpenAI has grown from a research lab into a company valued at $500 billion. Both companies now compete for customers, and OpenAI seeks more compute capacity than Microsoft can provide. The relationship has also faced complications over contract terms, including provisions that would limit Microsoft’s access to OpenAI technology once the company reaches so-called AGI (artificial general intelligence)—a nebulous milestone both companies now economically define as AI systems capable of generating at least $100 billion in profit.

In May, OpenAI abandoned its original plan to fully convert to a for-profit company after pressure from former employees, regulators, and critics, including Elon Musk. Musk has sued to block the conversion, arguing it betrays OpenAI’s founding mission as a nonprofit dedicated to benefiting humanity.

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Gmail gets a dedicated place to track all your purchases

Gmail, Google, Tech / Paul Patrick / September 11, 2025

An update to Gmail begins rolling out soon, readying Google’s premier email app for all your upcoming holiday purchases. Gmail has been surfacing shipment tracking for some time now, but Google will now add a separate view just for remembering the things you have ordered. And if you want to buy more things, there’s a new interface for that, too. Yay, capitalism.

Gmail is quite good at recognizing purchase information in the form of receipts and shipping notifications. Currently, the app (and web interface) lists upcoming shipments at the top of the inbox. It will continue to do that when you have a delivery within the next 24 hours, but the new Purchases tab brings it all together in one glanceable view.

Purchases will be available in the navigation list alongside all the other stock Gmail labels. When selected, Gmail will filter your messages to only show receipts, order status, and shipping details. This makes it easier to peruse your recent orders and search within this subset of emails. This could be especially handy in this day and age of murky international shipping timelines.

The Promotions tab that has existed for years is also getting a makeover as we head into the holiday season. This tab collects all emails that Google recognizes as deals, marketing offers, and other bulk promos. This keeps them out of your primary inbox, which is appreciated, but venturing into the Promotions tab when the need arises can be overwhelming.

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After Ukrainian testing, drone-detection radar doubles range with simple software patch

culture, Drones, Ukraine / Paul Patrick / September 11, 2025

As part of its unprovoked invasion, Russia has been firing massed waves of drones and missiles into Ukraine for years, though the tempo has been raised dramatically in recent months. Barrages of 700-plus drones now regularly attack Ukraine during overnight raids. Russia also appears to have upped the ante dramatically by sending at least 19 drones into Poland last night, some of which were shot down by NATO forces.

Many of these drones are Shahed/Geran types built with technology imported from Iran, and they have recently gained the ability to fly higher, making shootdowns more difficult. Given the low cost of the drones (estimates suggest they cost a few tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and many are simply decoys without warheads), hitting them with multimillion-dollar missiles from traditional air-defense batteries makes little sense and would quickly exhaust missile stocks.

So Ukraine has adopted widespread electronic warfare to disrupt control systems and navigation. Drones not forced off their path are fought with mobile anti-aircraft guns, aircraft, and interceptor drones, many launched from mobile fire teams patrolling Ukraine during the night.

For teams like this, early detection of the attack drones is crucial—even seconds matter when it comes to relocating a vehicle and launching a counter drone or aiming a gun. Take too long to get into position and the attack drone overhead has already passed by on the way to its target.

Which brings us to Robin Radar Systems, a Dutch company that initially used radar to detect birds. (Indeed, the name “Robin” is an acronym derived from “Radar OBservation of Bird INtensity.”) This radar technology, good at detecting small flying objects and differentiating them from fauna, has proven useful in Ukraine’s drone war. Last year, the Dutch Ministry of Defence bought 51 mobile Robin Radar IRIS units that could be mounted on vehicles and used by drone defense teams.

After Ukrainian testing, drone-detection radar doubles range with simple software patch Read More »

HBO Max is “way underpriced,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO says

HBO Max, max, streaming, Tech, warner bros. discovery / Paul Patrick / September 11, 2025

Consumers in America would pay twice as much 10 years ago for content. People were spending, on average, $55 for content 10 years ago, and the quality of the content, the amount of content that we’re getting, the spend is 10 or 12 fold and they’re paying dramatically less. I think we want a good deal for consumers, but I think over time, there’s real opportunity, particularly for us, in that quality area, to raise price.

A question of quality

Zaslav is arguing that the quality of the shows and movies on HBO Max warrants an eventual price bump. But, in general, viewers find streaming services are getting less impressive. A Q4 2024 report from TiVo found that the percentage of people who think the streaming services that they use have “moderate to very good quality” has been declining since Q4 2021.

Bar graph From TiVO's Q4 2024 Video Trends report. — From TiVO’s Q4 2024 Video Trends report. Credit: TiVo

Research also points to people being at their limit when it comes to TV spending. Hub Entertainment Research’s latest “Monetizing Video” study, released last month, found that for consumers, low prices “by far still matters most to the value of a TV service.”

Meanwhile, niche streaming services have been gaining in popularity as streaming subscribers grow bored with the libraries of mainstream streaming platforms and/or feel like they’ve already seen the best of what those services have to offer. Antenna, a research firm focused on consumer subscription services, reported this month that specialty streaming service subscriptions increased 12 percent year over year in 2025 thus far and grew 22 percent in the first half of 2024.

Zaslav would likely claim that HBO Max is an outlier when it comes to streaming library dissatisfaction. Although WBD’s streaming business (which includes Discovery+) turned a $293 million profit and grew subscriber-related revenue (which includes ad revenues) in its most recent earnings report, investors would likely be unhappy if the company rested on its financial laurels. WBD has one of the most profitable streaming businesses, but it still trails far behind Netflix, which posted an operating income of $3.8 billion in its most recent earnings.

Still, increasing prices is rarely welcomed by customers. With many other options for streaming these days (including free ones), HBO Max will have to do more to convince people that it is worth the extra money than merely making the claim.

HBO Max is “way underpriced,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO says Read More »

Flush door handles are the car industry’s latest safety problem

Cars / Paul Patrick / September 10, 2025

China to the rescue?

In fact, the styling feature might be on borrowed time. It seems that Chinese authorities have been concerned about retractable door handles for some time now and are reportedly close to banning them from 2027. Flush-fit door handles fail far more often during side impacts than regular handles, delaying egress or rescue time after a crash. During heavy rain, flush-fit door handles have short-circuited, trapping people in their cars. Chinese consumers have even reported an increase in finger injuries as they get trapped or pinched.

That’s plenty of safety risk, but what about the benefit to vehicle efficiency? As it turns out, it doesn’t actually help that much. Adding flush door handles cuts the drag coefficient (Cd) by around 0.01. You really need to know a car’s frontal area as well as its Cd, but this equates to perhaps a little more than a mile of EPA range, perhaps two under Europe’s Worldwide Harmonised Light vehicles Test Procedure.

If automakers were that serious about drag reduction, we’d see many more EVs riding on smaller wheels. The rotation of the wheels and tires is one of the greatest contributors to drag, yet the stylists’ love of huge wheels means most EVs you’ll find on the front lot of a dealership will struggle to match their official efficiency numbers (not to mention suffering from a worse ride).

China’s importance to the global EV market means that, if it follows through on this ban, we can expect to see many fewer cars arrive with flush door handles in the future.

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Reddit bug caused lesbian subreddit to be labeled as a place for “straight” women

AI, reddit, Social Media, Tech / Paul Patrick / September 10, 2025

Explaining further to Ars, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt said:

There was a small bug in a test we ran that mistakenly caused the English-to-English translation(s) you saw. That bug has been resolved. Unsurprisingly, English-to-English translations are not part of our strategy, as they aren’t necessary. English-to-English translations were not a desired or expected outcome of the test.

Reddit pulled the test it was running, but its machine learning-powered translations are still functioning, Rathschmidt said. The company plans to fix the bug and run its unspecified “test” again.

Reddit’s explanation differs from user theories floating around beforehand, which were mainly that Reddit was rewriting user-created summaries with generative AI, possibly to boost SEO. Some may still be perturbed by the problem persisting for weeks without explanation and the apparent lack of manual checks for the translation service. However, Redditors can now take comfort in knowing that Reddit is not currently using generative AI to alter user-generated content without notice.

Paige_Railstone, however, maintains frustration and wants to tell Reddit admins, “STOP. Hand off.” The translation bug, they noted, led to people posting on a subreddit for parents with autism that their child might be autistic, “and how terrible that would be for them,” Paige_Railstone recalled.

“These are the kind of unintentionally insulting posts that drive autistics into leaving a community, and it increases the workload of us moderators,” they said.

Paige_Railstone also sees the incident as a reason for moderators to be more cautious.

“This never used to be a concern, but this translation service was rolled out without any notification that I’m aware of, and no option to disable it within the mods’ control. That has the potential to cause problems, as we’ve seen over the past two weeks,” they said.

Disclosure: Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.

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Software packages with more than 2 billion weekly downloads hit in supply-chain attack

Biz & IT, npm, Open Source, Security, supply chain, supply chain attacks / Paul Patrick / September 9, 2025

Hackers planted malicious code in open source software packages with more than 2 billion weekly updates in what is likely to be the world’s biggest supply-chain attack ever.

The attack, which compromised nearly two dozen packages hosted on the npm repository, came to public notice on Monday in social media posts. Around the same time, Josh Junon, a maintainer or co-maintainer of the affected packages, said he had been “pwned” after falling for an email that claimed his account on the platform would be closed unless he logged in to a site and updated his two-factor authentication credentials.

Defeating 2FA the easy way

“Sorry everyone, I should have paid more attention,” Junon, who uses the moniker Qix, wrote. “Not like me; have had a stressful week. Will work to get this cleaned up.”

The unknown attackers behind the account compromise wasted no time capitalizing on it. Within an hour’s time, dozens of open source packages Junon oversees had received updates that added malicious code for transferring cryptocurrency payments to attacker-controlled wallets. With more than 280 lines of code, the addition worked by monitoring infected systems for cryptocurrency transactions and changing the addresses of wallets receiving payments to those controlled by the attacker.

The packages that were compromised, which at last count numbered 20, included some of the most foundational code driving the JavaScript ecosystem. They are used outright and also have thousands of dependents, meaning other npm packages that don’t work unless they are also installed. (npm is the official code repository for JavaScript files.)

“The overlap with such high-profile projects significantly increases the blast radius of this incident,” researchers from security firm Socket said. “By compromising Qix, the attackers gained the ability to push malicious versions of packages that are indirectly depended on by countless applications, libraries, and frameworks.”

The researchers added: “Given the scope and the selection of packages impacted, this appears to be a targeted attack designed to maximize reach across the ecosystem.”

The email message Junon fell for came from an email address at support.npmjs.help, a domain created three days ago to mimic the official npmjs.com used by npm. It said Junon’s account would be closed unless he updated information related to his 2FA—which requires users to present a physical security key or supply a one-time passcode provided by an authenticator app in addition to a password when logging in.

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Author name: Paul Patrick