Mike M. – Page 21

Julian LeFay, “the father of The Elder Scrolls,” has died at 59

bethesda softworks, gaming, Julian LeFay, obituary, PC Gaming, RPGs, The Elder Scrolls, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, The Wayward Realms / Mike M. / July 24, 2025

Julian LeFay, the man often credited as “the father of The Elder Scrolls,” has died at the age of 59, his creative partners announced this week.

“It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we inform our community of the passing of Julian LeFay, our beloved Technical Director and co-founder of Once Lost Games,” his colleagues wrote in a Bluesky post.

LeFay spent most of the 1990s at Bethesda Softworks, culminating in his work on The Elder Scrolls series into the late ’90s.

His career didn’t start with The Elder Scrolls, though. Beginning in 1988, LeFay made music for the Amiga hack-and-slash game Sword of Sodan as well as the NES game Where’s Waldo, and he did design and programming work on titles like Wayne Gretzky Hockey, the DOS version of Dragon’s Lair, and two DOS games based on the Terminator movie franchise.

In the early ’90s, he joined fellow Bethesda developers Ted Peterson and Vijay Lakshman on an Ultima Underworld-inspired RPG that would come to be called The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Though famed creative director Todd Howard has helmed the franchise since its third entry, The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall were chiefly spearheaded by LeFay. One of the gods of The Elder Scrolls universe was named after LeFay, and the setting was inspired by the literature and tabletop role-playing games LeFay and Peterson enjoyed.

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Marine biologist for a day: Ars goes shark tagging

Biology, Features, field school, marine biology, ocean science, Science, sharks / Mike M. / July 23, 2025

We did not need a bigger boat

Go shark fishing on the RV Garvin, get hooked on the ideas behind it.

Field School staff made sure the day out was a safe and satisfying experience.

MIAMI—We were beginning to run out of bait, and the sharks weren’t cooperating.

Everybody aboard the Research Vessel Garvin had come to Miami for the sharks—to catch them, sample them, and tag them, all in the name of science. People who once wanted to be marine biologists, actual marine biologists, shark enthusiasts, the man who literally wrote the book Why Sharks Matter, and various friends and family had spent much of the day sending fish heads set with hooks over the side of the Garvin. But each time the line was hauled back in, it came in slack, with nothing but half-eaten bait or an empty hook at the end.

And everyone was getting nervous.

I: “No assholes”

The Garvin didn’t start out as a research vessel. Initially, it was a dive boat that took people to wrecks on the East Coast. Later, owner Hank Garvin used it to take low-income students from New York City and teach them how to dive, getting them scuba certified. But when Garvin died, his family put the boat, no longer in prime condition, on the market.

A thousand miles away in Florida, Catherine MacDonald was writing “no assholes” on a Post-it note.

At the time, MacDonald was the coordinator of a summer internship program at the University of Miami, where she was a PhD student. And even at that stage in her career, she and her colleagues had figured out that scientific field work had a problem.

“Science in general does not have a great reputation of being welcoming and supportive and inclusive and kind,” said David Shiffman, author of the aforementioned book and a grad school friend of MacDonald’s. “Field science is perhaps more of a problem than that. And field science involving what are called charismatic megafauna, the big animals that everyone loves, is perhaps worse than that. It’s probably because a lot of people want to do this, which means if we treat someone poorly and they quit, it’s not going to be long before someone else wants to fill the spot.”

MacDonald and some of her colleagues—Christian Pankow, Jake Jerome, Nick Perni, and Julia Wester (a lab manager and some fellow grad students at the time)—were already doing their best to work against these tendencies at Miami and help people learn how to do field work in a supportive environment. “I don’t think that you can scream abuse at students all day long and go home and publish great science,” she said, “because I don’t think that the science itself escapes the process through which it was generated.”

So they started to think about how they might extend that to the wider ocean science community. The “no assholes” Post-it became a bit of a mission statement, one that MacDonald says now sits in a frame in her office. “We decided out the gate that the point of doing this in part was to make marine science more inclusive and accessible and that if we couldn’t do that and be a successful business, then we were just going to fail,” she told Ars. “That’s kind of the plan.”

But to do it properly, they needed a boat. And that meant they needed money. “We borrowed from our friends and family,” MacDonald said. “I took out a loan on my house. It was just our money and all of the money that people who loved us were willing to sink into the project.”

Even that might not have been quite enough to afford a badly run-down boat. But the team made a personal appeal to Hank Garvin’s family. “They told the family who was trying to offload the boat, ‘Maybe someone else can pay you more for it, but here’s what we’re going to use it for, and also we’ll name the boat after your dad,'” Shiffman said. “And they got it.”

For the day, everybody who signed up had the chance to do most of the work that scientists normally would. Julia Saltzman

But it wasn’t enough to launch what would become the Field School. The Garvin was in good enough shape to navigate to Florida, but it needed considerable work before it could receive all the Coast Guard certifications required to get a Research Vessel designation. And given the team’s budget, that mostly meant the people launching the Field School had to learn to do the work themselves.

“One of [co-founder] Julia’s good friends was a boat surveyor, and he introduced us to a bunch of people who taught us skills or introduced us to someone else who could fix the alignment of our propellers or could suggest this great place in Louisiana that we could send the transmissions for rebuilding or could help us figure out which paints to use,” MacDonald said.

“We like to joke that we are the best PhD-holding fiberglassers in Miami,” she told Ars. “I don’t actually know if that’s true. I couldn’t prove it. But we just kind of jumped off the cliff together in terms of trying to make it work. Although we certainly had to hire folks to help us with a variety of projects, including building a new fuel tank because we are not the best PhD-holding welders in Miami for certain.”

II: Fishing for sharks

On the now fully refurbished Garvin, we were doing drum-line fishing. This involved a 16 kg (35-pound) weight connected to some floats by an extremely thick piece of rope. Also linked to the weight was a significant amount of 800-pound test line (meaning a monofilament polymer that won’t snap until something exerts over 800 lbs/360 kg of force on it) with a hook at the end. Most species of sharks need to keep swimming to force water over their gills or else suffocate; the length of the line allows them to swim in circles around the weight. The hook is also shaped to minimize damage to the fish during removal.

To draw sharks to the drum line, each of the floats had a small metal cage to hold chunks of fish that would release odorants. A much larger piece—either a head or cross-section of the trunk of a roughly foot-long fish—was set on the hook.

Deploying all of this was where the Garvin‘s passengers, none of whom had field research experience, came in. Under the tutelage of the people from the Field School, we’d lower the drum from a platform at the stern of the Garvin to the floor of Biscayne Bay, within sight of Miami’s high rises. A second shark enthusiast would send the float overboard as the Garvin‘s crew logged its GPS coordinates. After that, it was simply a matter of gently releasing the monofilament line from a large hand-held spool.

From right to left, the floats, the weight, and the bait all had to go into the water through an organized process. Julia Saltzman

One by one, we set 10 drums in a long row near one of the exits from Biscayne Bay. With the last one set, we went back to the first and reversed the process: haul in the float, use the rope to pull in the drum, and then let a Field School student test whether the line had a shark at the end. If not, it and the spool were handed over to a passenger, accompanied by tips on how to avoid losing fingers if a shark goes after the bait while being pulled back in.

Rebait, redeploy, and move on. We went down the line of 10 drums once, then twice, then thrice, and the morning gave way to afternoon. The routine became far less exciting, and getting volunteers for each of the roles in the process seemed to require a little more prodding. Conversations among the passengers and Field School people started to become the focus, the fishing a distraction, and people starting giving the bait buckets nervous looks.

And then, suddenly, a line went tight while it was being hauled in, and a large brown shape started moving near the surface in the distance.

III: Field support

Mortgaging your home is not a long-term funding solution, so over time, the Field School has developed a bit of a mixed model. Most of the people who come to learn there pay the costs for their time on the Garvin. That includes some people who sign up for one of the formal training programs. Shiffman also uses them to give undergraduates in the courses he teaches some exposure to actual research work.

“Over spring break this year, Georgetown undergrads flew down to Miami with me and spent a week living on Garvin, and we did some of what you saw,” he told Ars. “But also mangrove, snorkeling, using research drones, and going to the Everglades—things like that.” They also do one-day outings with some local high schools.

Many of the school’s costs, however, are covered by groups that pay to get the experience of being an ocean scientist for a day. These have included everything from local Greenpeace chapters to companies signing up for a teamwork-building experience. “The fundraiser rate [they pay] factors in not only the cost of taking those people out but also the cost of taking a low-income school group out in the future at no cost,” Shiffman said.

And then there are groups like the one I was joining—paying the fundraiser rate but composed of random collections of people brought together by little more than meeting Shiffman, either in person or online. In these cases, the Garvin is filled with a combination of small groups nucleated by one shark fan or people who wanted to be a marine biologist at some point or those who simply have a general interest in science. They’ll then recruit one or more friends or family members to join them, with varying degrees of willingness.

For a day, they all get to contribute to research. A lot of what we know about most fish populations comes from the fishing industry. And that information is often biased by commercial considerations, changing regulations, and more. The Field School trips, by contrast, give an unbiased sampling of whatever goes for its bait.

“The hardest part about marine biology research is getting to the animals—it’s boat time,” Shiffman said. “And since they’re already doing that, often in the context of teaching people how to do field skills, they reached out to colleagues all over the place and said, ‘Hey, here’s where we’re going. Here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re catching. Can we get any samples for you?’ So they’re taking all kinds of biological samples from the animals, and depending on what we catch, it can be for up to 15 different projects, with collaborators all over the country.”

And taking those samples is the passengers’ job. So shortly after leaving the marina on Garvin, we were divided up into teams and told what our roles would be once a shark was on board. One team member would take basic measurements of the shark’s dimensions. A second would scan the shark for parasites and place them in a sample jar, while another would snip a small piece of fin off to get a DNA sample. Finally, someone would insert a small tag at the base of the shark’s dorsal fin using a tool similar to a hollow awl. Amid all that, one of the Field School staff members would use a syringe to get a blood sample.

All of this would happen while members of the Field School staff were holding the shark in place—larger ones on a platform at the stern of the Garvin, smaller ones brought on board. The staff were the only ones who were supposed to get close to what Shiffman referred to as “the bitey end” of the shark. For most species, this would involve inserting one of three different-sized PVC tubes (for different-sized sharks) that seawater would be pumped through to keep the shark breathing and give them something to chomp down on. Other staff members held down the “slappy end.”

For a long time, all of this choreography seemed abstract. But there was finally a shark on the other end of the line, slowly being hauled toward the boat.

IV: Pure muscle and rage?

The size and brown color were an immediate tip-off to those in the know: We had a nurse shark, one that Shiffman described as being “pure muscle and rage.” Despite that, a single person was able to haul it in using a hand spool. Once restrained, the shark largely remained a passive participant in what came next. Nurse sharks are one of the few species that can force water over their gills even when stationary, and the shark’s size—it would turn out to be over 2 meters long—meant that it would need to stay partly submerged on the platform in the back.

So one by one, the first team splashed onto the platform and got to work. Despite their extremely limited training, it took just over five minutes for them to finish the measurements and get all the samples they needed. Details like the time, location, and basic measurements were all logged by hand on paper, although the data would be transferred to a spreadsheet once it was back on land. And the blood sample had some preliminary work done on the Garvin itself, which was equipped with a small centrifuge. All of that data would eventually be sent off to many of the Field School’s collaborators.

Shark number two, a blacktip, being hauled to the Garvin. Julia Saltzman

Since the shark was showing no signs of distress, all the other teams were allowed to step onto the platform and pet it, partly due to the fear that this would be the only one we caught that day. Sharks have a skin that’s smooth in one direction but rough if stroked in the opposite orientation, and their cartilaginous skeleton isn’t as solid as the bone most other vertebrates rely on. It was very much not like touching any other fish I’d encountered.

After we had all literally gotten our feet wet, the shark, now bearing the label UM00229, was sent on its way, and we went back to checking the drum lines.

A short time later, we hauled in a meter-long blacktip shark. This time, we set it up on an ice chest on the back of the boat, with a PVC tube firmly inserted into its mouth. Again, once the Field School staff restrained the shark, the team of amateurs got to work quickly and efficiently, with the only mishap being a person who rubbed their fingers the wrong way against the shark skin and got an abrasion that drew a bit of blood. Next up would be team three, the final group—and the one I was a part of.

V: The culture beyond science

I’m probably the perfect audience for an outing like this. Raised on a steady diet of Jacques Cousteau documentaries, I was also drawn to the idea of marine biology at one point. And having spent many of my years in molecular biology labs, I found myself jealous of the amazing things the field workers I’d met had experienced. The idea of playing shark scientist for a day definitely appealed to me.

A shark swims away from the camera. — Once processed, the sharks seemed content to get back to the business of being a shark. Credit: Julia Saltzman

But I probably came away as impressed by the motivation behind the Field School as I was with the sharks. I’ve been in science long enough to see multiple examples of the sort of toxic behaviors that the school’s founders wanted to avoid, and I wondered how science would ever change when there’s no obvious incentive for anyone to improve their behavior. In the absence of those incentives, MacDonald’s idea is to provide an example of better behavior—and that might be the best option.

“Overall, the thing that I really wanted at the end of the day was for people to look at some of the worst things about the culture of science and say, ‘It doesn’t have to be like that,'” she told Ars.

And that, she argues, may have an impact that extends well beyond science. “It’s not just about training future scientists, it’s about training future people,” she said. “When science and science education hurts people, it affects our whole society—it’s not that it doesn’t matter to the culture of science, because it profoundly does, but it matters more broadly than that as well.”

With motivations like that, it would have felt small to be upset that my career as a shark tagger ended up in the realm of unfulfilled potential, since I was on tagging team three, and we never hooked shark number three. Still, I can’t say I wasn’t a bit annoyed when I bumped into Shiffman a few weeks later, and he gleefully informed me they caught 14 of them the day after.

If you have a large enough group, you can support the Field School by chartering the Garvin for an outing. For smaller groups, you need to get in touch with David Shiffman.

Listing image: Julia Saltzman

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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California backs down to Trump admin, won’t force ISPs to offer $15 broadband

broadband, Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, California, Policy, trump administration / Mike M. / July 23, 2025

“Complete farce”: State lawmaker says US threatened to block broadband funding.

Credit: Getty Images | Adrienne Bresnahan

A California lawmaker halted an effort to pass a law that would force Internet service providers to offer $15 monthly plans to people with low incomes.

Assemblymember Tasha Boerner proposed the state law a few months ago, modeling the bill on a law enforced by New York. It seemed that other states were free to impose cheap-broadband mandates because the Supreme Court rejected broadband industry challenges to the New York law twice.

Boerner, a Democrat who is chair of the Communications and Conveyance Committee, faced pressure from Internet service providers to change or drop the bill. She made some changes, for example lowering the $15 plan’s required download speeds from 100Mbps to 50Mbps and the required upload speeds from 20Mbps to 10Mbps.

But the bill was still working its way through the legislature when, according to Boerner, Trump administration officials told her office that California could lose access to $1.86 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funds if it forces ISPs to offer low-cost service to people with low incomes.

That amount is California’s share of a $42.45 billion fund created by Congress to expand access to broadband service. The Trump administration has overhauled program rules, delaying the grants. One change is that states can’t tell ISPs what to charge for a low-cost plan.

The US law that created BEAD requires Internet providers receiving federal funds to offer at least one “low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers.” But in new guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the agency said it prohibits states “from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO [low-cost service option] rate a subgrantee must offer.”

State lawmaker describes “complete farce”

After losing their case against New York, Internet service providers asked the Trump administration to try to block state affordability laws. Although New York’s court win seemed to solidify states’ regulatory authority, the Trump administration could use its control over BEAD funding to pressure states into abandoning low-income requirements.

“When we introduced the bill, there were looming changes to the BEAD program,” Boerner told Ars. “There were hints at what would happen, but we had a call two weeks ago with NTIA that confirmed that… explicit or implicit rate regulation would disqualify a state for access.”

NTIA officials also made it clear that, even if California obtained the funding, ISPs could exempt themselves from the proposed low-cost broadband bill simply by applying for BEAD funding, Boerner told us. She said the NTIA’s new guidance is a “complete farce,” since ISPs are getting public money to build infrastructure and won’t have to commit to offering low-income plans at specific rates.

“All they would have to do to get exempted from AB 353 [the $15 broadband bill] would be to apply to the BEAD program,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if their application was valid, appropriate, granted, or they got public money at the end of the day and built the projects—the mere application for the BEAD program would exempt them from 353, if it didn’t jeopardize from $1.86 billion to begin with. And that was a tradeoff I was unwilling to make.”

We contacted the NTIA and asked whether Boerner’s description of the agency’s statements is accurate. We also asked the NTIA whether it believes that ISPs applying for BEAD funding are exempt from the New York law. The NTIA declined to comment today.

Boerner’s account of NTIA’s guidance raises the question of whether the NTIA is trying to pressure New York into changing or dropping its low-cost broadband law. New York Attorney General Letitia James defended the state law in court, but her office declined to comment when contacted by Ars. We also contacted Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office yesterday and did not receive a reply.

Boerner said the federal government’s action is “a flat-out giveaway to large corporations and denying Californians and Americans access to what’s essentially a basic service that everybody needs, which is access to broadband.”

Advocates: California shouldn’t back down

An earlier version of Boerner’s bill was approved by the state Assembly on June 4. Boerner said there were negotiations with the Senate on how to proceed, and the bill was amended. But last week, after the call with NTIA, Boerner decided not to move ahead with it this year.

“I held it in committee,” Boerner said.

Boerner’s top donors include Cox, AT&T, and Comcast. Boerner acknowledged that when the bill was still moving ahead, she lowered its required speeds based on discussions with cable companies and other ISPs. The 50/10Mbps threshold is “what I was able to negotiate for the $15. Most companies—especially cable, a lot of the big ISPs in California—already offer $30 for 100/20Mbps,” she said.

Advocacy groups say that California lawmakers shouldn’t bend to big ISPs or the NTIA. The BEAD law’s funding is for subsidizing new broadband deployments, while California’s proposed law would mainly apply to networks that have already been built, they point out.

Moreover, New York beat ISPs in court after nearly four years in litigation. The US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the law last year. While the Supreme Court never directly ruled on the law, it rejected telecom groups’ petitions to hear their challenge to the appeals court ruling.

“No matter which way you slice it, federal changes to the BEAD program do not override the Supreme Court’s affirmation of a state’s authority to establish a broadband affordability standard. They just don’t,” Arturo Juarez, policy advisor for the California Alliance for Digital Equity, told Ars.

Speed cut negotiated with ISPs “a non-starter for us”

California-based advocates were eager to push for a low-income requirement after the Supreme Court rejected efforts to overturn New York’s law. “When the chair decided to take up the measure, we were really excited,” Juarez said. “She obviously sits on a key committee to getting the bill out.”

But advocates were disturbed by changes made to the bill, including the speed cut.

“We learned that there had been some backdoor, closed negotiations with industry to lower the speed threshold… that, of course, was just a non-starter for us,” Juarez said. “I don’t think it makes any sense to say that we’re going to lock low-income folks into second-class connectivity or essentially offer them a broadband service that doesn’t even qualify as broadband because it’s not fast enough, it doesn’t even meet the federal definition of what broadband is.”

Natalie Gonzalez, director of Digital Equity Los Angeles, told Ars that the NTIA guidance shouldn’t apply to existing broadband networks. Having BEAD rules apply to “existing infrastructure and existing subscription packages is a pretty far reach,” she said. Gonzalez also said that no legal analysis or evidence has been made public to show how the BEAD guidance on affordable broadband would make the state legislation unviable.

“From our standpoint as advocates and being on the calls with the CPUC [California Public Utilities Commission], our interpretation is that the rules simply just eliminate any new builds” from having an affordable option as a requirement, she said.

ISP-based verification another sticking point

Juarez and Gonzalez said they were also concerned that Boerner’s proposal would let ISPs do the verification of people’s eligibility for low-income plans, instead of having the CPUC perform that task. “We didn’t want ISP-based verification… because we saw that just doesn’t work, and it really represents a major barrier to access,” Juarez said.

Gonzalez said that “parents aren’t going to work with fears of immigration raids,” and people are concerned that ISPs would share sensitive data with the federal government. She said, “there was real hesitation from community and advocates within our coalition of who is going to be housing this data, what are the transparency and accountability and reporting requirements within the ISPs to secure this type of information.”

The CPUC handles California’s Lifeline program, “and that existing state verification process has been vetted, has been around for a long time,” Juarez said. The Boerner bill stated that the CPUC would have no authority to implement or enforce the $15 mandate and would have given oversight authority to the state Department of Technology.

Juarez said that advocates also wanted the bill to have broader exemptions for small Internet service providers that serve rural areas and aren’t as profitable. Big ISPs can easily afford to offer low-cost plans, he said. He pointed to a California Public Advocates Office analysis that said, “a $15 low-income broadband requirement would potentially reduce the combined revenues of the four largest broadband providers—AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Charter/Spectrum—by less than one percent.”

“We know that these massive multi-billion dollar corporations, they really have enough subscribers and they have enough service area to accommodate this sort of plan,” Juarez said.

Lawmaker “looking for new and creative ideas”

Boerner defended her approach to the bill. While she initially proposed higher speeds, she said that the 50/10Mbps threshold is robust enough for a family doing tasks like telehealth, Zooms, online learning, and file syncing. “The use case I always have in my head is a single mom with three kids working two jobs. That mom needs to get online, apply for jobs, she needs her kids to all get online and do their homework at the same time. I’m a mom of two kids. Nobody needs their kids fighting over bandwidth,” she said.

Boerner said her goal with the bill “was always a basic broadband service” that would be affordable. “There are lots of packages out there in the world that people choose to get because they’re being price-conscious and they choose the service level that they need,” she said.

We asked Boerner about pressure from broadband industry lobbyists. She replied, “Most industries are against rate regulation. We were trying to find a balance between meeting a need, which I think all of the companies see that need, right? They see the need for low-income Californians to get online. They want to be part of the solution, and also almost every industry in California hates rate regulation. So how do you balance those interests?”

While Boerner’s bill won’t be moving forward this year, a different bill in the state Senate would encourage ISPs to offer cheap broadband by making them eligible for Lifeline subsidies if they sell 100/20Mbps service for $30 or less. Unlike Boerner’s bill, it wouldn’t force ISPs to offer low-cost plans.

Boerner criticized Congress for discontinuing a national program that made $30 discounts available to people with low incomes. Her attempt to impose a low-cost mandate in California began after the nationwide Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) was eliminated.

“We all saw the photos of kids outside of Taco Bell or McDonald’s using their Wi-Fi to turn in homework during the pandemic, and none of us wanted to go back to that,” she said.

The ACP’s $30 discounts temporarily alleviated that problem. The ACP “was one of our most successful public benefit programs, and it wasn’t partisan,” Boerner said. “It was rural, it was urban, it was Democrat, it was Republican… every American who was low-income benefited from the ACP. And I’d really like to appeal to Congress to act in the interests of Americans and find a way to have federal subsidies for low-income access to broadband again. I wouldn’t need to do state regulations if Congress had done their job.”

It isn’t clear whether Boerner will revive her attempt to impose a low-cost mandate. When asked about her future plans for broadband affordability legislation, she did not provide any specifics. “We’re always looking for new and creative ideas,” Boerner said.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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Tesla is the least-trusted car brand in America, survey finds

Autonomous Driving, Cars, EV adoption, Tesla / Mike M. / July 22, 2025

Tesla’s eroding popularity with Americans shows little sign of abating. Each month, the Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report surveys thousands of consumers to gauge attitudes on EV adoption, autonomous driving, and the automakers that are developing those technologies. Toyota, which only recently started selling enough EVs to be included in the survey, currently has the highest net-positive score and the highest “view intensity score”—the percentage of consumers who have a very positive view of a brand minus the ones who have a very negative view—despite selling just a fairly lackluster EV to date. Meanwhile, the brand that actually popularized the EV, moving it from compliance car and milk float to something desirable, has fallen even further into negative territory in July.

Just 26 percent of survey participants still have a somewhat or very positive view of Tesla. But 39 percent have a somewhat or very negative view of the company, with just 14 percent being unfamiliar or having no opinion. That’s a net positive view of -13, but Tesla’s view intensity score is -16, meaning a lot more people really don’t like the company compared to the ones who really do. The problem is also growing over time: In April, Tesla still had a net positive view of -7.

Tesla remained at the bottom of the charts when EVIR looked more closely into demographic data. Tesla was the least-positively viewed car company regardless of income, although the effect was most pronounced among those with incomes less than $75,000, as were the results based on geography (although suburbanites held it in the most disdain) and age (where those over 65 have the most haters).

Vinfast is the only other automaker with a negative net-positive view and view intensity score, but 92 percent of survey respondents were unfamiliar with the Vietnamese automaker or had no opinion about it.

When asked which brands they trusted, the survey data mostly mirrored the positive versus negative brand perception. Only Tesla and Vinfast have negative net trust scores, with Tesla also having the lowest “trust integrity score”—those who say they trust a brand “a lot” versus those who distrust that brand “a lot,” at -19.

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Google gets ahead of the leaks and reveals the Pixel 10 early

Google, Google Pixel, pixel 10, smartphones, Tech / Mike M. / July 22, 2025

Google has an event next month to officially launch the Pixel 10 series, but the leaks have been coming fast and furious beforehand. There won’t be much left to learn on August 20, particularly now that Google has revealed the phone. Over on the Google Store, there’s a video revealing the Pixel 10’s design, and it looks just a little familiar.

The video (which you can also see below) isn’t very long, but it offers an unobscured look at the phone’s physical design. The 13-second clip opens with the numeral “10” emerging from the shadows. The zero elongates and morphs into the trademark camera window on the back of the phone. The video zooms out to reveal the full phone from the back. The device is a muted blue-gray, which is probably the “frost” color listed in recent leaks.

The video is not accompanied by specs, pricing, or any other details; however, Google’s new Tensor G5 processor is expected to be a marked improvement over past iterations. While the first four Tensor chips were manufactured in Samsung fabs, Tensor G5 is from TSMC. The dominant Taiwanese chip maker touts better semiconductor packaging technology, and the chip itself is believed to have more custom components that further separate it from the Samsung Exynos lineage.

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Trump’s claims of a Coca-Cola agreement quickly go flat as nutritionists groan

ama, cane sugar, coca-cola, health, High fructose corn syrup, Sugar, Trump / Mike M. / July 18, 2025

The cloying praise for the still-unconfirmed switch that Coca-Cola has, in fact, not announced was doused with some cold reality from Coca-Cola. While continuing not to confirm the agreement, the soda maker seemed to respond to the “artificial” bit in Fox’s post, saying that HFCS is “just a sweetener made from corn. It’s safe; it has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body.”

The beverage maker also said that the American Medical Association “confirmed that HFCS is no more likely to contribute to obesity than table sugar or other full-calorie sweeteners.”

A 2008 report from the AMA concluded that “Because the composition of HFCS and sucrose are so similar, particularly on absorption by the body, it appears unlikely that HFCS contributes more to obesity or other conditions than sucrose.” Though the medical association noted a lack of research directly comparing the sweeteners.

While political critics suggest that the fizzy Coke fuss is just a distraction from the president’s ongoing Epstein file scandal, health experts are shaking their heads.

Nutrition expert Marion Nestle, professor emeritus at New York University, told Stat News that the push for cane sugar, just like the push to remove artificial dyes from processed foods, was “nutritionally hilarious.” Whether Coke is sweetened with cane sugar or HFCS, it still contains the equivalent of about 10 teaspoons of sugar per 12-ounce can and poses risks for conditions such as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. “It’s the kind of thing that makes nutritionists roll their eyes, because it doesn’t make any difference,” Nestle said.

Trump’s claims of a Coca-Cola agreement quickly go flat as nutritionists groan Read More »

GitHub abused to distribute payloads on behalf of malware-as-a-service

Biz & IT, GitHub, malware, Security / Mike M. / July 18, 2025

Researchers from Cisco’s Talos security team have uncovered a malware-as-a-service operator that used public GitHub accounts as a channel for distributing an assortment of malicious software to targets.

The use of GitHub gave the malware-as-a-service (MaaS) a reliable and easy-to-use platform that’s greenlit in many enterprise networks that rely on the code repository for the software they develop. GitHub removed the three accounts that hosted the malicious payloads shortly after being notified by Talos.

“In addition to being an easy means of file hosting, downloading files from a GitHub repository may bypass Web filtering that is not configured to block the GitHub domain,” Talos researchers Chris Neal and Craig Jackson wrote Thursday. “While some organizations can block GitHub in their environment to curb the use of open-source offensive tooling and other malware, many organizations with software development teams require GitHub access in some capacity. In these environments, a malicious GitHub download may be difficult to differentiate from regular web traffic.”

Emmenhtal, meet Amadey

The campaign, which Talos said had been ongoing since February, used a previously known malware loader tracked under names including Emmenhtal and PeakLight. Researchers from security firm Palo Alto Networks and Ukraine’s major state cyber agency SSSCIP had already documented the use of Emmenhtal in a separate campaign that embedded the loader into malicious emails to distribute malware to Ukrainian entities. Talos found the same Emmenhtal variant in the MaaS operation, only this time the loader was distributed through GitHub.

The campaign using GitHub was different from one targeting Ukrainian entities in another key way. Whereas the final payload in the one targeting the Ukrainian entities was a malicious backdoor known as SmokeLoader, the GitHub one installed Amadey, a separate malware platform known. Amadey was first seen in 2018 and was initially used to assemble botnets. Talos said the primary function of Amadey is to collect system information from infected devices and download a set of secondary payloads that are customized to their individual characteristics, based on the specific purpose in different campaigns.

GitHub abused to distribute payloads on behalf of malware-as-a-service Read More »

2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA feels like a real car, not a science experiment

car review, Cars, First drive, Mercedes-Benz CLA / Mike M. / July 17, 2025

Mercedes’ new 800 V electric powertrain is ready for the public, and we’ve driven it.

Mercedes-Benz has high hopes for its new EV technology, which debuts in the 2026 CLA. Credit: Mercedes-Benz

The Mercedes-Benz CLA is a marked departure from Mercedes’ EV efforts. Instead of a dedicated line of EQ vehicles—like the EQB, EQC, and EQS—we’re getting vehicles “with EQ Technology.” It started with the electric G Wagon, but the CLA is the first mainstream product to make the change. The thing is that the change is significant and for the better. Several months ago, we got some time in a prototype CLA; now we’ve driven the final product.

The CLA returns for the 2026 model year as an EV first (with a hybrid coming) on an all-new 800-volt architecture. This architecture will find its way to other Mercedes vehicles, like the upcoming GLB and GLC. This thoroughly modern setup features some of the company’s biggest innovations.

The CLA will be available with either one or two electric motors, with a two-speed setup for efficiency and performance. The 250+ base model makes 268 hp (200 kW) and 247 lb-ft (335 Nm) of torque. Mercedes is claiming up to 792 km of range with this model on the WLTP cycle. Accounting for WLTP’s optimism, it’s still possible we might see an EPA-rated range over 400 miles, but Mercedes isn’t quoting any real numbers yet.

Not quite a sedan, more like a four-door coupe. Mercedes-Benz

The dual motor, all-wheel drive 4Matic variant, makes 349 hp ( 260 kW) and 380 lb-ft (515 Nm) of torque. It also has a two-speed setup. The WLTP estimate from Mercedes here is up to 771 km, which would still be potentially 400 miles under EPA testing in the real world.

Peak DC fast charging is 320 kW, with a 10–80 percent charging time of 22 minutes for the 85 kWh usable lithium-ion battery pack. For comparison, the current EQB peaks at just 110 kW.

Two charge ports

Like the upcoming Nissan Leaf, the charge connector situation will be a little weird on the CLA. It’ll have a standard SAE J-1772 plug for level 2 charging, but sitting next to it, behind the charging door, is also a NACS connector for DC fast charging. It’s not my favorite solution to the problem. If you were to switch from a Model 3 to a CLA, you might already have a Tesla charger in your garage, and you’ll need an adapter for the J-plug, but we are in a strange transitional time for all of this. At least they’re on the same side of the car.

Some early cars making their way to the United States will only support 800 V DC fast charging stations. Those would include Mercedes’ own stations, along with Ionna. But those early cars won’t work on the nation’s biggest 400 V network, Tesla Superchargers.

Mercedes tells us that these early cars will be limited to demonstration vehicles, with customer vehicles early next year supporting both 400 V and 800 V chargers.

“After the initial limited delivery of cars late this year for demonstration of the CLA’s fast-charging abilities, 2026 US customer orders from early next year will feature a converter and be capable of charging at 400 V and faster 800 V, meaning the largest number of US charging points, currently over 140,000.”

Customers shouldn’t have to think about it when they receive their own cars, which is ultimately what matters the most. It does, however, highlight some of the challenges of developing EVs in a fast-changing environment.

Finally, a hood that opens

The CLA with EQ Technology has some new changes for Mercedes in the cargo capacity department, too. It’s the first Mercedes with a frunk since the W23 of the 1930s. It was silly to offer a hood on a car that is bolted shut, so it’s nice to not only see Mercedes change course on that but also provide 2.5 cubic feet (71 L) of storage up there.

The cockpit layout is similar to the EQ Mercedes EVs. Mercedes-Benz

That gives the CLA overall cargo capacity of 18.7 cubic feet (530 L) between the frunk and the trunk. The trunk swallows two people’s luggage without much issue, but the load lift into the trunk is pretty high. This is not uncommon for a proper sedan, but it is noticeable.

Speaking of being a proper sedan, the new CLA is 1.3 inches (33 mm) longer than the old car, with a 2.4-inch (61 mm) longer wheelbase. It also has more headroom for both front and rear passengers and is a comfortable place to spend time once you get settled.

Our test models all had the AMG Line package, which included sportier seats that are actually quite comfortable. The cabin gives you a feeling of being cocooned in the car, but it doesn’t feel cramped or claustrophobic.

When you look ahead, you have an optional heads-up display and Mercedes’ new MBUX Superscreen. This is a 10.25-inch driver display, a 14-inch center display, and a 14-inch passenger display. They are all powered by MB.OS and Unity Game Engine. The new infotainment includes support for apps, like Disney+ and Angry Birds. The driver can access these while parked, but the passenger can use their display while the vehicle is in motion.

the back half of a Mercedes CLA seen with pedestrians and cyclists in the foreground. — Less eye-catching colors are available. Credit: Mercedes-Benz

While playing Angry Birds, I couldn’t help but notice how good-looking the passenger screen was. In fact, all the screens have excellent contrast and color reproduction, which is partly due to their lack of a screen filter that normally prevents the driver from seeing the screen.

Keep your eyes on the road

However, in the CLA, the passenger display is initially visible to the driver. The camera mounted above the center display, which is also used for features like video conferencing or in-car selfies, watches the driver. If the driver looks toward the passenger display, the screen will be disabled until the driver pays attention to the road again. It’s an interesting way to solve the driver distraction problem while not ruining how the screen looks.

Star Wars’ Andor looks and sounds pretty good with the Burmeister sound system, even if it’s in Danish by default—because we’re in Copenhagen—and I don’t know Danish.

My biggest complaint about the new infotainment system in these versions is huge bezel on the center screen. Some of the bezel is needed for the camera, but in 2025, it comes across as being a bit cheap. They look great, just the bezel doesn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if upgraded displays in higher-end future models expand to fill those gaps.

We’ll need to spend some time with the CLA on familiar roads before we can truly judge its efficiency. Credit: Mercedes-Benz

Driving the new CLA is a pleasant experience. The 250+ has plenty of grunt for most of the driving normal people do. The two-speed setup operates seamlessly, and at no point did I feel the need for more power.

If you want more power, or more importantly, all-wheel drive, the 350 4Matic delivers. In the normal driving mode, acceleration is even more brisk, but it doesn’t snap your head back. Put the car into the Sport setting, and you get all the acceleration you could really want. Yes, there’ll be more powerful versions in the future. But a 4.8-second run to 60 mph in a non-performance car is plenty.

That’s smooth

The country roads outside Copenhagen don’t offer many opportunities to really push the car to its limits, but ride comfort is excellent. Only when we hit a manhole cover on a torn-up street did I feel like I was driving an entry-level vehicle.

On the other hand, I didn’t feel the need or desire to switch over to the car’s sport mode. With a standard fixed suspension, little changes when you engage the setting (except unlocking the full acceleration power), and frankly, it never felt necessary.

That’s not to say the car isn’t fun or isn’t any good. On the contrary, I could spend a lot of time in one of these and be quite happy with it. However, there’s room to add an AMG variant that really cranks up the performance.

As for looks, I find the car attractive without being too much. I think the darker colors, look better on this car than the lighter ones, as the front grille looks a little busy with lighter colors. I find the car more attractive in person than in photos, and while I wasn’t a fan of the TriStar motif in the rear taillights, it has grown on me.

I haven’t driven the G580, but the GLC prototype I drove last month and the CLA feel different. Unlike previous Mercedes EVs, these feel like cars and not just science experiments. Yes, the technology is all there, but the one thing that BMW was able to do on its EVs that previous EQs lacked was delivering a driving experience that felt like it wasn’t exclusively dictated by math. There’s also no word on pricing yet.

The CLA with EQ Technology might be a mouthful, but it represents a significant leap forward.

2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA feels like a real car, not a science experiment Read More »

Google finds custom backdoor being installed on SonicWall network devices

Biz & IT, hackers, Security, sonicwall, vulnerabilities / Mike M. / July 17, 2025

Researchers from the Google Threat Intelligence Group said that hackers are compromising SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) appliances, which sit at the edge of enterprise networks and manage and secure access by mobile devices.

The targeted devices are end of life, meaning they no longer receive regular updates for stability and security. Despite the status, many organizations continue to rely on them. That has left them prime targets by UNC6148, the name Google has given to the unknown hacking group.

“GTIG recommends that all organizations with SMA appliances perform analysis to determine if they have been compromised,” a report published Wednesday said, using the abbreviation for Google Threat Intelligence Group. “Organizations should acquire disk images for forensic analysis to avoid interference from the rootkit anti-forensic capabilities. Organizations may need to engage with SonicWall to capture disk images from physical appliances.”

Lacking specifics

Many key details remain unknown. For one thing, the attacks are exploiting leaked local administrator credentials on the targeted devices, and so far, no one knows how the credentials were obtained. It’s also not known what vulnerabilities UNC6148 is exploiting. It’s also unclear precisely what the attackers are doing after they take control of a device.

The lack of details is largely the result of the functioning on Overstep, the name of custom backdoor malware UNC6148 is installing after initial compromise of the devices. Overstep allows the attackers to selectively remove log entries, a technique that is hindering forensic investigation. Wednesday’s report also posits that the attackers may be armed with a zero-day exploit, meaning it targets a vulnerability that’s currently publicly unknown. Possible vulnerabilities UNC6148 may be exploiting include:

CVE-2021-20038: An unauthenticated remote code execution made possible by a memory corruption vulnerability.
CVE-2024-38475: An unauthenticated path traversal vulnerability in Apache HTTP Server, which is present in the SMA 100. It can be exploited to extract two separate SQLite databases that store user account credentials, session tokens, and seed values for generating one-time passwords.
CVE-2021-20035: An authenticated remote code execution vulnerability. Security firm Arctic Wolf and SonicWall reported in April that this vulnerability was under active exploitation.
CVE-2021-20039: An authenticated remote code execution vulnerability. There have been reports that this vulnerability was under active exploitation to install ransomware in 2024.
CVE-2025-32819: An authenticated file deletion vulnerability that can be exploited to cause a targeted device to revert the built-in administrator credentials to a password so that attackers can gain administrator access.

Google finds custom backdoor being installed on SonicWall network devices Read More »

Stellantis abandons hydrogen fuel cell development

Cars, FCEV, hydrogen, Stellantis / Mike M. / July 16, 2025

Hydrogen is also much less energy-dense by volume, and making the stuff is far from efficient, even when you use entirely renewable electricity. And of course, the vast majority of commercial hydrogen is not so-called blue hydrogen, which was made with renewables but is instead mostly produced via steam reformation from hydrocarbon stocks. That’s an energy-intensive process and one that is very far from carbon-neutral.

Finally, there’s virtually no infrastructure for hydrogen road vehicles to refuel.

The vehicles are inefficient, and the fuel is expensive, difficult to store, and hard to find. So it’s perhaps no wonder that someone at Stellantis finally saw sense. Between the high development costs and the fact that FCEVs only sell with strong incentives, the decision was made to cancel the production of hydrogen vans in France and Poland.

Stellantis says there will be no job losses at its factories and that R&D staff will be put to work on other projects.

“In a context where the Company is mobilizing to respond to demanding CO2 regulations in Europe, Stellantis has decided to discontinue its hydrogen fuel cell technology development program,” said Jean-Philippe Imparato, Chief Operating Officer for Enlarged Europe. “The hydrogen market remains a niche segment, with no prospects of mid-term economic sustainability. We must make clear and responsible choices to ensure our competitiveness and meet the expectations of our customers with our electric and hybrid passenger and light commercial vehicles offensive.”

Stellantis abandons hydrogen fuel cell development Read More »

Medieval preacher invoked chivalric hero as a meme in sermon

Chaucer, cultural studies, culture, historical archaelogy, history, language history, Literature, medieval literature, Science, textual analysis / Mike M. / July 16, 2025

It’s the translation of the word “elves” that is central to their new analysis. Based on their consideration of the lines in the context of the sermon (dubbed the Humiliamini sermon) as a whole, Falk and Wade believe the correct translation is “wolves.” The confusion arose, they suggest, because of a scribe’s error while transcribing the sermon: specifically, the letters “y” (“ylves”) and “w” became muddled. The sermon focuses on humility, playing up how humans have been debased since Adam and comparing human behaviors to animals: the cunning deceit of the adder, for example, the pride of lions, the gluttony of pigs, or the plundering of wolves.

the text of the sermon — The text of the sermon. Credit: University of Cambridge

Falk and Wade think translating the word as “wolves” resolves some of the perplexity surrounding Chaucer’s references to Wade. The relevant passage in Troilus and Criseyde concerns Pandarus, uncle to Criseyde, who invites his niece to dinner and regales her with songs and the “tale of Wade,” in hopes of bringing the lovers together. A chivalric romance would serve this purpose better than a Germanic heroic epic evoking “the mythological sphere of giants and monsters,” the authors argue.

The new translation makes more sense of the reference in The Merchant’s Tale, too, in which an old knight argues for marrying a young woman rather than an older one because the latter are crafty and spin fables. The knight thus marries a much younger woman and ends up cuckolded. “The tale becomes, effectively, an origin myth for all women knowing ‘so muchel craft on Wades boot,'” the authors wrote.

And while they acknowledge that the evidence is circumstantial, Falk and Wade think they’ve identified the author of the Humiliamini sermon: late medieval writer Alexander Neckam, or perhaps an acolyte imitating his arguments and writing style.

Review of English Studies, 2025. DOI: 10.1093/res/hgaf038 (About DOIs).

Medieval preacher invoked chivalric hero as a meme in sermon Read More »

Large study squashes anti-vaccine talking points about aluminum

ACIP, aluminum, anti-vaccine, health, robert f kennedy jr, vaccine / Mike M. / July 16, 2025

A sweeping analysis of health data from more than 1.2 million children in Denmark born over a 24-year period found no link between the small amounts of aluminum in vaccines and a wide range of health conditions—including asthma, allergies, eczema, autism, and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The finding, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, firmly squashes a persistent anti-vaccine talking point that can give vaccine-hesitant parents pause.

Small amounts of aluminum salts have been added to vaccines for decades as adjuvants, that is, components of the vaccine that help drum up protective immune responses against a target germ. Aluminum adjuvants can be found in a variety of vaccines, including those against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and hepatitis A and B.

Despite decades of use worldwide and no clear link to harms, concern about aluminum and cumulative exposures continually resurfaces—largely thanks to anti-vaccine advocates who fearmonger about the element. A leader of such voices is Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the current US health secretary and an ardent anti-vaccine advocate.

In a June 2024 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Kennedy falsely claimed that aluminum is “extremely neurotoxic” and “give[s] you allergies.” The podcast has racked up nearly 2 million views on YouTube. Likewise, Children’s Health Defense, the rabid anti-vaccine organization Kennedy created in 2018, has also made wild claims about the safety of aluminum adjuvants. That includes linking it to autism, despite that many high-quality scientific studies have found no link between any vaccines and autism.

While anti-vaccine advocates like Kennedy routinely dismiss and attack the plethora of studies that do not support their dangerous claims, the new study should reassure any hesitant parents.

Clear data, unclear future

For the study, lead author Niklas Worm Andersson, of the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, and colleagues tapped into Denmark’s national registry to analyze medical records of over 1.2 million children born in the country between 1997 and 2018. During that time, new vaccines were introduced and recommendations shifted, creating variation in how many aluminum-containing vaccines children received.

Large study squashes anti-vaccine talking points about aluminum Read More »

Author name: Mike M.