Technology News

Enlarge / The Meta Quest Pro at a Best Buy demo station in October 2022.

Meta will open up the operating system that runs on its Quest mixed reality headsets to other technology companies, it announced today.

What was previously simply called Quest software will be called Horizon OS, and the goal will be to move beyond the general-use Quest devices to more purpose-specific devices, according to an Instagram video from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

There will be headsets focused purely on watching TV and movies on virtual screens, with the emphasis on high-end OLED displays. There will also be headsets that are designed to be as light as possible at the expense of performance for productivity and exercise uses. And there will be gaming-oriented ones.

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Kremlin-backed hackers have been exploiting a critical Microsoft vulnerability for four years in attacks that targeted a vast array of organizations with a previously undocumented tool, the software maker disclosed Monday.

When Microsoft patched the vulnerability in October 2022—at least two years after it came under attack by the Russian hackers—the company made no mention that it was under active exploitation. As of publication, the company’s advisory still made no mention of the in-the-wild targeting. Windows users frequently prioritize the installation of patches based on whether a vulnerability is likely to be exploited in real-world attacks.

Exploiting CVE-2022-38028, as the vulnerability is tracked, allows attackers to gain system privileges, the highest available in Windows, when combined with a separate exploit. Exploiting the flaw, which carries a 7.8 severity rating out of a possible 10, requires low existing privileges and little complexity. It resides in the Windows print spooler, a printer-management component that has harbored previous critical zero-days. Microsoft said at the time that it learned of the vulnerability from the US National Security Agency.

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Enlarge / A time-lapse showing how an insect's wing adopts very specific positions during flight. (credit: Florian Muijres, Dickinson Lab)

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have classified these creatures as pterygotes, the rest of the world simply calls them winged insects.

There are many aspects of insect biology, especially their flight, that remain a mystery for scientists. One is simply how they move their wings. The insect wing hinge is a specialized joint that connects an insect’s wings with its body. It’s composed of five interconnected plate-like structures called sclerites. When these plates are shifted by the underlying muscles, it makes the insect wings flap.

Until now, it has been tricky for scientists to understand the biomechanics that govern the motion of the sclerites even using advanced imaging technologies. “The sclerites within the wing hinge are so small and move so rapidly that their mechanical operation during flight has not been accurately captured despite efforts using stroboscopic photography, high-speed videography, and X-ray tomography,” Michael Dickinson, Zarem professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), told Ars Technica.

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Enlarge / Artist's illustration of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Titan. (credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

NASA has formally approved the robotic Dragonfly mission for full development, committing to a revolutionary project to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone.

Agency officials announced the outcome of Dragonfly's confirmation review last week. This review is a checkpoint in the lifetime of most NASA projects and marks the moment when the agency formally commits to the final design, construction, and launch of a space mission. The outcome of each mission's confirmation review typically establishes a budgetary and schedule commitment.

“Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)

Congress passed and President Biden signed a reauthorization of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), approving a bill that opponents say includes a "major expansion of warrantless surveillance" under Section 702 of FISA.

Over the weekend, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act was approved by the Senate in a 60-34 vote. The yes votes included 30 Republicans, 28 Democrats, and two independents who caucus with Democrats. The bill, which was previously passed by the House and reauthorizes Section 702 of FISA for two years, was signed by President Biden on Saturday.

"Thousands and thousands of Americans could be forced into spying for the government by this new bill and with no warrant or direct court oversight whatsoever," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Friday. "Forcing ordinary Americans and small businesses to conduct secret, warrantless spying is what authoritarian countries do, not democracies."

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Enlarge / OnLeak's renders of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, the Pixel 9 Pro, and the Pixel 9. (credit: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles / MySmartPrice)

The usual timeline would put the Google Pixel 9 at something like five months away from launching, but that doesn't mean it's too early to leak! Real-life pictures of the "Pixel 9 Pro" model have landed over at Rozetked.

This prototype looks just like the renders from OnLeaks that first came out back in January. The biggest change is a new pill-shaped camera bump instead of the edge-to-edge design of old models. It looks rather stylish in real-life photos, with the rounded corners of the pill and camera glass matching the body shape. The matte back looks like it still uses the excellent "soft-touch glass" material from last year. The front and back of the phone are totally flat, with a metal band around the side. The top edge still has a signal window cut out of it, which is usually for mmWave. The Pixel 8 Pro's near-useless temperature sensor appears to still be on the back of this prototype. At least, the spot for the temperature sensor—the silver disk right below the LED camera flash—looks identical to the Pixel 8 Pro. As a prototype any of this could change before the final release, but this is what it looks like right now.

The phone was helpfully photographed next to an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and you might notice that the Pixel 9 Pro looks a little small! That's because this is one of the small models, with only a 6.1-inch display. Previously for Pixels, "Pro" meant "the big model," but this year Google is supposedly shipping three models, adding in a top-tier small phone. There's the usual big Pixel 9, with a 6.7-inch display, which will reportedly be called the "Pixel 9 Pro XL." The new model is the "Pixel 9 Pro"—no XL—which is a small model but still with all the "Pro" trimmings, like three rear cameras. There's also the Pixel 9 base model, which is the usual smaller phone (6.03-inch) with cut-down specs like only two rear cameras.

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Enlarge (credit: Open Home Foundation)

Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project.

The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it's also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It's entirely free, but it also receives funding through a private cloud services company, Nabu Casa. It contains tiny board project ESPHome and other inter-connected bits. It has wide-ranging voice assistant ambitions, but it doesn't want to be Alexa or Google Assistant. Home Assistant is a lot.

After an announcement this weekend, however, Home Assistant's shape is a bit easier to draw out. All of the project's ambitions now fall under the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit organization that now contains Home Assistant and more than 240 related bits. Its mission statement is refreshing, and refreshingly honest about the state of modern open source projects.

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Sales of vegan meat are trending downward in the US, with companies scrambling to win back customers.

Learn more about Google's AI-powered tools that can help you explore the outdoors more.Learn more about Google's AI-powered tools that can help you explore the outdoors more.

Over the weekend, President Joe Biden signed legislation not only reauthorizing a major FISA spy program but expanding it in ways that could have major implications for privacy rights in the US.

Enlarge / The M2 Pro Mac mini. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman thinks that Apple's M4 chips for Macs are coming sooner rather than later—possibly as early as "late this year," per a report from earlier this month. Now Gurman says Apple could completely skip the M3 generation for some Macs, most notably the Mac mini.

To be clear, Gurman doesn't have specific insider information confirming that Apple is planning to skip the M3 mini. But based on Apple's alleged late-2024-into-early-2025 timeline for the M4 mini, he believes that it's "probably safe to say" that there's not enough space on the calendar for an M3 mini to be released between now and then.

This wouldn't be the first time an Apple Silicon Mac had skipped a chip generation—the 24-inch iMac was never updated with the M2, instead jumping directly from the M1 to the M3. The Mac Pro also skipped the M1 series, leapfrogging from Intel chips to the M2.

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Enlarge / A cropped portion of a ca. 1980 ad for the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard, which allowed Apple II users to run the CP/M operating system. (credit: Microsoft)

Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit Z80 architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator in various forms.

In a letter to customers dated April 15, 2024, Zilog wrote, "Please be advised that our Wafer Foundry Manufacturer will be discontinuing support for the Z80 product and other product lines. Refer to the attached list of the Z84C00 Z80 products affected."

Designers typically use the Z84C00 chips because of familiarity with the Z80 architecture or to allow legacy system upgrades without needing significant system redesigns. And while many other embedded chip architectures have superseded these Z80 chips in speed, processing power, and capability, they remained go-to solutions for decades in products that didn't need any extra horsepower.

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Enlarge / Don't expect to see this on the iOS App Store any time soon. (credit: OatmealDome)

Last week's release of the Delta emulation suite finally gave iOS users easy, no-sideloading-required access to classic Nintendo game emulation up through the Nintendo 64 era. When it comes to emulating Nintendo's subsequent home consoles on iOS, though, some technical restrictions imposed by Apple are making it difficult to get a functional emulator on the App Store.

In a recent blog post, DolphiniOS developer (and longtime Switch hacker) OatmealDome explains how a Dolphin code fork—which ports the popular GameCube and Wii emulator to Apple's smartphone OS—uses just-in-time (JIT) compilation to translate the PowerPC instructions from those retro consoles into ARM-compatible iOS code. But Apple's App Store regulations against apps that "install executable code" (Section 3.3.1B) generally prevent JIT recompilation on iOS, with very limited exceptions such as web browsers. That restriction may have some valid security reasoning behind it, but it can also get in the way for developers of tools like third-party browser engines (except recently in the EU).

While MacOS developers can make use of an explicit entitlement to allow JIT recompilation in an app, that exception doesn't apply to iOS developers. And while alternative App Stores and sideloaded apps (including DolphiniOS) have discovered various ways to enable JIT compilation on both jailbroken and stock iOS devices, these workarounds can get quite arcane and occasionally break with new iOS releases.

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GaeaStar’s 3D-printed disposable clay cups are available in the US for the first time today, but only at Verve Coffee shops in San Francisco.

For Earth Day, we’re sharing how Chromebooks can help support sustainability goals at your school by building a repair program and more.For Earth Day, we’re sharing how Chromebooks can help support sustainability goals at your school by building a repair program and more.

Tread lightly on our planet with toys and accessories made from repurposed plastic, and many other Earth-friendly picks.

Next time you stock up on supplies, consider these green cleaning alternatives, from refillable sprays to reusable dishcloths.

Enlarge / Tesla's "Full Self Driving" system just got a third cheaper. (credit: Edie Leong for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Tesla has dropped the price of its controversial "Full Self Driving" partially automated driver assist. Last week, getting access to FSD would cost you $12,000—today, it's a third cheaper at $8,000. Alternatively, customers can subscribe to the feature for $99 a month.

Tesla has bet heavily on FSD for the future of the company. It's one of two partially automated driving systems offered by Tesla—Autopilot is the older and less-capable system. FSD includes features such as auto lane changes, auto parking, the ability to summon the car from its parking space, and lane keeping (Autosteer in Tesla-speak) on surface streets.

Tesla claims that "[y]our car will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention and will continuously improve," but then also notes that "[t]he currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."

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Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman join forces in Deadpool and Wolverine.

We were already looking forward to the summer release of Deadpool and Wolverine, which will bring together Ryan Reynolds' R-rated antihero with Hugh Jackman's iconic X-Man. We're even more eager to see the film after Marvel dropped the official trailer, which is chock-full of off-color witticisms, meta-references, slo-mo action, and a generous sprinkling of F-bombs. (But no cocaine! Wade promised Feige! "They know all the slang terms. They have a list.")

"You’re talking about two massive movie stars in their most iconic roles,” Director Shawn Levy (Free Guy) told Screen Rant earlier this month. “It also gave me an opportunity. It’s the third Deadpool movie, but it’s not Deadpool 3. It’s a different thing that’s very much Deadpool and Wolverine. And it’s not trying to copycat anything from the first two movies. They were awesome, but this is a two-hander character adventure.”

(Spoilers for Deadpool 2 below.)

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Enlarge (credit: Sheldon Coope | SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images)

TikTok is gearing up for a long legal battle to fight legislation in the US that threatens to ban the app in its largest market if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, refuses to sell the viral video platform.

The US House of Representatives on Saturday passed a package of national security bills that included legislation that would result in TikTok being banned in the country if Chinese parent company ByteDance does not divest the app.

Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s public policy head in the US, told staff in response that if the bill became law, the company would “move to the courts for a legal challenge.”

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