Ars Technica

Frosthaven, a board game that was somehow even bigger and more ambitious than its considerably weighty forebear Gloomhaven, asks a lot of its players.

Each turn means picking two from maybe a dozen different possible action cards. Each of those cards has two options (plus a "default"), and each of those cards is played out against multiple other actions by your enemies and companions. And that's just the game itself—actually getting the game set up and getting your fellow gamers to agree on semi-regular appointments is a whole other crusade against tough odds.

When you're zoomed in, and especially in interior spaces, you can easily see Frosthaven's hex-based board game roots. Credit: Arc Games Treacherous terrain is a big part of the strategy, whether using it for power-ups or kiting enemies into bad spots. Credit: Arc Games Summons and spell-casting add another layer of complexity onto the game's meaty combat. Credit: Arc Games Your outpost provides you with boons, quests, and other higher-level management options. Credit: Arc Games

Like Gloomhaven before it, Frosthaven is getting a PC game, which should make exploring a baddie-infested tundra easier to set up and potentially easier to do multiplayer. A closed beta test begins March 27, with sign-ups at the game's website. The game will launch into early access during 2025, with more than 35 quests across the first two acts available, with over 130 quests planned in total. It will have single-player and up to four-player multiplayer, with players able to pick up their teammates' characters if there's a momentary dropout.

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Apple was slower than most Big Tech firms to jump on the generative AI hype train, but it finally got there with the release of Apple Intelligence. The first components of Apple's AI rolled out last year, but it's going to take a bit longer for one of the most hotly anticipated features. After announcing that the improved Siri was delayed until 2026, Apple has reportedly begun an uncharacteristic reorganization of its executive ranks.

The new report from Bloomberg claims that Apple hopes to get its AI-backed Siri efforts back on track after months of delays. The updated assistant is supposed to leverage on-device data to improve personal context to make interactions more natural and work across apps. CEO Tim Cook has apparently become dissatisfied with John Giannandrea, the company's AI head. Apple leadership discussed the lagging Siri AI features at length during a recent summit, and the result is that Giannandrea will no longer be overseeing Siri development.

In the coming days, Apple is expected to tell employees that Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell will be stepping in to take over development of the next-gen Siri. This will remove Apple's troubled virtual assistant completely from Giannandrea's oversight, leaving him to work on AI research and testing initiatives. Apple's Vision Products Group, which is responsible for developing the company's VR headsets, will be managed by Rockwell deputy Paul Meade going forward.

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Robert Wickens was one of motorsport's rising stars when his life was permanently altered in a crash that paralyzed him from the chest down in 2018. Ever since, Wickens has said that his goal is to return to compete in the sport at the top level, and that looks set to happen early next month in Long Beach, California, following a successful test of his hand control-equipped Corvette GT3.R race car earlier this week.

The day-and-a-half test at Sebring in Florida wasn't Wickens' first time in a race car since his crash. In 2021 he tested a less-powerful front-wheel drive Hyundai Veloster N TCR car and competed in the Michelin Pilot Challenge series for Bryan Herta Autosport, winning the championship in 2023 with his teammate Harry Gottsacker in the newer Elantra N TCR car.

And last year, we bumped into him in Portland, Oregon, ahead of his test in the Formula E Gen3 Evo car.

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Every Tesla Cybertruck ever sold is being recalled so Tesla can fix an exterior panel that could potentially come unglued and detach while driving.

If the "panel separates from the vehicle while in drive, it could create a road hazard for following motorists and increase their risk of injury or a collision," Tesla explained in a safety recall report submitted Tuesday to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Tesla initially became aware of the issue in January and launched a study of the problem as more complaints came in, the report said. By March, social media complaints were getting louder as Tesla wrapped up its probe, concluding that a voluntary recall was necessary.

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The parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died of measles in Texas last month sat down for an interview with Children's Health Defense (CHD), the rabid anti-vaccine organization founded and run until recently by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now US health secretary under the Trump administration.

The child's vaccine-preventable death marked the first measles fatality in the US in a decade. It's a tragedy that stands as a dark reminder of the dangers of the disease—one of the most infectious known to humankind—and the importance of the lifesaving vaccinations. But, in the interview, CHD wielded the loss of the young child as a means to downplay the deadly disease, attack the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine, tout unproven treatments, and spread misinformation.

Preventable death

The video interview, which was posted Monday, begins with the grieving parents, who are Mennonites, recounting their daughter's decline amid sobs: She came down with measles, developed the telltale rash, and then her fever kept climbing, and her breathing worsened. They took her to the emergency room and she was admitted to the hospital. Doctors found she had developed pneumonia, a known complication of measles that strikes about 1 in 20 children infected and is the most common cause of measles deaths in young children. Her condition deteriorated, she was moved to the intensive care unit, intubated, but continued to decline and died.

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It's a widely known problem with roots in urban legend: Devices with motherboards failing in the early 2000s with a sudden pop, a gruesome spill, or sometimes a burst of flames. And it was allegedly all due to one guy who didn't copy a stolen formula correctly.

The "capacitor plague" of the early 2000s was real and fairly widespread among devices, even if the majority of those devices didn't go bad at the same time or even in the same year. The story of this widespread failure, passing between industry insider stories and media reports, had a specific culprit, but also a broad narrative about the shift from Japanese to Taiwanese manufacturers and about outsourcing generally.

The Asianometry channel on YouTube recently dug into the "capacitor plague" in a video that asks, "What happened to the capacitors in 2002?" and comes to some informed, broad, and layered answers. It explains the specifics of what's happening inside both a working capacitor and the faulty models, relays the reporting on the companies blamed and affected, and, crucially, puts the plague in the wider context of hotter chips, complex supply chains, counterfeits, and, sure, some industrial sabotage.

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Discord’s mobile app will have video ads starting in June, the company announced today. The initial pilot for the video ads, which Discord calls Video Quests on Mobile, will offer advertisers the ability to “showcase trailers, make impactful announcements, and highlight premium content” to users, Discord said.

Discord was a proudly ad-free platform until March 2024, when it introduced ads to its desktop and console apps. Those ads offer Discord users rewards for PC games if they play certain games or get people to watch a stream of their gameplay through Discord. Discord followed up with Video Quests, which let developers show Discord users video ads, like trailers and announcements of new seasons and downloadable content. Discord users see prompts for both types of ads on the bottom-left side of their screen and can choose to expand or ignore them.

Discord users can also opt out of personalized promotions and “hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game you’re not interested in,” Discord said.

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A mother suing Character.AI after her son died by suicide—allegedly manipulated by chatbots posing as adult lovers and therapists—was horrified when she recently discovered that the platform is allowing random chatbots to pose as her son.

According to Megan Garcia's litigation team, at least four chatbots bearing Sewell Setzer III's name and likeness were flagged. Ars reviewed chat logs showing the bots used Setzer's real photo as a profile picture, attempted to imitate his real personality by referencing Setzer's favorite Game of Thrones chatbot, and even offered "a two-way call feature with his cloned voice," Garcia's lawyers said. The bots could also be self-deprecating, saying things like "I'm very stupid."

The Tech Justice Law Project (TJLP), which is helping Garcia with litigation, told Ars that "this is not the first time Character.AI has turned a blind eye to chatbots modeled off of dead teenagers to entice users, and without better legal protections, it may not be the last."

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