Technology News

A US judge who will decide Google’s fate in a historic antitrust trial suggested it was “odd” for the company to say it has the best search engine but also pay Apple billions to lock out rivals.

There’s still time left to bid for a 145,152-core Cheyenne supercomputer that was once the 20th most powerful computer in the world.

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AT&T is now charging mobile customers an extra $7 per month for faster wireless data speeds. AT&T says the Turbo add-on, available starting today, is "built to support high-performance mobile applications, like gaming, social video broadcasting and live video conferencing, with optimized data while customers are on the go."

While Turbo "boosts all the high-speed and hotspot data on a user's connection," AT&T said the difference will be more noticeable for certain kinds of applications. For example, gaming applications using Turbo will experience "less freezing or stuttering and lower latency," AT&T said.

The $7 charge is for each line. Adding Turbo to multiple lines on the same account requires paying the extra fee for each line. AT&T said that Turbo lets users "optimize their plan's high-speed (premium) and hotspot data allotments" and provides better data performance "even during busy times on the network."

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Enlarge / John Schmidtlein, partner at Williams & Connolly LLP and lead litigator for Alphabet Inc.'s Google, arrives to federal court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

Halfway through the first day of closing arguments in the Department of Justice's big antitrust trial against Google, US District Judge Amit Mehta posed the question that likely many Google users have pondered over years of DOJ claims that Google's market dominance has harmed users.

"What should Google have done to remain outside the crosshairs of the DOJ?" Mehta asked plaintiffs halfway through the first of two full days of closing arguments.

According to the DOJ and state attorneys general suing, Google has diminished search quality everywhere online, primarily by locking rivals out of default positions on devices and in browsers. By paying billions for default placements that the government has argued allowed Google to hoard traffic and profits, Google allegedly made it nearly impossible for rivals to secure enough traffic to compete, ultimately decreasing competition and innovation in search by limiting the number of viable search engines in the market.

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• Weird Al's Rambo parody was a drop in the bucket amidst all the other jokes in the film, but it's among the most memorable. [credit: Shout Factory ]

Believe it or not, it's been 35 years since Weird Al's quotable cult classic UHF first came out. Right on time for that anniversary, Shout Factory will release an UltraHD Blu-ray of the movie. This will be the first time it has ever been available in 4K.

Releasing July 2 but pre-ordering now, the disc will include a new 4K scan of the original 35mm negative, along with audio commentary from Weird Al and Jay Levy, the film's director.

It will also come bundled with a standard HD Blu-ray that includes the film in that older format along with a bunch of special features, including video of a 2014 Comic-Con panel on the movie, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes videos, and some other assets. Some of those return from the movie's last physical edition, which was a 25th anniversary HD Blu-ray, but not 4K.

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Enlarge / A big erdtree casts a big shadow. (credit: Namco Bandai)

The good news for Elden Ring fans is that the two-plus-year wait for the game's first DLC, "Shadow of the Erdtree," will end in just a couple of months. The bad news is that "Shadow of the Erdtree" will also be the last bit of DLC for FromSoftware's multimillion-selling action RPG.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chinese site Zhihu (machine translation), Elden Ring producer Hidetaka Miyazaki said "Shadow of the Erdtree" contains a lot of existing lore and content that was created for the original game but couldn't fit into the final package. Miyazaki said the team decided to release all of that unused content as one large DLC expansion, rather than multiple smaller bits, because "if they were sold separately, the freedom of exploration and sense of adventure would be reduced."

As for just how big the DLC will be, Miyazaki balked when the interviewer asked how long it would take players to complete. Miyazaki brought up memories of being called a liar after estimating in an earlier interview that the original game would only take about 30 hours of play to complete—crowdsourced game-length database HowLongToBeat puts the "main story" estimate closer to 60 hours.

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A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January.

A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn’t have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account.

While exploits require no user interaction, hijackings work only against accounts that aren’t configured to use multifactor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets, but the attackers ultimately are unable to access the account, allowing the rightful owner to change the reset password. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of 10.

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Argylle, Mad Max: Fury Road, Napoleon, and a documentary about Billie Eilish are just a few of the movies you should be watching on Apple TV+ this month.

Enlarge / Streaming Fallout 4 from GeForce Now might seem unnecessary, unless you know how running it natively has been going. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

The Steam Deck is a Linux computer. There is, technically, very little you cannot get running on it, given enough knowledge, time, and patience. That said, it's never a bad thing when someone has done all the work for you, leaving you to focus on what matters: sneaking game time on the couch.

GeForce Now, Nvidia's game-streaming service that uses your own PC gaming libraries, has made it easier for Steam Deck owners to get its service set up on their Deck. On the service's Download page, there is now a section for Gaming Handheld Devices. Most of the device links provide the service's Windows installer, since devices like the ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go run Windows. Some note that GeForce Now is already installed on devices like the Razer Edge and Logitech G Cloud.

But Steam Deck types are special. We get a Unix-style executable script, a folder with all the necessary Steam icon image assets, and a README.md file.

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Enlarge / The Samsung Watch 6 classic. (credit: Samsung)

Wear OS was nearly dead a few years ago but is now on a remarkable comeback trajectory, thanks to renewed commitment from Google and a hardware team-up with Samsung. Wear OS is still in a distant second place compared to the Apple Watch, but a new Counterpoint Research report has the wearable OS at 21 percent market share, with the OS expected to hit 27 percent in 2024.

Counterpoint's market segmentation for this report is basically "smartwatches with an app store," so it excludes cheaper fitness bands and other, more simple electronic watches. We're also focusing on the non-China market for now. The report has Apple's market share at 53 percent and expects it to fall to 49 percent in 2024. The "Other" category is at 26 percent currently. That "Other" group would have to be Garmin watches, a few remaining Fitbit smartwatches like the Versa and Ionic, and Amazfit watches. Counterpoint expects the whole market (including China) to grow 15 percent in 2024 and that a "major part" of the growth will be non-Apple watches. Counterpoint lists Samsung as the major Wear OS driver, with OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Google getting shout-outs too.

2023 are actual numbers, while 2024 is a forecast. (credit: Counterpoint Research)

China is a completely different world, with Huawei's HarmonyOS currently dominating with 48 percent. Counterpoint expects the OS's smartwatch market share to grow to 61 percent this year. Under the hood, HarmonyOS-for-smartwatches is an Android fork, and for hardware, the company is gearing up to launch an Apple Watch clone. Apple is only at 28 percent in China, and Wear OS is relegated to somewhere in the "Other" category. There's no Play Store in China, so Wear OS is less appealing, but some Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Oppo are still building Wear OS watches.

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Enlarge (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Starting in March with the release of iOS 17.4, iPhones in the European Union have been subject to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a batch of regulations that (among other things) forced Apple to support alternate app stores, app sideloading, and third-party browser engines in iOS for the first time. This week, EU regulators announced that they are also categorizing Apple's iPadOS as a "gatekeeper," meaning that the iPad will soon be subject to the same regulations as the iPhone.

In a developer blog post released today, Apple said that it would comply with the EU's regulations "later this fall, as required." All changes that Apple has made to iOS on European iPhones to comply with the DMA will be implemented in the same way on the iPad, though it's not clear whether these changes will be brought to iPadOS 17 or if they'll just be a part of the upcoming iPacOS 18 update.

The EU began investigating whether iPadOS would qualify as a gatekeeper in September 2023, the same day it decided that iOS, the Safari browser, and the App Store were all gatekeepers.

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Here are the winners of our Single-Use Plastics Challenge, and how these solutions help reduce the food and beverage industry’s plastic footprint.Here are the winners of our Single-Use Plastics Challenge, and how these solutions help reduce the food and beverage industry’s plastic footprint.

From Google Ads to Gemini, small businesses across the country use Google tools to reach customers, grow their client base and so much more.

Enlarge / New gods, same old drama. (credit: Supergiant)

Here at Ars, we were obviously excited by the late 2022 announcement of Hades II as a follow-up to our favorite game of 2020. But when early coverage of that sequel suggested major changes to the game's core combat, we were a bit worried that the developers at Supergiant risked messing up the core gameplay loop that made the original game so satisfying.

So far, it seems like those worries were unfounded. After spending a few hours playing through the game's recent technical test—which covers content up through the game's first major "boss" character—we found a confident sequel that keeps the original games familiar flow while adding just enough changes to avoid feeling like a rehash. If anything, the new systems in Hades II make the original game's positional combat more satisfying than ever.

Spoiler warning: The rest of this piece offers minor spoilers for the early parts of Hades II.

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Learn more about how we developed Pixel 8 Pro’s Video Boost feature as well as tips on how to use it.Learn more about how we developed Pixel 8 Pro’s Video Boost feature as well as tips on how to use it.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized the idea superintelligent AI could erase humanity. His new book imagines a world in which algorithms have solved every problem.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom popularized the idea superintelligent AI could erase humanity. His new book imagines a world in which algorithms have solved every problem.

In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, far-right militia groups are using Facebook to organize—and they’re not worried about getting banned by Meta.

Enlarge / A decorative ring made from carved stone is embedded in the wall of a ballcourt in the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza. (credit: Kåre Thor Olsen/CC BY-SA 3.0)

It's well-known that the ancient Maya had their own version of ball games, which were played with a rubber ball on stone courts. Such games served not just as athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices. Archaeologists have now found evidence that the Maya may have blessed newly constructed ball courts in rituals involving plants with hallucinogenic properties, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

“When they erected a new building, they asked the goodwill of the gods to protect the people inhabiting it,” said co-author David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati. “Some people call it an ensouling ritual, to get a blessing from and appease the gods.” Lentz and his team previously used genetic and pollen analyses of the wild and cultivated plants found in the ancient Maya city Yaxnohcah in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, revealing evidence of sustainable agriculture and forestry spanning a millennia.

As we've reported previously, there is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.

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When it rains, it pours. Here are our picks for cold, wet days—plus expert tips on deciphering product specs.