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Ars Technica
AI used to design a multi-step enzyme that can digest some plastics
Enzymes are amazing catalysts. These proteins are made of nothing more than a handful of Earth-abundant elements, and they promote a vast array of reactions, convert chemical energy to physical motion, and act with remarkable specificity. In many cases, we have struggled to find non-enzymatic catalysts that can drive some of the same chemical reactions.
Unfortunately, there isn't an enzyme for many reactions we would sorely like to catalyze—things like digesting plastics or incorporating carbon dioxide into more complex molecules. We've had a few successes using directed evolution to create useful variations of existing enzymes, but efforts to broaden the scope of what enzymes can do have been limited.
With the advent of AI-driven protein design, however, we can now potentially design things that are unlike anything found in nature. A new paper today describes a success in making a brand-new enzyme with the potential to digest plastics. But it also shows how even a simple enzyme may have an extremely complex mechanism—and one that's hard to tackle, even with the latest AI tools.
Categories: Technology News
DOGE’s .gov site lampooned as coders quickly realize it can be edited by anyone
"An official website of the United States government," reads small text atop the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) website that Elon Musk's team started populating this week with information on agency cuts.
But you apparently don't have to work in government to push updates to the site. A couple of prankster web developers told 404 Media that they separately discovered how "insecure" the DOGE site was, seemingly pulling from a "database that can be edited by anyone."
One coder couldn't resist and pushed two updates that, as of this writing, remained on the DOGE site. "This is a joke of a .gov site," one read. "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN," read another.
Categories: Technology News
Reddit will lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says
Reddit is planning to introduce a paywall this year, CEO Steve Huffman said during a videotaped Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Thursday.
Huffman previously showed interest in potentially introducing a new type of subreddit with "exclusive content or private areas" that Reddit users would pay to access.
When asked this week about plans for some Redditors to create "content that only paid members can see," Huffman said:
Categories: Technology News
After 20% range reduction, I’m waiting for Jaguar to buy my car back
In November 2019, I was overjoyed to drive a new Jaguar I-Pace off the dealer's lot. Five years later, I'm waiting for Jaguar to drive the car away.
After two recalls for software updates, the car's range is now permanently restricted to 80 percent of what it was new. And along with owners of over 2,700 2019 I-Paces, I'm waiting for Jaguar to buy the car back. That's because the company has decided that purchasing the cars is cheaper—and likely easier—than identifying and replacing defective battery packs. It's a frustrating situation to be in, and not just because I can no longer drive a car I have grown to like.
Why did I buy an I-Pace? Good question—after all, Jaguars are not renowned for being paragons of reliability. 2019 was also the first year for the I-Pace, and buying a car in its first model can be a risky move as unanticipated manufacturing and parts problems rear their heads. One example: The original wiring harness in the I-Pace was poorly designed, so Jaguar ended up replacing many of them (including mine), which the mechanic told me took 11 hours and involved disassembling the front of the car.
Categories: Technology News
Arm to start making server CPUs in-house
Arm plans to launch its own chip this year after securing Meta as one of its first customers, in a radical change to the SoftBank-owned group’s business model of licensing its blueprints to the likes of Apple and Nvidia.
Rene Haas, Arm’s chief executive, will unveil the first chip that it has made in-house as early as this summer, according to people familiar with the UK-based group’s plans.
The move from designing the basic building blocks of a chip to making its own complete processor could also upend the balance of power in the $700 billion semiconductor industry, putting Arm into competition with some of its biggest customers.
Categories: Technology News
Rocket Report: A blue mood at Blue; Stoke Space fires a shot over the bow
Welcome to Edition 7.31 of the Rocket Report! The unfortunate news this week concerns layoffs. Blue Origin announced a 10 percent cut in its workforce as the company aims to get closer to breaking even. More broadly in the space industry, there is unease about what the Trump administration's cuts to NASA and other federal agencies might mean.
We don't have all the answers, but it does seem that NASA is likely to be subject to less deep cuts than some other parts of the government. We should find out sometime in March when the Trump White House submits its initial budget request. Congress, of course, will have the final say.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Categories: Technology News
H5N1 testing in cow veterinarians suggests bird flu is spreading silently
Three veterinarians who work with cows have tested positive for prior infections of H5 bird flu, according to a study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The finding may not seem surprising, given the sweeping and ongoing outbreak of H5N1 among dairy farms in the US, which has reached 968 herds in 16 states and led to infections in 41 dairy workers. However, it is notable that none of the three veterinarians were aware of being infected, and none of them worked with cows that were known or suspected to be infected with H5N1. In fact, one of them only worked in Georgia and South Carolina, two states where H5N1 infections in dairy cows and humans have never been reported.
The findings suggest that the virus may be moving in animals and people silently, and that our surveillance systems are missing infections—both long-held fears among health experts.
Categories: Technology News
Streaming used to make stuff networks wouldn’t. Now it wants safer bets.
There was a time when it felt like you needed a streaming subscription in order to contribute to watercooler conversations. Without Netflix, you couldn’t react to House of Cards’ latest twist. Without Hulu, you couldn’t comment on how realistic The Handmaid’s Tale felt, and you needed Prime Video to prefer The Boys over the latest Marvel movies. In the earlier days of streaming, when streaming providers were still tasked with convincing customers that streaming was viable, streaming companies strived to deliver original content that lured customers.
But today, the majority of streaming services are struggling with profitability, and the Peak TV era, a time when TV programming budgets kept exploding and led to iconic original series like Game of Thrones, is over. This year, streaming companies are pinching pennies. This means they're trying harder to extract more money from current subscribers through ads and changes to programming strategies that put less emphasis on original content.
What does that mean for streaming subscribers, who are increasingly paying more? And what does it mean for watercooler chat and media culture when the future of TV increasingly looks like TV’s past, with a heightened focus on live events, mainstream content, and commercials?
Categories: Technology News
Condé Nast, other news orgs say AI firm stole articles, spit out “hallucinations”
Condé Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in "systematic copyright and trademark infringement" by using news articles to train its large language model.
"Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power its artificial intelligence ('AI') service, which in turn competes with Publisher offerings and the emerging market for AI licensing," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. "Not content with just stealing our works, Cohere also blatantly manufactures fake pieces and attributes them to us, misleading the public and tarnishing our brands."
Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica and other publications such as Wired and The New Yorker, was joined in the lawsuit by The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, Newsday, The Plain Dealer, Politico, The Republican, the Toronto Star, and Vox Media.
Categories: Technology News
Burning in woman’s legs turned out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain
It started with a bizarre burning sensation in her feet. Over the next two days, the searing pain crept up her legs. Any light touch made it worse, and over-the-counter pain medicine offered no relief.
On the third day, the 30-year-old, otherwise healthy woman from New England went to an emergency department. Her exam was normal. Her blood tests and kidney function were normal. The only thing that stood out was a high number of eosinophils—white blood cells that become active with certain allergic diseases, parasitic infections, or other medical conditions, such as cancer. The woman was discharged and advised to follow up with her primary care doctor.
Over the next few days, the scorching sensation kept advancing, invading her trunk and arms. She developed a headache that was also unfazed by over-the-counter pain medicine. Seven days into the illness, she went to a second emergency department. There, the findings were much the same: Normal exam, normal blood tests, normal kidney function, and high eosinophil count—this time higher. The reference range for this count was 0 to 400; her count was 1,050. She was given intravenous medicine to treat her severe headache, then once again discharged with a plan to see her primary care provider.
Categories: Technology News
Apple teases launch for “the newest member of the family” on February 19
Big news for people who prefer their product announcements to be pre-announced: Apple CEO Tim Cook says that the company has something brewing for Wednesday, February 19. Cook referred to "the newest member of the family," suggesting a launch event focused on a single product rather than multiple refreshes throughout its product lineup.
Most rumors point to the "family" being the iPhone and the "newest member" being an updated version of the entry-level iPhone SE. Last refreshed in March of 2022 with the guts of late 2021's iPhone 13, the SE is the only iPhone in Apple's lineup that still ships with large display bezels and a Home button. And it's one of just three models (along with the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus) to still include a Lightning port.
Previous reporting has suggested that the next-generation iPhone SE could replace both the current SE and the iPhone 14 series in the iPhone lineup, since the new phone is expected to ship with an iPhone 14-style design with an edge-to-edge display and a notch cutout. The old SE and the 14 series have already been discontinued in the EU, where new phones are all required to use a USB-C port.
Categories: Technology News
Wheel of Time S3 trailer tees us up for Last Battle
Prime Video's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time returns in March.
We've finally got a full-length trailer for Prime Video's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time, adapted from the late Robert Jordan's bestselling 14-book series of epic fantasy novels. (Ars has been following the series closely with regular recaps through the first two seasons.)
(Some spoilers for the first two seasons below.)
As previously reported, the series centers on Moiraine (played by Oscar-nominee Rosamund Pike), a member of a powerful, all-woman organization called the Aes Sedai. Magic, known as the One Power, is divided into male (saidin) and female (saidar) flavors. The latter is the province of the Aes Sedai. Long ago, a great evil, called the Dark One, caused the saidin to become tainted, such that most men who show an ability to channel that magic go mad. It's the job of the Aes Sedai to track down such men and strip them of their abilities—a process known as "gentling" that, unfortunately, is often anything but. There is also an ancient prophecy concerning the Dragon Reborn: the reincarnation of a person who will save or destroy humanity.
Categories: Technology News
Over half of LLM-written news summaries have “significant issues”—BBC analysis
Here at Ars, we've done plenty of coverage of the errors and inaccuracies that LLMs often introduce into their responses. Now, the BBC is trying to quantify the scale of this confabulation problem, at least when it comes to summaries of its own news content.
In an extensive report published this week, the BBC analyzed how four popular large language models used or abused information from BBC articles when answering questions about the news. The results found inaccuracies, misquotes, and/or misrepresentations of BBC content in a significant proportion of the tests, supporting the news organization's conclusion that "AI assistants cannot currently be relied upon to provide accurate news, and they risk misleading the audience."
Where did you come up with that?To assess the state of AI news summaries, BBC's Responsible AI team gathered 100 news questions related to trending Google search topics from the last year (e.g., "How many Russians have died in Ukraine?" or "What is the latest on the independence referendum debate in Scotland?"). These questions were then put to ChatGPT-4o, Microsoft Copilot Pro, Google Gemini Standard, and Perplexity, with the added instruction to "use BBC News sources where possible."
Categories: Technology News
“A sicker America”: Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary
The US Senate on Thursday confirmed the long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The vote was largely along party lines, with a tally of 52 to 48. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), a polio survivor and steadfast supporter of vaccines, voted against the confirmation, the only Republican to do so.
Before the vote, Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) claimed that if there had been a secret ballot today, most Republicans would have voted against Kennedy. "But sadly, and unfortunately for America, Republicans are being strong-armed by Donald Trump and will end up holding their nose and voting to confirm Mr. Kennedy... What a travesty," Schumer said.
Categories: Technology News
Sam Altman lays out roadmap for OpenAI’s long-awaited GPT-5 model
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a roadmap for how the company plans to release GPT-5, the long-awaited followup to 2023's GPT-4 AI language model that made huge waves in both tech and policy circles around the world. In a reply to a question on X, Altman said GPT-5 would be coming in "months," suggesting a release later in 2025.
Initially, Altman explained in a long post on X, the company plans to ship GPT-4.5 (previously known as "Orion" internally) in a matter of "weeks" as OpenAI's last non-simulated reasoning model. Simulated reasoning (SR) models like o3 use a special technique to iteratively process problems posed by users more deeply, but they are slower than conventional large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4o and not ideal for every task.
After that, GPT-5 will be a system that brings together features from across OpenAI's current AI model lineup, including conventional AI models, SR models, and specialized models that do tasks like web search and research. "In both ChatGPT and our API, we will release GPT-5 as a system that integrates a lot of our technology, including o3," he wrote. "We will no longer ship o3 as a standalone model."
Categories: Technology News
Citing too much “bureaucracy,” Blue Origin to cut 10 percent of its workforce
A little less than a month after the successful debut of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin's workforce will be trimmed by 10 percent.
The cuts were announced during an all-hands meeting on Thursday morning led by the rocket company's chief executive, Dave Limp. During the gathering, Limp cited "business strategy" as the rationale for making the cuts to a workforce of more than 10,000 people.
Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, and he continues to provide an estimated $2 billion in funding annually to support its operations.
Categories: Technology News
The Honda-Nissan merger is dead
The proposed merger between Honda and Nissan is officially dead. The plan, announced in late December, would have created the world's third-largest automaker, displacing Volkswagen Group from the bronze on the podium. But it was also never quite seen as a merger of equals—many suspected this was a Honda takeover of beleaguered Nissan at the behest of the Japanese government.
Nissan is already part of a triple-alliance, together with Mitsubishi and France's Renault. Although Mitsubishi considered joining the Honda-Nissan merger, that was old news by late January.
That alliance might have been part of the problem. Although not an actual merger, the car companies involved each own stakes in the other—in Renault's case, it owns 37.5 percent of Nissan. Honda would have liked Nissan to buy out Renault's stake, presumably not keen on such a significant chunk of the company under foreign ownership.
Categories: Technology News
Avowed review: Wait, are we the baddies?
At its heart, Avowed is a game about colonization. Your protagonist in this action-RPG from the Pillars of Eternity universe is the envoy for the Aedyran Empire, which has for years sent its occupying force to tame and control the wild and unruly islands of the Living Lands. What the Aedyrans try to spin as a civilizing effort in a naturally lawless place, the native residents of the Living Lands, by and large, see as a pillaging army stealing resources at the behest of their far-off masters.
As the Aedyran envoy, you've been sent to investigate and quell the Dreamscourge, a spreading plague that is poisoning the minds of people and beasts throughout the Living Lands. But the citizens you encounter there don't see you as the stock-standard brave hero chosen by providence to save them from an ongoing disaster. Instead, you're viewed first and foremost as a representative of the same occupying force that has had its metaphorical boot on their necks for years.
That fact alone adds a low-level hum of hatred and mistrust to practically every interaction you have in Avowed. Some characters will confront you with that hate right to your face, often with violence. Some will merely mutter it under their breath as they grudgingly tolerate your presence. Some show fear and/or disgust on their face even as they endeavor to play nice or desperately beg for favors.
Categories: Technology News
Financially motivated hackers are helping their espionage counterparts and vice versa
There’s a growing collaboration between hacking groups engaging in espionage on behalf of nation-states and those seeking financial gains through ransomware and other forms of cybercrime, researchers noted this week.
There has always been some level of overlap between these two groups, but it has become more pronounced in recent years. On Tuesday, the Google-owned Mandiant security firm said the uptick comes amid tighter purse strings and as a means for concealing nation-state-sponsored espionage by making it blend in with financially motivated cyberattacks.
Opportunities abound“Modern cybercriminals are likely to specialize in a particular area of cybercrime and partner with other entities with diverse specializations to conduct operations,” Mandiant researchers explained. “The specialization of cybercrime capabilities presents an opportunity for state-backed groups to simply show up as another customer for a group that normally sells to other criminals. Purchasing malware, credentials, or other key resources from illicit forums can be cheaper for state-backed groups than developing them in-house, while also providing some ability to blend in to financially motivated operations and attract less notice."
Categories: Technology News
From 900 miles away, the US government recorded audio of the Titan sub implosion
Thanks to being an incompressible medium, water transmits vibrations both farther and faster than the air. (Here's a good video explainer on the subject.) This fact helps to explain how a US government-owned "moored passive acoustic recorder" was able to hear and record the 2023 implosion of the doomed Titan submersible—even though the recorder was 900 miles away from the dive site.
That implosion, during an attempted dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, killed five people, including Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company that built and operated the Titan.
The implosion audio was just released publicly by the US Coast Guard's Titan Marine Board of Investigation, which has been investigating the disaster in enormous detail. As part of that investigation, the Coast Guard obtained the audio from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the US Department of Commerce.
Categories: Technology News
