Month: January 2022

Enlarge / Sega is thinking long and hard about whether it wants NFTs to become part of its brand image.

Non-fungible tokens have become the buzziest of concepts among big-budget game publishers these days. While Ubisoft is the only big-name publisher to actually roll out in-game NFT items thus far, everyone from Square Enix to EA and Take-Two has expressed varying levels of enthusiasm for the idea. Even aging gaming brands like Konami and Atari have used NFTs as a way to quickly cash in via artificially rare digital collectibles.

So it was somewhat notable when Sega used a recent management Q&A to take a much more skeptical position on the industry’s NFT mania.

To be clear, Sega isn’t completely rebuking the idea of NFTs in its games. The company said it “would like to try out various experiments, and we have already started many different studies and considerations” in the space, including so-called “play-to-earn” games.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Criminals are actively exploiting the high-severity Log4Shell vulnerability on servers running VMware Horizon in an attempt to install malware that allows them to gain full control of affected systems, the UK’s publicly funded healthcare system is warning.

CVE-2021-44228 is one of the most severe vulnerabilities to come to light in the past few years. It resides in Log4J, a system-logging code library used in thousands if not millions of third-party applications and websites. That means there is a huge base of vulnerable systems. Additionally, the vulnerability is extremely easy to exploit and allows attackers to install Web shells, which provide a command window for executing highly privileged commands on hacked servers.

The remote-code execution flaw in Log4J came to light in December after exploit code was released before a patch was available. Malicious hackers quickly began actively exploiting CVE-2021-44228 to compromise sensitive systems.

Enlarge (credit: NASA)

Quantum radar has been on the… ahem… radar for a while now. Unfortunately, the theoretical and practical results from our explorations of the concept have been underwhelming. But before we get to the disappointments, let me give all you radar enthusiasts a reason for hope. A new paper demonstrates that, under conditions of low signal-to-noise ratios (at the edge of the radar’s classical range), employing quantum technologies may offer a very significant boost in accuracy.

Quantum radar?

Radar, at its simplest, involves sending out pulses of radiation that reflect off an object. The reflected signal is detected, and the time of flight is measured. The time of flight is then translated into a range, while the direction that the radar antenna was pointed when it picked up the reflection tells us the direction.

The horrible thing about radar is that the signal drops off very rapidly—as the fourth power of the distance. This is because the power of the radiation we send out drops as the square of the distance between the transmitter and the object. And then it drops as the square of the range again after it’s reflected and has to travel back to the receiver. You get clobbered by the inverse square rule twice.

Enlarge / The US Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Mike Kline)

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases that could severely limit the federal government’s ability to set public health policy during the pandemic. At issue is whether existing health and safety authority given to federal agencies by Congress is broad enough to cover the pandemic or whether Congress needs to step in and explicitly authorize the agencies’ actions.

The arguments occur as the US sees an unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases. Indeed, two of the state lawyers arguing against these new public health measures were caught up in that surge and had to participate in the hearings remotely.

For and against

Two separate cases are being heard today, both regarding executive actions taken by the Biden administration. The first case involves a rule, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), covering all health care workers at facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid. The rule requires these workers to be vaccinated unless they are exempted on medical or religious grounds. The second case involves a vaccine-or-test mandate issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); the mandate would apply to any businesses with 100 or more employees.

Enlarge / A screenshot from Fallout 4, the most recent main entry in the game franchise. (credit: Bethesda)

Amazon Prime Video’s adaptation of the Fallout franchise of video games is entering production this year, and its two lead writers have been named, according to reports in Deadline and Variety.

It was previously known that Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (who worked together on HBO’s Westworld) would be executive producers, and Variety and Deadline both report that Nolan will direct the first episode of the show.

But Nolan and Joy will not be the primary creative leads on the series. Rather, Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner have been attached as showrunners.

Enlarge (credit: CanStockPhoto)

If you’ve been too busy playing the best games of 2021 to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, you’re running out of time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $1,600 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win). The deadline is 11:59 pm EST tonight (Friday).

Over the past few weeks, over 300 readers have contributed almost $38,000 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child’s Play as part of the charity drive (EFF is now leading in the donation totals by about $8,000). That’s still a bit off from last year’s record haul of over $58,000, but it’s quickly approaching the previous record of $38,861.06 set in 2015.

If you’ve put it off this long, don’t do so any longer! There are only a few hours left to get your entry recorded and help a good cause at the same time.