Tag: TechTips

Enlarge / Having this guy stomp through might mean that things would struggle to grow there afterwards. (credit: Roger Harris)

Words I did not expect to read in a scientific paper this week: “The similarity in mass and contact area between modern farm vehicles and sauropods raises the question: What was the mechanical impact of these prehistoric animals on land productivity?” The paper, from Thomas Keller and Dani Or, raises what may be a significant worry: Farm vehicles have grown over the past few decades, to the point where they may be compacting the subsurface soil where roots of crops extend. This poses a risk to agricultural productivity.

The paper then compares that compaction risk to the one posed by the largest animals to ever roam our land: sauropods.

The big crunch

We think of the ground as being solid, but gaps and channels within soil are critical to plant life, since they allow air and water to reach roots. Soil compaction, in its extreme form, gets rid of all these spaces, making the ground much less hospitable for plants. And compaction is hard to reverse; it can take decades of plant and animal activity to break up the compacted soil again and re-establish a healthy ecosystem.

Enlarge / Chinese flag with digital matrix -Innovation Concept – Digital Tech Wallpaper – 3D illustration (credit: peterschreiber.media | Getty Images)

For the best part of a decade, US officials and cybersecurity companies have been naming and shaming hackers they believe work for the Chinese government. These hackers have stolen terabytes of data from companies like pharmaceutical and video game firms, compromised servers, stripped security protections, and highjacked hacking tools, according to security experts. And as China’s alleged hacking has grown more brazen, individual Chinese hackers face indictments. However, things may be changing.

Since the start of 2022, China’s Foreign Ministry and the country’s cybersecurity firms have increasingly been calling out alleged US cyberespionage. Until now, these allegations have been a rarity. But the disclosures come with a catch: They appear to rely on years-old technical details, which are already publicly known and don’t contain fresh information. The move may be a strategic change for China as the nation tussles to cement its position as a tech superpower.

“These are useful materials for China’s tit-for-tat propaganda campaigns when they faced US accusation and indictment of China’s cyberespionage activities,” says Che Chang, a cyber threat analyst at the Taiwan-based cybersecurity firm TeamT5.

Enlarge (credit: Jacqui VanLiew | Getty Images)

Over the past 19 years, the imageboard 4chan has been tied to Gamergate, the inception of QAnon, the incubation of a particular brand of online racism, and a raft of domestic terror attacks that have killed scores of people.

Tragically, references and tributes to 4chan are littered throughout a 180-page screed believed to be written by the 18-year-old who is alleged to have shot 13 people in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on May 14. All 10 victims killed in the massacre were Black. Just this week, 4chan’s users spread transphobic misinformation about the identity of the school shooter who killed 19 children and two adults in an elementary school in Uvdale, Texas, that quickly reached the feeds of a right-wing member of Congress.

Even as the imageboard continues to rise in infamy, a question lingers: Who actually owns 4chan?

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s Memorial Day weekend, which means the time has come for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of good tech deals from around the web includes all the best offers we could dig up from this weekend’s crop of holiday sales. While Memorial Day promotions generally focus on home goods, appliances, and mattresses more than electronics, we’ve still found a few gadget deals of note for those who can’t wait for more tech-centric sales events like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day.

The highlights include a number of deals on Apple devices. The Apple Watch Series 7, for instance, is back down to $329, which is about $25 off its street price online, $70 off Apple’s MSRP, and generally a good price for the top pick in our guide to the best smartwatches. The 256GB version of the latest iPad Air is available for $679, which matches the lowest price we’ve tracked, while the MacBook Air is discounted to $900, which matches the lowest price we’ve seen this year. (Just note that the latter is expected to receive a refresh with a faster chip at some point in 2022, if you can afford to wait.) Best Buy is running a promotion that gives a bonus $10 in store credit if you buy a $100 Apple Gift Card, and other gadgets like the third-gen AirPods and MagSafe Charger are cheaper than we typically see as well.

Beyond that, our roundup includes several ongoing deals on PlayStation games and gear, including a rare discount on PlayStation 5 controllers, plus lower-than-usual prices on Bose’s highly comfortable QuietComfort 45 headphones, Google’s Nest Hub smart display and Nest Audio smart speaker, well-reviewed laptops from Lenovo and HP, an excellent LG OLED TV, tons of PC games, and some 4K Blu-rays for a few movies we like. You can peruse our full curated list of Memorial Day deals below.

Enlarge / The official Star Trek Wine collection has expanded from two varieties to six. (credit: Sean Carroll)

Back in 2019, (partly)  in honor of the announcement of Star Trek: Picard, Ars staffers held an informal tasting session to sample two bottles of official Star Trek Wines, a collaboration between CBS Consumer Products and Wines That Rock. And the wines were…. far better than we expected, although very much over-priced.

Picard has now wrapped its second season, with a third currently in production, and the folks behind Star Trek Wines have expanded their collection from two varieties to six. So a second informal wine tasting was clearly in order. And who better to help us in this noble endeavor than Q himself—aka actor John de Lancie—and The Orville writer Andre Bormanis, who launched his career as a science advisor on TNG? They joined a fresh group of tasters (eight people in all) on a cool late spring evening in Los Angeles, where the nibbles were plentiful and the conversation flowed freely. (Wine assessments were anonymous, in keeping with the gathering’s super-casual vibe. And the wine was purchased out of pocket, not gifted for promotional purposes.)  

Let’s start by revisiting the original two varieties. First up: a 2017 Sonoma Valley zinfandel, described as a blend of 87 percent zinfandel, blended with petite sirah and just a hint of syrah.. The packaging plays up the fictional connection, claiming the wine is produced under the United Federation Special Reserve Label, “blended by our intergalactic sommelier and designed to fit the palates of multiple planets.” (The back label tasting notes adds “Andalorian spice” to the description just for fun.)