Tag: TechTips

Enlarge (credit: Rob Engelaar | Getty Images)

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

On February 25, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, a prolific ransomware gang called Conti made a proclamation on its dark website. It was an unusually political statement for a cybercrime organization: Conti pledged its “full support of Russian government” and said it would use “all possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures” of Russia’s opponents.

Perhaps sensing that such a public alliance with the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin could cause problems, Conti tempered its declaration later that day. “We do not ally with any government and we condemn the ongoing war,” it wrote in a follow-up statement that nonetheless vowed retaliation against the United States if it used cyberwarfare to target “any Russian-speaking region of the world.”

Enlarge (credit: Chuchart Duangdaw)

Spring has brought remarkably extreme heat to India and Pakistan this year. Unusually extensive heatwaves have followed one after another since March and are continuing well into May. The situation presents a conundrum for rapid studies of the role of climate change in this event, as we can’t yet put an end date on it. Nevertheless, a pair of studies have looked into the influence of the climate on March and April’s heat.

Daily and monthly temperature records have been broken in many areas. Thermometers have hit temperatures as high as 120°F (49°C), and the heat has been accompanied by abnormally dry weather. Record-breaking heatwaves often coincide with drought, as the dry ground heats up even more without the cooling effect of evaporation. However, the lower humidity has reduced the heat’s threat to human health, though at least 90 deaths have been reported so far, and that number is expected to rise.

Working outdoors has been extremely challenging, and the impacts of the slowdown have added up as the heat drags on. The effect on agriculture has been significant, with wheat yield losses already estimated at 10–35 percent in areas of northern India, for example. With Ukrainian exports down because of war, India had previously been planning to increase its own exports but instead instituted an export ban this month.

Enlarge / The end is coming for two of Nintendo’s digital storefronts.

Back in February, Nintendo announced plans to shut down the digital eShops on the 3DS and Wii U, two consoles that it said have “become less used by consumers over time.” After today, the first phase of that plan will go into effect, and players will no longer be able to use a credit card to add new funds to their eShop wallets.

Physical eShop gift cards, which can still be purchased at major retailers, will be redeemable until August 29. But today marks the last chance to add eShop funds directly without going through an outside retailer.

Players who add funds today (or who use funds in a linked “Nintendo Account wallet” as used on the Switch) will still be able to make purchases until “late March 2023,” Nintendo said. Purchases made before that cutoff will still be available to redownload “for the foreseeable future” as well, though demos and “free-to-start” games will no longer be downloadable after that date.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s the weekend, which means the time has come for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best tech deals from around the web is headlined by a truckload of discounts on good PC games. Most of those are due to the return of the Epic Games Store’s annual “Mega Sale,” which began earlier this week and runs until June 16.

As with previous promotions from Epic’s PC game storefront, the new sale is most notable for offering an unlimited-use coupon that applies to any purchase of $14.99 or more. In past sales, this coupon amounted to a flat $10 off, but Epic says it will now give a 25 percent discount. This means you won’t save as much as before on less-expensive games—a $15 game that would’ve dropped to $5 after applying the coupon in previous sales will now cost $11.25—but you’ll get slightly more back with games closer to full price. For instance, a newer game like LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which normally goes for $50 on PC, can be had for $37.49 after using the coupon here.

You’ll have to sign into an Epic account and manually claim the coupon first, but once you do, it will automatically renew after each use until the sale ends next month. Note that you only need to have at least $14.99’s worth of games in your cart for the coupon to apply: Something like Disco Elysium, an Ars favorite that’s on sale for $14, wouldn’t be eligible for the extra 25 percent off on its own, but if you add another discounted game to your cart to get over the $15 threshold, the coupon will then apply to both titles individually at checkout. As with past Epic sales, the coupon doesn’t apply to DLC or in-game purchases, nor will it work with preorders.

Enlarge / Bioreactors that host algae would be one option for carbon sequestration—as long as the carbon is stored somehow. (credit: Getty Images)

On Thursday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the latest program to come out of the bipartisan infrastructure funding package that was passed last year. In this case, the money is going to foster the development of a technology that we’ll almost certainly need but is currently underdeveloped: capture of carbon dioxide from the air and its stable storage. The infrastructure law set aside $3.5 billion for direct air capture, and the DOE plans to use that to fund four facilities spread across the US.

Direct air capture has suffered from a bit of a catch-22. Most scenarios for limiting end-of-century warming assume we’ll emit enough carbon dioxide in the next few decades to overshoot our climate goals and will therefore need to remove some from the atmosphere. That would necessitate the development of direct air capture technologies. But, at present, there’s no way to fund the operation of a facility to do the capturing, so the technology remains immature and its economics poorly understood.

The DOE’s funding has the potential to change some of that. It has a total of $3.5 billion to spend in the years 2022 through 2026. It plans to use that to fund four carbon-capture and storage centers spread across the US, each with the capability of permanently storing a million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.