Brian Barrett

Enlarge / President Joe Biden signing a different executive order on January 28, 2021. (credit: Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images)

The White House is launching an effort today to ease the global semiconductor supply crunch affecting a wide array of other industries, but any boost the administration can provide is likely to be on the far side of many more months of shortages.

President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order this afternoon aimed at "securing America's critical supply chains." The order will address several challenges in the US supply chain, according to a fact sheet from the White House, with a particular focus on pharmaceuticals, mineral resources, semiconductors, and large-capacity batteries.

The order is a sort of combination of every US politicians' favorite rallying cry—"more American jobs"—and an acknowledgement that shortages and production challenges in critical supply chains really have had a profound effect on the nation, especially in the past year. It calls for an immediate 100-day review that will "identify near-term steps the administration can take, including with Congress" to identify where the vulnerabilities in these supply chains are and what regulators or legislators can do to increase US manufacturing of these critical components.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Jill Ferry Photography)

Cox has been making it extremely difficult or impossible for some customers to stick with their current Internet speeds despite promising that it won't force users onto plans with slower uploads.

As we wrote two weeks ago, Cox informed customers with 300Mbps download and 30Mbps upload speeds that they will be switched to a plan with 500Mbps downloads and 10Mbps uploads on March 3. A Cox spokesperson told Ars at the time that customers can stay on the plan with 30Mbps uploads as long as they upgrade to a DOCSIS 3.1 modem. But Cox's email to its customers did not mention this option, and customers who called Cox customer service have since been told in no uncertain terms that they cannot stay on their current plans.

Several Cox users from California emailed Ars about the problem after reading our article, all with similar experiences.

• 

  I installed Firefox 86 on my Ubuntu workstation using Snap to be certain I wouldn't accidentally mess with my working system configuration. [credit: Jim Salter ]

Mozilla released Firefox 86 yesterday, and the browser is now available for download and installation for all major operating systems, including Android. Along with the usual round of bug fixes and under-the-hood updates, the new build offers a couple of high-profile features—multiple Picture-in-Picture video-watching support, and (optional) stricter cookie separation, which Mozilla is branding Total Cookie Protection.

Firefox 86 became the default download at mozilla.org on Tuesday—but as an Ubuntu 20.04 user, I didn't want to leave the Canonical-managed repositories just to test the new version. This is one scenario in which snaps truly excel—providing you with a containerized version of an application, easily installed but guaranteed not to mess with your "real" operating system.

As it turns out, Firefox's snap channel didn't get the message about build 86 being the new default—the latest/default snap is still on build 85. In order to get the new version, I needed to snap refresh firefox --channel=latest/candidate.

Enlarge / The remains of a shredded star formed an accretion disk around the black hole whose powerful tidal forces ripped it apart. This created a cosmic particle accelerator spewing out fast subatomic particles. (credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab)

Roughly 700 million years ago, a tiny subatomic particle was born in a galaxy far, far away and began its journey across the vast expanses of our universe. That neutrino finally reached the Earth's South Pole last October, setting off detectors buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice. A few months earlier, a telescope in California had recorded a bright glow emanating from the friction of that same distant galaxy—evidence of a so-called "tidal disruption event" (TDE), most likely the result of a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole.

According to two new papers (here and here) published in the journal Nature Astronomy, that lone neutrino was likely born from the TDE, which serves as a cosmic-scale particle accelerator near the center of the distant galaxy, spewing out high-energy subatomic particles as the star's matter is consumed by the black hole. This finding also sheds light on the origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, a question that has puzzled astronomers for decades.

"The origin of cosmic high-energy neutrinos is unknown, primarily because they are notoriously hard to pin down," said co-author Sjoert van Velzen, a postdoc at New York University at the time of the discovery. "This result would be only the second time high-energy neutrinos have been traced back to their source."

Enlarge (credit: Oleksii Leonov)

Ukraine has accused the Russian government of hacking into one of its government Web portals and planting malicious documents that would install malware on end users’ computers.

“The purpose of the attack was the mass contamination of information resources of public authorities, as this system is used for the circulation of documents in most public authorities,” officials from Ukraine’s National Coordination Center for Cybersecurity said in a statement published on Wednesday. “The malicious documents contained a macro that secretly downloaded a program to remotely control a computer when opening the files.”

Wednesday’s statement said that the methods used in the attack connected the hackers to the Russian Federation. Ukraine didn’t say if the attack succeeded in infecting any authorities’ computers.

Enlarge / Tears of an Anthem clown. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Bioware / Getty Images)

The story of EA and BioWare's beleaguered action-RPG Anthem has apparently ended. According to an official BioWare blog post, the ambitious jetpack-combat game's "overhaul" project is dead. The staff that had been assigned to rebuild the game into better shape has been reassigned to work on other BioWare projects, particularly Dragon Age 4 and the next Mass Effect game.

From what we saw in the game's March 2019 launch version, EA and BioWare clearly intended for the game to receive regularly updated content, but negative reviews (including my own) made clear that BioWare needed to go back to the drawing board. Despite some good ideas and fun flight controls, Anthem's basic core needed serious touching-up before we'd return to the game.

Then-general manager Casey Hudson made a February 2020 statement acknowledging those criticisms. After listing aspects of the game that needed work, he offered a pledge to fans: that BioWare would complete "fundamental work... to bring out the full potential of the experience... specifically working to reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges, and progression with meaningful rewards—while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting."

• 

  LG's 2021 OLED lineup. [credit: LG ]

LG has announced that it will begin licensing its webOS TV software for use by other TV manufacturers. That will put webOS in direct competition with other platforms in use across TV brands, such as alternatives from Roku, Amazon, and Google.

LG says "over 20 TV manufacturers" have "committed to the webOS partnership" and names RCA, Ayonz, and Konka as examples. They'll ship the OS in their TVs and, in so doing, gain access to voice-control features, LG's AI algorithms, and a fairly robust library of already built streaming apps like Netflix, YouTube, or Disney+.

For smaller manufacturers, this is more cost-effective than developing these features on their own or lobbying companies like Netflix or Disney to support new platforms.

Enlarge / A sign at the Johnson & Johnson campus on August 26, 2019 in Irvine, California. (credit: Getty | Mario Tama)

Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine is effective and has a “favorable safety profile,” according to scientists at the Food and Drug Administration.

The endorsement comes out of a review released by the regulatory agency Wednesday. The FDA has been looking over data on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine since February 4, when the company applied for Emergency Use Authorization. The agency’s green light is a positive sign ahead of this Friday, February 26, when the FDA will convene an advisory committee to make a recommendation on whether the FDA should grant the EUA. The FDA isn’t obligated to follow the committee’s recommendation, but it usually does.

If Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is granted an EUA, it will become the third COVID-19 vaccine available for use in the US. The other two vaccines are both two-dose, mRNA-based vaccines, one made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech and the other from Moderna, which developed its vaccine in collaboration with researchers at the US National Institutes of Health.

• 

  This is from an earlier rollout, but Google Maps' dark mode should look something like this. [credit: Reddit ]

Google Maps has finally decided to support dark mode on Android 539 days after officially launching Android 10. Google's latest blog post says that dark mode in Google Maps is "soon expanding to all Android users globally," making the feature official after lots of public experiments.

Google's uneven rollout strategy makes it hard to nail down when any feature officially "launches." Some users have had dark mode for a while, though, through various experiments and early rollouts. Google has been teasing a dark mode for Google Maps since October 2019, and experimental rollouts hit some users in September 2020. Google Maps has also been showing a dark-colored map in navigation mode for some time, but that's not the same thing as a comprehensive dark mode for all the UI elements.

If Google Maps is following Android's best practices, the UI should automatically switch over to the dark theme if your system settings have dark mode enabled. Google says you'll also be able to find a new "theme" section in the Google Maps settings, where you can toggle the feature manually. The Google Maps dark mode that has been floating around for a while has been on a server-side switch. The code is already on your device, so there's no version we can point to that will enable dark mode; you just have to wait for Google to flag your account.

• 

  No, this isn't a rendering from a Pixar film, it's what the new USPS mail delivery vehicle will look like. [credit: USPS ]

Update 4:00pm EST: The US Postmaster General told Congress today that only 10 percent of the new delivery trucks would be battery electric.

Original story 12:02pm EST: The United States Postal Service has decided on a new delivery vehicle. On Tuesday afternoon, the USPS awarded a 10-year, $485-million contract to Oshkosh Defense—better known for armored vehicles—to deliver between 50,000 and 165,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, with the first trucks due on the road in 2023.

Neither the USPS nor Oshkosh is ready to share in-depth specs for the NGDV; Oshkosh still has to finalize the design, according to the press release. We do know that the new fleet will be made of a mix of powertrains. Some will be battery electric, but others will use "fuel-efficient internal combustion engines," with the ability to be retrofitted "to keep pace with advances in electric vehicle technology."

(credit: D-Wave)

Early on in D-Wave's history, the company made bold claims about its quantum annealer outperforming algorithms run on traditional CPUs. Those claims turned out to be premature, as improvements to these algorithms pulled the traditional hardware back in front. Since then, the company has been far more circumspect about its performance claims, even as it brought out newer generations of hardware.

But in the run-up to the latest hardware, the company apparently became a bit more interested in performance again. And it recently got together with Google scientists to demonstrate a significant boost in performance compared to a classical algorithm, with the gap growing as the problem became complex—although the company's scientists were very upfront about the prospects of finding a way to boost classical hardware further. Still, there are a lot of caveats even beyond that, so it's worth taking a detailed look at what the company did.

D-Wave's system is based on a large collection of quantum devices that are connected to some of their neighbors. Each device can have its state set separately, and the devices are then given the chance to influence their neighbors as the system moves through different states and individual devices change their behavior. These transitions are the equivalent of performing operations. And because of the quantum nature of these devices, the hardware seems to be able to "tunnel" to new states, even if the only route between them involves high-energy states that are impossible to reach.

Enlarge / We were very impressed with the Hyundai Kona EV, but owners may feel a little put out by having to get a replacement battery. (credit: Hyundai)

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Hyundai is going to recall its Kona EV due to problems with the battery pack. In total, around 82,000 Kona EVs will have to be recalled globally after 15 fires—11 in South Korea, two in Canada, one in Finland, and one in Austria—in order to have replacement battery packs fitted. Until the recall is performed, the automaker advises owners not to charge their Kona EVs beyond 90 percent.

In October 2020, the OEM issued the first recall for the Kona EV, affecting more than 37,000 vehicles in South Korea and more than 11,000 in North America and Europe. The cause was the risk of a short circuit in the battery, which could potentially start a fire. At the time, South Korea's transport ministry suggested that a manufacturing defect could have been the cause, something that cell manufacturer LG Chem denied.

Those cars were issued new software, but in January of this year, a recalled-and-upgraded Kona EV caught fire.

• 

  China released this low-fidelity render of its Long March 9 rocket launching. [credit: CCTV ]

China has officially approved the development of a super heavy lift rocket, named the Long March 9, or CZ-9 vehicle. The decision was revealed on Wednesday by Chinese state television.

In a snippet from an interview with CCTV, the deputy director of the China National Space Agency, Wu Yanhua, said the main purpose of the new rocket is for any "crewed lunar landing or crewed Mars landing missions" the country may undertake.

According to Chinese officials, the country will target the year 2030 for a debut launch. This is consistent with previous timeline estimates. The rocket is planned to have a lift capacity of 140 metric tons, with the capability of sending 50 or more tons into lunar orbit. It would be an immense vehicle, with a 10-meter diameter core and 5-meter side boosters. China would also like to eventually make the rocket, or at least part of it, reusable.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Pasieka)

California can start enforcing the net neutrality law it enacted over two years ago, a federal judge ruled yesterday in a loss for Internet service providers.

Broadband-industry lobby groups' motion for a preliminary injunction was denied by Judge John Mendez of US District Court for the Eastern District of California. Mendez did not issue a written order but announced his ruling at a hearing, and his denial of the ISPs' motion was noted in the docket.

Mendez reportedly was not swayed by ISPs' claims that a net neutrality law isn't necessary because they haven't been blocking or throttling Internet traffic.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Google is adding its password checkup feature to Android, making the mobile OS the latest company offering to give users an easy way to check if the passcodes they’re using have been compromised.

Password Checkup works by checking credentials entered into apps against a list of billions of credentials compromised in the innumerable website breaches that have occurred in recent years. In the event there’s a match, users receive an alert, along with a prompt that can take them to Google’s password manager page, which offers a way to review the security of all saved credentials.

Alerts look like this:

Enlarge / Fry's Electronics in Fremont, CA. (credit: Getty Images)

Fry's Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, has gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry's will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer followed that news hours later by offering its own Wednesday-morning announcement via the Fry's website.

Rumors began flying on Tuesday in the form of anecdotes from alleged Fry's employees, who all reported that they'd been summarily fired earlier in the day with zero notice. One anonymous report posted at The Layoff alleged that every remaining Fry's store in the US was "permanently closing tomorrow," and that statement was repeated hours later at a Fry's-related Reddit community. The Reddit post included the allegation that one store's staffers were tasked with shipping any remaining merchandise back to suppliers during their final day at work.

Sacramento freelance journalist Matthew Keys followed these posts by citing an unnamed source—someone who had worked at Fry's up until "this week"—who claimed that the electronics chain would make a formal announcement "this week" about closing all of its stores and liquidating any remaining assets. As the wave of rumors exploded, the official Fry's website began serving failure notices—yet some of its subsite content, particularly years-old press releases, remained active through Frys.com subdomains. As Tuesday wore on, the Fry's retail site flickered in and out of normal service, even letting customers buy products after KRON-4's report went live.

Shortly before his death, Alan Turing published a provocative paper outlining his theory for how complex, irregular patterns emerge in nature—his version of how the leopard got its spots. These so-called Turing patterns have been observed in physics and chemistry, and there is growing evidence that they also occur in biological systems. Now a team of Spanish scientists has managed to tweak E. coli in the laboratory so that the colonies exhibit branching Turing patterns, according to a recent paper published in the journal Synthetic Biology.

"By using synthetic biology, we have a unique opportunity to interrogate biological structures and their generative potential," said co-author Ricard Solé of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, who is also an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute. "Are the observed mechanisms found in nature to create patterns the only solutions to generate them, or are there alternatives?"

In synthetic biology, scientists typically stitch together long stretches of DNA—which can taken from other organisms, or be entirely novel—and insert them into an organism's genome.

Enlarge / Young children go back to kindergarten following COVID-19 lockdown. (credit: Getty | TPG)

In our cushy COVID bubbles, our immune systems may be getting soft.

Physical distancing, lockdowns, masking, and spirited sanitizing all mean we are coming into contact with fewer garden-variety germs than normal. This year’s flu season was basically cancelled.

While that may seem like a welcome reprieve from seasonal ailments and pesky sniffles, experts fear that our immune systems may be losing their defensive edge in the lull. And with the usual microscopic suspects lying in wait for our return to some sense of normalcy, it could mean that nasty bursts of common colds and flu-like illnesses are in our post-COVID futures—ones that may not be avoidable even if we carry on with some of our COVID precautions.

Enlarge / "What are you looking at?" The Asian Giant Hornet, aka a "murder hornet," is not to be trifled with. (credit: Gary Alpert)

In November 2019, a beekeeper in Blaine, Washington, named Ted McFall was horrified to discover thousands of tiny mutilated bodies littering the ground—an entire colony of his honeybees had been brutally decapitated. The culprit: the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), a species native to southeast Asia and parts of the Russian far East. Somehow, these so-called "murder hornets" had found their way to the Pacific Northwest, where they were posing a dire ecological threat to North American honeybee populations.

The story of the quest to track and eradicate the hornets before their numbers became overwhelming is the subject of a new documentary: Attack of the Murder Hornets, now streaming on Discovery+. Featuring genuine suspense, a colorful cast of characters crossing socioeconomic lines, and a tone that draws on classic horror and science fiction movies, it's one of the best nature documentaries you're likely to see this year.

Asian giant hornets are what's known as apex predators, sporting enormous mandibles that they use to rip the heads off their prey and remove the tasty thoraxes (which include muscles that power the bee's wings for flying and movement). A single hornet can decapitate 20 bees in one minute, and just a handful can wipe out 30,000 bees in 90 minutes. The hornet has a venomous, extremely painful sting—and its stinger is long enough to puncture traditional beekeeping suits. Conrad Berube, a beekeeper and entomologist who had the misfortune to be stung seven times while exterminating a murder hornet nest, told The New York Times, "It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh." And while Japanese honeybees, for example, have evolved defenses against the murder hornet, North American honeybees have not, as the slaughter of McFall's colony aptly demonstrated.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by a good discount on Eufy's Indoor Cam 2K, which is down to $30 at Amazon when you clip the $4 on-page coupon. That's $10 off the indoor security camera's typical street price online and just $2 above the lowest price we've tracked to date. A two-pack of cameras is also on sale for $60.

We recommended the Indoor Cam 2K in our ultimate holiday gift guide last December for offering crisp 2K-resolution video that stays clearer than most 1080p cameras in this price range during the day or night, as well as multiple video recording options and a companion app that's easy to grok on both mobile devices and the Web. Its 125-degree field of view isn't the widest we've seen, and the hardware itself doesn't feel premium, but the device still supplies a number of features found in more expensive competitors. And while Eufy itself isn't a major name, we'll note that it's the smart home sister brand for Anker, a better-known manufacturer of accessories we've tested and recommended in the past.

The device lets you record video locally through a microSD card or NAS, while a cloud recording service offers 30 days of storage for a relatively reasonable $3 per month or $30 per year. There's a built-in siren, a mic and speaker to issue alerts in real time, and an 8X digital zoom for getting a closer look at images. You can integrate the device with both Amazon Alexa and the Google Assistant. The app can send notifications when it detects different motions or sound, including specific alerts for crying children. It's largely accurate at deciphering what is or isn't worth pinging your phone, but you can also customize the sensitivity of the motion detection and set specific activity zones for the camera to watch out for (e.g., a couch you don't want the dog to jump on).