Author name: DJ Henderson

notepad’s-spellcheck-and-autocorrect-are-rolling-out-to-everybody-after-41-years

Notepad’s spellcheck and autocorrect are rolling out to everybody after 41 years

microsoft, notepad, Tech, Windows 11, windows 11 23h2, windows 11 24h2 / /

notrpad spelchexk —

It’s still bare-bones by most standards, but Notepad has evolved a lot recently.

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  • Testing spellcheck in the latest version of Windows Notepad.

  • Right-clicking and expanding the Spelling menu also presents more options.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Like other recent Notepad additions, spellcheck and autocorrect can be tweaked or disabled entirely in the settings.

    Andrew Cunningham

In March, Microsoft started testing an update to the venerable Notepad app that added spellcheck and autocorrect to the app’s limited but slowly growing set of capabilities. The update that adds these features to Notepad is now rolling out to all Windows 11 users via the Microsoft Store, as reported by The Verge.

The spellcheck feature underlines words in red when they’re misspelled, and users can either left-click the words to see a list of suggestions or right-click words and see suggestions under a separate “spelling” menu item. Autocorrect works automatically to fix minor and obvious misspellings (typing “misspellign” instead of “misspelling,” for example), and changes can be reverted manually or by using the Undo command.

Either feature can be disabled from within Notepad’s settings. The spellchecker can also be switched on and off for a few different individual file extensions in case you want to see spelling suggestions for .txt files but not for .md or .lic files. The Verge also reports that spellchecking is turned off by default for log files or “other file types associated with coding.” Neither feature worked when I opened a batch file in Notepad to edit it, for example.

Microsoft often rolls out new app updates gradually, so you may or may not be seeing the new features yet. I can currently see the spellcheck and autocorrect features in Notepad version 11.2405.13.0 running on a fully updated Windows 11 23H2 PC, but your mileage may vary.

Notepad has received several updates over the course of the Windows 11 era, starting with dark mode support and other theme options. Eventually, it also added a tabbed interface that supported automatically reopening files when relaunching the app. These kinds of additions count as “major” for Notepad, which for years had only received relatively minor under-the-hood updates (when it was being updated at all).

The Notepad improvements come as Microsoft prepares to stop shipping WordPad with Windows 11. WordPad was previously Windows’ preinstalled basic word processor, but it has seen few (if any) significant updates since Windows 7 was released in 2009. WordPad is still available in Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2, but is no longer included in current versions of the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 update. After WordPad is gone, users looking for basic word processing will need to look to the more-capable Notepad, the free-to-use online version of Microsoft Word, or a free alternative like LibreOffice.

Notepad’s spellcheck and autocorrect are rolling out to everybody after 41 years Read More »

boeing-to-plead-guilty-to-conspiracy-to-defraud-faa-aircraft-evaluation-group

Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group

Boeing, boeing guilty, Policy / /

Boeing guilty plea —

Families say deal with US “fails to hold Boeing accountable” for 346 crash deaths.

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An American Airlines plane just before making a landing with a body of water in the background

Enlarge / An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft approaches San Diego International Airport for a landing on June 28, 2024.

Getty Images | Kevin Carter

Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to a criminal charge and pay $243.6 million for violating a 2021 agreement that was spurred by two fatal crashes. The US government notified a judge of Boeing’s plea agreement in a July 7 filing in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

“The parties have agreed that Boeing will plead guilty to the most serious readily provable offense,” the Department of Justice said. If accepted by the court, the deal would allow Boeing to avoid a trial.

Families of victims said in a filing yesterday that they will urge the court to reject the deal at a plea hearing. “The families intend to argue that the plea deal with Boeing unfairly makes concessions to Boeing that other criminal defendants would never receive and fails to hold Boeing accountable for the deaths of 346 persons,” their lawyers wrote.

The deal stems from Boeing 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019 in Indonesia and Ethiopia. After the crashes, Boeing was charged with conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration in connection with the agency’s evaluation of the 737 Max.

Conspiracy to defraud FAA

“Boeing will plead guilty to the offense charged in the pending one-count Criminal Information, conspiracy to defraud the United States, specifically, the lawful function of the Federal Aviation Administration Aircraft Evaluation Group,” the US government filing said.

In January 2021, Boeing signed a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties and compensation to airline customers and the victims’ families. In May 2024, the Justice Department said it determined that Boeing violated the deferred prosecution agreement “by failing to design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations.”

The DOJ determined that Boeing violated the 2021 agreement several months after the January 2024 incident in which a 737 Max 9 used by Alaska Airlines made an emergency landing because a door plug blew off during a flight. Boeing initially said it believed that it honored the terms of the agreement but ultimately agreed to plead guilty to the charge for conspiracy to defraud the FAA.

“The parties have agreed in principle to the material terms of a plea agreement that would, among other things, hold Boeing accountable for its material misstatements to the Federal Aviation Administration, require Boeing to pay the statutory maximum fine, require Boeing to invest at least $455 million in its compliance and safety programs, impose an independent compliance monitor, and allow the Court to determine the restitution amount for the families in its discretion, consistent with applicable law,” the DOJ court filing said.

Boeing will agree to a fine of $243.6 million, which will be doubled to $487.2 million, and is “the maximum criminal fine for the charged offense,” the DOJ said. But “the new plea agreement will recommend that when imposing the sentence, the Court credit the $243.6 million criminal monetary penalty Boeing previously paid pursuant to the [deferred prosecution agreement], with the net result being that Boeing will have to pay another $243.6 million fine.”

Boeing hasn’t agreed on further restitution to victims’ families, but the court could order an additional payment. Boeing agreed to be subject to an independent compliance monitor for three years.

Victims’ families oppose plea deal

Families of the victims of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes “have expressed their intention to oppose this (or any) plea agreement,” the DOJ noted. The government said it “conferred with the families, airline customers, and their representatives” and “formulated the plea offer based in part on the feedback” it received.

The DOJ court filing said Boeing will not receive immunity for any other “conduct that may be the subject of any ongoing or future Government investigation of the Company.”

There could also be prosecutions of individuals at Boeing. “DOJ is resolving only with the company—and providing no immunity to any individual employees, including corporate executives, for any conduct,” the agency said in a statement quoted by CNN.

Under the plea agreement, restitution for families would be determined by the court. “The plea agreement will allow the Court to determine the restitution amount for the families in its discretion, consistent with applicable legal principles… Boeing will retain the right to appeal any restitution order it believes was not legally imposed,” the government said.

Because families intend to oppose the plea agreement, the government said it will “meet and confer with all stakeholders on a briefing schedule.” A lawyer for victims’ families asked “that the Court schedule a plea hearing no sooner than late July to allow adequate time for the families to make travel arrangements to attend in person,” the DOJ said.

“This sweetheart deal fails to recognize that because of Boeing’s conspiracy, 346 people died. Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime are being hidden,” Paul Cassell, a lawyer for the families, said.

Boeing did not comment on the specifics of the plea deal. “We can confirm that we have reached an agreement in principle on terms of a resolution with the Justice Department, subject to the memorialization and approval of specific terms,” the company said in a statement provided to Ars.

Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group Read More »

here’s-nascar’s-idea-for-a-fully-electric-stock-car

Here’s NASCAR’s idea for a fully electric stock car

battery electric vehicle, Cars, electric race car, NASCAR / /

1,000 kW —

The prototype is here to gauge interest and promote NASCAR’s sustainability push.

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A NASCAR EV prototype seen from the front 3/4 view

Enlarge / After developing the Next Gen stock car and then the Garage 56 car, NASCAR’s tech team has now created a battery-electric race car prototype.

NASCAR

This past weekend was a busy one on the racing calendar. Over in the UK, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone was yet more evidence that Red Bull no longer has the fastest car in F1. In Ohio, IndyCar had a mostly successful introduction of its new supercapacitor-based hybrid system. And a couple of Great Lakes over, NASCAR held its second street race in Chicago, choosing that event to also show off its prototype of a fully electric stock car.

In doing so, it has partnered with the technology company ABB, which, among other things, makes charging equipment and is also Formula E’s title sponsor. “The objective of the collaboration between NASCAR, ABB in the United States, and the NASCAR industry is to push the boundaries of electrification technology, from EV racing to long-haul transportation to facility operations,” said ABB Executive Vice President Ralph Donati.

The NASCAR EV prototype starts with a modified Next Gen chassis, which was introduced to the sport in 2022. This is something of a no-brainer: in addition to the other stuff you want in a race car chassis, like a good ratio of stiffness to weight, it’s also designed to be able to safely protect the driver from the consequences of the very high-speed crashes that occur in the series. So, there shouldn’t be any concerns about the 78 kWh liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack.

The EV prototype was developed together with Ford, General Motors, and Toyota. And yes, it's a crossover.

Enlarge / The EV prototype was developed together with Ford, General Motors, and Toyota. And yes, it’s a crossover.

NASCAR

That pack supplies three electric motors: one for the front axle and one for each rear wheel. And it’s far more powerful than any V8-powered stock car, with 1,341 hp (1,000 kW) available at peak power. The motors are supplied by STARD, an Austrian motorsport company that also helped Ford develop the wacky Supervan 4, Supervan 4.2, and most recently, its SuperTruck EV demonstrators.

Like those machines, this electric demonstrator also looks a little out of the ordinary for a race car. It’s most noticeable in profile, where you see the EV prototype is a few inches taller than a Next Gen car, aiming for a crossover-shaped body.

Flax composites

Those body panels might just be the first thing we see translate from the prototype over to competition cars. NASCAR recently moved away from sheet metal for its bodywork, but for this car, it opted to make the body out of flax-based composites from a company called Bcomp.

People have been working on sustainable alternatives to carbon fiber for a while now—we encountered hemp body panels on the Eco Racing Radical in the late 2000s. Plant-based composites are heavier than synthetic carbon composites, but as sustainability becomes an increasingly important aspect of modern racing series, that becomes a trade-off worth making, as Bcomp says its composites have an 85-percent smaller carbon footprint when compared to a traditional composite of similar stiffness.

“Integrating sustainable innovations into the design process helps set the standard for sustainability across our industry and supports forward progress towards the company’s sustainability goals and targets,” said Bcomp’s vice president of vehicle design, Brandon Thomas.

Bcomp bodywork helps reduce the EV prototype's carbon footprint.

Enlarge / Bcomp bodywork helps reduce the EV prototype’s carbon footprint.

Bcomp

Just don’t expect to see an all-electric NASCAR race anytime soon. While a battery EV like the prototype you see here would work well on road and street courses as well as short ovals, since all three offer chances to regenerate energy under braking, no one is entirely sure how to make EVs work on superspeedways.

Rather, the car is a way for the sport to gauge fan interest and to promote NASCAR IMPACT, the sport’s new sustainability push. The plan is for ABB to help NASCAR decarbonize its operations, which are responsible for far more of its carbon footprint than the cars running on track. It wants to reduce its footprint to zero by 2035, but a more immediate goal is to use only renewable electricity at its racetracks and facilities by 2028, as well as building out on-site charging stations.

Here’s NASCAR’s idea for a fully electric stock car Read More »

brad-pitt-stages-a-formula-one-racing-comeback-in-first-teaser-for-f1

Brad Pitt stages a Formula One racing comeback in first teaser for F1

Apple TV Plus, Brad Pitt, culture, Entertainment, F1, film, film trailers, Formula 1, Warner Bros. / /

Vroom, vroom —

Pitt: “You’ve never seen speed, you’ve never seen just the G forces like this.”

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Brad Pitt and Damson Idris co-star in F1, coming to theaters next summer.

Can a washed-up Formula One driver come out of retirement to mentor a young rookie into a champion? That’s the basic premise for F1, a forthcoming film starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Top Gun: Maverick). Warner Bros. dropped the first teaser for the film yesterday, right before the 2024 British Grand Prix.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a fictional Formula One driver who crashed horribly in the 1990s and retired from the sport. Then his longtime friend Ruben (Javier Bardem), owner of the fictional team APXGP, approaches him about coming out of retirement to mentor his team’s rookie prodigy, Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris). “They’re a last place team, they’re 21-22 on the grid, they’ve never scored a point,” Pitt told Sky Sports last year. “But they have a young phenom (Idris) and they bring me in as kind of a Hail Mary and hijinks ensue.”

In addition to Pitt, Bardem, and Idris, the cast includes Kerry Condon as Kate; Tobias Menzies as Banning; Kim Bodnia as Kaspar; Shea Wigham as Chip Hart; Joseph Balderrama as Rica Fazio; Sarah Niles as Noah’s mother, Bernadette; Samson Kayo as Cashman; Callie Cooke as Jodie; and Layne Harper as Press.

  • Brad Pitt plays mentor to Damson Idris’ hotshot rookie driver.

    Warner Bros/Apple TV+

  • This film is really about the cars.

    YouTube/Warner Bros.

  • Racing footage was shot on location during the regular F1 season.

    YouTube/Warner Bros.

  • Ready for its closeup.

    YouTube/Warner Bros

  • In the driver’s seat.

    YouTube/Warner Bros.

Playing themselves in the film: seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz Jr., Sergio Perez, Benoit Treluyer, and the rest of the F1 drivers and team members. Hamilton is a co-producer on the film and was also involved during the script-writing process to keep the film as realistic as possible by drawing on his own experiences. “We want everyone to love it and to really feel that we can encapsulate what the essence of this sport is about,” Hamilton said last year.

We don’t get much dialogue in this first teaser, or much information about the plot. Honestly? The teaser comes off as a bit cheesy from a marketing standpoint. (Since when do people in the racing community scoff so dismissively at safety concerns?) But that’s all real racing footage shot on actual tracks during bona fide F1 Grand Prix weekends. Pitt himself raced an adapted F2 car between practice sessions around the Northamptonshire circuit.

“There are cameras mounted all over the car,” Pitt told Sky Sports during filming at the 2023 British Grand Prix. “You’ve never seen speed; you’ve never seen just the G forces like this.” Based on the teaser, the visual efforts to immerse audiences in the F1 experience paid off. This is a film you’ll probably want to see in IMAX.

F1 arrives in theaters in the summer of 2025 and will stream on Apple TV+ sometime after that. It’s the sixth film from Apple Original Films to snag theater distribution, following in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon and this weekend’s Fly Me to the Moon, among others.

Apple Original Films/Warner Bros.

Listing image by Warner Bros/Apple TV+

Brad Pitt stages a Formula One racing comeback in first teaser for F1 Read More »

what-we-know-about-microdosing-candy-illnesses-as-death-investigation-underway

What we know about microdosing candy illnesses as death investigation underway

cases, diamond shruumz, health, microdosing, muscimol, mushrooms, psychedelics, Science, seizures, Toxicology / /
The Birthday Cake flavored bar.

Enlarge / The Birthday Cake flavored bar.

One person may have died from eating Diamond Shruumz microdosing candies, which were recalled last week amid a rash of severe illnesses involving seizures, intubation, and intensive care stays.

According to an update this week from the Food and Drug Administration, the cluster of cases continues to increase across the country. To date, 48 people across 24 states have fallen ill after eating the candies, which include chocolate bars, gummies, and candy cones that were sold online and in retail locations, such as smoke and vape shops. Of the 48 people sickened, 46 were ill enough to seek medical care, and 27 were admitted to a hospital.

For now, the death noted in the FDA’s latest update is only “potentially associated” with the candies and is still under investigation. No other information is yet available.

But in an interview with Ars, medical toxicologist Michael Moss was not surprised that the candies may have turned deadly. Moss, who is the medical director of the Utah Poison Control Center, cared for one of the first people reported to be sickened in the cluster.

An early case

The person was sickened in Nevada and transferred to a hospital in Utah, where Moss was a member of his care team. After the person came out of intensive care, Moss sat down with him and tried to piece together what happened. According to Moss, the person had bought a Birthday Cake-flavored chocolate bar at a local store. The bars are sold as “microdosing” candies, suggesting they contain psychedelic compounds, but the exact components and dosages aren’t listed.

Though the person told Moss he had some experience with psychedelics before, it was only with actual mushrooms. This was the first time he had eaten such a bar. And the bar’s packaging had only vague instructions of how much to eat at one time to achieve certain effects. For instance, eating nine or more squares of the bar was described with an image of an eye with lots of rainbow colors.

“What does that dose mean? And how many milligrams of what is that? Nobody knows,” Moss said. “So, he decided, ‘It’s a chocolate bar.’ So why wouldn’t you just eat the chocolate bar? Pretty reasonable thing to do.”

But, within minutes of eating the bar, the person felt nauseated and very dizzy and tired. He went to lie down and doesn’t remember much after that. Fortunately, a family member came home soon after and found him. The family member saw that he had vomited and was possibly aspirating or choking. By the time paramedics arrived, he was having a seizure. He had another in the emergency room. Doctors gave him anti-seizure medications and a breathing tube and put him on ventilation before transferring him to the hospital in Utah.

What we know about microdosing candy illnesses as death investigation underway Read More »

iter-fusion-reactor-to-see-further-delays,-with-operations-pushed-to-2034

ITER fusion reactor to see further delays, with operations pushed to 2034

delays, fusion, ITER, Physics, Science / /

Better late than never? —

Full fusion power won’t happen until nearly 2040 on new timeline.

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Image of a large metal vessel with a number of holes cut into it.

Enlarge / One of the components of the reactor during leak testing.

On Tuesday, the people managing the ITER experimental fusion reactor announced that a combination of delays and altered priorities meant that its first-of-its-kind hardware wouldn’t see plasma until 2036, with the full-energy deuterium-tritium fusion pushed back to 2039. The latter represents a four-year delay relative to the previous roadmap. While the former is also a delay, it’s due in part to changing priorities.

COVID and construction delays

ITER is an attempt to build a fusion reactor that’s capable of sustaining plasmas that allow it to operate well beyond the break-even point, where the energy released by fusion reactions significantly exceeds the energy required to create the conditions that enable those reactions. It’s meant to hit that milestone by scaling up a well-understood design called a tokamak.

But the problem has been plagued by delays and cost overruns nearly from its start. At early stages, many of these stemmed from changes in designs necessitated by a better and improved understanding of plasmas held at extreme pressures and temperatures due to better modeling capabilities and a better understanding of the behavior of plasmas in smaller reactions.

The latest delays are due to more prosaic reasons. One of them is the product of the international nature of the collaboration, which sees individual components built by different partner organizations before assembly at the reactor site in France. The pandemic, unsurprisingly, severely disrupted the production of a lot of these components, and the project’s structure meant that alternate suppliers couldn’t be used (assuming alternate suppliers of one-of-a-kind hardware existed in the first place).

The second problem relates to the location of the reactor in France. The country’s nuclear safety regulator had concerns about the assembly of some of the components and halted construction on the reactor.

High energy from the start

During the re-evaluation of the schedule that these delays would necessitate, the organization that manages ITER re-assessed some of its priorities. The previous schedule would have seen getting plasma into the machine prioritized, seeing relatively low-energy hydrogen plasmas put into the machine before all of the final hardware was complete. This would necessitate an extended shutdown after initial experiments before the reactor could be used at progressively higher energies, using more potent deuterium and deuterium/tritium plasmas.

In the previous schedule, the low-energy, hydrogen-only plasmas would have started testing in 2025, a target date that the delays have made completely unrealistic. Instead, they’ll now happen in 2034. However, rather than being a set of brief demonstrations, these experiments will continue for over two years and reach much higher energies. So, while having plasma in the machine will be delayed by nearly a decade, the system’s magnets will reach power only three years later than expected under the previous plan.

Full power operations using a deuterium/tritium fuel mix will be set back by four years. Even if this new schedule is kept, however, that won’t be until 2039.

So, we’re looking at 15 years even if there are no further delays. But the potential for said delays likely went up, as the announcement indicates that ITER will be switching to a different material (from beryllium to tungsten) for the construction of the inner wall that faces the plasma. This will be more relevant since many other projects, including commercial fusion startups, are planning on using tungsten. But it may still add a new suite of technical and manufacturing delays.

The risk for ITER, however, is that all of these delays cause some of the nations that are supporting the project to back out. Or, if some of the commercial fusion startups that have launched would have it, create the risk that fusion will already be here by the time ITER is ready to run.

ITER fusion reactor to see further delays, with operations pushed to 2034 Read More »

how-the-lincoln-nautilus-surprisingly-won-me-over-with-its-ride,-huge-screen

How the Lincoln Nautilus surprisingly won me over with its ride, huge screen

car review, Cars, Lincoln Nautilus / /

yes, really —

How I stopped worrying and learned to love the big screen.

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A panoramic screen in a Lincoln Nautilus

Enlarge / In the past, car companies engaged in “horsepower wars.” Now it seems they’re competing in a screen size war.

Jonathan Gitlin

It’s important to try to approach a review car with an open mind, but I’ll admit my preconceptions were stacked against the Lincoln Nautilus. It’s on the larger end of the midsize SUV segment, bigger than I like them, and my last encounter with a Lincoln wasn’t entirely positive. And then there’s the whole giant screen. Not to be outdone by Cadillac and its 33-inch display, Nautilus has a 48-inch screen that stretches between the A pillars, which sounds like a recipe for distraction. And yet, this hybrid SUV won me over rapidly.

We tested the hybrid Nautilus, a $1,500 option for a model that starts at $50,415. The hybrid system combines a 2.0 L turbocharged four-cylinder direct-injection engine with an electric motor in parallel, sending torque to all four wheels via a continuously variable transmission. Total output is 310 hp (231 kW), with a maximum output of 300 hp (223 kW) from the internal combustion engine, or 134 hp (100 kW) from the electric motor.

It’s quite efficient, too. The EPA rates the hybrid Nautilus at a combined 30 mpg (7.84 L/100 km), although a combination of 22-inch wheels and oppressive Washington, DC, summer temperatures meant that I averaged a little bit less than that.

Lincoln hasn’t disclosed a torque figure for the electric motor, but it’s easily sufficient for the task of getting the 4,517-lb (2,049 kg) SUV up and moving, both smoothly and near-silently, before the gas engine thinks about firing up. At city speeds, the electric motor does almost all of the work, at least as long as the weather isn’t too extreme—in the depths of winter and the height of summer, you can expect the engine to fire up more often unless you turn off the heater or AC.

  • I’m not the biggest fan of the exterior styling, but this was a very good metallic red paint.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • On the other hand, I am a fan of the interior, except for the placing of the touchscreen.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • There’s quite a lot of room in the rear.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • The Nautilus starts at just over $50,000, but you can spend a lot more than that depending on options and trim level.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • Note the door handles that stick up and out from the side.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • This might be the best Lincoln I’ve driven.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • The backup camera shows up where you normally see your map.

    Jonathan Gitlin

  • The Lincoln emblem is illuminated.

    Jonathan Gitlin

It’s a car that seems to encourage you to relax a bit and not be in quite so much of a hurry behind the wheel. That impression was helped by the seats, which offer plenty of adjustment and one of the best massaging functions you’ll currently find on four wheels. There’s even an optional digital scent diffuser.

Ride comfort was more than acceptable, despite the huge wheels, and the oblong-ish steering wheel never requires very much effort thanks to plenty of assist from the power steering. If the point of a luxury car is to pamper its occupants while they are transported from A to B, then the Nautilus should be considered quite luxurious.

How the Lincoln Nautilus surprisingly won me over with its ride, huge screen Read More »

judge-says-ftc-lacks-authority-to-issue-rule-banning-noncompete-agreements

Judge says FTC lacks authority to issue rule banning noncompete agreements

noncompete agreements, Policy / /

Noncompete ban —

Authority cited by FTC just a “housekeeping statute,” US judge in Texas rules.

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FTC Chair Lina Khan sitting at a Congressional hearing

Enlarge / FTC Chair Lina Khan testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on May 15, 2024, in Washington, DC.

Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch

A US judge ruled against the Federal Trade Commission in a challenge to its rule banning noncompete agreements, saying the FTC lacks “substantive” rulemaking authority.

The preliminary ruling only blocks enforcement of the noncompete ban against the plaintiff and other groups that intervened in the case, but it signals that the judge believes the FTC cannot enforce the rule. The case is in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, so appeals would be heard in the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—which is generally regarded as one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.

In April, the FTC issued a rule that would render the vast majority of current noncompete clauses unenforceable and ban future ones. The agency said that noncompete clauses are “an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act,” calling them “a widespread and often exploitative practice imposing contractual conditions that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting a new business.”

A tax services firm called Ryan, LLC sued the FTC in an attempt to block the rule. The lawsuit was joined by the US Chamber of Commerce, two Texas business groups, and a lobbyist association that represents chief executive officers at US businesses.

In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge Ada Brown granted a preliminary injunction and postponed the effective date of the rule as it applies to the plaintiffs. The rule is scheduled to take effect on September 4, 2024. As of now, the FTC’s ban on noncompetes is slated to apply to everyone except the entities involved in the lawsuit.

“FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority”

“The issue presented is whether the FTC’s ability to promulgate rules concerning unfair methods of competition include the authority to create substantive rules regarding unfair methods of competition,” Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote.

Brown acknowledged that “the FTC has some authority to promulgate rules to preclude unfair methods of competition.” But “the text, structure, and history of the FTC Act reveal that the FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition under Section 6(g),” she wrote.

The FTC has argued it can impose the rule using authority under sections 5 and 6(g) of the FTC Act. “Alongside section 5, Congress adopted section 6(g) of the Act, in which it authorized the Commission to ‘make rules and regulations for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of’ the FTC Act, which include the Act’s prohibition of unfair methods of competition,” the FTC said when it issued the rule.

“The FTC stands by our clear authority, supported by statute and precedent, to issue this rule,” an FTC spokesperson told Ars today. “We will keep fighting to free hardworking Americans from unlawful noncompetes, which reduce innovation, inhibit economic growth, trap workers, and undermine Americans’ economic liberty.”

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge called Brown’s ruling “the latest in a series of attacks on the administrative state, which only further embolden judges without subject matter expertise to seize power from federal agencies and prevent them from effectively serving the American people.”

The Supreme Court last week overturned the 40-year-old Chevron precedent, which gave agencies leeway to interpret ambiguous laws as long as the agency’s conclusion was reasonable. The SCOTUS ruling effectively gives courts more power to block federal rules.

FTC’s cited authority just a “housekeeping statute”

Brown concluded that section 6(g) is merely a “housekeeping statute,” authorizing “rules of agency organization procedure or practice” but not “substantive rules.”

“Plaintiffs next contend the lack of a statutory penalty for violating rules promulgated under Section 6(g) demonstrates its lack of substantive rulemaking power. The Court agrees,” Brown wrote. “When authorizing legislative rulemaking, Congress also historically prescribes sanctions for violations of the agency’s rules—confirming that those rules create substantive obligations for regulated parties.”

The judge said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits and would be harmed if the rule takes effect. Brown intends to issue a ruling on the merits by August 30.

The preliminary injunction does not apply nationwide, as Brown chose to limit “the scope of the injunctive relief herein to named Plaintiff Ryan, LLC and Plaintiff-Intervenors Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America; Business Roundtable; Texas Association of Business; and Longview Chamber of Commerce.”

The business trade groups wanted the injunction to apply to all of their member entities but could not convince Brown to extend the injunction that far. “Plaintiff-Intervenors have directed the Court to neither sufficient evidence of their respective associational member(s) for which they seek standing, nor any of the three elements that must be met regarding associational standing. Without such developed briefing, the Court declines to extend injunctive relief to members of Plaintiff-Intervenors,” Brown wrote.

Judge says FTC lacks authority to issue rule banning noncompete agreements Read More »

tool-preventing-ai-mimicry-cracked;-artists-wonder-what’s-next

Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next

Artificial Intelligence, artists, Features, generative ai, Glaze, image generators, Nightshade, Policy, security research, the glaze project / /
Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

For many artists, it’s a precarious time to post art online. AI image generators keep getting better at cheaply replicating a wider range of unique styles, and basically every popular platform is rushing to update user terms to seize permissions to scrape as much data as possible for AI training.

Defenses against AI training exist—like Glaze, a tool that adds a small amount of imperceptible-to-humans noise to images to stop image generators from copying artists’ styles. But they don’t provide a permanent solution at a time when tech companies appear determined to chase profits by building ever-more-sophisticated AI models that increasingly threaten to dilute artists’ brands and replace them in the market.

In one high-profile example just last month, the estate of Ansel Adams condemned Adobe for selling AI images stealing the famous photographer’s style, Smithsonian reported. Adobe quickly responded and removed the AI copycats. But it’s not just famous artists who risk being ripped off, and lesser-known artists may struggle to prove AI models are referencing their works. In this largely lawless world, every image uploaded risks contributing to an artist’s downfall, potentially watering down demand for their own work each time they promote new pieces online.

Unsurprisingly, artists have increasingly sought protections to diminish or dodge these AI risks. As tech companies update their products’ terms—like when Meta suddenly announced that it was training AI on a billion Facebook and Instagram user photos last December—artists frantically survey the landscape for new defenses. That’s why, counting among those offering scarce AI protections available today, The Glaze Project recently reported a dramatic surge in requests for its free tools.

Designed to help prevent style mimicry and even poison AI models to discourage data scraping without an artist’s consent or compensation, The Glaze Project’s tools are now in higher demand than ever. University of Chicago professor Ben Zhao, who created the tools, told Ars that the backlog for approving a “skyrocketing” number of requests for access is “bad.” And as he recently posted on X (formerly Twitter), an “explosion in demand” in June is only likely to be sustained as AI threats continue to evolve. For the foreseeable future, that means artists searching for protections against AI will have to wait.

Even if Zhao’s team did nothing but approve requests for WebGlaze, its invite-only web-based version of Glaze, “we probably still won’t keep up,” Zhao said. He’s warned artists on X to expect delays.

Compounding artists’ struggles, at the same time as demand for Glaze is spiking, the tool has come under attack by security researchers who claimed it was not only possible but easy to bypass Glaze’s protections. For security researchers and some artists, this attack calls into question whether Glaze can truly protect artists in these embattled times. But for thousands of artists joining the Glaze queue, the long-term future looks so bleak that any promise of protections against mimicry seems worth the wait.

Attack cracking Glaze sparks debate

Millions have downloaded Glaze already, and many artists are waiting weeks or even months for access to WebGlaze, mostly submitting requests for invites on social media. The Glaze Project vets every request to verify that each user is human and ensure bad actors don’t abuse the tools, so the process can take a while.

The team is currently struggling to approve hundreds of requests submitted daily through direct messages on Instagram and Twitter in the order they are received, and artists requesting access must be patient through prolonged delays. Because these platforms’ inboxes aren’t designed to sort messages easily, any artist who follows up on a request gets bumped to the back of the line—as their message bounces to the top of the inbox and Zhao’s team, largely volunteers, continues approving requests from the bottom up.

“This is obviously a problem,” Zhao wrote on X while discouraging artists from sending any follow-ups unless they’ve already gotten an invite. “We might have to change the way we do invites and rethink the future of WebGlaze to keep it sustainable enough to support a large and growing user base.”

Glaze interest is likely also spiking due to word of mouth. Reid Southen, a freelance concept artist for major movies, is advocating for all artists to use Glaze. Reid told Ars that WebGlaze is especially “nice” because it’s “available for free for people who don’t have the GPU power to run the program on their home machine.”

Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next Read More »

can’t-stop-your-cat-from-scratching-the-furniture?-science-has-some-tips

Can’t stop your cat from scratching the furniture? Science has some tips

animal behavior, animals, Biology, cat behavior, Cats, Science, veterinary science / /
two adorable kittens (one tabby, one tuxedo) on a little scratching post base.

Enlarge / Ariel and Caliban learned as kittens that scratching posts were fair game for their natural claw-sharpening instincts.

Sean Carroll

Ah, cats. We love our furry feline overlords despite the occasional hairball and their propensity to scratch the furniture to sharpen their claws. The latter is perfectly natural kitty behavior, but overly aggressive scratching is usually perceived as a behavioral problem. Veterinarians frown on taking extreme measures like declawing or even euthanizing such “problematic” cats. But there are alternative science-backed strategies for reducing or redirecting the scratching behavior, according to the authors of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

This latest study builds on the group’s prior research investigating the effects of synthetic feline facial pheromones on undesirable scratching in cats, according to co-author Yasemin Salgirli Demirbas, a veterinary researcher at Ankara University in Turkey. “From the beginning, our research team agreed that it was essential to explore broader factors that might exacerbate this issue, such as those influencing stress and, consequently, scratching behavior in cats,” she told Ars. “What’s new in this study is our focus on the individual, environmental, and social dynamics affecting the level of scratching behavior. This perspective aims to enhance our understanding of how human and animal welfare are interconnected in different scenarios.”

The study investigated the behavior of 1,211 cats, with data collected via an online questionnaire completed by the cats’ caregivers. The first section collected information about the caregivers, while the second asked about the cats’ daily routines, social interactions, environments, behaviors, and temperaments. The third and final section gathered information about the frequency and intensity of undesirable scratching behavior in the cats based on a helpful “scratching index.”

The team concluded that there are several factors that influence the scratching behavior of cats, including environmental factors, high levels of certain kinds of play, and increased nocturnal activity. But stress seems to be the leading driver. “Cats might scratch more as a way to relieve stress or mark their territory, especially if they feel threatened or insecure,” said Demirbas. And the top source of such stress, the study found, is the presence of small children in the home.

A corrugated fiberboard scratching pad can redirect your cat's unwanted scratching away from the furniture.

Enlarge / A corrugated fiberboard scratching pad can redirect your cat’s unwanted scratching away from the furniture.

Can’t stop your cat from scratching the furniture? Science has some tips Read More »

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Two of the German military’s new spy satellites appear to have failed in orbit

germany, SARah, Science, Space / /

The peril of pointing —

Did OHB really not test the satellite antennas on the ground?

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The SARah-1 mission is seen on the launch pad in June 2022.

Enlarge / The SARah-1 mission is seen on the launch pad in June 2022.

SpaceX

On the day before Christmas last year, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from California and put two spy satellites into low-Earth orbit for the armed forces of Germany, which are collectively called the Bundeswehr.

Initially, the mission appeared successful. The German satellite manufacturer, OHB, declared that the two satellites were “safely in orbit.” The addition of the two SARah satellites completed a next-generation constellation of three reconnaissance satellites, the company said.

However, six months later, the two satellites have yet to become operational. According to the German publication Der Spiegel, the antennas on the satellites cannot be unfolded. Engineers with OHB have tried to resolve the issue by resetting the flight software, performing maneuvers to vibrate or shake the antennas loose, and more to no avail.

As a result, last week, German lawmakers were informed that the two new satellites will probably not go into operation as planned.

Saving SARah

The three-satellite constellation known as SARah—the SAR is a reference to the synthetic aperture radar capability of the satellites—was ordered in 2013 at a cost of $800 million. The first of the three satellites, SARah 1, launched in June 2022 on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was built by Airbus in southern Germany, and it has since gone into operation without any problems.

The two smaller satellites built by OHB, flying with passive synthetic aperture radar reflectors, were intended to complement the SARah 1 satellite, which carries an active phased-array radar antenna.

“The new SARah satellites ensure that the Bundeswehr has the capability for worldwide imaging reconnaissance independent of the time of day or the weather,” the German military said at the time of the SARah 1 satellite launch. “At the same time, they provide support in the early detection and management of crises.”

This new constellation was intended to replace an aging fleet of similar, though less capable, satellites known as  SAR-Lupe. This five-satellite constellation launched nearly two decades ago.

OHB said to be at fault

According to the Der Spiegel report, the Bundeswehr says the two SARah satellites built by OHB remain the property of the German company and would only be turned over to the military once they were operational. As a result, the military says OHB will be responsible for building two replacement satellites.

Shockingly, the German publication says that its sources indicated OHB did not fully test the functionality and deployment of the satellite antennas on the ground. This could not be confirmed.

This setback comes as OHB is attempting to complete a deal to go private—the investment firm KKR is planning to acquire the German space company. OHB officials said they initiated the effort to go private late last year because public markets had “structurally undervalued” the company.

OHB has its hands in many different space businesses in Europe. The small launch firm Rocket Factory Augsburg was spun out of OHB in 2018 and is working toward its debut launch later this year or in 2025. The company is also a supplier for the larger Ariane 6 rocket and one of several private companies that is part of a coalition bidding to build a Starlink-like satellite constellation for the European Union known as IRIS2.

Two of the German military’s new spy satellites appear to have failed in orbit Read More »

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High-altitude cave used by Tibetan Buddhists yields a Denisovan fossil

ancient proteins, Archeology, Denisovans, human evolution, Science / /

Eating in —

Cave deposits yield bones of sheep, yaks, carnivores, and birds that were butchered.

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Image of a sheer cliff face with a narrow path leading to a cave opening.

Enlarge / The Baishiya Karst Cave, where the recently analyzed samples were obtained.

Dongju Zhang’s group (Lanzhou University)

For well over a century, we had the opportunity to study Neanderthals—their bones, the items they left behind, their distribution across Eurasia. So, when we finally obtained the sequence of their genome and discovered that we share a genetic legacy with them, it was easy to place the discoveries into context. In contrast, we had no idea Denisovans existed when sequencing DNA from a small finger bone revealed that yet another relative of modern humans had roamed Asia in the recent past.

Since then, we’ve learned little more. The frequency of their DNA in modern human populations suggest that they were likely concentrated in East Asia. But we’ve only discovered fragments of bone and a few teeth since then, so we can’t even make very informed guesses as to what they might have looked like. On Wednesday, an international group of researchers described finds from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau that had been occupied by Denisovans, which tell us a bit more about these relatives: what they ate. And that appears to be anything they could get their hands on.

The Baishiya Karst Cave

The finds come from a site called the Baishiya Karst Cave, which is perched on a cliff on the northeast of the Tibetan Plateau. It’s located at a high altitude (over 3,000 meters or nearly 11,000 feet) but borders a high open plain, as you can see in the picture below.

Oddly, it came to the attention of the paleontology community because the cave was a pilgrimage site for Tibetan monks, one of whom discovered a portion of a lower jaw that eventually was given to a university. There, people struggled to understand exactly how it fit with human populations until eventually analysis of proteins preserved within it indicated it belonged to a Denisovan. Now called the Xiahe mandible, it remains the most substantial Denisovan fossil we’ve discovered to date.

The Ganjia Basin borders the cliffs that contain the Baishiya Karst Cave.

Enlarge / The Ganjia Basin borders the cliffs that contain the Baishiya Karst Cave.

Dongju Zhang’s group (Lanzhou University)

Since then, excavations at the site had turned up a large collection of animal bones, but none that had been identified as Denisovan. Sequencing of environmental DNA preserved in the cave, however, revealed that the Denisovans had occupied the cave regularly for at least 100,000 years, meaning they were surviving at altitude during both of the last two glacial cycles.

The new work focuses in on the bones, many of which are too fragmentary to be definitively assigned to a species. To do so, the researchers purified fragments of proteins from the bones, which contain large amounts of collagen. These fragments were then separated according to their mass, a technique called mass spectrometry, which works well even with the incredibly small volumes of proteins that survive over hundreds of thousands of years.

Mass spectrometry relies on the fact that there are only a limited number of combinations of amino acids—often only one—that will produce a protein fragment of a given mass. So, if the mass spectrometry finds a signal at that mass, you can compare the possible amino acid combinations that produce it to known collagen sequences to find matches. Some of these matches will end up being in places where collagens from different species have distinct sequences of amino acids, allowing you to determine what species the bone came from.

When used this way, the technique is termed zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry, or ZooMS. And, in the case of the work described in the new paper, it identified nearly 80 percent of the bone fragments that were tested.

High-altitude cave used by Tibetan Buddhists yields a Denisovan fossil Read More »