Author name: Beth Washington

raspberry-pi-500+-puts-the-pi,-16gb-of-ram,-and-a-real-ssd-in-a-mechanical-keyboard

Raspberry Pi 500+ puts the Pi, 16GB of RAM, and a real SSD in a mechanical keyboard

raspberry pi 400, raspberry pi 5, raspberry pi 500, Tech / /

The Raspberry Pi 500 (and 400) systems are versions of the Raspberry Pi built for people who use the Raspberry Pi as a general-purpose computer rather than a hobbyist appliance. Now the company is leaning into that even more with the Raspberry Pi 500+, an amped-up version of the keyboard computer with 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB, a 256GB NVMe SSD instead of microSD storage, and a fancier keyboard with mechanical switches, replaceable keycaps, and individually programmable RGB LEDs.

The computer is currently available to purchase from the usual suspects like CanaKit and Micro Center, and generally starts at $200, twice the price of the Pi 500.

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton’s blog post about the 500+ says that the upgraded version of the computer has been in the works since the regular 500 was released last year.

The Pi 500+ is still a full Pi 5-based computer in a keyboard-shaped case, but the keyboard has gotten a serious upgrade. Credit: Raspberry Pi

Early testers of the Pi 500 noted at the time that there was space on the motherboard—which uses the same components as a regular Raspberry Pi 5, but on a different board that allows all the ports to be on the same side—for an M.2 slot, but that there was nothing soldered to it. The Pi 500+ includes an NVMe slot populated with a 256GB M.2 2280 SSD, but that can be swapped for higher-capacity drives. Upton also notes that the system is still bootable from microSD and USB drives.

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fiji’s-ants-might-be-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-for-the-insect-apocalypse

Fiji’s ants might be the canary in the coal mine for the insect apocalypse

ants, Biology, evolution, Fiji, insects, Science, speciation / /

A new genetic technique lets museum samples track population dynamics.

In late 2017, a study by Krefeld Entomological Society looked at protected areas across Germany and discovered that two-thirds of the insect populations living in there had vanished over the last 25 years. The results spurred the media to declare we’re living through an “insect apocalypse,” but the reasons behind their absence were unclear. Now, a joint team of Japanese and Australian scientists have completed a new, multi-year study designed to get us some answers.

Insect microcosm

“In our work, we focused on ants because we have systematic ways for collecting them,” says Alexander Mikheyev, an evolutionary biologist at the Australian National University. “They are also a group with the right level of diversity, where you have enough species to do comparative studies.” Choosing the right location, he explained, was just as important. “We did it in Fiji, because Fiji had the right balance between isolation—which gave us a discrete group of animals to study—but at the same time was diverse enough to make comparisons,” Mikheyev adds.

Thus, the Fijian archipelago, with its 330 islands, became the model the team used to get some insights into insect population dynamics. A key difference from the earlier study was that Mikheyev and his colleagues could look at those populations across thousands of years, not just the last 25.

“Most of the previous studies looked at actual observational data—things we could come in and measure,” Mikheyev explains. The issue with those studies was that they could only account for the last hundred years or so, because that’s how long we have been systematically collecting insect samples. “We really wanted to understand what happened in the longer time frame,” Mikheyev says.

To do this, his team focused on community genomics—studying the collective genetic material of entire groups of organisms. The challenge is that this would normally require collecting thousands of ants belonging to hundreds of species across the entire Fijian archipelago. Given that only a little over 100 out of 330 islands in Fiji are permanently inhabited, this seemed like an insurmountable challenge.

To go around it, the team figured they could run its tests on ants already collected in Fijian museums. But that came with its own set of difficulties.

DNA pieces

Unfortunately, the quality of DNA that could be obtained from museum collections was really bad. From the perspective of DNA preservation, the ants were obtained and stored in horrific conditions, since the idea was to showcase them for visitors, not run genetic studies. “People were catching them in malaise traps,” Mikheyev says. “A malaise trap is basically a bottle of alcohol that sits somewhere in Fiji for a month. Those samples had horribly fragmented, degraded DNA.”

To work with this degraded genetic material, the team employed a technique they called high-throughput museumomics, a relatively new technique that looks at genetic differences across a genome without sequencing the whole thing. DNA sampled from multiple individuals was cut and marked with unique tags at the same repeated locations, a bit like using bookmarks to pinpoint the same page or passage in different issues of the same book. Then, the team sequenced short DNA fragments following the tag to look for differences between them, allowing them to evaluate the genetic diversity within a population.  “We developed a series of methods that actually allowed us to harness these museum-grade specimens for population genetics,” Mikheyev explains.

But the trouble didn’t end there. Differences among Fijian ant taxa are based on their appearance, not genetic analysis. For years, researchers were collecting various ants and determining their species by looking at them. This led to 144 species belonging to 40 genera. For Mikheyev’s team, the first step was to look at the genomes in the samples and see if these species divisions were right. It turned out that they were mostly correct, but some species had to be split, while others were lumped together. At the end, the team confirmed that 127 species were represented among their samples.

Overall, the team analyzed more than 4,000 specimens of ants collected over the past decade or so. And gradually, a turbulent history of Fijian ants started to emerge from the data.

The first colonists

The art of reconstructing the history of entire populations from individual genetic sequences relies on comparing them to each other thoroughly and running a whole lot of computer simulations. “We had multiple individuals per population,” Mikheyev explains. “Let’s say we look at this population and find it has essentially no diversity. It suggests that it very recently descended from a small number of individuals.” When the contrary was true and the diversity was high, the team assumed it indicated the population had been stable for a long time.

With the DNA data in hand, the team simulated how populations of ants would evolve over thousands of years under various conditions, and picked scenarios that best matched the genetic diversity results it obtained from real ants. “We identified multiple instances of colonization—broadscale evolutionary events that gave rise to the Fijian fauna that happened in different timeframes,” Mikheyev says. There was a total of at least 65 colonization events.

The first ants, according to Mikheyev, arrived at Fiji millions of years ago and gave rise to 88 endemic Fijian ant species we have today. These ants most likely evolved from a single ancestor and then diverged from their mainland relatives. Then, a further 23 colonization events introduced ants that were native to a broader Pacific region. These ants, the team found, were a mixture of species that colonized Fiji naturally and ones that were brought by the first human settlers, the Lapita people, who arrived around 3,000 years ago.

The arrival of humans also matched the first declines in endemic Fijian ant species.

Slash and burn

“In retrospect, these declines are not really surprising,” Mikheyev says. The first Fijian human colonists didn’t have the same population density as we have now, but they did practice things like slash-and-burn agriculture, where forests were cut down, left to dry, and burned to make space for farms and fertilize the soil. “And you know, not every ant likes to live in a field, especially the ones that evolved to live in a forest,” Mikheyev adds. But the declines in Fijian endemic ant species really accelerated after the first contact with the Europeans.

The first explorers in the 17th and 18th centuries, like Abel Tasman and James Cook, charted some of the Fijian islands but did not land there. The real apocalypse for Fijian ants began in the 19th century, when European sandalwood traders started visiting the archipelago on a regular basis and ultimately connected it to the global trade networks.

Besides the firearms they often traded for sandalwood with local chiefs, the traders also brought fire ants. “Fire ants are native to Latin America, and it’s a common invasive species extremely well adapted to habitats we create: lawns or clear-cut fields,” Mikheyev says. Over the past couple of centuries, his team saw a massive increase in fire ant populations, combined with accelerating declines in 79 percent of endemic Fijian ant species.

Signs of apocalypse

To Mikheyev, Fiji was just a proving ground to test the methods of working with museum-grade samples. “Now we know this approach works and we can start leveraging collections found in museums around the world—all of them can tell us stories about places where they were collected,” Mikheyev says. His ultimate goal is to look for the signs of the insect apocalypse, or any other apocalypse of a similar kind, worldwide.

But the question is whether what’s happening is really that bad? After all, not all ants seem to be in decline. Perhaps what we see is just a case of a better-adapted species taking over—natural selection happening before our eyes?

“Sure, we can just live with fire ants all along without worrying about the kind of beautiful biodiversity that evolution has created on Fiji,” Mikheyev says. “But I feel like if we just go with that philosophy, we’re really going to be irreparably losing important and interesting parts of our ecology.” If the current trends persist, he argues, we might lose endemic Fijian ants forever. “And this would make our world worse, in many ways,” Mikheyev says.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.ads3004

Photo of Jacek Krywko

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

Fiji’s ants might be the canary in the coal mine for the insect apocalypse Read More »

senate-staff-probes-doge,-finds-locked-doors-and-windows-covered-with-trash-bags

Senate staff probes DOGE, finds locked doors and windows covered with trash bags

doge, numident, Policy, social security database / /

Pay no attention to the DOGE behind the curtain

Democratic report describes Social Security risk and secretive DOGE offices.

A protest against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk in New York on February 19, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Pacific Press

Multiple whistleblowers alleged that DOGE uploaded a highly sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) database to an unmonitored cloud environment, according to a report by Senate Democratic staff. The staff report describes an investigation into DOGE activities at three agencies, including a site visit at the General Services Administration (GSA) in which DOGE officials appeared to be hiding certain areas from view.

As we reported last month, then-SSA Chief Data Officer Chuck Borges alleged that DOGE officials created “a live copy of the country’s Social Security information in a cloud environment that circumvents oversight.” At least one other whistleblower has apparently made the same allegation.

Whistleblowers, including Borges, alleged “that Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old DOGE staffer who was previously fired from a job for leaking company data to a competitor, and other DOGE personnel had been granted permission to move highly sensitive SSA data into an unmonitored cloud environment,” the Senate Democratic report said. “The whistleblowers said that DOGE has uploaded a live copy of NUMIDENT, which contains highly sensitive personal data on anyone who has held a Social Security number, including every American. This includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), place and date of birth, work permit status, and parents’ names, among other sensitive personal information, for all Americans, to a cloud environment.”

SSA Chief Information Officers Michael Russo and Aram Moghaddassi, who are described as “DOGE-affiliated,” allegedly “granted approval for the data move despite a June 12, 2025, internal risk assessment flagging a high level of risk and potentially catastrophic impact to SSA beneficiaries and SSA programs absent additional controls to safeguard against unauthorized access,” the report said.

That internal risk assessment by SSA employees “evaluated the likelihood of such catastrophic impact to be between 35 and 65 percent,” with the potential for widespread disclosure of personally identifiable information, the report said.

Windows “hastily covered with black trash bags and tape”

Democratic staffers investigated DOGE activities at the SSA, GSA, and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), resulting in the report written by staff for Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. The report criticized the agencies for lack of cooperation.

“None of the agencies have allowed meetings with representatives from agency DOGE teams. In the DOGE spaces staff were permitted to view, armed guards controlled access to work and living spaces, rooms were locked, and office windows appeared to have been hastily covered with black trash bags and tape,” the report said.

At the GSA building, “officials refused to show staff at least six offices that GSA had allowed DOGE to convert into bedrooms,” and refused to show staff the agency’s Starlink broadband equipment, the report said. In another instance described by the report, “GSA officials said they did not have the key to open a locked room that had windows covered with black paper, trash bags, and tape. When staff asked why the most senior officials in offices charged with building management and security could not open an office door, GSA could not provide an answer.”

The report said that during a site visit at the SSA building, the DOGE workspace was guarded by armed security. “SSA officials providing the tour confirmed that this level of security was unusual,” the report said. “When staff asked why the additional security for the DOGE workspace was needed, Mr. [Dan] Callahan [the Assistant Commissioner for Building and Facilities Management] said that DOGE staff were concerned about threats to their safety. Staff asked whether these were direct threats and whether officials informed law enforcement. Officials explained that there had not been a specific threat, rather that some DOGE staff felt threatened based on a communication with an SSA employee that ‘included cursing.'”

Aside from the security guard, the DOGE offices appeared to be empty on a Thursday afternoon, the report said. Senate staff were told “that DOGE staff had telework agreements with the agency. SSA officials confirmed that DOGE were the only individuals who had this approved telework structure in the entire CIO’s office. SSA officials could not answer questions about the telework agreements, including a reason for the telework exception and who approved the agreements.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, said that “DOGE isn’t making government more efficient—it’s putting Americans’ sensitive information in the hands of completely unqualified and untrustworthy individuals. They are bypassing cybersecurity protections, evading oversight, and putting Americans’ personal data at risk.”

Agencies didn’t answer many questions, report says

SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano previously denied the whistleblower allegations in a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). The cloud environment “is actually a secured server in the agency’s cloud infrastructure which historically has housed this data and is continuously monitored and overseen—SSA’s standard practice,” the letter said.

The Senate Democratic staff report said the agencies did not answer many of the questions posed during the investigation:

In response to these questions, senior officials at SSA, GSA, and OPM all failed to provide information about who was in charge; what conduct DOGE teams were engaged in; and what data those teams had been given access to, including the authorities and restrictions guiding their access. None of the agencies could answer simple questions about organizational charts and employee roles. During oversight trips, GSA and OPM would not even directly acknowledge the existence of their DOGE teams—despite the fact that Executive Order 14158 requires each agency to have a DOGE team comprised of at least four people. At the OPM site visit, officials provided staff with information that directly contradicted court documents filed on the agency’s behalf… None of the agencies have responded to staff’s follow-up questions, including whether they are in compliance with federal law.

The Senate staff report said that OPM’s “political leadership were determined to deny any existence of DOGE at the agency,” despite evidence to the contrary. When staff visited OPM, offices were mostly empty and “leadership had difficulty answering a series of basic questions about the agency’s organization and staffing,” the report said.

When contacted by Ars today, the SSA did not provide any new response to the Senate staff report but instead pointed us to the Bisignano letter that we wrote about last week.

“I can confirm, based on the agency’s thorough review, that neither the Numident database nor any of its data has been accessed, leaked, hacked, or shared in any unauthorized fashion,” Bisignano wrote in the letter. “SSA continuously monitors its systems for any signs of unauthorized access or data compromise, and we have not detected any such incidents involving the Numident database.”

An OPM spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars today, “OPM takes its responsibility to safeguard federal personnel records seriously. This report recycles unfounded claims about so-called ‘DOGE teams’ that simply have never existed at OPM. Federal employees at OPM conduct their work in line with longstanding law, security, and compliance requirements. Instead of rehashing baseless allegations, Senate Democrats should focus their efforts on the real challenges facing the federal workforce. OPM remains committed to transparency, accountability, and delivering for the American people.”

We contacted the GSA today and will update this article if it provides a response.

Report warns adversaries could hack database

While there’s no reported breach, the Senate Democratic report warned that the SSA’s cloud environment could be hacked by foreign adversaries, including “Russia, China, and Iran, who regularly attempt cyber attacks on the US government and critical infrastructure.”

The report urged the Trump administration to “immediately shut down the new cloud environment at SSA that contains NUMIDENT data,” and take other actions such as revoking DOGE access to personal data “until agencies certify that all agency personnel are in compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the Privacy Act, the Federal Records Act.” But Democrats’ ability to influence the administration is limited at best, particularly with Republicans holding majorities in both the House and Senate.

DOGE sought access to Social Security data as part of an effort to uncover evidence of fraud. A federal judge wrote in March that DOGE “is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.” In June, the Supreme Court allowed DOGE to access SSA records, overturning lower-court decisions that imposed some limits on data access.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Senate staff probes DOGE, finds locked doors and windows covered with trash bags Read More »

felony-charges-after-south-carolina-high-school-filled-with-“fart-spray”…-for-weeks

Felony charges after South Carolina high school filled with “fart spray”… for weeks

culture, fart spray, South Carolina / /

Let’s dig into the science of stink.

As a boy, I once owned a whoopee cushion. I thought it was hilarious; my aging and extremely “proper” great aunt—God rest her soul—did not, and at one Thanksgiving dinner, she let me know. Chastened, I never used a whoopee cushion again. Nor, as the decades passed, did I think much more about the possible humor value of fake farts.

Until this week, when I came across the strange case of Alexander Paul Robertson Lewis, who has been charged with a felony in South Carolina for—and let me quote from the official police press release here—using “an Internet-acquired spray designed to imitate fecal odor.”

The nanny state run amok? The criminalization of fun? Authorities who Just Can’t Take A Joke?

Not exactly.

The gas leak that wasn’t

The 32-year-old Lewis worked as a teacher’s assistant at the West Florence High School in Florence County, South Carolina. His duties did not, of course, include spraying anything “designed to imitate fecal odor” into the air. But according to police, Lewis was responsible for “creating a foul smell” at the school—not once, but for weeks. It was so dire that multiple students needed medical attention.

The school’s administration suspected a gas leak at first. According to local news reports, in mid-August, the school sent an email to parents letting them know that “gas is only used in our school for heating, in the kitchen for food preparation, and in a few of the science labs. Excluding the kitchen, we have turned off all gas to the building as a precaution. This has allowed us to rule out a gas leak as the source of the odor.”

The district brought in plumbers to inspect “all lines above the ceilings as well as the propane tank lines for potential gas leaks.” It brought in the local gas utility to test for leaks in “hallways, classrooms, rooftops, science labs, propane tanks, natural gas meters, and floor drains in bathrooms.” It hired an environmental consultant to do air quality testing. None of these inspections turned up anything untoward.

Over the next weeks, parents and students began to complain vociferously about getting sick at school. One student told local station WPDE that “every time I go to my second block class, I walk up the stairwell and immediately, teachers are covering their noses and their mouths, coughing because of the smell.” Another said, “I got physically sick the other day because of the smell. I feel like I’m going to pass out because I get so lightheaded and so dizzy.”

Parents said that they were taking their children for doctors’ visits, worried about possible carbon monoxide exposure or about asthma-related difficulties. One parent wrote in a Facebook comment about the whole saga, “My daughter passed out and [was] rushed to the ER.”

An angry mom showed up to a September school board meeting and ripped into the district for its lack of responsiveness. “There has been an ongoing smell for the past two, three weeks now,” she said. “My son has asthma. This is triggering his asthma… I had to take him to the doctor twice… He’s had to use his inhaler multiple times a day.”

The school continued to search for answers. According to WMBF News, the district ultimately had “five different entities test for gas, opening several walls, and checking sewer lines.”

In the end, though, it may come down to some guy wielding a truly noxious amount of “fart spray.”

On September 20, police arrested Lewis for using the spray “on multiple occasions and over time resulting in a disruption of the school,” which spent $55,000 trying to track down the problem.

Such events are uncommon but not unknown. In 2023, for instance, two people in San Antonio, Texas, were arrested and charged with felonies after a similar “senior prank.” In that case, according to local accounts, “The stench was so bad that the school was evacuated twice in an attempt to find the source, while seven students were taken to the hospital for further care after complaining of headaches and nausea.”

Crazy. But why the severe reactions?

Mug shot for Alexander Paul Robertson Lewis

Alexander Paul Robertson Lewis. Credit: Florence County Sheriff

Safe stink?

One can go on Amazon and find many of these products, and they often advertise themselves as being “non-toxic.” A product called “Wet Farts” claims, for instance, that “Our fart spray extra strong prank is made with non-toxic and non-flammable ingredients that are totally safe and effective.” (Though it does note that Wet Farts will “bombard your victims with a stinky wet cloud of fart that will make their face grimace and their eyes water.”)

But even “non-toxic” products can cause reactions, especially in susceptible populations like asthma sufferers. Many of these fart products don’t publish their ingredient lists, although some have put out Safety Data Sheets (SDS). Before we look at those, though, let’s back up and consider something a bit more basic to see how it compares.

Simple “stink bombs” often rely on ammonium sulfide, which, when exposed to air, generates hydrogen sulfide. This smells strongly of rotten eggs. The National Institutes of Health describes ammonium sulfide as a “colorless to yellow liquid, with an odor of rotten eggs or ammonia,” which can “slowly react with water to generate flammable and toxic hydrogen sulfide gas.” The compound “may be irritating to skin, eyes, and mucous membranes and may cause illness from skin absorption.”

Stink bombs may also use mercaptans such as methyl mercaptan, which is added to odorless natural gas to make it smell. (It is also present in bad breath.)

But this kind of thing is amateur hour. Sulfides and mercaptans alone aren’t enough to capture the ripe aroma of fully baked flatulence. So truly noxious fart sprays often contain secret ingredient blends that are difficult to evaluate. “Liquid Ass” has a published SDS that notes the product is a yellowish “turbid liquid” that is 90-plus percent water; the rest is a “mixture of proprietary natural ingredients.”

Exposure to Liquid Ass, especially in large quantities, can cause “irritation” to the skin and eyes, while eye splashes “may cause temporary pain and blurred vision.” Ingesting the stuff can “cause headaches, gastritis, [and] intoxication,” while breathing it “may cause irritation to the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract.” Still, exposure should “cause irritation with only minor residual injury.”

The makers of Liquid Ass claim that the hydrogen sulfide released by garden-variety stink bombs can, even at moderate levels, cause real problems for people. By contrast, they say that Liquid Ass “has been tested to be safe” and that its SDS notes: “No hazardous ingredients known to be present.”

Or the discerning prankster might consider the Jue-Fish Toxic Bomb Super Fart! gift set. It’s perfect to use when “meeting with friends” or even “dealing with villains.”

While it “smells like the worst smell in the world,” the ingredients are “very safe.” These include:

  • water
  • capsaicin [responsible for the “heat” in hot peppers; also used in pepper spray/tear gas]
  • piperine [gives black and white pepper their pungency]
  • mustard extract
  • fermented soybeans [natto, a Japanese food made from fermented soybean, is described as being “notorious for its strong, distinctive smell, often compared to dirty socks or ammonia”]
  • fermented Houttuynia cordata [a plant known as “fish mint” or “fish leaf,” with “an unusual taste from its volatile oil decanoyl acetaldehyde (3-oxododecanal), a taste that is often described as “fishy”]

The point is that the ingredients in “fart sprays” can vary widely, may not be fully disclosed, and may never have been tested for toxicity in the combination present in the bottle. Even when “non-toxic,” they may cause problems for some people.

(One of the best parts of working at Ars Technica is seeing experts emerge from the woodwork to enlighten us about all sorts of fascinating topics in the comments; I trust that the chemists here can shed even more light on the “science of stink”—and on why it might cause strong reactions.)

Still—it’s pretty amazing that one teacher’s assistant was allegedly able to create such a serious situation for an entire high school. Just how much of this stuff could one person spray?

We may learn more over the coming months when Lewis has to return to court. He is currently free on a $9,090 bond.

Photo of Nate Anderson

Felony charges after South Carolina high school filled with “fart spray”… for weeks Read More »

as-many-as-2-million-cisco-devices-affected-by-actively-exploited-0-day

As many as 2 million Cisco devices affected by actively exploited 0-day

Biz & IT, Cisco, exploit, Security, zero-day, zero-day vulnerability / /

As many as 2 million Cisco devices are susceptible to an actively exploited zero-day that can remotely crash or execute code on vulnerable systems.

Cisco said Wednesday that the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-20352, was present in all supported versions of Cisco IOS and Cisco IOS XE, the operating system that powers a wide variety of the company’s networking devices. The vulnerability can be exploited by low-privileged users to create a denial-of-service attack or by higher-privileged users to execute code that runs with unfettered root privileges. It carries a severity rating of 7.7 out of a possible 10.

Exposing SNMP to the Internet? Yep

“The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) became aware of successful exploitation of this vulnerability in the wild after local Administrator credentials were compromised,” Wednesday’s advisory stated. “Cisco strongly recommends that customers upgrade to a fixed software release to remediate this vulnerability.”

The vulnerability is the result of a stack overflow bug in the IOS component that handles SNMP (simple network management protocol), which routers and other devices use to collect and handle information about devices inside a network. The vulnerability is exploited by sending crafted SNMP packets.

To execute malicious code, the remote attacker must have possession of read-only community string, an SNMP-specific form of authentication for accessing managed devices. Frequently, such strings ship with devices. Even when modified by an administrator, read-only community strings are often widely known inside an organization. The attacker would also require privileges on the vulnerable systems. With that, the attacker can obtain RCE (remote code execution) capabilities that run as root.

As many as 2 million Cisco devices affected by actively exploited 0-day Read More »

youtube-will-restore-channels-banned-for-covid-and-election-misinformation

YouTube will restore channels banned for COVID and election misinformation

covid-19 misinformation, election misinformation, Google, misinformation, Tech, youtube / /

It’s not exactly hard to find politically conservative content on YouTube, but the platform may soon skew even further to the right. YouTube parent Alphabet has confirmed that it will restore channels that were banned in recent years for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and elections. Alphabet says it values free expression and political debate, placing the blame for its previous moderation decisions on the Biden administration.

Alphabet made this announcement via a lengthy letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The letter, a response to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, explains in no uncertain terms that the company is taking a more relaxed approach to moderating political content on YouTube.

For starters, Alphabet denies that its products and services are biased toward specific viewpoints and that it “appreciates the accountability” provided by the committee. The cloying missive goes on to explain that Google didn’t really want to ban all those accounts, but Biden administration officials just kept asking. Now that the political tables have turned, Google is looking to dig itself out of this hole.

According to Alphabet’s version of events, misinformation such as telling people to drink bleach to cure COVID wasn’t initially against its policies. However, Biden officials repeatedly asked YouTube to take action. YouTube did and specifically banned COVID misinformation sitewide until 2024, one year longer than the crackdown on election conspiracy theories. Alphabet says that today, YouTube’s rules permit a “wider range of content.”

In an apparent attempt to smooth things over with the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, YouTube will restore the channels banned for COVID and election misinformation. This includes prominent conservatives like Dan Bongino, who is now the Deputy Director of the FBI, and White House counterterrorism chief Sebastian Gorka.

YouTube will restore channels banned for COVID and election misinformation Read More »

broadcom’s-prohibitive-vmware-prices-create-a-learning-“barrier,”-it-pro-says

Broadcom’s prohibitive VMware prices create a learning “barrier,” IT pro says

Biz & IT, Broadcom, vmware / /

Broadcom didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment for this article.

Compatibility problems

Migrating off of VMware hasn’t only resulted in delayed projects for the Indiana school district; it has also brought complications for its HCI hardware. The district’s IT director told Ars that Dell won’t provide long-term support for the hardware if it’s not running VMware. This is despite Dell reportedly touting a “10-year lifespan” on the devices when the district first bought in, in 2019, per the IT professional.

“They’re basically holding our service contract hostage if we don’t buy VMware,” the IT director told Ars.

Put in a bind, the IT team is trying to repurpose the hardware without Dell support, noting that the district had already invested $250,000 into the system over six years.

“It’s made us have to go back to the drawing board for the next three to four years, essentially,” the IT leader said.

The Indiana IT director said Dell suggested that the district could buy an entirely new stack of server hardware with new support, but budget limits, especially over the coming years, make this unreasonable.

“New IT balloons very quickly, and [Dell workers] don’t really seem to understand that I can’t just spend that amount of money randomly,” the director said.

The Indiana district is now using the unsupported hardware, too.

“We are currently flying blind,” the IT director said.

Ars reached out to Dell Technologies about the school district’s situation and the impact that higher VMware prices have on organizations that have relied on Dell technology tied to VMware. A spokesperson shared the following statement:

Dell Technologies remains committed to supporting all VxRail customers with active support agreements. VxRail continues to deliver value for thousands of organizations globally, and we work closely with customers to ensure they can maximize their investment. Dell has a long history of offering choice through a broad portfolio of technology partners and solutions, helping organizations to select the path that best aligns to their strategy, infrastructure needs, and long-term IT goals.

Over in Idaho, VMware was part of Idaho Falls School District 91’s IT setup since at least 2008. The school district operated about 80 VMs running on four ESXi hosts, all managed centrally through vCenter. The VMs hosted mission-critical systems, including the student information system, key databases, and other applications that directly support teaching and learning, Donovan Gregory, the district’s IT SysNet administrator, told Ars.

Broadcom’s prohibitive VMware prices create a learning “barrier,” IT pro says Read More »

volvo-says-it-has-big-plans-for-south-carolina-factory

Volvo says it has big plans for South Carolina factory

Cars, trump tariffs, volvo / /

Volvo is undergoing something of a restructuring. The automaker wants to be fully electric by 2040, but for that to happen, it needs to remain in business until then. Earlier this year, that meant layoffs, but today, Volvo announced it has big plans for its North American factory in Ridgeville, South Carolina.

Volvo has been making cars in South Carolina since 2017, starting with the S60 sedan—a decision I always found slightly curious given that US car buyers had already given up on sedans by that point in favor of crossovers and SUVs. S60 production ended last summer, and these days, the plant builds the large electric EX90 SUV and the related Polestar 3.

The company is far from fully utilizing the Ridgeville plant, though, which has an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles. When the turnaround plan was first announced this July, Volvo revealed it would start building the next midsize XC60 in South Carolina—a wise move given the Trump tariffs and the importance of this model to Volvo’s sales figures here.

Now, the OEM says it will add another model to the mix, with a new, yet-to-be-named hybrid due before 2030.

“Our investment plans once again reinforce our long-term commitment to the US market and our manufacturing operations in South Carolina,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive. “This year, we celebrate 70 years of Volvo Cars presence in the United States. We have sold over 5 million cars there and plan to sell many more in years to come,” he said.

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What climate targets? Top fossil fuel producing nations keep boosting output

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Top producers are planning to mine and drill even more of the fuels in 2030.

Machinery transfers coal at a port in China’s Chongqing municipality on April 20. Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images

The last two years have witnessed the hottest one in history, some of the worst wildfire seasons across Canada, Europe and South America and deadly flooding and heat waves throughout the globe. Over that same period, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers have expanded their planned output for the future, setting humanity on an even more dangerous path into a warmer climate.

Governments now expect to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas in 2030 as would be consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a report released Monday. That level is slightly higher than what it was in 2023, the last time the biennial Production Gap report was published.

The increase is driven by a slower projected phaseout of coal and higher outlook for gas production by some of the top producers, including China and the United States.

“The Production Gap Report has long served as a mirror held up to the world, revealing the stark gap between fossil fuel production plans and international climate goals,” said Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a foreword to the report. “This year’s findings are especially alarming. Despite record climate impacts, a winning economic case for renewables, and strong societal appetite for action, governments continue to expand fossil fuel production beyond what the climate can withstand.”

The peer-reviewed report, written by researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Climate Analytics and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, aims to focus attention on the supply side of the climate equation and the government policies that encourage or steer fossil fuel production.

“Governments have such a significant role in setting up the rules of the game,” said Neil Grant, a senior expert at Climate Analytics and one of the authors, in a briefing for reporters. “What this report shows is most governments are not using that influence for good.”

Chart showing growth in fossil fuel production

Credit: Inside Climate News

The report’s blaring message is that these subsidies, tax incentives, permitting and other policies have largely failed to adapt to the climate targets nations have adopted. The result is a split screen. Governments say they will cut their own climate-warming pollution, yet they plan to continue producing the fossil fuels that are driving that pollution far beyond what their climate targets would allow.

The report singles out the United States as “the starkest case of a country recommitting to fossil fuels.” The data for the United States, which draws on the latest projections of the US Energy Information Administration, does not reflect most of the policies the Trump administration and Congress have put in place this year to promote fossil fuels.

Since January, Congress has enacted billions of dollars in new subsidies to oil and gas companies while the Trump administration has forced retiring coal plants to continue operating, expanded mining and drilling access on public lands, delayed deadlines for drillers to comply with limits on methane pollution and fast-tracked fossil fuel permitting while setting roadblocks for building wind and solar energy projects.

In response to the report, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email, “As promised, President Trump ended Joe Biden’s war on American energy and unleashed American energy on day one in the best interest of our country’s economic and national security. He will continue to restore American’s energy dominance.”

Chart showing planned fuel production

Credit: Inside Climate News

The Production Gap report assessed the government plans or projections of 20 of the world’s top producers. Some have state-owned enterprises while others are dominated by publicly listed companies. The countries, which were chosen for their production levels, availability of data and presence of clear climate targets, account for more than 80 percent of fossil fuel output. The report models total global production by scaling the data up to account for the rest.

All but three of the 20 nations are planning or projecting increased production in 2030 of at least one fossil fuel. Eleven now project higher production of at least one fuel in 2030 than they did two years ago.

Expected global output of coal, oil, and gas for 2030 is now 120 percent more than what would be consistent with pathways to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and 77 percent higher than scenarios to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The greater the warming, the more severe the consequences will be on extreme weather, rising seas and other impacts.

While previous installments of the report were published under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, this year’s version was issued independently.

In a sign of the world’s continuing failure to limit fossil fuel use, the modeling scenarios the report uses are becoming obsolete. Because nations have continued to burn more coal, gas and oil every year, future cuts would now need to be even steeper than what is reflected in the report to keep climate targets within reach.

“We’re already going into sort of the red and burning up our debt,” Grant said.

Three nations alone—China, the United States and Russia—were responsible for more than half of “extraction-based” emissions in 2022, or the pollution that comes when the fossil fuels are burned.

Ira Joseph, a senior research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who was not involved in the report, said its focus on supply highlights an important part of understanding global energy markets.

“Any type of tax breaks or subsidies or however you want to call them lowers the break-even cost for producing oil and gas,” Joseph said. Lower costs mean more supply, which in turn lowers prices and spurs more demand. The projections and plans the report is based on, Joseph said, reflect this global give and take.

Chart showing fossil fuel increase by country

Credit: Inside Climate News

The biggest changes since the last report come from a slower projected decline in China’s coal mining and faster expected growth in gas production in the United States. Smaller producers are also expecting sharper increases in gas output.

The report did highlight some bright spots. Two additional governments—Brazil and Colombia—are developing plans that would align fossil fuel production with climate goals, bringing the total to six out of the 20. Germany now expects a more accelerated phase-out of coal production. China is speeding its deployment of wind and solar energy. Some countries have also reduced subsidies for fossil fuels.

Yet these measures clearly fall far short, the report said.

The authors called on governments to coordinate their policies and plan for how they can collectively lower production in a way that keeps climate targets within reach without shocking the economies that depend on the jobs and revenue provided by mining, drilling, and processing the fuels. They pointed to a handful of efforts—called Just Energy Transition Partnerships—to provide financing from wealthy countries to support phasing out coal in developing or emerging economies. These programs have struggled to mobilize much money, however, and the Trump administration has withdrawn the United States from them.

Grant said the policies indicate that government officials are failing to adapt to a more uncertain future.

“Change doesn’t happen in straight lines, but I think if you look at the Production Gap report this year, what you see is that many governments are still thinking in straight lines,” Grant said.

The policies the team examined foresee fossil fuel use remaining steady or declining gradually. The result, Grant argued, could be one of two scenarios: Either fossil fuel use remains high for years, in line with these production plans, or it declines more quickly and governments are unprepared for the sudden drop in sales.

“Those would lead to either climate chaos or significant negative economic impacts on countries,” Grant said. “So we need to try to avoid both of those. And the way to do that is to try to align our fossil fuel production plans with our climate goals.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Photo of Inside Climate News

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Microsoft’s Entra ID vulnerabilities could have been catastrophic

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“Microsoft built security controls around identity like conditional access and logs, but this internal impression token mechanism bypasses them all,” says Michael Bargury, the CTO at security firm Zenity. “This is the most impactful vulnerability you can find in an identity provider, effectively allowing full compromise of any tenant of any customer.”

If the vulnerability had been discovered by, or fallen into the hands of, malicious hackers, the fallout could have been devastating.

“We don’t need to guess what the impact may have been; we saw two years ago what happened when Storm-0558 compromised a signing key that allowed them to log in as any user on any tenant,” Bargury says.

While the specific technical details are different, Microsoft revealed in July 2023 that the Chinese cyber espionage group known as Storm-0558 had stolen a cryptographic key that allowed them to generate authentication tokens and access cloud-based Outlook email systems, including those belonging to US government departments.

Conducted over the course of several months, a Microsoft postmortem on the Storm-0558 attack revealed several errors that led to the Chinese group slipping past cloud defenses. The security incident was one of a string of Microsoft issues around that time. These motivated the company to launch its “Secure Future Initiative,” which expanded protections for cloud security systems and set more aggressive goals for responding to vulnerability disclosures and issuing patches.

Mollema says that Microsoft was extremely responsive about his findings and seemed to grasp their urgency. But he emphasizes that his findings could have allowed malicious hackers to go even farther than they did in the 2023 incident.

“With the vulnerability, you could just add yourself as the highest privileged admin in the tenant, so then you have full access,” Mollema says. Any Microsoft service “that you use EntraID to sign into, whether that be Azure, whether that be SharePoint, whether that be Exchange—that could have been compromised with this.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms

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The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

Science saved, sort of

In the event of a shutdown, there has been much uncertainty about what would happen to NASA’s budget and the agency’s science missions. Earlier this summer, for example, the White House directed science mission leaders to prepare “closeout plans” for about two dozen spacecraft.

These science missions were targeted for cancellation under the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, and the development of these closeout plans indicated that, in the absence of a final budget from Congress, the White House could seek to end these (and other) programs beginning October 1.

However, two sources confirmed to Ars on Friday afternoon that interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has now directed the agency to work toward the budget level established in the House Appropriations Committee’s budget bill for the coming fiscal year. This does not support full funding for NASA’s science portfolio, but it is far more beneficial than the cuts sought by the White House.

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“Yikes”: Internal emails reveal Ticketmaster helped scalpers jack up prices

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Through those years, employees occasionally flagged abuse behavior that Ticketmaster and Live Nation were financially motivated to ignore, the FTC alleged. In 2018, one Ticketmaster engineer tried to advocate for customers, telling an executive in an email that fans can’t tell the difference between Ticketmaster-supported brokers—which make up the majority of its resale market—and scalpers accused of “abuse.”

“We have a guy that hires 1,000 college kids to each buy the ticket limit of 8, giving him 8,000 tickets to resell,” the engineer explained. “Then we have a guy who creates 1,000 ‘fake’ accounts and uses each [to] buy the ticket limit of 8, giving him 8,000 tickets to resell. We say the former is legit and call him a ‘broker’ while the latter is breaking the rules and is a ‘scalper.’ But from the fan perspective, we end up with one guy reselling 8,000 tickets!”

And even when Ticketmaster flagged brokers as bad actors, the FTC alleged the company declined to enforce its rules to crack down if losing resale fees could hurt Ticketmaster’s bottom line.

“Yikes,” said a Ticketmaster employee in 2019 after noticing that a broker previously flagged for “violating fictitious account rules on a “large scale” was “still not slowing down.”

But that warning, like others, was ignored by management, the FTC alleged. Leadership repeatedly declined to impose any tools “to prevent brokers from bypassing posted ticket limits,” the FTC claimed, after analysis showed Ticketmaster risked losing nearly $220 million in annual resale ticket revenue and $26 million in annual operating income. In fact, executives were more alarmed, the FTC alleged, when brokers complained about high-volume purchases being blocked, “intentionally” working to support their efforts to significantly raise secondary market ticket prices.

On top of earning billions from fees, Ticketmaster can also profit when it “unilaterally” decides to “increase the price of tickets on their secondary market.” From 2019 to 2024, Ticketmaster “collected over $187 million in markups they added to resale tickets,” the FTC alleged.

Under the scheme, Ticketmaster can seemingly pull the strings, allowing brokers to buy up tickets on the primary market, then help to dramatically increase those prices on the secondary market, while collecting additional fees. One broker flagged by the FTC bought 772 tickets to a Coldplay concert, reselling $81,000 in tickets for $170,000. Another broker snatched up 612 tickets for $47,000 to a single Chris Stapleton concert, also nearly doubling their investment on the resale market. Meanwhile, artists, of course, do not see any of these profits.

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