Beth Washington – Page 12

F1 in Britain: Terrible English summer weather equals entertaining race

Cars, F1, Formula 1 / Beth Washington / July 7, 2025

Maybe Bernie Ecclestone was right about fitting racetracks with sprinklers.

Oscar Piastri’s McLaren emerges from the spray during the 2025 British Grand Prix at Silverstone in England. Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

The heat dome that oppressed much of Europe has broken. Not a drop of rain marred the 24 hour races at Le Mans, the Nürburgring, or Spa-Francorchamps, held unusually over consecutive weekends this June. Similarly, last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix took place under scorching skies that were baking the Tyrolean mountains. No such luck for the vast crowds at Silverstone attending the British Grand Prix this past weekend, who definitely needed their waterproofs. On the plus side, the addition of rain certainly made things interesting.

Like many British race circuits, Silverstone was a former World War II airbase. Originally home to Wellington Bombers, it’s very exposed to the wind, which was gusting at times during practice and qualifying, making life complicated for the drivers. Lewis Hamilton made the home crowd smile by topping the time charts during FP1. Hamilton has struggled to get to grips with his new Ferrari for much of this season, but at Silverstone he looked much more comfortable, finishing FP2 less than a 10th of a second behind his teammate, Charles Leclerc, although neither could match McLaren’s Lando Norris for outright speed.

On Saturday, it was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who rose to the top, snatching pole position from the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Norris by about a 10th of a second. George Russell’s Mercedes was competitive in the colder temperatures, securing fourth on the grid ahead of the Ferraris of Hamilton and Leclerc. Mercedes’ young rookie, Kimi Antonelli, qualified seventh but would start 10th as a result of a penalty acquired in Austria, and Haas rookie Oliver Bearman put in the eighth-fastest time, but ignoring a red flag during Saturday’s final practice session landed him with a 10-place grid penalty. As it was, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso lined up seventh for the race, followed by Pierre Gasly’s Alpine, Carlos Sainz in the first Williams, and then Antonelli rounding out the top 10.

Ferrari's British driver Lewis Hamilton on the grid ahead of the Formula One British Grand Prix at the Silverstone motor racing circuit in Silverstone, central England, on July 6, 2025. — Lewis Hamilton has more wins at Silverstone than any other F1 driver. Credit: ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP via Getty Images

Race day was rainy, with the F2 feature race proving a good preview for the main event. A heavy shower during the F1 pre-race buildup saw everyone choose to take the formation lap on intermediate tires, although sections of the track were dry enough that Russell, Leclerc, Antonelli, Bearman, and Racing Bull’s Isack Hadjar all diverted to the pit lane at the end of the formation lap for slick tires. That was the wrong gamble—the last few turns were far too wet for slicks, as they would soon find out.

Who wants to bet?

Up front, Verstappen had placed the wrong bet, too, opting for a dry weather setup that was light on downforce. The first few laps were interrupted by virtual safety car periods as drivers collided or spun off, with others like Leclerc choosing to take the opportunity to stop for tires—another bad bet, as it turned out.

Verstappen was passed first by Piastri, then Norris got by as the rain returned. Verstappen was clearly not having a good time and had an off-track excursion that was greeted with a roar by the partisan spectators. But the Red Bull got back past Norris in the pits, as McLaren was forced to double-stack its cars, losing Norris a second or two in the process.

The main problem with running F1 races in the rain is the lack of visibility. The aerodynamic downforce generated by the cars sends up huge rooster tails of spray from the rear diffusers, with more water pumped into the airflow by the treaded intermediate or wet tires. And so, on lap 14, a full safety car period was declared, with the cars circulating behind the Mercedes AMG coupe at a reduced pace.

The safety car is present during the Formula 1 Qatar Airways Grand Prix of Great Britain at the Silverstone Circuit in Towcester, England, on July 6, 2024. — Did Piastri violate safety car procedure? He didn’t think so, but the stewards did. Credit: Jon Hobley | MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The race went green for about a lap until Hadjar crashed heavily in the spray, hitting the back of Antonelli before even seeing the Mercedes in front of him. A mistimed brake application by Piastri just as this safety car period ended saw Verstappen briefly pass him on track before the green flag was waved—normally this would garner the passing car a penalty, but in this case the stewards chose to penalize Piastri with a 10 second time penalty, to be served at his next pitstop. With his teammate Norris just a few seconds behind, this robbed the Australian of the win, gifting it to the other McLaren instead.

Verstappen, like the stewards, thought Piastri was playing games behind the safety car, and it evidently unsettled the Dutch driver, forcing him into an error like in Spain a few weeks ago. The reigning world champion fell as low as 10th, recovering to fifth place by the end.

The second half of the race saw various drivers gamble on slick tires, betting the track was dry enough to build enough tire temperature to go faster than the grooved intermediate rubber. Fernando Alonso went first on lap 38, followed by George Russell, both of whom struggled initially. Waiting a few more laps proved wiser, but even by lap 44 the very fast Stowe corner looked like it was wet enough to get a driver’s attention.

Norris delighted his many fans in attendance by taking victory ahead of Piastri, passing his teammate easily, while the Australian was held stationary for his penalty before his team was allowed to change the car’s tires. That closed the gap in the standings between them to just eight points.

Well deserved, well overdue

NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - JULY 06: Third placed Nico Hulkenberg of Germany and Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber celebrates on the podium with his trophy during the F1 Grand Prix of Great Britain at Silverstone Circuit on July 06, 2025 in Northampton, England. — I can’t imagine anyone in the paddock was displeased to see Nico Hulkenberg finally earn a podium. Credit: Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images

But the biggest smiles were surely for the man in third place. Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg got past Lance Stroll, then held a hard-charging Lewis Hamilton at bay for the final chapter of the race to secure third place. It was the first podium finish for Sauber since 2012, and the very first for Hulkenberg, who waited a record 239 races to achieve the result. The highly rated German driver, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with Porsche on a spare weekend in 2015, has never had access to front-line F1 machinery, but even so, this result was well overdue.

When he was still in charge and wanted to get his own way, Bernie Ecclestone would often throw out a number of implausible-sounding or extreme ideas for the sport in order to force teams to back the less-extreme idea he really wanted implemented. One of those extreme ideas—one he brought up back in 2011—was to fit F1 tracks with sprinklers that would come on at random, and while we never saw it happen, the added chaos of a wet-then-drying track has proved time and again to create entertaining racing. Maybe we should give it a go?

Damson Idris, one of the stars of the recent F1 movie, was on hand to wave the checkered flag at Silverstone. A second viewing of the film reveals that the script is actually even cheesier than I first thought, and a number of plot holes continue to bug me—if the Rolex 24 at Daytona is at the end of January, how come the F1 season was halfway through, for example? Then again, I also rewatched Days of Thunder to see if I was hasty in placing F1 ahead of the NASCAR movie in my recent review, but I found enough to remain satisfied that I got those two in the right order. Normally, technical accuracy plays a back seat to a good plot. For F1 The Movie, it’s mostly the other way around.

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica’s automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.

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Rocket Report: Japan’s workhorse booster takes a bow; you can invest in SpaceX now

discovery, rocket report, Shuttle, Space / Beth Washington / July 4, 2025

“We will be able to industrialize Zephyr production up to 50 units per year.”

Europe’s first reusable rocket main stage demonstrator, Themis, is being transported to its launch pad at Esrange Space Centre, Sweden. Credit: ESA/ArianeGroup

Welcome to Edition 8.01 of the Rocket Report! Today’s edition will be a little shorter than normal because, for one day only, we celebrate fake rockets—fireworks—rather than the real thing. For our American readers, we hope you have a splendid Fourth of July holiday weekend. For our non-American readers, you may be wondering what the heck is happening in our country right now. Alas, making sense of all this is beyond the scope of this humble little newsletter.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Will Orbex ever launch an orbital rocket? Orbex, a launch services company based in the United Kingdom, has announced the postponement of its first orbital launch to 2026 due to infrastructure limitations and other issues, Orbital Today reports. At the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, Orbex chief executive Miguel Bello Mora announced that the company is now targeting next year for the liftoff of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord in Scotland. He said the delay is partly due to the limited launch infrastructure at SaxaVord and a “bottleneck” in site operations.

The real issue, revealed … Orbex is developing the Prime rocket, but progress has been very slow. The company is now a decade old and has shown off relatively little hardware. It’s difficult to believe the company will launch anytime soon. Tellingly, Orbex recently told the UK government it would need to raise a further 120 million pounds ($163 million) from private investors over the next four years to realize its ambitions. That seems like a huge ask. This newsletter has been skeptical of Orbex before, and this latest update only affirms that skepticism.

Themis demonstrator arrives in Sweden. Developed by ArianeGroup, a 30-meter launch vehicle intended to demonstrate reusable launch capability has arrived at the Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden, SVT reports. The initial phase of the test campaign will include wet-dress rehearsals and hot-fire tests, to be followed by a “hop test” that will occur no earlier than the end of this year.

Hopping higher and higher … Based on experience from these initial tests, the program aims to fly the Themis demonstrator on higher and progressively more advanced tests, not dissimilar to what SpaceX did with its Grasshopper vehicle a little more than a decade ago in Texas. Eventually, Europe aims to use lessons learned from Themis to develop a reusable rocket similar to the Falcon 9 vehicle. (submitted by bjelkeman)

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Electron launches twice in two days. Rocket Lab’s “Symphony in the Stars” mission lifted off on Saturday, June 28, from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The mission was the second of two launches from the same launch site in less than 48 hours, a new record for turnaround time, the company said. It’s a sign of a maturing company that Rocket Lab can turn between launches so quickly.

Reaching an impressive cadence … “Symphony in the Stars” was Rocket Lab’s tenth Electron mission of 2025 and its 68th launch overall as the company continues to increase the cadence of Electron launches. “The future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year,” Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said in a news release. It’s been a good year for the firm, with 100 percent mission success.

Latitude announces expansion plans. In an emailed news release, the French launch startup Latitude said this week that it has secured a strategic industrial site south of Reims on the former AstraZeneca production facility. This site offers development potential of 270,000 sq. feet. By investing over 50 million euros ($58 million) in this site, Latitude aims to deliver on its promise of developing a small rocket with a high launch cadence.

Seeking to scale … “Thanks to this location, we will be able to industrialize Zephyr production up to 50 units per year while maintaining control over our growth pace,” said Isabelle Valentin, chief operating officer of the company. Latitude aims to launch its Zephyr rocket in 2026 from the Guiana Space Centre, in French Guiana, for the first time. The company also said it has signed two major contracts, including a strategic mission for the European Defence Fund and a contract with the French space agency, CNES, for microgravity demonstrations.

Japan’s H2A rocket makes final flight. Japan’s flagship H2A rocket lifted off for the final time on Sunday from the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, successfully concluding a 24-year run that has defined the nation’s space capabilities, The Japan Times reports. The rocket’s 50th and final mission carried the GOSAT-GW, a government-developed hybrid environmental observation satellite.

Out with the old, in with the new … Jointly developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the 53-meter rocket debuted in 2001 and quickly became the workhorse of the country’s space program. It had an excellent record, with 49 successes out of 50 launch attempts. The decision to retire the H2A comes amid rising global competition in the space launch industry, where cost-efficiency has become a key differentiator. Japan hopes its new H3 rocket, although expendable, will be more cost competitive.

SpaceX to win DOD satellite contract. The Trump administration plans to cancel a fleet of orbiting data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency and replace it with a secretive network that, so far, relies primarily on SpaceX’s Starlink Internet constellation, Ars reports. While details of the Pentagon’s plan remain secret, the White House proposal would commit $277 million in funding to kick off a new program called “pLEO SATCOM” or “MILNET.” The funding line for a proliferated low-Earth orbit satellite communications network hasn’t appeared in a Pentagon budget before, but plans for MILNET already exist in a different form.

X marks the spot … Meanwhile, the budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would eliminate funding for a new tranche of data relay satellites from the Space Development Agency. The pLEO SATCOM or MILNET program would replace them, providing crucial support for the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense shield. While SpaceX’s role isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Pentagon’s budget documents, the MILNET program is already on the books, and SpaceX is the lead contractor. It has been made public in recent months, after years of secrecy, although many details remain unclear.

Prometheus rocket engine undergoes testing. European rocket builder ArianeGroup announced this week that it completed a series of Prometheus rocket engine test ignitions in late June, marking a key milestone in the program, European Spaceflight reports. Developed under a European Space Agency contract, Prometheus is a reusable rocket engine capable of producing around 100 metric tons of thrust.

Launching soon from Sweden … It is designed to be manufactured at a fraction of the cost of current European engines, with the use of additive manufacturing playing a key role in reducing production costs. According to ArianeGroup, the multiple ignitions over a single day represent a “significant advancement in the engine’s development.” Prometheus will initially power the Themis demonstrator (see item above). Its first commercial application will be the two-stage Maia rocket, developed by MaiaSpace, an ArianeGroup subsidiary.

Do you want to buy SpaceX tokens? SpaceX remains a privately held company, which means that us mere mortals cannot invest in the launch firm. (To be clear, as a space reporter, I do not invest in any space companies. To do so would be unethical.) The DealBook newsletter has a report on a new trend in “tokens” that allows ordinary investors to invest in privately traded companies, including SpaceX.

Not technically equity … Vlad Tenev, Robinhood’s chief executive, said that the tokens are not technically “equity,” but that they “effectively give retail investors exposure to these private assets.” Robinhood isn’t alone: The startup Republic is offering tokens meant to track the equity performance of SpaceX. Those will be sold to US investors via a loophole in a 2012 securities law. However, DealBook warns, unregulated private-company tokens could lead to a fragmented and less transparent ecosystem for investments, making it harder for regulators to protect the public.

Texas politicians seek to move shuttle Discovery. This week, a political effort to relocate the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian to Space Center Houston has been merged with the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which the US Senate passed on Tuesday, Ars reports. Among the bill’s many provisions is $85 million for the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act. Sponsored by US Sen John Cornyn, R–Texas, the bill calls for Discovery to be removed from its home of the past 13 years, the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and put it on display at Space Center Houston, the official visitor complex for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Underestimating transport costs … The Senate version of the bill provides “no less than $5 million” for the “transportation of the space vehicle” and the remainder to go toward the construction of a facility to house it. The original text of the Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act called for the NASA administrator and the Smithsonian to jointly develop a plan for moving Discovery prior to appropriations being made by Congress. It is unclear whether the total amount allocated by the Senate would be enough; the National Air and Space Museum provided Congress with an estimate of $200 million to $300 million for the move. Speaking frankly, and as a resident of Houston, this bill is absurd, and the shuttle Discovery absolutely belongs in the Smithsonian. NASA is being told to cut science missions left and right, but funding can be found for this?

Next New Glenn launch will target Mars. Blue Origin is making steady progress toward the second launch of its New Glenn rocket, which could occur sometime this fall, Ars reports. Publicly, the company has said this second launch will take place no earlier than August 15. This is now off the table. One source told Ars that a mid- to late-September launch date was “realistic,” but another person said late October or November was more likely.

A big landing on tap … Blue Origin has been mum about the payload that will fly on this rocket, but multiple people have told Ars that the current plan is to launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission on the second launch of New Glenn. This mission encompasses a pair of small spacecraft that will be sent to Mars to study the red planet’s magnetosphere. After ESCAPADE, Blue Origin has several missions tentatively plotted out. A much-anticipated mission to land Blue Origin’s Mk1 lander on the Moon could take place during the first half of next year.

Next three launches

July 3: Soyuz 2.1a | Progress MS-31 | Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | 19: 32 UTC

July 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-28 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 48 UTC

July 15: Eris | Initial test flight | Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Australia | 21: 30 UTC

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Rocket Report: Japan’s workhorse booster takes a bow; you can invest in SpaceX now Read More »

Rice could be key to brewing better non-alcoholic beer

beer, chemistry, fermentation, Science / Beth Washington / July 3, 2025

small glass of light colored beer with a nice foam head — Rice enhances flavor profiles for nonalcoholic beer, reduces fermentation time, and may contribute to flavor stability. Credit: Paden Johnson/CC BY-NC-SA

He and his team—including Christian Schubert, a visiting postdoc from the Research Institute for Raw Materials and Beverage Analysis in Berlin—brewed their own non-alcoholic beers, ranging from those made with 100 percent barley malt to ones made with 100 percent rice. They conducted a volatile chemical analysis to identify specific compounds present in the beers and assembled two sensory panels of tasters (one in the US, one in Europe) to assess aromas, flavors, and mouthfeel.

The panelists determined the rice-brewed beers had less worty flavors, and the chemical analysis revealed why: lower levels of aldehyde compounds. Instead, other sensory attributes emerged, most notably vanilla or buttery notes. “If a brewer wanted a more neutral character, they could use nonaromatic rice,” the authors wrote. Along with brewing beers with 50 percent barley/50 percent rice, this would produce non-alcoholic beers likely to appeal more broadly to consumers.

The panelists also noted that higher rice content resulted in beers with a fatty/creamy mouthfeel—likely because higher rice content was correlated with increased levels of larger alcohol molecules, which are known to contribute to a pleasant mouthfeel. But it didn’t raise the alcohol content above the legal threshold for a nonalcoholic beer.

There were cultural preferences, however. The US panelists didn’t mind worty flavors as much as the European tasters did, which might explain why the former chose beers brewed with 70 percent barley/30 percent rice as the optimal mix. Their European counterparts preferred the opposite ratio (30 percent barley/70 percent rice). The explanation “may lie in the sensory expectations shaped by each region’s brewing traditions,” the authors wrote. Fermentation also occurred more quickly as the rice content increased because of higher levels of glucose and fructose.

The second study focused on testing 74 different rice cultivars to determine their extract yields, an important variable when it comes to an efficient brewing process, since higher yields mean brewers can use less grain, thereby cutting costs. This revealed that cultivars with lower amylose content cracked more easily to release sugars during the mashing process, producing the highest yields. And certain varieties also had lower gelatinization temperatures for greater ease of processing.

International Journal of Food Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/10942912.2025.2520907 (About DOIs)

Journal of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/03610470.2025.2499768

Rice could be key to brewing better non-alcoholic beer Read More »

AT&T rolls out Wireless Account Lock protection to curb the SIM-swap scourge

Biz & IT, fraud, Security, sim swap, wireless carrier / Beth Washington / July 3, 2025

AT&T is rolling out a protection that prevents unauthorized changes to mobile accounts as the carrier attempts to fight a costly form of account hijacking that occurs when a scammer swaps out the SIM card belonging to the account holder.

The technique, known as SIM swapping or port-out fraud, has been a scourge that has vexed wireless carriers and their millions of subscribers for years. An indictment filed last year by federal prosecutors alleged that a single SIM swap scheme netted $400 million in cryptocurrency. The stolen funds belonged to dozens of victims who had used their phones for two-factor authentication to cryptocurrency wallets.

Wireless Account Lock debut

A separate scam from 2022 gave unauthorized access to a T-Mobile management platform that subscription resellers, known as mobile virtual network operators, use to provision services to their customers. The threat actor gained access using a SIM swap of a T-Mobile employee, a phishing attack on another T-Mobile employee, and at least one compromise of an unknown origin.

This class of attack has existed for well over a decade, and it became more commonplace amid the irrational exuberance that drove up the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In some cases, scammers impersonate existing account holders who want a new phone number for their account. At other times, they simply bribe the carrier’s employees to make unauthorized changes.

AT&T rolls out Wireless Account Lock protection to curb the SIM-swap scourge Read More »

Nudify app’s plan to dominate deepfake porn hinges on Reddit, 4chan, and Telegram, docs show

AI, Artificial Intelligence, deepfake porn, fake nudes, nudify apps, Policy, revenge porn / Beth Washington / July 3, 2025

Reddit confirmed the nudify app’s links have been blocked since 2024.

Clothoff—one of the leading apps used to quickly and cheaply make fake nudes from images of real people—reportedly is planning a global expansion to continue dominating deepfake porn online.

Also known as a nudify app, Clothoff has resisted attempts to unmask and confront its operators. Last August, the app was among those that San Francisco’s city attorney, David Chiu, sued in hopes of forcing a shutdown. But recently, a whistleblower—who had “access to internal company information” as a former Clothoff employee—told the investigative outlet Der Spiegel that the app’s operators “seem unimpressed by the lawsuit” and instead of worrying about shutting down have “bought up an entire network of nudify apps.”

Der Spiegel found evidence that Clothoff today owns at least 10 other nudify services, attracting “monthly views ranging between hundreds of thousands to several million.” The outlet granted the whistleblower anonymity to discuss the expansion plans, which the whistleblower claimed was motivated by Clothoff employees growing “cynical” and “obsessed with money” over time as the app—which once felt like an “exciting startup”—gained momentum. Because generating convincing fake nudes can cost just a few bucks, chasing profits seemingly relies on attracting as many repeat users to as many destinations as possible.

Currently, Clothoff runs on an annual budget of around $3.5 million, the whistleblower told Der Spiegel. It has shifted its marketing methods since its launch, apparently now largely relying on Telegram bots and X channels to target ads at young men likely to use their apps.

Der Spiegel’s report documents Clothoff’s “large-scale marketing plan” to expand into the German market, as revealed by the whistleblower. The alleged campaign hinges on producing “naked images of well-known influencers, singers, and actresses,” seeking to entice ad clicks with the tagline “you choose who you want to undress.”

A few of the stars named in the plan confirmed to Der Spiegel that they never agreed to this use of their likenesses, with some of their representatives suggesting that they would pursue legal action if the campaign is ever launched.

However, even celebrities like Taylor Swift have struggled to combat deepfake nudes spreading online, while tools like Clothoff are increasingly used to torment young girls in middle and high school.

Similar celebrity campaigns are planned for other markets, Der Spiegel reported, including British, French, and Spanish markets. And Clothoff has notably already become a go-to tool in the US, not only targeted in the San Francisco city attorney’s lawsuit, but also in a complaint raised by a high schooler in New Jersey suing a boy who used Clothoff to nudify one of her Instagram photos taken when she was 14 years old, then shared it with other boys on Snapchat.

Clothoff is seemingly hoping to entice more young boys worldwide to use its apps for such purposes. The whistleblower told Der Spiegel that most of Clothoff’s marketing budget goes toward “advertising posts in special Telegram channels, in sex subs on Reddit, and on 4chan.” (Reddit noted to Ars that Clothoff URLs have been banned from Reddit since 2024 and “Reddit does not allow paid advertising against NSFW content or otherwise monetize it.”)

In ads, the app planned to specifically target “men between 16 and 35” who like benign stuff like “memes” and “video games,” as well as more toxic stuff like “right-wing extremist ideas,” “misogyny,” and “Andrew Tate,” an influencer criticized for promoting misogynistic views to teen boys.

Chiu was hoping to defend young women increasingly targeted in fake nudes by shutting down Clothoff, along with several other nudify apps targeted in his lawsuit. But so far, while Chiu has reached a settlement shutting down two websites, porngen.art and undresser.ai, attempts to serve Clothoff through available legal channels have not been successful. Chiu’s office is continuing its efforts to serve Clothoff through available legal channels. which evolve as the lawsuit moves through the court system, deputy press secretary for Chiu’s office, Alex Barrett-Shorter, told Ars.

Meanwhile, Clothoff continues to evolve, recently marketing a feature that Clothoff claims attracted more than a million users eager to make explicit videos out of a single picture.

Clothoff denies it plans to use influencers

Der Spiegel’s efforts to unmask the operators of Clothoff led the outlet to Eastern Europe, after reporters stumbled upon a “database accidentally left open on the Internet” that seemingly exposed “four central people behind the website.”

This was “consistent,” Der Spiegel said, with a whistleblower claim that all Clothoff employees “work in countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union.” Additionally, Der Spiegel noted that all Clothoff internal communications it reviewed were written in Russian, and the site’s email service is based in Russia.

A person claiming to be a Clothoff spokesperson named Elias denied knowing any of the four individuals flagged in their investigation, Der Spiegel reported, and disputed the $3 million budget figure. Elias claimed a nondisclosure agreement prevented him from discussing Clothoff’s team any further. However, soon after reaching out, Der Spiegel noted that Clothoff took down the database, which had a name that translated to “my babe.”

Regarding the shared marketing plan for global expansion, Elias denied that Clothoff intended to use celebrity influencers, saying that “Clothoff forbids the use of photos of people without their consent.”

He also denied that Clothoff could be used to nudify images of minors; however, one Clothoff user who spoke to Der Spiegel on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that his attempt to generate a fake nude of a US singer failed initially because she “looked like she might be underage.” But his second attempt a few days later successfully generated the fake nude with no problem. That suggests Clothoff’s age detection may not work perfectly.

As Clothoff’s growth appears unstoppable, the user explained to Der Spiegel why he doesn’t feel that conflicted about using the app to generate fake nudes of a famous singer.

“There are enough pictures of her on the Internet as it is,” the user reasoned.

However, that user draws the line at generating fake nudes of private individuals, insisting, “If I ever learned of someone producing such photos of my daughter, I would be horrified.”

For young boys who appear flippant about creating fake nude images of their classmates, the consequences have ranged from suspensions to juvenile criminal charges, and for some, there could be other costs. In the lawsuit where the high schooler is attempting to sue a boy who used Clothoff to bully her, there’s currently resistance from boys who participated in group chats to share what evidence they have on their phones. If she wins her fight, she’s asking for $150,000 in damages per image shared, so sharing chat logs could potentially increase the price tag.

Since she and the San Francisco city attorney each filed their lawsuits, the Take It Down Act has passed. That law makes it easier to force platforms to remove AI-generated fake nudes. But experts expect the law will face legal challenges over censorship fears, so the very limited legal tool might not withstand scrutiny.

Either way, the Take It Down Act is a safeguard that came too late for the earliest victims of nudify apps in the US, only some of whom are turning to courts seeking justice due to largely opaque laws that made it unclear if generating a fake nude was illegal.

“Jane Doe is one of many girls and women who have been and will continue to be exploited, abused, and victimized by non-consensual pornography generated through artificial intelligence,” the high schooler’s complaint noted. “Despite already being victimized by Defendant’s actions, Jane Doe has been forced to bring this action to protect herself and her rights because the governmental institutions that are supposed to protect women and children from being violated and exploited by the use of AI to generate child pornography and nonconsensual nude images failed to do so.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Nudify app’s plan to dominate deepfake porn hinges on Reddit, 4chan, and Telegram, docs show Read More »

NYT to start searching deleted ChatGPT logs after beating OpenAI in court

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatbots, chatgpt, copyright, copyright infringement, fair use, new york times, openai, Policy / Beth Washington / July 2, 2025

What are the odds NYT will access your ChatGPT logs in OpenAI court battle?

Last week, OpenAI raised objections in court, hoping to overturn a court order requiring the AI company to retain all ChatGPT logs “indefinitely,” including deleted and temporary chats.

But Sidney Stein, the US district judge reviewing OpenAI’s request, immediately denied OpenAI’s objections. He was seemingly unmoved by the company’s claims that the order forced OpenAI to abandon “long-standing privacy norms” and weaken privacy protections that users expect based on ChatGPT’s terms of service. Rather, Stein suggested that OpenAI’s user agreement specified that their data could be retained as part of a legal process, which Stein said is exactly what is happening now.

The order was issued by magistrate judge Ona Wang just days after news organizations, led by The New York Times, requested it. The news plaintiffs claimed the order was urgently needed to preserve potential evidence in their copyright case, alleging that ChatGPT users are likely to delete chats where they attempted to use the chatbot to skirt paywalls to access news content.

A spokesperson told Ars that OpenAI plans to “keep fighting” the order, but the ChatGPT maker seems to have few options left. They could possibly petition the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for a rarely granted emergency order that could intervene to block Wang’s order, but the appeals court would have to consider Wang’s order an extraordinary abuse of discretion for OpenAI to win that fight.

OpenAI’s spokesperson declined to confirm if the company plans to pursue this extreme remedy.

In the meantime, OpenAI is negotiating a process that will allow news plaintiffs to search through the retained data. Perhaps the sooner that process begins, the sooner the data will be deleted. And that possibility puts OpenAI in the difficult position of having to choose between either caving to some data collection to stop retaining data as soon as possible or prolonging the fight over the order and potentially putting more users’ private conversations at risk of exposure through litigation or, worse, a data breach.

News orgs will soon start searching ChatGPT logs

The clock is ticking, and so far, OpenAI has not provided any official updates since a June 5 blog post detailing which ChatGPT users will be affected.

While it’s clear that OpenAI has been and will continue to retain mounds of data, it would be impossible for The New York Times or any news plaintiff to search through all that data.

Instead, only a small sample of the data will likely be accessed, based on keywords that OpenAI and news plaintiffs agree on. That data will remain on OpenAI’s servers, where it will be anonymized, and it will likely never be directly produced to plaintiffs.

Both sides are negotiating the exact process for searching through the chat logs, with both parties seemingly hoping to minimize the amount of time the chat logs will be preserved.

For OpenAI, sharing the logs risks revealing instances of infringing outputs that could further spike damages in the case. The logs could also expose how often outputs attribute misinformation to news plaintiffs.

But for news plaintiffs, accessing the logs is not considered key to their case—perhaps providing additional examples of copying—but could help news organizations argue that ChatGPT dilutes the market for their content. That could weigh against the fair use argument, as a judge opined in a recent ruling that evidence of market dilution could tip an AI copyright case in favor of plaintiffs.

Jay Edelson, a leading consumer privacy lawyer, told Ars that he’s concerned that judges don’t seem to be considering that any evidence in the ChatGPT logs wouldn’t “advance” news plaintiffs’ case “at all,” while really changing “a product that people are using on a daily basis.”

Edelson warned that OpenAI itself probably has better security than most firms to protect against a potential data breach that could expose these private chat logs. But “lawyers have notoriously been pretty bad about securing data,” Edelson suggested, so “the idea that you’ve got a bunch of lawyers who are going to be doing whatever they are” with “some of the most sensitive data on the planet” and “they’re the ones protecting it against hackers should make everyone uneasy.”

So even though odds are pretty good that the majority of users’ chats won’t end up in the sample, Edelson said the mere threat of being included might push some users to rethink how they use AI. He further warned that ChatGPT users turning to OpenAI rival services like Anthropic’s Claude or Google’s Gemini could suggest that Wang’s order is improperly influencing market forces, which also seems “crazy.”

To Edelson, the most “cynical” take could be that news plaintiffs are possibly hoping the order will threaten OpenAI’s business to the point where the AI company agrees to a settlement.

Regardless of the news plaintiffs’ motives, the order sets an alarming precedent, Edelson said. He joined critics suggesting that more AI data may be frozen in the future, potentially affecting even more users as a result of the sweeping order surviving scrutiny in this case. Imagine if litigation one day targets Google’s AI search summaries, Edelson suggested.

Lawyer slams judges for giving ChatGPT users no voice

Edelson told Ars that the order is so potentially threatening to OpenAI’s business that the company may not have a choice but to explore every path available to continue fighting it.

“They will absolutely do something to try to stop this,” Edelson predicted, calling the order “bonkers” for overlooking millions of users’ privacy concerns while “strangely” excluding enterprise customers.

From court filings, it seems possible that enterprise users were excluded to protect OpenAI’s competitiveness, but Edelson suggested there’s “no logic” to their exclusion “at all.” By excluding these ChatGPT users, the judge’s order may have removed the users best resourced to fight the order, Edelson suggested.

“What that means is the big businesses, the ones who have the power, all of their stuff remains private, and no one can touch that,” Edelson said.

Instead, the order is “only going to intrude on the privacy of the common people out there,” which Edelson said “is really offensive,” given that Wang denied two ChatGPT users’ panicked request to intervene.

“We are talking about billions of chats that are now going to be preserved when they weren’t going to be preserved before,” Edelson said, noting that he’s input information about his personal medical history into ChatGPT. “People ask for advice about their marriages, express concerns about losing jobs. They say really personal things. And one of the bargains in dealing with OpenAI is that you’re allowed to delete your chats and you’re allowed to temporary chats.”

The greatest risk to users would be a data breach, Edelson said, but that’s not the only potential privacy concern. Corynne McSherry, legal director for the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, previously told Ars that as long as users’ data is retained, it could also be exposed through future law enforcement and private litigation requests.

Edelson pointed out that most privacy attorneys don’t consider OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to be a “privacy guy,” despite Altman recently slamming the NYT, alleging it sued OpenAI because it doesn’t “like user privacy.”

“He’s trying to protect OpenAI, and he does not give a hoot about the privacy rights of consumers,” Edelson said, echoing one ChatGPT user’s dismissed concern that OpenAI may not prioritize users’ privacy concerns in the case if it’s financially motivated to resolve the case.

“The idea that he and his lawyers are really going to be the safeguards here isn’t very compelling,” Edelson said. He criticized the judges for dismissing users’ concerns and rejecting OpenAI’s request that users get a chance to testify.

“What’s really most appalling to me is the people who are being affected have had no voice in it,” Edelson said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

NYT to start searching deleted ChatGPT logs after beating OpenAI in court Read More »

GOP budget bill poised to crush renewable energy in the US

Policy, Science, syndication / Beth Washington / July 1, 2025

An early evaluation shows the administration’s planned energy policies would result in the drilling of 50,000 new oil wells every year for the next few years, he said, adding that it “ensures the continuation of land devastation… the poisoning of soil and groundwater due to fossil fuels and the continuation of gas blowouts and fires.”

There is nothing beneficial about the tax, he said, “only guaranteed misery.”

An analysis by the Rhodium Group, and energy policy research institute, projected that the Republican regime’s proposed energy policies would result in about 4 billion tons more greenhouse gas emissions than a continuation of current policies—enough to raise the average global temperature by .0072° Fahrenheit.

The overall budget bill was also panned in a June 28 statement by the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey.

McGarvey called it “a massive insult to the working men and women of North America’s Building Trades Unions and all construction workers.”

He said that, as written, the budget “stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” potentially costing as many jobs as shutting down 1,000 Keystone X pipeline projects, threatening an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs and over 3 billion work hours, which translates to $148 billion in lost annual wages and benefits.

“These are staggering and unfathomable job loss numbers, and the bill throws yet another lifeline and competitive advantage to China in the race for global energy dominance,” he said.

Research in recent years shows how right-wing populist and nationalist ideologies have used anti-renewable energy arguments to win voters, in defiance of environmental logic and scientific fact, in part by using social media to spread misleading and false information about wind, solar and other emissions-free electricity sources.

The same forces now seem to be at work in the US, said Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol who studies how people respond to misinformation and propaganda, and why people reject well-established scientific facts, such as those regarding climate change.

“This is a bonus for fossil fuels at the expense of future generations and the future of the American economy,” he said. “Other countries will continue working towards renewable-energy economies, especially China. That competitive advantage will eventually pay out to the detriment of American businesses. You can’t negotiate with the laws of physics.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

GOP budget bill poised to crush renewable energy in the US Read More »

Tuesday Telescope: A howling wolf in the night sky

daily telescope, Space, tuesday telescope / Beth Washington / July 1, 2025

Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

In the 1800s, astronomers were mystified by the discovery of stars that displayed highly unusual emission lines. It was only after 1868, when scientists discovered the element helium, that astronomers were able to explain the broad emission bands due to the presence of helium in these stars.

Over time, these stars became known as Wolf-Rayet stars (Charles Wolf was a French astronomer, and helium was first detected by the French scientist Georges Rayet and others), and astronomers came to understand that they were the central stars within planetary nebulae, and continually ejecting gas at high velocity.

This gives Wolf-Rayet stars a distinctive appearance in the night sky. And this week, Chris McGrew has shared a photo of WR 134—a variable Wolf-Rayet star about 6,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus—which he captured from a dark sky location in southwestern New Mexico.

“The stellar winds are blowing out the blue shell of ionized oxygen gas visible in the middle of the image,” McGrew said. “This is a deep sky object that has been imaged countless times, and I get why. Ever since I saw it for the first time, it’s been high on my list. For years I didn’t have the skies or the time, but I finally got the chance to go after it.”

Source: Chris McGrew

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Tuesday Telescope: A howling wolf in the night sky Read More »

A mammoth tusk boomerang from Poland is 40,000 years old

ancient people did stuff, Archaeology, boomerangs, mammoth, paleolithic, paleolithic europe, radiocarbon dating, Science / Beth Washington / July 1, 2025

A boomerang carved from a mammoth tusk is one of the oldest in the world, and it may be even older than archaeologists originally thought, according to a recent round of radiocarbon dating.

Archaeologists unearthed the mammoth-tusk boomerang in Poland’s Oblazowa Cave in the 1990s, and they originally dated it to around 18,000 years old, which made it one of the world’s oldest intact boomerangs. But according to recent analysis by University of Bologna researcher Sahra Talamo and her colleagues, the boomerang may have been made around 40,000 years ago. If they’re right, it offers tantalizing clues about how people lived on the harsh tundra of what’s now Poland during the last Ice Age.

A boomerang carved from mammoth tusk

The mammoth-tusk boomerang is about 72 centimeters long, gently curved, and shaped so that one end is slightly more rounded than the other. It still bears scratches and scuffs from the mammoth’s life, along with fine, parallel grooves that mark where some ancient craftsperson shaped and smoothed the boomerang. On the rounded end, a series of diagonal marks would have made the weapon easier to grip. It’s smoothed and worn from frequent handling: the last traces of the life of some Paleolithic hunter.

Based on experiments with a replica, the Polish mammoth boomerang flies smoothly but doesn’t return, similar to certain types of Aboriginal Australian boomerangs. In fact, it looks a lot like a style used by Aboriginal people from Queensland, Australia, but that’s a case of people in different times and places coming up with very similar designs to fit similar needs.

But critically, according to Talamo and her colleagues, the boomerang is about 40,000 years old.

That’s a huge leap from the original radiocarbon date, made in 1996, which was based on a sample of material from the boomerang itself and estimated an age of 18,000 years. But Talamo and her colleagues claim that original date didn’t line up well with the ages of other nearby artifacts from the same layer of the cave floor. That made them suspect that the boomerang sample may have gotten contaminated by modern carbon somewhere along the way, making it look younger. To test the idea, the archaeologists radiocarbon dated samples from 13 animal bones—plus one from a human thumb—unearthed from the same layer of cave floor sediment as the boomerang.

A mammoth tusk boomerang from Poland is 40,000 years old Read More »

Analyst: M5 Vision Pro, Vision Air, and smart glasses coming in 2026–2028

Apple, Apple Vision Air, apple vision pro, ar, hmd, Tech, visionOS, vr, XR / Beth Washington / July 1, 2025

Apple is also reportedly planning a “Vision Air” product, with production expected to start in Q3 2027. Kuo says it will be more than 40 percent lighter than the first-generation Vision Pro, and that it will include Apple’s flagship iPhone processor instead the more robust Mac processor found in the Vision Pro—all at a “significantly lower price than Vision Pro.” The big weight reduction is “achieved through glass-to-plastic replacement, extensive magnesium alloy use (titanium alloy deemed too expensive), and reduced sensor count.”

True smart glasses in 2027

The Vision Pro (along with the planned Vision Air) is a fully immersive VR headset that supports augmented reality by displaying the wearer’s surroundings on the internal screens based on what’s captured by 3D cameras on the outside of the device. That allows for some neat applications, but it also means the device is bulky and impractical to wear in public.

The real dream for many is smart glasses that are almost indistinguishable from normal glasses, but which display some of the same AR content as the Vision Pro on transparent lenses instead of via a camera-to-screen pipeline.

Apple is also planning to roll that out, Kuo says. But first, mass production of display-free “Ray-Ban-like” glasses is scheduled for Q2 2027, and Kuo claims Apple plans to ship between 3 million and 5 million units through 2027, suggesting the company expects this form factor to make a much bigger impact than the Vision Pro’s VR-like HMD approach.

The glasses would have a “voice control and gesture recognition user interface” but no display functionality at all. Instead, “core features include: audio playback, camera, video recording, and AI environmental sensing.”

The actual AR glasses would come later, in 2028.

Analyst: M5 Vision Pro, Vision Air, and smart glasses coming in 2026–2028 Read More »

Supreme Court overturns 5th Circuit ruling that upended Universal Service Fund

Policy, Supreme Court, Universal Service Fund / Beth Washington / June 28, 2025

Finally, the Consumers’ Research position produces absurd results, divorced from any reasonable understanding of constitutional values. Under its view, a revenue-raising statute containing non-numeric, qualitative standards can never pass muster, no matter how tight the constraints they impose. But a revenue-raising statute with a numeric limit will always pass muster, even if it effectively leaves an agency with boundless power. In precluding the former and approving the latter, the Consumers’ Research approach does nothing to vindicate the nondelegation doctrine or the separation of powers.

The Gorsuch dissent said the “combination” question isn’t the deciding factor. He said the only question that needs to be answered is whether Congress violated the Constitution by delegating the power to tax to the FCC.

“As I see it, this case begins and ends with the first question. Section 254 [of the Communications Act] impermissibly delegates Congress’s taxing power to the FCC, and knowing that is enough to know the Fifth Circuit’s judgment should be affirmed,” Gorsuch said.

“Green light” for FCC to support Internet access

In the Gorsuch view, it doesn’t matter whether the FCC exceeded its authority by delegating Universal Service management to a private administrative company. “As far as I can tell, and as far as petitioners have informed us, this Court has never approved legislation allowing an executive agency to tax domestically unless Congress itself has prescribed the tax rate,” Gorsuch wrote.

The FCC and Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to reverse the 5th Circuit decision. The court also received a challenge from broadband-focused advocacy groups and several lobby groups representing ISPs.

“Today is a great day,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, counsel for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society; the National Digital Inclusion Alliance; and the Center for Media Justice. “We will need some time to sort through the details of today’s decision, but what matters most is that the Supreme Court has given the green light to the FCC to continue to support Internet access to the tens of millions of Americans and the thousands of schools, libraries and rural hospitals that rely on the Universal Service Fund.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr praised the ruling but said he plans to make changes to Universal Service. “I am glad to see the court’s decision today and welcome it as an opportunity to turn the FCC’s focus towards the types of reforms necessary to ensure that all Americans have a fair shot at next-generation connectivity,” Carr said.

Supreme Court overturns 5th Circuit ruling that upended Universal Service Fund Read More »

Reddit CEO pledges site will remain “written by humans and voted on by humans”

AI, LLMs, reddit, steve huffman, syndication / Beth Washington / June 26, 2025

Reddit is in an “arms race” to protect its devoted online communities from a surge in artificial intelligence-generated content, with the authenticity of its vast repository of human interaction increasingly valuable in training new AI-powered search tools.

Chief executive Steve Huffman told the Financial Times that Reddit had “20 years of conversation about everything,” leaving the company with a lucrative resource of personal interaction.

This has allowed it to strike multimillion dollar partnerships with Google and OpenAI to train their large language models on its content, as tech companies look for real-world data that can improve their generative AI products.

But Huffman said Reddit was now battling to ensure its users stay at the center of the social network. “Where the rest of the internet seems to be powered by or written by or summarized by AI, Reddit is distinctly human,” he said. “It’s the place you go when you want to hear from people, their lived experiences, their perspectives, their recommendations. Reddit is communities and human curation and conversation and authenticity.”

As Reddit becomes an increasingly important source for LLMs, advertisers are responding with what one agency chief described as a “massive migration” to the platform.

Multiple advertising and agency executives speaking during this month’s Cannes advertising festival told the FT that brands were increasingly exploring hosting a business account and posting content on Reddit to boost the likelihood of their ads appearing in the responses of generative AI chatbots.

However, Huffman warned against any company seeking to game the site with fake or AI-generated content, with plans to bring in strict verification checks to ensure that only humans can post to its forums.

“For 20 years, we’ve been fighting people who have wanted to be popular on Reddit,” he said. “We index very well into the search engines. If you want to show up in the search engines, you try to do well on Reddit, and now the LLMs, it’s the same thing. If you want to be in the LLMs, you can do it through Reddit.”

Reddit CEO pledges site will remain “written by humans and voted on by humans” Read More »

Author name: Beth Washington