Mike M.

Samsung turns to China to boost its ailing semiconductor division

AI, china, chips, samsung, syndication, Tech / Mike M. / April 3, 2025

Samsung has turned to Chinese technology groups to prop up its ailing semiconductor division, as it struggles to secure big US customers despite investing tens of billions of dollars in its American manufacturing facilities.

The South Korean electronics group revealed last month that the value of its exports to China jumped 54 percent between 2023 and 2024, as Chinese companies rush to secure stockpiles of advanced artificial intelligence chips in the face of increasingly restrictive US export controls.

In one previously unreported deal, Samsung last year sold more than three years’ supply of logic dies—a key component in manufacturing AI chips—to Kunlun, the semiconductor design subsidiary of Chinese tech group Baidu, according to people familiar with the matter.

But the increasing importance of its China sales to Samsung comes as it navigates growing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing over the development of sensitive technologies.

The South Korean tech giant announced last year that it was making a $40 billion investment in expanding its advanced chip manufacturing and packaging facilities in Texas, boosted by up to $6.4 billion in federal subsidies.

But Samsung’s contract chipmaking business has struggled to secure big US customers, bleeding market share to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which is investing “at least” $100 billion in chip fabrication plants in Arizona.

“Samsung and China need each other,” said CW Chung, joint head of Apac equity research at Nomura. “Chinese customers have become more important for Samsung, but it won’t be easy to do business together.

Samsung has also fallen behind local rival SK Hynix in the booming market for “high bandwidth memory,” another crucial component in AI chips. As the leading supplier of HBMs for use by Nvidia, SK Hynix’s quarterly operating profit last year surpassed that of Samsung for the first time in the two companies’ history.

“Chinese companies don’t even have a chance to buy SK Hynix’s HBM because the supply is all bought out by the leading AI chip producers like Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Broadcom,” said Jimmy Goodrich, senior adviser for technology analysis to the Rand Corporation research institute.

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Hands-on with the Switch 2: It’s the Switch, too

Features, gaming, mario kart world, Nintendo, switch 2 / Mike M. / April 3, 2025

It’s bigger, it’s more powerful, and it has some weird Nintendo control gimmicks.

That’s my hand on a Switch 2. Hence the term “hands-on” Credit: Kyle Orland

The Nintendo Switch 2 could be considered the most direct “sequel” to a Nintendo console that the company has ever made. The lineage is right there in the name, with Nintendo simply appending the number “2” onto the name of its incredibly successful previous console for the first time in its history.

Nintendo’s previous consoles have all differed from their predecessors in novel ways that were reflected in somewhat new naming conventions. The Switch 2’s name, on the other hand, suggests that it is content to primarily be “more Switch.” And after spending the better part of the day playing around with the Switch 2 hardware and checking out some short game demos on Wednesday, I indeed came away with the impression that this console is “more Switch” in pretty much every way that matters, for better or worse.

Bigger is better

We’ve deduced from previous trailers just how much bigger the Switch 2 would be than the original Switch. Even with that preparation, though, the expanded Switch 2 makes a very good first impression in person.

Yes, the Switch 2 feels a good deal more substantial in the hands—Nintendo’s official stats page pegs it at about 34 percent heavier than the original Switch (as well as a tad wider and taller). But Nintendo’s new console is still noticeably short of Steam Deck-level bulk, coming in about 17 percent lighter (and a bit less wide and thick) than Valve’s handheld.

That extra size and weight over the original Switch is being put to good use, nowhere more so than in a 7.9-inch screen that feels downright luxurious on a handheld that’s this compact. That screen might be missing a best-in-class high-contrast OLED panel, but the combination of full 1080p resolution, HDR colors, and variable frame rates up to 120 fps still results in a handheld display that we feel would hold up well next to the best modern OLED competition.

The system’s extra size also allows for Joy-Cons that are expanded just enough to be much better suited for adult hands, with much less need for grown-ups to contort into a claw-like grip just to get a solid hold. That’s even true when the controllers are popped out from the system, which is now easily accomplished with a solidly built lever on the rear of each controller (reconnecting the Joy-Cons by slotting them in with a hefty magnetic snap feels equally solid).

The controls on offer here are still a bit smaller than you might be used to on controllers designed for home consoles or even those on larger handhelds like the Steam Deck. But the enlarged buttons are now less likely to press uncomfortably into the pad of your thumb than those on the Switch. And the slightly larger-than-Switch joysticks are a bit easier to maneuver precisely, with a longer physical travel distance from center to edge.

Speaking of joysticks, Nintendo has yet to go on record regarding whether it is using the coveted “magnetic Hall effect” sensors that would prevent the kind of stick drift that plagued the original Switch Joy-Cons. When asked about the stick drift issue in a roundtable Q&A, Switch 2 Technical Director Tetsuya Sasaki would only say that the “new Joy-Con 2 controllers have been designed from the ground up from scratch to have bigger, smoother movement.”

When it comes to raw processing power, it’s all relative. The Switch 2 is a noticeable step up from the eight-year-old Switch but an equally noticeable step down from modern top-of-the-line consoles.

Playing the Switch 2 Edition of Tears of the Kingdom, for instance, feels like playing the definitive version of the modern classic, thanks mostly to increased (and silky smooth) frame rates and quick-loading menus. But an early build of Cyberpunk 2077 felt relatively rough on the Switch 2, with visuals that clocked somewhere just south of a PS4 Pro (though this could definitely change with some more development polish before launch). All told, I’d guess that the Switch 2 should be able to handle effective ports of pretty much any game that runs on the Steam Deck, with maybe a little bit of extra graphical panache to show for the trouble.

A mouse? On a game console?

Nintendo has a history of trying to differentiate its consoles with new features that have never been seen before. Some, like shoulder buttons or analog sticks, become industry standards that other companies quickly aim to copy. Others, like a tablet controller or glasses-free stereoscopic 3D, are rightly remembered as half-baked gimmicks that belong in the dustbin of game industry history.

I can’t say which side of that divide the Switch 2’s Joy-Con “mouse mode,” which lets you use a Joy-Con on its side like a mouse, will fall on. But if I had to guess, I’d go with the gimmicky side.

It works, but it’s kind of awkward. Kyle Orland

The main problem with “mouse mode” is that the Switch 2 Joy-Cons lack the wide, palm-sized base and top surface you’d find on a standard PC mouse. Instead, when cradled in mouse mode, a Joy-Con stands awkwardly on an edge that’s roughly the width of an adult finger. The top isn’t much better, with only a small extension to rest a second finger on the jutting shoulder button that serves as a “right-click” option on the right Joy-Con (the thinner “left click” shoulder button ends up feeling uncomfortably narrow in this mode).

This thin “stand-up” design means that in mouse mode, the thumb side of your palm tends to spill awkwardly over the buttons and joysticks on the inner edge of the Joy-Con, which are easy to press accidentally in some gameplay situations. Meanwhile, on the other side, your ring finger and pinky will have to contort uncomfortably to get a solid grip that can nudge or lift the Joy-Con as necessary.

These ergonomic problems were most apparent when playing Drag x Drop, a Switch 2 exclusive that I can confidently say is the first video game I’ve ever played using two mice at once. Using long, vertical swoops of those mice, you can push and pull the wheels on either side of a wheelchair in a kind of tank-like fashion to dash, reverse, pivot, and gently turn with some degree of finesse in a game of three-on-three basketball.

That repetitive mouse-swooping motion started to strain my upper arms after just a few minutes of play, though. And I ended my brief Drag x Drop play sessions with some soreness in my palm from having to constantly and quickly grasp the Joy-Con to reposition on the playing surface.

These problems were less pronounced in games that relied on more subtle mouse movements. In a short demo of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, for instance, using mouse mode and a few small flicks of the wrist let me change my aim much more quickly and precisely than using a joystick and/or the Joy-Con’s built-in gyroscopes (or even the IR-based “pointer” on the Wii’s Metroid Prime 3). While my grip on the narrow Joy-Con still felt a bit awkward, the overall lack of mouse motion made it much less noticeable, even after a 20-minute demo session.

A quick flick of the wrist is all I need to adjust my aim precisely and quickly. Credit: Kyle Orland

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond also integrates mouse controls well into the existing design of the game, letting you lock the camera on the center of an enemy while using the mouse to make fine aim adjustments as they move or even hit other enemies far off to the side of the screen as needed. The game’s first boss seems explicitly designed as a sort of tutorial for this combination aiming, with off-center weak points that almost require quick flicks of the mouse-controlling wrist while jumping and dodging using the accessible buttons on the thumb side.

Other mouse-based Switch 2 demos Nintendo showed this week almost seemed specifically designed to appeal to PC gamers. The Switch 2 version of Civilization VII, for instance, played practically identically to the PC version, with a full mouse pointer that eliminates the need for any awkward controller mapping. And the new mouse-based mini-games in Mario Party Jamboree felt like the best kind of early Macintosh tech demos, right down to one that is a close mimic of the cult classic Shufflepuck Cafe. A few games even showed the unique promise of a “mouse” that includes its own gyroscope sensor, letting players rotate objects by twisting their wrist or shoot a basketball with a quick “lift and flick” motion.

The biggest problem with the Switch 2’s mouse mode, though, is imagining how the average living room player is going to use it. Nintendo’s demo area featured large, empty tables where players could easily slide their Joy-Cons to their hearts’ content. To get the same feeling at home, the average sofa-bound Switch player will have to crouch awkwardly over a cleared coffee table or perhaps invest in some sort of lap desk.

Nintendo actually recommends that couch-bound mouse players slide the Joy-Con’s narrow edge across the top of the thigh area of their pants. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked for the long vertical mouse swipes of Drag x Drop. For games that involved more horizontal mouse movement, though, a narrow, rounded thigh-top does not serve as a very natural mouse pad.

You can test this for yourself by placing an optical mouse on your thigh and going about your workday. If you get weird looks from your boss, you can tell them I said it was OK.

Start your engines

Mouse gimmicks aside, Nintendo is leaning heavily on two first-party exclusives to convince customers that the system is worth buying in the crucial early window after its June 5 launch. While neither makes the massive first impression that Breath of the Wild did eight years ago, both seem like able demonstrations for the new console.

Mario Kart World feels like just the kind of update the long-running casual racer needs. While you can still race through pre-set “cups” in Grand Prix mode, I was most interested in the ability to just drive aimlessly between the race areas, searching for new locations in a freely roamable open world map.

Racing against 23 different opponents per race might sound overwhelming on paper, but in practice, the constant jockeying for position ends up being pretty engaging, like a slower-paced version of F-Zero GX. It definitely doesn’t hurt that items in World are much less punishing than in previous Kart games; most projectiles and hazards now merely slow your momentum rather than halting it completely. Drifts feel a bit more languorous here, too, with longer arcs needed to get the crucial “sparks” required for a boost.

A multi-section Knockout Tour map. Credit: Nintendo

While the solo races were fine, I had a lot more fun in Knockout Tour mode, Mario Kart World‘s Battle Royale-style elimination race. After pairing up with 23 other human players online, Knockout Tour mode selects a route through six connected sections of the world map for you to race through. The bottom four racers are eliminated at every section barrier until just four racers remain to vie for first place at the end.

You’d better be in the top 20 before you cross that barrier. Credit: Kyle Orland

This design makes for a lot of tense moments as players use up their items and jockey for position at the end of each section cutoff. The frequent changes in style and scenery along a multi-section Knockout Tour competition also make races more interesting than multiple laps around the same old turns. And I liked how the reward for playing well in this mode is getting to play more; success in Knockout Tour mode means a good ten to fifteen minutes of uninterrupted racing.

Punch, punch, it’s all in the mind. Credit: Nintendo

Nintendo’s other big first-party Switch 2 exclusive, Donkey Kong Bananza, might not be the new 3D Mario game we were hoping for. Even so, it was incredibly cathartic to jump, dig, and punch my way through the demo island’s highly destructible environments, gathering countless gold trinkets and collectibles as I did. The demo is full of a lot of welcome, lighthearted touches, like the ability to surf on giant slabs of rock or shake the controller for a very ape-like beating of Donkey Kong’s chest. (Why? Just because.)

One of my colleagues joked that the game might as well be called Red Faction: Gorilla, but I’d compare it more to the joyful destruction of Travellers Tales’ many Lego games.

A single whirlwind day with the Switch 2 isn’t nearly enough to get a full handle on the system’s potential, of course. Nintendo didn’t demonstrate any of the new GameChat features it announced Wednesday morning or the adaptive microphone that supposedly powers easy on-device voice chat.

Still, what we were able to sample this week has us eager to spend more time with the “more Switch” when it hits stores in just a couple of months.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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Genres are bustin’ out all over in Strange New Worlds S3 teaser

culture, Entertainment, paramount plus, star trek strange new worlds, streaming television, TV trailers / Mike M. / April 3, 2025

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns this summer with ten new episodes.

Paramount+ has dropped a tantalizing one-minute teaser for the upcoming third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds., and it looks like the latest adventures of the starship Enterprise will bring romance, comedy, mystery, and even a bit of analog tech, not to mention a brand new villain.

(Some spoilers for S2 below)

We haven’t seen much from the third season to date. There was an exclusive clip during San Diego Comic Con last summer—a callback to the S2 episode “Charades,” in which a higher-dimensional race, the Kerkohvians, accidentally reconfigured Spock’s half-human, half-Vulcan physiology to that of a full-blooded human, just before Spock was supposed to meet his Vulcan fiancee’s parents. The S3 clip had the situation reversed: The human crew had to make themselves Vulcan to succeed on a new mission but weren’t able to change back.

The S2 finale found the Enterprise under vicious attack by the Gorn, who were in the midst of invading one of the Federation’s colony worlds. Several crew members were kidnapped (La’an, M’Benga, Ortegas, and Sam), along with other survivors of the attack. Pike faced a momentous decision: follow orders to retreat, or disobey them to rescue his crew. In October, we learned that Pike naturally chose the latter. New footage shown at New York City Comic-Con picked up where the finale left off, giving us the kind of harrowing high-stakes pitched space battle against a ferocious enemy that has long been a hallmark of the franchise.

Genres are bustin’ out all over in Strange New Worlds S3 teaser Read More »

Male fruit flies drink more alcohol to get females to like them

Biology, fruit flies, Pheromones, Science / Mike M. / April 3, 2025

Fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are tremendously fond of fermented foodstuffs. Technically, it’s the yeast they crave, produced by yummy rotting fruit, but they can consume quite a lot of ethanol as a result of that fruity diet. Yes, fruit flies have ultra-fast metabolisms, the better to burn off the booze, but they can still get falling-down drunk—so much so, that randy inebriated male fruit flies have been known to court other males by mistake and fail to mate successfully.

Then again, apparently adding alcohol to their food increases the production of sex pheromones in male fruit flies, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That, in turn, makes them more attractive to the females of the species.

“We show a direct and positive effect of alcohol consumption on the mating success of male flies,” said co-author Ian Keesey of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. “The effect is caused by the fact that alcohol, especially methanol, increases the production of sex pheromones. This in turn makes alcoholic males more attractive to females and ensures a higher mating success rate, whereas the success of drunken male humans with females is likely to be questionable.”

Fruit flies are the workhorses of modern genetics research, used to study everything from cancer to sleep disorders. They make excellent model systems because they share so many genes with humans, plus they are cheap, easy to breed, and can be genetically altered easily. Many years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the University of California, San Francisco laboratory of behavior geneticist Ulrike Heberlein, who spent years getting fruit flies drunk in an “Inebriometer” to learn about the various genes that influence alcohol tolerance. (Heberlein is now scientific program director and laboratory head at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Campus.)

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Vast pedophile network shut down in Europol’s largest CSAM operation

child porn, child sexual abuse materials, csam, dark web, europol, kidflix, Policy / Mike M. / April 3, 2025

Europol has shut down one of the largest dark web pedophile networks in the world, prompting dozens of arrests worldwide and threatening that more are to follow.

Launched in 2021, KidFlix allowed users to join for free to preview low-quality videos depicting child sex abuse materials (CSAM). To see higher-resolution videos, users had to earn credits by sending cryptocurrency payments, uploading CSAM, or “verifying video titles and descriptions and assigning categories to videos.”

Europol seized the servers and found a total of 91,000 unique videos depicting child abuse, “many of which were previously unknown to law enforcement,” the agency said in a press release.

KidFlix going dark was the result of the biggest child sexual exploitation operation in Europol’s history, the agency said. Operation Stream, as it was dubbed, was supported by law enforcement in more than 35 countries, including the United States.

Nearly 1,400 suspected consumers of CSAM have been identified among 1.8 million global KidFlix users, and 79 have been arrested so far. According to Europol, 39 child victims were protected as a result of the sting, and more than 3,000 devices were seized.

Police identified suspects through payment data after seizing the server. Despite cryptocurrencies offering a veneer of anonymity, cops were apparently able to use sophisticated methods to trace transactions to bank details. And in some cases cops defeated user attempts to hide their identities—such as a man who made payments using his mother’s name in Spain, a local news outlet, Todo Alicante, reported. It likely helped that most suspects were already known offenders, Europol noted.

Vast pedophile network shut down in Europol’s largest CSAM operation Read More »

2025 Audi RS e-tron GT: More range, more power, still drives like an Audi

Audi RS e-tron GT, car review, Cars, First drive / Mike M. / April 2, 2025

New motors, new battery

The front electric motor has revised electronics and a new pulse inverter, and the rear motor is a new version with a higher density of copper windings and an overall weight reduction of 22 lbs (10 kg). They’ve upped the amount of regenerative braking on offer, too—you can now harvest up to 400 kW under braking at up to 0.45 G before the friction brakes take over (the old car was up to 290 kW and 0.38 G). Audi also upped the maximum amount of regen braking that occurs when you lift off the throttle, which can now be 0.13 G (up from 0.06 G), which you toggle on or off using the paddles behind the steering wheel.

Being able to recover more energy under braking obviously helps efficiency, but there’s also new battery chemistry with a different ratio of nickel:manganese:cobalt from before, plus a lot of work on the 800 V battery pack’s cooling system. That also means it can DC fast-charge at up to 320 kW now, which drops the 10–80 percent charge time to just 18 minutes, making the e-tron GT competitive with the very fast-charging EVs from Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis. The optimum pack temperature for fast charging has been reduced from 95° C to 59° C, and the pack even weighs 25 lbs (11 kg) less than before.

The e-tron GT has AC charge ports on both sides, but only DC charging on one side. Audi

For an extra $11,000, you can equip the RS e-tron GT with active suspension (together with better performance tires and ceramic brakes in the Dynamic plus package). If you choose comfort mode, the active suspension will lean into turns, lift the nose under braking, and drop the nose under acceleration, combating the weight transfer that happens under cornering, acceleration, and braking. With this setting active, and when driven at regular speeds, the effect is a subtle but indeed very comfortable ride as a passenger.

I’m going HOW fast??

As you settle into the seat of the RS e-tron GT, you notice there’s a new multifunction steering wheel, with a pair of bright red buttons—one to activate the 10-second boost mode, the other to toggle between the two customizable “RS” drive modes and performance mode (to switch between comfort, dynamic, and efficiency, you use a button on the center stack). There’s also new Nappa leather for the seats, and the option of forged carbon fiber trim as opposed to the woven stuff. Oddly, the forged carbon is an $8,400 add-on, despite being cheaper and easier to make than traditional woven carbon fiber. There’s also the option of an all-carbon fiber roof, or a glass roof with or without electrochromic dimming sections.

2025 Audi RS e-tron GT: More range, more power, still drives like an Audi Read More »

“Chaos” at state health agencies after US illegally axed grants, lawsuit says

Policy, rfk jr / Mike M. / April 2, 2025

Nearly half of US states sued the federal government and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today in a bid to halt the termination of $11 billion in public health grants. The lawsuit was filed by 23 states and the District of Columbia.

“The grant terminations, which came with no warning or legally valid explanation, have quickly caused chaos for state health agencies that continue to rely on these critical funds for a wide range of urgent public health needs such as infectious disease management, fortifying emergency preparedness, providing mental health and substance abuse services, and modernizing public health infrastructure,” said a press release issued by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.

The litigation is led by Colorado, California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington. The other plaintiffs are Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Nearly all of the plaintiffs are represented by a Democratic attorney general. Kentucky and Pennsylvania have Republican attorneys general and are instead represented by their governors, both Democrats.

The complaint, filed in US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, is in response to the recent cut of grants that were originally created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The sole stated basis for Defendants’ decision is that the funding for these grants or cooperative agreements was appropriated through one or more COVID-19 related laws,” the states’ lawsuit said.

The lawsuit says the US sent notices to states that grants were terminated “for cause” because “the grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.”

“Chaos” at state health agencies after US illegally axed grants, lawsuit says Read More »

What we’re expecting from Nintendo’s Switch 2 announcement Wednesday

c button, gaming, Mario Kart, metroid prime 4, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, nintendo switch 2, switch 2, switch 2 launch / Mike M. / April 2, 2025

Implausible: Long-suffering Earthbound fans have been hoping for a new game in the series (or even an official localization of the Japan-exclusive Mother 3) for literal decades now. Personally, though, I’m hoping for a surprise revisit to the Punch-Out series, following on its similar surprise return on the Wii in 2009.

Screen

Likely: While a 720p screen was pretty nice in a 2017 gaming handheld, a full 1080p display is much more standard in today’s high-end gaming portables. We expect Nintendo will follow this trend for what looks to be a nearly 8-inch screen on the Switch 2.

Possible: While a brighter OLED screen would be nice as a standard feature on the Switch 2, we expect Nintendo will follow the precedent of the Switch generation and offer this as a pricier upgrade at some point in the future.

Implausible: The Switch 2 would be the perfect time for Nintendo to revisit the glasses-free stereoscopic 3D that we all thought was such a revelation on the 3DS all those years ago.

C Button

Close-up of the — C-ing is believing. Credit: Nintendo

Likely: The mysterious new button labeled “C” on the Switch 2’s right Joy-Con could serve as a handy way to “connect” to other players, perhaps through a new Miiverse-style social network.

Possible: Recent rumors suggest the C button could be used to connect to a second Switch console (or the TV-connected dock) for a true dual-screen experience. That would be especially fun and useful for Wii U/DS emulation and remasters.

Implausible: The C stands for Chibi-Robo! and launches a system-level mini-game focused on the miniature robot.

New features

Switch 2, with joycons slightly off the central unit/screen. — Credit: Nintendo

Likely: After forcing players to use a wonky smartphone app for voice chat on the Switch, we wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo finally implements full on-device voice chat for online games on the Switch 2—at least between confirmed “friends” on the system.

Possible: Some sort of system-level achievement tracking would bring Nintendo’s new console in line with a feature that the competition from Sony and Microsoft has had for decades now.

Implausible: After killing it off for the Switch generation, we’d love it if Nintendo brought back the Virtual Console as a way to buy permanent downloadable copies of emulated classics that will carry over across generations. Failing that, how about a revival of the 3DS’s StreetPass passive social network for Switch 2 gamers on the go?

What we’re expecting from Nintendo’s Switch 2 announcement Wednesday Read More »

DeepMind is holding back release of AI research to give Google an edge

AI, deepmind, Gemini, Google, syndication / Mike M. / April 1, 2025

However, the employee added it had also blocked a paper that revealed vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s ChatGPT, over concerns the release seemed like a hostile tit-for-tat.

A person close to DeepMind said it did not block papers that discuss security vulnerabilities, adding that it routinely publishes such work under a “responsible disclosure policy,” in which researchers must give companies the chance to fix any flaws before making them public.

But the clampdown has unsettled some staffers, where success has long been measured through appearing in top-tier scientific journals. People with knowledge of the matter said the new review processes had contributed to some departures.

“If you can’t publish, it’s a career killer if you’re a researcher,” said a former researcher.

Some ex-staff added that projects focused on improving its Gemini suite of AI-infused products were increasingly prioritized in the internal battle for access to data sets and computing power.

In the past few years, Google has produced a range of AI-powered products that have impressed the markets. This includes improving its AI-generated summaries that appear above search results, to unveiling an “Astra” AI agent that can answer real-time queries across video, audio, and text.

The company’s share price has increased by as much as a third over the past year, though those gains pared back in recent weeks as concern over US tariffs hit tech stocks.

In recent years, Hassabis has balanced the desire of Google’s leaders to commercialize its breakthroughs with his life mission of trying to make artificial general intelligence—AI systems with abilities that can match or surpass humans.

“Anything that gets in the way of that he will remove,” said one current employee. “He tells people this is a company, not a university campus; if you want to work at a place like that, then leave.”

Additional reporting by George Hammond.

DeepMind is holding back release of AI research to give Google an edge Read More »

MCP: The new “USB-C for AI” that’s bringing fierce rivals together

AI, Anthropic, API, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, large language models, machine learning, MCP, Model Context Protocol, openai / Mike M. / April 1, 2025

Model context protocol standardizes how AI uses data sources, supported by OpenAI and Anthropic.

What does it take to get OpenAI and Anthropic—two competitors in the AI assistant market—to get along? Despite a fundamental difference in direction that led Anthropic’s founders to quit OpenAI in 2020 and later create the Claude AI assistant, a shared technical hurdle has now brought them together: How to easily connect their AI models to external data sources.

The solution comes from Anthropic, which developed and released an open specification called Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024. MCP establishes a royalty-free protocol that allows AI models to connect with outside data sources and services without requiring unique integrations for each service.

“Think of MCP as a USB-C port for AI applications,” wrote Anthropic in MCP’s documentation. The analogy is imperfect, but it represents the idea that, similar to how USB-C unified various cables and ports (with admittedly a debatable level of success), MCP aims to standardize how AI models connect to the infoscape around them.

So far, MCP has also garnered interest from multiple tech companies in a rare show of cross-platform collaboration. For example, Microsoft has integrated MCP into its Azure OpenAI service, and as we mentioned above, Anthropic competitor OpenAI is on board. Last week, OpenAI acknowledged MCP in its Agents API documentation, with vocal support from the boss upstairs.

“People love MCP and we are excited to add support across our products,” wrote OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X last Wednesday.

MCP has also rapidly begun to gain community support in recent months. For example, just browsing this list of over 300 open source servers shared on GitHub reveals growing interest in standardizing AI-to-tool connections. The collection spans diverse domains, including database connectors like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and vector databases; development tools that integrate with Git repositories and code editors; file system access for various storage platforms; knowledge retrieval systems for documents and websites; and specialized tools for finance, health care, and creative applications.

Other notable examples include servers that connect AI models to home automation systems, real-time weather data, e-commerce platforms, and music streaming services. Some implementations allow AI assistants to interact with gaming engines, 3D modeling software, and IoT devices.

What is “context” anyway?

To fully appreciate why a universal AI standard for external data sources is useful, you’ll need to understand what “context” means in the AI field.

With current AI model architecture, what an AI model “knows” about the world is baked into its neural network in a largely unchangeable form, placed there by an initial procedure called “pre-training,” which calculates statistical relationships between vast quantities of input data (“training data”—like books, articles, and images) and feeds it into the network as numerical values called “weights.” Later, a process called “fine-tuning” might adjust those weights to alter behavior (such as through reinforcement learning like RLHF) or provide examples of new concepts.

Typically, the training phase is very expensive computationally and happens either only once in the case of a base model, or infrequently with periodic model updates and fine-tunings. That means AI models only have internal neural network representations of events prior to a “cutoff date” when the training dataset was finalized.

After that, the AI model is run in a kind of read-only mode called “inference,” where users feed inputs into the neural network to produce outputs, which are called “predictions.” They’re called predictions because the systems are tuned to predict the most likely next token (a chunk of data, such as portions of a word) in a user-provided sequence.

In the AI field, context is the user-provided sequence—all the data fed into an AI model that guides the model to produce a response output. This context includes the user’s input (the “prompt”), the running conversation history (in the case of chatbots), and any external information sources pulled into the conversation, including a “system prompt” that defines model behavior and “memory” systems that recall portions of past conversations. The limit on the amount of context a model can ingest at once is often called a “context window,” “context length, ” or “context limit,” depending on personal preference.

While the prompt provides important information for the model to operate upon, accessing external information sources has traditionally been cumbersome. Before MCP, AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude could access external data (a process often called retrieval augmented generation, or RAG), but doing so required custom integrations for each service—plugins, APIs, and proprietary connectors that didn’t work across different AI models. Each new data source demanded unique code, creating maintenance challenges and compatibility issues.

MCP addresses these problems by providing a standardized method or set of rules (a “protocol”) that allows any supporting AI model framework to connect with external tools and information sources.

How does MCP work?

To make the connections behind the scenes between AI models and data sources, MCP uses a client-server model. An AI model (or its host application) acts as an MCP client that connects to one or more MCP servers. Each server provides access to a specific resource or capability, such as a database, search engine, or file system. When the AI needs information beyond its training data, it sends a request to the appropriate server, which performs the action and returns the result.

To illustrate how the client-server model works in practice, consider a customer support chatbot using MCP that could check shipping details in real time from a company database. “What’s the status of order #12345?” would trigger the AI to query an order database MCP server, which would look up the information and pass it back to the model. The model could then incorporate that data into its response: “Your order shipped on March 30 and should arrive April 2.”

Beyond specific use cases like customer support, the potential scope is very broad. Early developers have already built MCP servers for services like Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, and Postgres databases. This means AI assistants could potentially search documents in a company Drive, review recent Slack messages, examine code in a repository, or analyze data in a database—all through a standard interface.

From a technical implementation perspective, Anthropic designed the standard for flexibility by running in two main modes: Some MCP servers operate locally on the same machine as the client (communicating via standard input-output streams), while others run remotely and stream responses over HTTP. In both cases, the model works with a list of available tools and calls them as needed.

A work in progress

Despite the growing ecosystem around MCP, the protocol remains an early-stage project. The limited announcements of support from major companies are promising first steps, but MCP’s future as an industry standard may depend on broader acceptance, although the number of MCP servers seems to be growing at a rapid pace.

Regardless of its ultimate adoption rate, MCP may have some interesting second-order effects. For example, MCP also has the potential to reduce vendor lock-in. Because the protocol is model-agnostic, a company could switch from one AI provider to another while keeping the same tools and data connections intact.

MCP may also allow a shift toward smaller and more efficient AI systems that can interact more fluidly with external resources without the need for customized fine-tuning. Also, rather than building increasingly massive models with all knowledge baked in, companies may instead be able to use smaller models with large context windows.

For now, the future of MCP is wide open. Anthropic maintains MCP as an open source initiative on GitHub, where interested developers can either contribute to the code or find specifications about how it works. Anthropic has also provided extensive documentation about how to connect Claude to various services. OpenAI maintains its own API documentation for MCP on its website.

Benj Edwards is Ars Technica’s Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site’s dedicated AI beat in 2022. He’s also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC.

MCP: The new “USB-C for AI” that’s bringing fierce rivals together Read More »

Apple updates all its operating systems, brings Apple Intelligence to Vision Pro

Apple, iOS, ipad, iPadOS, IPhone, Mac, macOS, Tech, tvos, vision pro, visionOS, watchos / Mike M. / April 1, 2025

Apple dropped a big batch of medium-size software updates for nearly all of its products this afternoon. The iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, tvOS 18.4, and visionOS 2.4 updates are all currently available to download, and each adds a small handful of new features for their respective platforms.

A watchOS 11.4 update was also published briefly, but it’s currently unavailable.

For iPhones and iPads that support Apple Intelligence, the flagship feature in 18.4 is Priority Notifications, which attempts to separate time-sensitive or potentially important notifications from the rest of them so you can see them more easily. The update also brings along the handful of new Unicode 16.0 emoji, a separate app for managing a Vision Pro headset (similar to the companion app for the Apple Watch), and a grab bag of other fixes and minor enhancements.

The Mac picks up two major features in the Sequoia 15.4 update. Users of the Mail app now get the same (optional) automated inbox sorting that Apple introduced for iPhones and iPads in an earlier update, attempting to tame overgrown inboxes using Apple Intelligence language models.

The Mac is also getting a long-standing Quick Start setup feature from the Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. On those devices, you can activate them and sign in to your Apple ID by holding another compatible Apple phone or tablet in close proximity. Macs running the 15.4 update finally support the same feature (though it won’t work Mac-to-Mac, since a rear-facing camera is a requirement).

Apple updates all its operating systems, brings Apple Intelligence to Vision Pro Read More »

DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected

elon musk doge, Policy / Mike M. / April 1, 2025

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gained access “to a payroll system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across dozens of agencies,” despite “objections from senior IT staff who feared it could compromise highly sensitive government personnel information” and lead to cyberattacks, The New York Times reported today.

The system at the Interior Department gives DOGE “visibility into sensitive employee information, such as Social Security numbers, and the ability to more easily hire and fire workers,” the NYT wrote, citing people familiar with the matter. DOGE workers had been trying to get access to the Federal Personnel and Payroll System for about two weeks and succeeded over the weekend, the report said.

“The dispute came to a head on Saturday, as the DOGE workers obtained the access and then placed two of the IT officials who had resisted them on administrative leave and under investigation, the people said,” according to the NYT report. The agency’s CIO and CISO are reportedly under investigation for their “workplace behavior.”

When contacted by Ars today, the Interior Department said, “We are working to execute the President’s directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

DOGE’s access to federal systems continues to grow despite court rulings that ordered the government to cut DOGE off from specific records, such as those held by the Social Security Administration, Treasury Department, Department of Education, and Office of Personnel Management.

DOGE accesses federal payroll system and punishes employees who objected Read More »

Author name: Mike M.