Mike M. – Page 19

Anthropic dares you to jailbreak its new AI model

AI, Anthropic Claude / Mike M. / February 4, 2025

An example of the lengthy wrapper the new Claude classifier uses to detect prompts related to chemical weapons. Credit: Anthropic

“For example, the harmful information may be hidden in an innocuous request, like burying harmful requests in a wall of harmless looking content, or disguising the harmful request in fictional roleplay, or using obvious substitutions,” one such wrapper reads, in part.

On the output side, a specially trained classifier calculates the likelihood that any specific sequence of tokens (i.e., words) in a response is discussing any disallowed content. This calculation is repeated as each token is generated, and the output stream is stopped if the result surpasses a certain threshold.

Now it’s up to you

Since August, Anthropic has been running a bug bounty program through HackerOne offering $15,000 to anyone who could design a “universal jailbreak” that could get this Constitutional Classifier to answer a set of 10 forbidden questions. The company says 183 different experts spent a total of over 3,000 hours attempting to do just that, with the best result providing usable information on just five of the 10 forbidden prompts.

Anthropic also tested the model against a set of 10,000 jailbreaking prompts synthetically generated by the Claude LLM. The constitutional classifier successfully blocked 95 percent of these attempts, compared to just 14 percent for the unprotected Claude system.

The instructions provided to public testers of Claude’s new constitutional classifier protections. Credit: Anthropic

Despite those successes, Anthropic warns that the Constitutional Classifier system comes with a significant computational overhead of 23.7 percent, increasing both the price and energy demands of each query. The Classifier system also refused to answer an additional 0.38 percent of innocuous prompts over unprotected Claude, which Anthropic considers an acceptably slight increase.

Anthropic stops well short of claiming that its new system provides a foolproof system against any and all jailbreaking. But it does note that “even the small proportion of jailbreaks that make it past our classifiers require far more effort to discover when the safeguards are in use.” And while new jailbreak techniques can and will be discovered in the future, Anthropic claims that “the constitution used to train the classifiers can rapidly be adapted to cover novel attacks as they’re discovered.”

For now, Anthropic is confident enough in its Constitutional Classifier system to open it up for widespread adversarial testing. Through February 10, Claude users can visit the test site and try their hand at breaking through the new protections to get answers to eight questions about chemical weapons. Anthropic says it will announce any newly discovered jailbreaks during this test. Godspeed, new red teamers.

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“Zero warnings”: Longtime YouTuber rails against unexplained channel removal

censorship, content moderation, deceptive content, online bans, Policy, spam, youtube / Mike M. / February 4, 2025

Artemiy Pavlov, the founder of a small but mighty music software brand called Sinesvibes, spent more than 15 years building a YouTube channel with all original content to promote his business’ products. Over all those years, he never had any issues with YouTube’s automated content removal system—until Monday, when YouTube, without issuing a single warning, abruptly deleted his entire channel.

“What a ‘nice’ way to start a week!” Pavlov posted on Bluesky. “Our channel on YouTube has been deleted due to ‘spam and deceptive policies.’ Which is the biggest WTF moment in our brand’s history on social platforms. We have only posted demos of our own original products, never anything else….”

Officially, YouTube told Pavlov that his channel violated YouTube’s “spam, deceptive practices, and scam policy,” but Pavlov could think of no videos that might be labeled as violative.

“We have nothing to hide,” Pavlov told Ars, calling YouTube’s decision to delete the channel with “zero warnings” a “terrible, terrible day for an independent, honest software brand.”

“We have never been involved with anything remotely shady,” Pavlov said. “We have never taken a single dollar dishonestly from anyone. And we have thousands of customers that stand by our brand.”

Ars saw Pavolov’s post and reached out to YouTube to find out why the channel was targeted for takedown. About three hours later, the channel was suddenly restored. That’s remarkably fast, as YouTube can sometimes take days or weeks to review an appeal. A YouTube spokesperson later confirmed that the Sinesvibes channel was reinstated due to the regular appeals process, indicating perhaps that YouTube could see that Sinesvibes’ removal was an obvious mistake.

Developer calls for more human review

For small brands like Sinesvibes, even spending half a day in limbo was a cause for crisis. Immediately, the brand worried about 50 broken product pages for one of its distributors, as well as “hundreds if not thousands of news articles posted about our software on dozens of different websites.” Unsure if the channel would ever be restored, Sinesvibes spent most of Monday surveying the damage.

Now that the channel is restored, Pavlov is stuck confronting how much of the Sinesvibes brand depends on the YouTube channel remaining online while still grappling with uncertainty since the reason behind the ban remains unknown. He told Ars that’s why, for small brands, simply having a channel reinstated doesn’t resolve all their concerns.

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Let us spray: River dolphins launch pee streams into air

animal behavior, animal communication, animals, Biology, dolphins, Science / Mike M. / February 4, 2025

According to Amazonian folklore, the area’s male river dolphins are shapeshifters (encantade), transforming at night into handsome young men who seduce and impregnate human women. The legend’s origins may lie in the fact that dolphins have rather human-like genitalia. A group of Canadian biologists didn’t spot any suspicious shapeshifting behavior over the four years they spent monitoring a dolphin population in central Brazil, but they did document 36 cases of another human-like behavior: what appears to be some sort of cetacean pissing contest.

Specifically, the male dolphins rolled over onto their backs, displayed their male members, and launched a stream of urine as high as 3 feet into the air. This usually occurred when other males were around, who seemed fascinated in turn by the arching streams of pee, even chasing after them with their snouts. It’s possibly a form of chemical sensory communication and not merely a need to relieve themselves, according to the biologists, who described their findings in a paper published in the journal Behavioral Processes. As co-author Claryana Araújo-Wang of CetAsia Research Group in Ontario, Canada, told New Scientist, “We were really shocked, as it was something we had never seen before.”

Spraying urine is a common behavior in many animal species, used to mark territory, defend against predators, communicate with other members of one’s species, or as a means of mate selection since it has been suggested that the chemicals in the urine carry useful information about physical health or social dominance.

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Tariffs may soon spike costs of cars, household goods, consumer tech

auto industry, Canada, china, Donald Trump, mexico, Policy, tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / February 4, 2025

“A little pain”: Trump finally admits tariffs heap costs on Americans.

Canadian and American flags are seen at the US/Canada border March 1, 2017, in Pittsburg, New Hampshire. Credit: DON EMMERT / Staff | AFP

Over the weekend, President Trump issued executive orders heaping significant additional tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners, Canada, China, and Mexico.

To justify the tariffs—”a 25 percent additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10 percent additional tariff on imports from China”—Trump claimed that all partners were allowing drugs and immigrants to illegally enter the US. Declaring a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump’s orders seemed bent on “downplaying” the potential economic impact on Americans, AP News reported.

But very quickly, the trade policy sparked inflation fears, with industry associations representing major US firms from many sectors warning of potentially derailed supply chains and spiked consumer costs of cars, groceries, consumer technology, and more. Perhaps the biggest pain will be felt by car buyers already frustrated by high prices if car prices go up by $3,000, as Bloomberg reported. And as Trump eyes expanding tariffs to the European Union next, January research from the Consumer Technology Association showed that imposing similar tariffs on all countries would increase the cost of laptops by as much as 68 percent, game consoles by up to 58 percent, and smartphones perhaps by 37 percent.

With tariffs scheduled to take effect on Tuesday, Mexico moved fast to negotiate a one-month pause on Monday, ABC News reported. In exchange, Mexico promised to “reinforce” the US-Mexico border with 10,000 National Guard troops.

The pause buys Mexico a little time to convince the Trump administration—including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and potentially Commerce Secretary nominee Howard Lutnick—to strike a “permanent” trade deal, ABC News reported. If those talks fall through, though, Mexico has indicated it will retaliate with both tariff and non-tariff measures, ABC News reported.

Even in the best-case scenario where no countries retaliate, the average household income in 2025 could drop by about $1,170 if this week’s new tariffs remain in place, an analysis from the Budget Lab at Yale forecast. With retaliation, average income could decrease by $1,245.

Canada has already threatened to retaliate by imposing 35 percent tariffs on US goods, although that could change, depending on the outcome of a meeting this afternoon between Trump and outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Currently, there’s seemingly tension between the Trump administration and Trudeau, however.

On Saturday, Trudeau called Trump’s rationale for imposing tariffs on Canada—which Trudeau noted is responsible for less than 1 percent of drugs flowing into the US—”the flimsiest pretext possible,” NBC News reported.

This morning, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, reportedly criticized Canada’s response on CNBC. While Mexico is viewed as being “very, very serious” about Trump’s tariffs threat, “Canadians appear to have misunderstood the plain language of the executive order and they’re interpreting it as a trade war,” Hassett said.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to lower prices of groceries, cars, gas, housing, and other goods, AP News noted. But on Sunday, Trump clearly warned reporters while boarding Air Force One that tariffs could have the opposite effect, ABC News reported, and could significantly worsen inflation the longer the trade policy stands.

“We may have short term, some, a little pain, and people understand that, but, long term, the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world,” Trump said.

Online shoppers, car buyers brace for tariffs

In addition to imposing new tariffs on these countries, Trump’s executive orders also took aim at their access to the “de minimus” exemption that allows businesses, including online retailers, to send shipments below $800 into the US without being taxed. That move could likely spike costs for Americans using popular Chinese retail platforms like Temu or Shein.

Before leaving office, Joe Biden had threatened in September to alter the “de minimus” rule, accusing platforms like Temu or Shein of flooding the US with “huge volumes of low-value products such as textiles and apparel” and making “it increasingly difficult to target and block illegal or unsafe shipments.” Following the same logic, it seems that Trump wants to exclude Canada, China, and potentially Mexico from the duty-free exemption to make it easier to identify illegal drug shipments.

Temu and Shein did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. But both platforms in September told Ars that losing the duty-free exemption wouldn’t slow their growth. And both platforms have shifted business to keep more inventory in the US, CNBC reported.

Canada is retaliating, auto industry will suffer

While China has yet to retaliate to defend such retailers, for Canada, the tariffs are considered so intolerable that the country immediately ordered tariffs on beverages, cosmetics, and paper products flowing from the US, AP News reported. Next up will be “passenger vehicles, trucks, steel and aluminum products, certain fruits and vegetables, beef, pork, dairy products, aerospace products, and more.”

If the trade wars further complicate auto industry trade in particular, it could hurt US consumers. Carmakers globally saw stocks fall on expectations that Trump’s tariffs will have a “profound impact” on the entire auto industry, CNBC reported. And if tariffs expand into the EU, an Oxford Economics analysis suggested, the cost of European cars in the US market would likely increase while availability decreases, perhaps crippling a core EU market and limiting Americans’ choice in vehicles.

EU car companies are already bracing for potential disruptions. A spokesperson for Germany-based BMW told CNBC that tariffs “hinder free trade, slow down innovation, and set a negative spiral in motion. In the end, they are detrimental to customers, making products more expensive and less innovative.” A Volkswagen spokesperson confirmed the company was “counting on constructive talks between the trading partners to ensure planning security and economic stability and to avoid a trade conflict.”

Right now, Canada’s auto industry appears most spooked by the impending trade war, with the president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, Flavio Volpe, warning that Canada’s auto sector could “shut down within a week,” Bloomberg reported.

“At 25 percent, absolutely nobody in our business is profitable by a long shot,” Volpe said.

According to Bloomberg, nearly one-quarter of the 16 million cars sold in the US each year will be hit with duties, adding about $60 billion in industry costs. Seemingly the primary wallet drain will be car components that cross the US-Canada and US-Mexico borders “as many as eight times during production” and, should negotiations fail, could be getting hit with tariffs both ways. Tesla, for example, relies on a small parts manufacturer in Canada, Laval Tool, to create the molds for its Cybertruck. It already costs up to $500,000 per mold, Bloomberg noted, and since many of the mold components are sourced from Canada currently, that cost could go up at a time when Cybertruck sales already aren’t great, InsideEVs reported.

Tariffs “necessary”

William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former US trade official, told AP News that Trump’s new tariffs on raw materials disrupting the auto industry and others don’t seem to “make much economic sense.”

“Historically, most of our tariffs on raw materials have been low because we want to get cheaper materials so our manufacturers will be competitive … Now, what’s he talking about? He’s talking about tariffs on raw materials,” Reinsch said. “I don’t get the economics of it.”

But Trump has maintained that tariffs are necessary to push business into the US while protecting national security. Industry experts have warned that hoping Trump’s tariffs will pressure carmakers to source all car components within the US is a “tough ask,” as shifting production could take years. Trump seems unlikely to back down any time soon, instead asking already cash-strapped Americans to be patient with any rising costs potentially harming businesses and consumers.

“We can play the game all they want,” Trump said.

But to countries threatening the US with tariffs in response to Trump’s orders, it likely doesn’t feel like a game. According to AP News, the Ministry of Commerce in China plans to file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization for the “wrongful practices of the US.”

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.

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It seems the FAA office overseeing SpaceX’s Starship probe still has some bite

Commercial space, elon musk, FAA, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starship, starship flight 7 / Mike M. / February 2, 2025

The political winds have shifted in Washington, but the FAA hasn’t yet changed its tune on Starship.

Liftoff of SpaceX’s seventh full-scale test flight of the Super Heavy/Starship launch vehicle on January 16. Credit: SpaceX

The seventh test flight of SpaceX’s gigantic Starship rocket came to a disappointing end a little more than two weeks ago. The in-flight failure of the rocket’s upper stage, or ship, about eight minutes after launch on January 16 rained debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean.

Amateur videos recorded from land, sea, and air showed fiery debris trails streaming overhead at twilight, appearing like a fireworks display gone wrong. Within hours, posts on social media showed small pieces of debris recovered by residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos. Most of these items were modest in size, and many appeared to be chunks of tiles from Starship’s heat shield.

Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Elon Musk’s close relationship with Trump, coupled with the new administration’s appetite for cutting regulations and reducing the size of government, led some industry watchers to question whether Musk’s influence might change the FAA’s stance on SpaceX.

So far, the FAA hasn’t budged on its requirement for an investigation, an agency spokesperson told Ars on Friday. After a preliminary assessment of flight data, SpaceX officials said a fire appeared to develop in the aft section of the ship before it broke apart and fell to Earth.

“The FAA has directed SpaceX to lead an investigation of the Starship Super Heavy Flight 7 mishap with FAA oversight,” the spokesperson said. “Based on the investigation findings for root cause and corrective actions, the FAA may require a company to modify its license.”

This is much the same language the FAA used two weeks ago, when it first ordered the investigation.

Damage report

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation is charged with ensuring commercial space launches and reentries don’t endanger the public, and requires launch operators obtain liability insurance or demonstrate financial ability to cover any third-party property damages.

For each Starship launch, the FAA requires SpaceX maintain liability insurance policies worth at least $500 million for such claims. It’s rare for debris from US rockets to fall over land during a launch. This would typically only happen if a launch failed at certain parts of the flight. And there’s no public record of any claims of third-party property damage in the era of commercial spaceflight. Under federal law, the US government would pay for damages to a much higher amount if any claims exceeded a launch company’s insurance policies.

Here’s a piece of Starship 33 @SpaceX @elonmusk found in Turks and Caicos! 🚀🏝️ pic.twitter.com/HPZDCqA9MV

— @maximzavet (@MaximZavet) January 17, 2025

The good news is there were no injuries or reports of significant damage from the wreckage that fell over the Turks and Caicos. “The FAA confirmed one report of minor damage to a vehicle located in South Caicos,” an FAA spokesperson told Ars on Friday. “To date, there are no other reports of damage.”

It’s not clear if the vehicle owner in South Caicos will file a claim against SpaceX for the damage. It would the first time someone makes such a claim related to an accident with a commercial rocket overseen by the FAA. Last year, a Florida homeowner submitted a claim to NASA for damage to his house from a piece of debris that fell from the International Space Station.

Nevertheless, the Turks and Caicos government said local officials met with representatives from SpaceX and the UK Air Accident Investigations Branch on January 25 to develop a recovery plan for debris that fell on the islands, which are a British Overseas Territory.

A prickly relationship

Musk often bristled at the FAA last year, especially after regulators proposed fines of more than $600,000 alleging that SpaceX violated terms of its launch licenses during two Falcon 9 missions. The alleged violations involved the relocation of a propellant farm at one of SpaceX’s launch pads in Florida, and the use of a new launch control center without FAA approval.

In a post on X, Musk said the FAA was conducting “lawfare” against his company. “SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach,” Musk wrote.

There was no such lawsuit, and the issue may now be moot. Sean Duffy, Trump’s new secretary of transportation, vowed to review the FAA fines during his confirmation hearing in the Senate. It is rare for the FAA to fine launch companies, and the fines last year made up the largest civil penalty ever imposed by the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division.

SpaceX also criticized delays in licensing Starship test flights last year. The FAA cited environmental issues and concerns about the extent of the sonic boom from Starship’s 23-story-tall Super Heavy booster returning to its launch pad in South Texas. SpaceX successfully caught the returning first stage booster at the launch pad for the first time in October, and repeated the feat after the January 16 test flight.

What separates the FAA’s ongoing oversight of Starship’s recent launch failure from these previous regulatory squabbles is that debris fell over populated areas. This would appear to be directly in line with the FAA’s responsibility for public safety.

During last month’s test flight, Starship did not deviate from its planned ground track, which took the rocket over the Gulf of Mexico, the waters between Florida and Cuba, and then the Atlantic Ocean. But the debris field extended beyond the standard airspace closure for the launch. After the accident, FAA air traffic controllers cleared additional airspace over the debris zone for more than an hour, rerouting, diverting, and delaying dozens of commercial aircraft.

These actions followed pre-established protocols. However, it highlighted the small but non-zero risk of rocket debris falling to Earth after a launch failure. “The potential for a bad day downrange just got real,” Lori Garver, a former NASA deputy administrator, posted on X.

Public safety is not sole mandate of the FAA’s commercial space office. It is also chartered to “encourage, facilitate, and promote commercial space launches and reentries by the private sector,” according to an FAA website. There’s a balance to strike.

Lawmakers last year urged the FAA to speed up its launch approvals, primarily because Starship is central to strategic national objectives. NASA has contracts with SpaceX to develop a variant of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon, and Starship’s unmatched ability to deliver more than 100 tons of cargo to low-Earth orbit is attractive to the Pentagon.

While Musk criticized the FAA in 2024, SpaceX officials in 2023 took a different tone, calling for Congress to increase the budget for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Spaceflight and for the regulator to double the space division’s workforce. This change, SpaceX officials argued, would allow the FAA to more rapidly assess and approve a fast-growing number of commercial launch and reentry applications.

In September, SpaceX released a statement accusing the former administrator of the FAA, Michael Whitaker, of making inaccurate statements about SpaceX to a congressional subcommittee. In a different post on X, Musk directly called for Whitaker’s resignation.

He needs to resign https://t.co/pG8htfTYHb

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2024

That’s exactly what happened. Whitaker, who took over the FAA’s top job in 2023 under the Biden administration, announced in December he would resign on Inauguration Day. Since the agency’s establishment in 1958, three FAA administrators have similarly resigned when a new administration takes power, but the office has been largely immune from presidential politics in recent decades. Since 1993, FAA administrators have stayed in their post during all presidential transitions.

There’s no evidence Whitaker’s resignation had any role in the mid-air collision of an American Eagle passenger jet and a US Army helicopter Wednesday night near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. But his departure from the FAA less than two years into a five-year term on January 20 left the agency without a leader. Trump named Chris Rocheleau as the FAA’s acting administrator Thursday.

Next flight, next month?

SpaceX has not released an official schedule for the next Starship test flight or outlined its precise objectives. However, it will likely repeat many of the goals planned for the previous flight, which ended before SpaceX could accomplish some of its test goals. These missed objectives included the release of satellite mockups in space for the first demonstration of Starship’s payload deployment mechanism, and a reentry over the Indian Ocean to test new, more durable heat shield materials.

The January 16 test flight was the first launch up an upgraded, slightly taller Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2. The next flight will use the same upgraded version.

A SpaceX filing with the Federal Communications Commission suggests the next Starship flight could launch as soon as February 24. Sources told Ars that SpaceX teams believe a launch before the end of February is realistic.

But SpaceX has more to do before Flight 8. These tasks include completing the FAA-mandated investigation and the installation of all 39 Raptor engines on the rocket. Then, SpaceX will likely test-fire the booster and ship before stacking the two elements together to complete assembly of the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket.

SpaceX is also awaiting a new FAA launch license, pending its completion of the investigation into what happened on Flight 7.

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Research Roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

Archaeology, Physics, Science / Mike M. / February 2, 2025

Peruvian mummy tattoos, the wobbly physics of spears and darts, quantum “cat states,” and more.

Lasers revealed tattoos on the hand of a 1200-year-old Peruvian mummy. Credit: Michael Pittman and Thomas G Kaye

It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. January’s list includes papers on using lasers to reveal Peruvian mummy tattoos; the physics of wobbly spears and darts; how a black hole changes over time; and quantum “cat states” for error correction in quantum computers, among other fascinating research.

Tracking changes in a black hole over time

Left: EHT images of M87from the 2018 and 2017 observation campaigns. Middle: Example images from a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulation at two different times. Right: Same simulation snapshots, blurred to match the EHT’s observational resolution. Credit: EHT collaboration

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope announced the first direct image ever taken of a black hole at the center of an elliptical galaxy, Messier 87 (M87), located in the constellation of Virgo some 55 million light-years away. Astronomers have now combined earlier observational data to learn more about the turbulent dynamics of plasma near M87*’s event horizon over time, according to a paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Co-author Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany likened the new analysis to comparing two photographs of Mount Everest, one year apart. While the mountain’s basic structure is unlikely to change much in that time, one could observe changes in clouds near the peak and deduce from that properties like wind direction. For instance, in the case of M87*, the new analysis confirmed the presence of a luminous ring that is brightest at the bottom, which in turn confirmed that the rotational axis points away from Earth. “More of these observations will be made in the coming years and with increasing precision, with the ultimate goal of producing a movie of what happens near M87*,” said Rezolla.

Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2025. DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202451296 (About DOIs).

Lasers reveal Peruvian mummy tattoos

A tattooed forearm of a Chancay mummy. Credit: Michael Pittman and Thomas G Kaye

Humans across the globe have been getting tattoos for more than 5,000 years, judging by traces found on mummified remains from Europe to Asia and South America. But it can be challenging to decipher details of those tattoos, given how much the ink tends to “bleed” over time, along with the usual bodily decay. Infrared imaging can help, but in an innovative twist, scientists decided to use lasers that make skin glow ever so faintly, revealing many fine hidden details of tattoos found on 1,200-year-old Peruvian mummies, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It’s the first time the laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) technique has been used on mummified human remains. The skin’s fluorescence essentially backlights any tattoos, and after post-processing, the long-exposure photographs showed white skin behind black outlines of the tattoo art—images so detailed it’s possible to measure density differences in the ink and eliminate any bleed effects. The authors determined that the tattoos on four mummies—geometric patterns with triangles and diamonds—were made with carbon-based black ink skillfully applied with a pointed object finer than a standard modern tattoo needle, possibly a cactus needle or sharpened bone.

PNAS, 2025. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2421517122 (About DOIs).

Sforza Castle’s hidden passages

Ground-penetrating radar reveals new secrets under Milan's Sforza Castle — Ground-penetrating radar reveals new secrets under Milan’s Sforza Castle Credit: Politecnico di Milano

Among the many glories of Milan is the 15th-century Sforza Castle, built by Francesco Sforza on the remnants of an earlier fortification as his primary residence. Legends about the castle abound, most notably the existence of secret underground chambers and passages. For instance, Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan from 1494–1499, was so heartbroken over the loss of his wife in childbirth that he used an underground passageway to visit her tomb in the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie—a passageway that appears in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, who was employed at the court for a time.

Those underground cavities and passages are now confirmed, thanks to a geophysical survey using ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning, performed as part of a PhD thesis. Various underground cavities and buried passageways were found within the castle’s outer walls, including Ludovico’s passageway and what have may have been secret military passages. Those involved in the project plan to create a “digital twin” of Sforza Castle based on the data collected, one that incorporates both its current appearance and its past. Perhaps it will also be possible to integrate that data with augmented reality to provide an immersive digital experience.

Physics of wobbly spears and darts

Image sequence of a 100-mm long projectile during a typical ejection in experiments. — Image sequence of a 100-mm-long projectile during a typical ejection in experiments. Credit: G. Giombini et al., 2025

Among the things that make humans unique among primates is our ability to throw various objects with speed and precision (with some practice)—spears or darts, for example. That’s because the human shoulder is anatomically conducive to storing and releasing the necessary elastic energy, a quality that has been mimicked in robotics to improve motor efficiency. According to the authors of a paper published in the journal Physical Review E, the use of soft elastic projectiles can improve the efficiency of throws, particularly those whose tips are weighted with a mass like a spearhead.

Guillaume Giombini of the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, and co-authors wanted to explore this “superpropulsion” effect more deeply, using a combination of experimental data, numerical simulation, and theoretical analysis. The projectiles they used in their experiments were inspired by archery bows and consisted of two flat steel cantilevers connected by a string, essentially serving as springs to give the projectile the necessary elasticity. They placed a flat piece of rigid plastic in the middle of the string as a platform. Some of the projectiles were tested alone, while others were weighted with end masses. A fork held each projectile in place before launch, and the scientists measured speed and deformation during flight. They found that the wobble produced by the weighted tip projectiles yielded a kinetic energy gain of 160 percent over more rigid, unweighted projectiles.

Physical Review E, 2025. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.00.005500 (About DOIs).

Quantum “cat states” for error detection

Left to right: UNSW researchers Benjamin Wilhelm, Xi Yu, Andrea Morello, and Danielle Holmes, all seated and each holding a cat on their lap — Left to right: UNSW researchers Benjamin Wilhelm, Xi Yu, Andrea Morello, and Danielle Holmes. Credit: UNSW Sydney/CC BY-NC

The Schrödinger’s cat paradox in physics is an excellent metaphor for the superposition of quantum states in atoms. Over the last 20 years, physicists have managed to build various versions of Schrödinger’s cat in the laboratory whereby two or more particles manage to be in two different states at the same time—so-called “cat states,” such as six atoms in simultaneous “spin up” and “spin down” states, rather like spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Such states are fragile, however, and quickly decohere. Physicists at the University of New South Wales came up with a fresh twist on a cat-state that is more robust, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Physics.

They used an antimony atom embedded within a silicon quantum chip. The atom is quite heavy and has a large nuclear spin that can go in eight directions rather than just two (spin up and spin down). This could help enormously with quantum error correction, one of the biggest obstacles in quantum computing, because there is more room for error in the binary code. “As the proverb goes, a cat has nine lives,” said co-author Xi Yu of UNSW. “One little scratch is not enough to kill it. Our metaphorical ‘cat’ has seven lives: it would take seven consecutive errors to turn the ‘0’ into a ‘1.’” And embedding the atom in a silicon chip makes it scalable.

Nature Physics, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02745-0 (About DOIs).

New twist on chain mail armor

how polycatenated architected materials look in their fluid or granular state, conforming to the shape of the vessel in which it is held. — Credit: Wenjie Zhou

Scientists have developed a new material that is like “chain mail on steroids,” capable of responding as both a fluid or a solid, depending on the kind of stress applied, according to a paper published in the journal Science. That makes it ideal for manufacturing helmets or other protective gear, as well as biomedical devices and robotics components. The technical term is polycatenated architected materials (PAMs). Much like how chain mail is built from small metal rings linked together into a mesh, PAMs are composed of various interlocking shapes that can form a wide range of different 3D patterns.

The authors were partly inspired by the lattice structure of crystals; they just replaced fixed particles with rings or cage-like shapes made out of different materials—such as acrylic polymers, nylon, or metals—to make small 3D-printed structures small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. They then subjected these materials to various stressors in the laboratory: compression, a lateral shearing force, and twisting. Some of the materials felt like hard solids, others were squishier, but they all exhibited the same kind of telltale transition, behaving more like a fluid or a solid depending on the stressor applied. PAMs at the microscale can also expand or contract in response to electrical charges. This makes them a useful hybrid material, spanning the gap between granular materials and elastic deformable ones.

W. Zhou et al., Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adr9713 (About DOIs).

Kitty robot mimics headbutts

Any cat lover will tell you that cats show humans affection by rubbing their heads against the body (usually shins or hands). It’s called “bunting,” often accompanied by purring, and it’s one of the factors that make companion animal therapy so effective, per the authors of a paper published in ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interactions. That’s why they built a small robot designed to mimic bunting behavior, conducting various experiments to assess whether human participants found their interactions with the kitty-bot therapeutic. The robot prototypes were small enough to fit on a human lap, featuring a 3D-printed frame and a head covered with furry polyester fabric.

The neck needed to be flexible to mimic the bunting behavior, so the authors incorporated a mechanism that could adjust the stiffness of the neck via wire tension. They then tested various prototypes with university students, setting the neck stiffness to low, high, and variable. The students said they felt less tense after interacting with the robots. There was no significant difference between the settings, although participants slightly preferred the variable setting. We know what you’re thinking: Why not just get an actual cat or visit your local cat cafe? The authors note that many people are allergic to cats, and there is also a risk of bites, scratches, or disease transmission—hence the interest in developing animal-like robots for therapeutic applications.

ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interactions, 2025. DOI: 10.1145/3700600 (About DOIs).

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Research Roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX tosses away a Falcon 9; a Somalian spaceport?

rocket report, Space / Mike M. / February 2, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“It was the perfect partnership and the biggest softball of all the opportunities.”

Falcon 9 launches the SpainSat NG I mission to orbit from Florida on Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.29 of the Rocket Report! It may be difficult to believe, but we are already one full month into the new year. It will be hard to top this month in launch, however, given the historic debut of New Glenn, and fiery end of the seventh Starship flight test. And in truth, February does look a bit sleepier in terms of launch.

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.

UK government injects $25 million into Orbex. As some European launch companies have struggled to raise funding, the United Kingdom government stepped up to make a significant investment in the Scotland-based launch firm Orbex, The Financial Times reports. As part of the company’s latest fundraising round, valued at $50 million (GBP 40 million), the UK government will become a shareholder in Orbex. The company is working to develop both a small- and medium-lift rocket. Phil Chambers, Orbex’s chief executive, said the UK support would be “a strong signal to other private investors, and to the European Space Agency and the EU, that we’re serious about being a part of the future of European launch.”

What’s the plan, fellas? … If we’re being frank, which is how we roll in the Rocket Report, some of Orbex’s recent activity does not inspire confidence. The company, for example, suspended plans to develop a spaceport at Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands to focus resources on developing the Prime microlauncher. And then it said it would develop the larger Proxima rocket as well. That seems pretty ambitious for what is, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively modest round of fundraising. Given that we have not seen a whole lot of hardware from Orbex, some skepticism is warranted. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Turkey may develop a spaceport in Somalia. Turkey has begun advancing plans to construct a rocket launch facility in Somalia, Space in Africa reports. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said the project began in December. Mohamud emphasized the project’s potential benefits, highlighting its capacity to generate significant employment opportunities and revenue for the East Africa nation. “I believe that the importance of Somalia hosting a launchpad for Turkish satellites goes beyond the billions of dollars and opportunities the project will generate,” Mohamud said.

Nothing has been finalized yet … Located along the equator, Somalia fronts the Indian Ocean, offering an ideal launch location. The potential Somali launch site is part of Turkey’s broader aspirations to assert itself in the global space race, traditionally dominated by major powers. In 2021, Turkey unveiled a 10-year space road map that includes plans for missions to the moon, establishing a spaceport, and developing advanced satellite systems. Somalia, a key Turkish security partner since 2011, already hosts Turkey’s largest overseas training base.

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Firefly expands Alpha launch plans to Wallops and Sweden. Firefly Aerospace expects to start launching its Alpha rocket from launch sites in Virginia and Sweden as soon as 2026 to help the company avoid growing congestion at launch sites in Florida and California, Space News reports. So far, Alpha has only launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Firefly is planning five Alpha launches in 2025, all from Vandenberg. The company has performed five Alpha launches to date, going back to the failed inaugural launch in 2021.

Sweden, you say? … So what is up with those plans to launch from Sweden? Adam Oakes, vice president of launch vehicles at Firefly, said the Esrange Space Centre in Sweden was an ideal partner. “Esrange has basically done everything for the science community in space except an orbital rocket,” he said, citing the more than 600 sounding rocket launches there as well as experience with ground stations. “It was the perfect partnership and the biggest softball of all the opportunities out there.” It still feels a bit odd, as Vandenberg already offers polar launch corridors, as well as Alpha-size commercial European launch vehicles coming along soon. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace targets 2026 for debut launch. A subsidiary of ArianeGroup that is developing a two-stage partially reusable rocket, MaiaSpace is one of the more interesting European launch startups. The company’s chief executive, Yohann Leroy, recently spoke with Europe in Space to discuss the company’s plans. The company will likely start off with a suborbital test flight of a launcher capable of boosting 500 kg to low-Earth orbit in reusable mode and 1,500 kg in expendable mode during the middle of next year.

Following an iterative design method … “Our approach is to test our rocket in flight as early as possible, following our test-and-learn iterative approach,” Leroy said. “We are convinced we will go faster this way, rather than spending time in the lab making sure the first flight reaches 100 percent of our performance targets. In short, we are ready to trade lift-off performance for time-saving, knowing that we will quickly recover our performance afterward. What’s important is to stick to our objective of starting commercial operations in the second half of 2026, and we’re on track to reach this goal.” (submitted by RB)

Arianespace inking deals for its new rocket. Arianespace currently has a backlog of 30 Ariane 6 launches, 18 of which are for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation. However, it has recently begun to add Europe-based launch contracts for the rocket. During signing events at the 17th European Space Conference in late January, Arianespace secured contracts for three Ariane 6 flights, European Spaceflight reports.

Getting into operations … The missions are the European Space Agency’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission, the Sentinel-1D Earth observation satellite that will replace Sentinel-1A, and a pair of second-generation Galileo satellites. After completing a largely successful debut flight last year, the first operational flight of Ariane is scheduled for February 26, carrying the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite for the French Armed Forces. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX expends a Falcon 9 rocket. On Wednesday, SpaceX launched the SpainSat NG-1 satellite from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A. The Falcon 9 first-stage booster used on this launch saw its 21st and final flight, Florida Today reports. SpaceX said the reason it was not trying to recover the booster was due to the extra power needed to reach the satellite’s intended orbit.

Into the drink … The well-traveled booster had launched a variety of missions during its lifetime: 13 Starlink missions, SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, GSAT-20, and Thuraya-4. The Airbus-built satellite, known as SpainSat NG-1 (New Generation), is the first of two satellites for Hisdesat. It was developed under a partnership with the European Space Agency, making its launch on a Falcon 9 somewhat notable.

India marks first launch of 2025. India conducted its first launch of the year late Tuesday, sending a new-generation navigation satellite toward geostationary orbit, Space News reports. A Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk II lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Aboard was the NVS-02 satellite, sent into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The satellite is the second of five new-generation spacecraft for the Navigation with Indian Constellation.

A busy year planned … The mission was the first of 10 orbital launches planned by India in 2025, which would mark a domestic launch record. Major missions include a joint Earth science mission between NASA and ISRO, named NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, expected to launch around March on a GSLV rocket, and an uncrewed test flight for the Gaganyaan human spaceflight program on a human-rated LVM-3 launcher. The first launch of the Vikram-1 for private company Skyroot Aerospace could also take place this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

New Glenn represents a milestone moment for Blue Origin. In a feature, Ars Technica explores what the successful launch of the New Glenn rocket means for Blue Origin. The near-term step is clear: getting better at building engines and rockets and flying New Glenn regularly. In an interview, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos sounded a lot like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has spoken about “building the machine that builds the machine” over the last decade with respect to both Tesla vehicles and SpaceX rockets. Asked about Blue’s current priorities, Bezos responded, “Rate manufacturing and driving urgency around the machine that makes the machine.”

The tortoise and the hare … There are those who wonder why Blue Origin, which has a “tortoise” as its unofficial mascot, has moved so slowly when compared to SpaceX’s progress over the last quarter of a century. Bezos responded that the space age is just beginning. “It’s still absolutely day one,” he said. “There are going to be multiple winners. SpaceX is going to be successful. Blue Origin is going to be successful. And there are other companies who haven’t even been founded yet that are going to grow into fantastic, giant space companies. So the vision that I think people should have is that this is the absolute beginning.”

Space Force has big dreams for ULA this year. The US Space Force is projecting 11 national security launches aboard United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket in 2025, Space News reports. This ambitious schedule comes as the National Security Space Launch program continues to wait on Vulcan’s readiness. The heavy lift rocket, which debuted last year after prolonged schedule setbacks, is a cornerstone of the national security’s Phase 2 program, under which ULA was selected in 2020 as the primary launch provider for national security missions through 2027.

That seems like a lot … However, Vulcan remains under review, with certification expected in late February following its second demonstration flight in October 2024. There is a lot of pressure on ULA to execute with Vulcan, due not only to the need to fly out Phase 2 launches, but because the military is nearing a decision on how to award launch contracts under Phase 3 of the program. The more complex “Lane 2” missions are likely to be divided up between ULA and SpaceX. Reaching 11 national security launches on Vulcan this year seems like a stretch for ULA. The company probably will only launch two rockets during the first half of this year, one of which probably will be an Atlas V booster. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

April 2026 a “no later than” date for Artemis II. In a Space News article citing current contractors defending NASA’s Artemis plan to return humans to the Moon, a space agency official said the current timeline for Artemis II is achievable. April 2026 is actually a no-later-than date for the mission, Matt Ramsay, Artemis 2 mission manager at NASA, said during a panel discussion. “The agency has challenged us to do better, and we’re in the process of figuring out what better looks like,” he said, with a “work-to” launch date coming in the next few weeks.

NET or NLT? … This is interesting, because a good source told Ars about a month ago that the present date for the Artemis II mission to fly astronauts around the Moon has almost no schedule margin. However, Ramsay said the key factor driving the launch date will be work assembling the vehicle. Crews are currently stacking segments of the SLS’s twin solid rocket boosters, a process that should be complete in the next two to three weeks. This all assumes the Artemis II mission goes forward as designed. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Next three launches

Jan. 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-4 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 11 UTC

Feb. 2: H3 | Demo Flight | Michibiki 6 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 8: 30 UTC

Feb. 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-3 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 8: 54 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: SpaceX tosses away a Falcon 9; a Somalian spaceport? Read More »

Ford made a NASCAR Mach-E, but it’s not sure what to do with it yet

Cars, electric racing, Ford Performance, NASCAR / Mike M. / January 31, 2025

Ford’s no stranger to the NASCAR life. Ford driver Joey Logano was the 2024 Cup Series Champion in one of the company’s Mustang-bodied machines. He’s currently leading the 2025 series, too. However, the Blue Oval and its Ford Performance division are going into uncharted territory with its new prototype, an all-electric Mach-E built atop elements of NASCAR’s current Next Gen chassis.

The machine uses three motors to make a total of 1,341 hp (1,000 kW). Yes, three motors, one for each rear wheel plus the odd one out up front, giving the thing all-wheel drive. That’s a seeming necessity, given the car has two times the power that any NASCAR racer is allowed to deploy on the non-restrictor plate races.

But that extra driven axle isn’t just for acceleration. “If you’re rear-wheel drive only, you’re only getting rear regen,” Mark Rushbrook said. He’s the global director of Ford Performance. Since braking forces are higher at the front axle, an extra motor there means more regen to recharge the battery.

The motors and the car’s development were done by Austrian motorsport development house STARD, which also provided the engineering behind Ford’s previous electric demonstrators, like the Supervan and the SuperTruck.

The most interesting thing, though, might just be the car’s shape. The NASCAR Mach-E has a decidedly crossover profile, much like NASCAR and ABB’s prototype EV, helping to make room for the batteries—78 kWh to be exact.

Is now the time to go EV racing?

Ford Performance is still working out where and when we’ll see this latest demonstrator actually demonstrating, but Rushbrook said this concept was developed in concert with NASCAR and other manufacturers, so this isn’t just a one-off. With shifting EV perception across the country and many saying that alternate fuels are the way forward, part of the plan is to figure out just what the fans want to see.

Ford made a NASCAR Mach-E, but it’s not sure what to do with it yet Read More »

In Apple’s first-quarter earnings, the Mac leads the way in sales growth

Apple, china, earnings, ipad, IPhone, Mac, Q1, Tech, tim cook / Mike M. / January 31, 2025

Apple fell slightly short of investor expectations when it reported its first-quarter earnings today. While sales were up 4 percent overall, the iPhone showed signs of weakness, and sales in the Chinese market slipped by just over 11 percent.

CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that the iPhone performed better in countries where Apple Intelligence was available, like the US—seemingly suggesting that the slip was partially because Chinese consumers do not see enough reason to buy new phones without Apple Intelligence. (He also said, “Half of the decline is due to a change in channel inventory.”) iPhone sales also slipped in China during this same quarter last year; this was the first full quarter during which the iPhone 16 was available.

In any case, Cook said the company plans to roll out Apple Intelligence in additional languages, including Mandarin, this spring.

Apple’s wearables category also declined slightly, but only by 2 percent.

Despite the trends that worried investors, Apple reported $36.33 billion in net revenue for the first quarter. That’s 7.1 percent more than last year’s Q1. This was driven by the Mac, the iPad, and Services (which includes everything from Apple Music to iCloud)—all of which saw slight upticks in sales. Services was up 14 percent, continuing a strong streak for that business, while the Mac and the iPad both jumped up 15 percent.

The uptick in Mac and iPad sales was likely helped by several new Mac models and a new iPad mini starting shipments last October.

Cook shared some other interesting numbers in the earnings call with investors and the press: The company has an active base of 2.35 billion devices, and it has more than 1 billion active subscriptions.

In Apple’s first-quarter earnings, the Mac leads the way in sales growth Read More »

VGHF opens free online access to 1,500 classic game mags, 30K historic files

gaming, VGHF / Mike M. / January 31, 2025

In the intro video, Salvador talks about looking through their archives and stumbling on the existence of Pretzel Pete, a little-remembered early 3D driving/platform game. Despite its extreme obscurity, the game is nonetheless mentioned in the 1999 E3 catalog and an old issue of PC Gamer, both of which are now memorialized forever in the VGHF digital archives.

Getting this kind of obscure information into a digitized, easily searchable form was “a lot harder than it sounds,” Salvador said. Beyond getting archival-quality scans of the magazines themselves (a process aided by community efforts like RetroMags and Out of Print Archive), extracting the text from those pages proved difficult for OCR software designed for the high-contrast, black-text-on-white-background world of business documents. “If you’ve ever read a ’90s video game magazine, you know how crazy those magazine layouts get,” Salvador said.

VGHF Head Librarian Phil Salvador talks about the digital library launch.

To get around that problem, Salvador said VGHF Director of Technology Travis Brown spent months developing a specially designed text-recognition tool that “handles even the toughest magazine pages with no problem” and represents “a significant leap in quality over what we had before.” That means it’s easier than ever to find 81 separate mentions of Clu Clu Land from across dozens of different issues with a single search.

Unfortunately, the vast wealth of video game information on offer here does not include direct, playable access to retail video games, which libraries can’t share digitally due to the limitations of the DMCA. But the VGHF and other organizations “continue to challenge those copyright rules every three years,” leaving some hope that digital libraries like this may soon include access to the source material being discussed.

VGHF opens free online access to 1,500 classic game mags, 30K historic files Read More »

I agree with OpenAI: You shouldn’t use other peoples’ work without permission

AI, chatgpt, DeepSeek, deepseek R1, NVIDIA, openai / Mike M. / January 31, 2025

ChatGPT developer OpenAI and other players in the generative AI business were caught unawares this week by a Chinese company named DeepSeek, whose open source R1 simulated reasoning model provides results similar to OpenAI’s best paid models (with some notable exceptions) despite being created using just a fraction of the computing power.

Since ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, and other generative AI models first became publicly available in late 2022 and 2023, the US AI industry has been undergirded by the assumption that you’d need ever-greater amounts of training data and compute power to continue improving their models and get—eventually, maybe—to a functioning version of artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

Those assumptions were reflected in everything from Nvidia’s stock price to energy investments and data center plans. Whether DeepSeek fundamentally upends those plans remains to be seen. But at a bare minimum, it has shaken investors who have poured money into OpenAI, a company that reportedly believes it won’t turn a profit until the end of the decade.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman concedes that the DeepSeek R1 model is “impressive,” but the company is taking steps to protect its models (both language and business); OpenAI told the Financial Times and other outlets that it believed DeepSeek had used output from OpenAI’s models to train the R1 model, a method known as “distillation.” Using OpenAI’s models to train a model that will compete with OpenAI’s models is a violation of the company’s terms of service.

“We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable models being built here,” an OpenAI spokesperson told Ars.

So taking data without permission is bad, now?

I’m not here to say whether the R1 model is the product of distillation. What I can say is that it’s a little rich for OpenAI to suddenly be so very publicly concerned about the sanctity of proprietary data.

I agree with OpenAI: You shouldn’t use other peoples’ work without permission Read More »

Sony removes PlayStation account requirement from 4 single-player Steam games

gaming, God of War Ragnarok, helldivers 2, horizon zero dawn, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, PC Gaming, PlayStation, PlayStation Network, Sony, Spider-Man 2, steam, The Last of Us Part II / Mike M. / January 29, 2025

Sony’s game publishing arm has done a 180-degree turn on a controversial policy of requiring PC players to sign in with PlayStation accounts for some games, according to a blog post by the company.

A PlayStation account will “become optional” for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. Sony hasn’t lost hope that players will still go ahead and use a PlayStation account, though, as it’s tying several benefits to signing in.

Logging in with PlayStation will be required to access trophies, the PlayStation equivalent of achievements. (Steam achievements appear to be supported regardless.) It will also allow friend management, provided you have social contacts on the PlayStation Network.

Additionally, Sony is providing some small in-game rewards to each title that are available if you log in with its account system. You’ll get early unlocks of the Spider-Man 2099 Black Suit and the Miles Morales 2099 Suit in Spider-Man 2, for example—or the Nora Valiant outfit in Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Some of these rewards are available via other means within the games, such as the Armor of the Black Bear set for Kratos in Ragnarok.

Sony removes PlayStation account requirement from 4 single-player Steam games Read More »

Author name: Mike M.