Dish Network has agreed to pay AT&T at least $5 billion over 10 years for network access amid a feud between Dish and T-Mobile.

Dish is in the early stages of building a 5G network and in the meantime is serving customers as a reseller using network capacity that it purchases from T-Mobile. But Dish and T-Mobile are fighting over T-Mobile’s plan to shut down its 3G CDMA network earlier than it originally intended, with Dish accusing T-Mobile of anticompetitive behavior.

With the rapid rise of the highly transmissible delta variant and national vaccination efforts largely stalled, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage among the unvaccinated in the US—and things are looking grim.

Cases of COVID-19 are rising in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Right now, the states with the highest averages for daily new cases per 100,000 people are Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Louisiana, and Nevada, which all have below-average vaccination rates. Nationwide, average daily cases are up 140 percent over the past two weeks. Hospitalizations and deaths, which lag behind increases in cases by weeks, are also up 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

A recently assembled Leonardo da Vinci family tree, spanning 21 generations from 1331 to the present, could pave the way for DNA testing that might confirm whether the bones interred in da Vinci’s grave are actually his. Two art historians’ hopes of uncovering a genetic explanation for the Renaissance artist’s brilliance, however, will probably be doomed by scientific reality.

Da Vinci’s modern family

To construct the family tree, art historians Alessandro Vezzosi and Agnese Sabato dug through birth, death, and property records spanning the last 690 years. They also interviewed surviving relatives to learn more about the famous artist, scientist, and inventor’s modern extended family. In the end, they traced da Vinci’s family from his grandfather, born in 1331, to the 14 relatives living today. Leonardo da Vinci himself had no children, and his modern relatives all descend from his 22 (!) half-siblings.

The present family played an essential role in the new study. “Many of them have collaborated, together with their relatives, to the collection and verification of information,” wrote Vezzosi and Sabato, “helping enthusiastically to contact other family members and retrieve new documents and images.” Those many-times-great nieces and nephews include several office workers (one of whom served as a naval gunner in the 1960s), a retired upholsterer, a surveyor, and a state employee who is “passionate about motorcycling and music.” The oldest is now 85 years old, and the youngest is just one year old.

Smartphones belonging to more than three dozen journalists, human rights activists, and business executives have been infected with powerful spyware that an Israeli firm sells, purportedly to catch terrorists and criminals, The Washington Post and other publications reported.

The handsets were infected with Pegasus, full-featured spyware developed by NSO Group. The Israel-based exploit seller has come under intense scrutiny in recent years after repressive governments in the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and other countries have been found using the malware against journalists, activists, and other groups not affiliated with terrorism or crime.

Pegasus is frequently installed through “zero-click” exploits, such as those sent by text messages, which require no interaction from victims. After the exploits surreptitiously jailbreak or root a target’s iPhone or Android device, Pegasus immediately trawls through a wealth of the device’s resources. It copies call histories, text messages, calendar entries, and contacts. It is capable of activating the cameras and microphones of compromised phones to eavesdrop on nearby activities. It can also track a target’s movements and steal messages from end-to-end encrypted chat apps.

Apple pushed out new versions of its iOS, tvOS, and watchOS operating systems for iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch devices on Monday. Dubbed iOS 14.7, tvOS 14.7, and watchOS 7.6, the updates are relatively small and include tweaks, bug fixes, and a minor new feature or two.

The primary impetus for the iOS update seems to be added support for the recently launched MagSafe Battery Pack that is compatible with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lines.

Additionally, Apple Card holders can now “combine credit limits and share one account with an existing Apple Card user,” a new option that Apple first announced earlier this year.

The US government blamed the Chinese government on Monday for attacks on thousands of Microsoft Exchange servers.

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  With an MSRP of $3,959,900, the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport is the most expensive car we’ve ever tested at Ars. [credit:
  Jonathan Gitlin ]

I’m not sure anything can adequately prepare you to drive a modern Bugatti. If the thought of more than a megawatt of power under your right foot isn’t daunting enough, there’s the price tag. The Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport that we tested goes for $3,959,000. All press test drives require the presence of a chaperone—in our case, the affable Butch Leitzinger, one of a handful of racing drivers that Bugatti employs for this reason.

In fact, the car is so far out of the normal frame of reference that it’s perhaps even more daunting to write about than to drive, as evinced by the fact that it has taken me many weeks to properly marshal these words.

President Joe Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy spent the last several days hammering social media companies for their platforms’ roles in spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

Officials with the rocket company Blue Origin said they remain on track for their first human spaceflight on Tuesday, which will carry founder Jeff Bezos and three other passengers on a suborbital hop 100 km above West Texas.

Steve Lanias, the lead flight director for the mission, said during a call with reporters that engineers completed a “Flight Readiness Review” for the launch over the weekend and found the New Shepard rocket and capsule to be in perfect condition. Weather, too, looks reasonable with any early morning storms expected to pass before the anticipated liftoff time of 8 am CT (13:00 UTC).

Bezos and the other three passengers—his brother, Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and a paying customer from the Netherlands named Oliver Daemen—underwent about 14 hours of training this weekend across two days. Their flight will be entirely autonomous. After launch the capsule will separate from the rocket, and the passengers will have about three minutes of weightlessness before they must strap back into their seats for the return to Earth. Upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere the passengers will experience about 5 Gs as gravity exerts itself on the returning vehicle.