Enlarge / A number of big-name Xbox and PlayStation games are on sale this weekend. (credit: Ars Technica)

This weekend edition of the Dealmaster is focused exclusively on video game discounts for PlayStation and Xbox owners, as both Sony and Microsoft kicked off wide-ranging sales on their respective online stores earlier this week. The former’s PlayStation Summer Sale runs through August 18—with Sony promising a second batch of discounts arriving on August 4—while the latter’s Xbox Ultimate Game Sale will last through August 5.

These are not the first sweeping sales each company has run on its digital shops this summer, but as before, the new promotions discount several hundred games across last- and current-gen consoles (plus a few PC games, in Microsoft’s case). Also like before, most of the offers advertised in each sale aren’t great deals, either because the game in question is lackluster or because the discount isn’t much lower than the street price we’ve seen in recent months.

So, as we like to do with the Dealmaster, we’ve looked through the entirety of Sony’s and Microsoft’s selections so you don’t have to, picking out the genuine deals along the way.

Enlarge / Cooling water is only one factor that limits the productivity of nuclear power plants. (credit: Getty Images)

With extreme weather causing power failures in California and Texas, it’s increasingly clear that the existing power infrastructure isn’t designed for these new conditions. Past research has shown that nuclear power plants are no exception, with rising temperatures creating cooling problems for them. Now, a comprehensive analysis looking at a broader range of climate events shows that it’s not just hot weather that puts these plants at risk—it’s the full range of climate disturbances.

Heat has been one of the most direct threats, as higher temperatures mean that the natural cooling sources (rivers, oceans, lakes) are becoming less efficient heat sinks. However, this new analysis shows that hurricanes and typhoons have become the leading causes of nuclear outages, at least in North America and South and East Asia. Precautionary shutdowns for storms are routine, and so this finding is perhaps not so surprising. But other factors—like the clogging of cooling intake pipes by unusually abundant jellyfish populations—are a bit less obvious.

Overall this latest analysis calculates that the frequency of climate-related nuclear plant outages is almost eight times higher than it was in the 1990s. The analysis also estimates that the global nuclear fleet will lose up 1.4 percent—about 36 TWh—of its energy production in the next 40 years, and up to 2.4 percent, or 61 TWh, by 2081-2100.

Enlarge / Apple’s and Roku’s new remotes are a welcome upgrade to their respective streaming experiences, and they’re compatible with older models. (credit: Corey Gaskin)

Apple and Roku know that remotes for streaming devices are important. It’s why they recently inked a deal to put an Apple TV+ button on Roku remotes going forward. It’s also why they’ve made some thoughtful upgrades to their respective streaming devices in the form of redesigned remotes. Both companies are focused on improving usability and adding features via the remote, rather than retooling the streamers themselves.

Apple’s new Siri Remote and Roku’s Voice Remote Pro are new devices that existing users can buy to make their streaming experiences much less frustrating (in Apple’s case) or easier and more feature-rich (in Roku’s). For Apple, a redesign was long overdue. Apple TV remotes have been the stuff of nightmares since the first and only redesign over half a decade ago. Roku’s remotes never had that sort of over-engineering problem—instead, they’ve suffered from the opposite issue, often feeling hollow and cheap while missing some useful functions on all but the highest-end Roku players.

Now, these remotes aren’t in direct competition with one another. And in some key areas like price and wide-ranging support, the streamers they control both fall behind the latest Google Chromecast—a device we found preferable not just to those, but to Amazon’s Fire TV platform as well. But for anyone who’s already using a streaming option from Apple or Roku, scrapping those devices entirely could be a significant waste of money and a general pain depending on their setup. Adding one of these new remotes, though, will improve the experience appreciably.

Enlarge / Flag bearers Yui Susaki and Rui Hachimura of Team Japan lead their team out during the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on July 23, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (credit: Matthias Hangst | Getty Images)

Less than a week later, one of Lawson’s players—Katie Lou Samuelson, a power forward for the Seattle Storm—announced on Instagram that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and wouldn’t be able to go to Tokyo. Fast-paced, maybe, but not exactly unpredictable. As the 2020 Tokyo Games get underway, Samuelson is one of 91 people either in Tokyo for the Olympics or who were hoping to go who’ve tested positive for the disease, including US tennis player Coco Gauf, a Czech beach volleyball player, two South African soccer players, and so on.

Enlarge / A report this week indicates that the problem of high-caliber spyware is far more widespread than previously feared. (credit: Pau Barrena | Getty Images)

The shadowy world of private spyware has long caused alarm in cybersecurity circles, as authoritarian governments have repeatedly been caught targeting the smartphones of activists, journalists, and political rivals with malware purchased from unscrupulous brokers. The surveillance tools these companies provide frequently target iOS and Android, which have seemingly been unable to keep up with the threat. But a new report suggests the scale of the problem is far greater than feared—and has placed added pressure on mobile tech makers, particularly Apple, from security researchers seeking remedies.

This week, an international group of researchers and journalists from Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories, and more than a dozen other organizations published forensic evidence that a number of governments worldwide—including Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—may be customers of the notorious Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group. The researchers studied a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers associated with activists, journalists, executives, and politicians who were all potential surveillance targets. They also looked specifically at 37 devices infected with, or targeted by, NSO’s invasive Pegasus spyware. They even created a tool so you can check whether your iPhone has been compromised.

After years of speculation, NASA officially announced Friday that SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy would launch arguably the space agency’s most important Solar System exploration mission of the 2020s—the Europa Clipper.

Slated to launch in October 2024, the $4.25 billion mission will spend much of the remainder of this decade flying to the Jovian system before entering an elongated orbit around Jupiter. The spacecraft will then make as many as 44 flybys of Europa, the intriguing, ice-encrusted Jovian moon that scientists believe harbors a vast ocean beneath the surface. It is possible that aquatic life exists there.

The total contract award amount for launch services is approximately $178 million, NASA said in a news release. This is a significant moment for SpaceX, as the company will be entrusted with one of NASA’s highest priority exploration missions. The deal also saves NASA about $2 billion.

Enlarge / This photo has a job application for Boston University hidden within it. The technique introduced by Wang, Liu, and Cui could hide data inside an image classifier rather than just an image. (credit: Keith McDuffy CC-BY 2.0)

Researchers Zhi Wang, Chaoge Liu, and Xiang Cui published a paper last Monday demonstrating a new technique for slipping malware past automated detection tools—in this case, by hiding it inside a neural network.

The three embedded 36.9MiB of malware into a 178MiB AlexNet model without significantly altering the function of the model itself. The malware-embedded model classified images with near-identical accuracy, within 1% of the malware-free model. (This is possible because the number of layers and total neurons in a convolutional neural network is fixed prior to training—which means that, much like in human brains, many of the neurons in a trained model end up being either largely or entirely dormant.)

Just as importantly, squirreling the malware away into the model broke it up in ways that prevented detection by standard antivirus engines. VirusTotal, a service that “inspects items with over 70 antivirus scanners and URL/domain blocklisting services, in addition to a myriad of tools to extract signals from the studied content,” did not raise any suspicions about the malware-embedded model.

Enlarge / The exterior of the headquarters of biotechnology company Biogen in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

If you answered “no, never” to all of those questions, there’s a possibility that you may not actually be human. Nevertheless, you should still talk to a doctor about additional cognitive screenings to check if you have Alzheimer’s disease. At least, that’s the takeaway from a six-question quiz provided, in part, by Biogen, the maker of an unproven, $56,000 Alzheimer’s drug.

The six questions include the four above, plus questions about whether you ever lose your train of thought or ever get lost on your way to or around a familiar place. The questions not only bring up common issues that perfectly healthy people might face from time to time, but the answers any quiz-taker provides are also completely irrelevant. No matter how you answer—even if you say you never experience any of those issues—the quiz will always prompt you to talk with your doctor about cognitive screening. The results page even uses your zip code to provide a link to find an Alzheimer’s specialist near you.

Some of those questions have now been answered in a new teardown video by Charger Lab.

While there had been clues suggesting that the MagSafe Battery Pack measured in at just over 11 watt-hours, we weren’t 100% sure. Now we have confirmation. The battery pack has two identical batteries inside it, each labelled as 5.733 Wh. In total, the MagSafe Battery Pack has a capacity of 1460 mAh. And voltage? That’s 7.62V.

Enlarge / Blocking individual users in Google Drive! Finally! (credit: Google)

Google officially acknowledged the problem back in 2019, and the company said it was making spam controls “a priority.” Now, more than two years later, Google is finally rolling out the most basic of spam tools to Google Drive sharing—you can block individual email addresses! The company announced this feature in May, but the tool is rolling out to users over the next 15 days. Soon, once the spam arrives in your Google Drive, you’ll be able to click the menu button next to the item and choose “block user.”

Enlarge (credit: CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP)

If signed into law, the Health Misinformation Act would strip Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies of some immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently prevents Internet firms from being held liable for most content posted on their platforms. The carveout proposed by Klobuchar and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) would eliminate that legal shield in instances where a platform “promotes health misinformation through an algorithm,” the bill says.

Audi’s DTM program—think the German equivalent of NASCAR—ended at the end of 2020, and 2021 is the German automaker’s final year in Formula E. But the investment that Audi Sport made in both those programs will not go to waste, as aspects of each are combining to power an outrageous-looking machine designed to compete in the Dakar Rally. Unveiled online today, the car is called the Audi RS Q e-tron, and Audi says that campaigning it in one of the world’s toughest off-road races will let the company test and develop its electric powertrains “under extreme conditions.”

Although Audi’s racing exploits have mostly taken place on the confines of race tracks for the last few decades, the brand has a strong link with rallying; it used the World Rally Championship in the 1980s to demonstrate its quattro all-wheel-drive technology. They might both involve rallying, but Dakar is a tougher challenge than the WRC, as it’s contested over two weeks in remote places, with distances of 500 miles (800 km) a day.

“That’s a very long distance,” says Andreas Roos, who is responsible for the Dakar project at Audi Sport. “What we are trying to do has never been done before. This is the ultimate challenge for an electric drivetrain.”

Enlarge / A Wear OS watch. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Google has provided a few more details about its upcoming Wear OS update plans. As we’ve reported, Google and Samsung are teaming up to resurrect the struggling Wear OS. Samsung is ditching Tizen watches and bringing its Exynos SoCs to the Wear OS platform, and Google will start Wear OS development again after mostly ignoring the operating system for the past few years.

The post on the official Wear OS forums is titled “What Wear OS 3 means for you,” and it describes what will be a rocky transition to the new OS. First, it’s important to note that the post is formally calling the revamped Wear OS “Wear OS 3,” a detail Google has left out of all its official statements so far, opting for “unified platform,” “the new version of Wear OS,” or some other clunky descriptor. It’s version 3! This lines up with our count; it’s the first major Wear OS update since Wear OS 2 in 2018.

Next, we get a list of devices being updated from Wear OS 2 to 3. It’s not long:

Enlarge / For now, it’s time to unplug when you get to 90 percent state of charge. (credit: Chevrolet)

In November 2020, General Motors issued a recall of the Chevrolet Bolt EV due to a potential fire risk. Unfortunately for Bolt EV owners, that fix—a software patch—did not work, and now their cars are subject to a second recall. General Motors will replace battery modules in the affected cars, which span model years 2017-2019.

The problem started making headlines in October 2020, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began an investigation into the electric hatchback following a number of reports of vehicle fires. GM tried to fix the problem with software, at first temporarily limiting the Bolt EVs’ batteries from charging past 90 percent.

A more permanent fix was made available in May 2021. During the course of GM’s investigation together with LG Chem (which makes the lithium-ion battery cells), the companies discovered in some modules “a rare manufacturing defect” that could cause a short and thereby start a battery fire. The solution was to let diagnostic software monitor for this defect and alert the owner if detected.

Enlarge (credit: Blue Origin)

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.

Jeff Bezos blasts off. Will Blue Origin follow? On Tuesday morning, the founder of Amazon fulfilled a lifelong dream of flying into space aboard a rocket and capsule he personally funded. “Best day ever,” Bezos said after landing safely beneath three parachutes. “My expectations were high, and they were dramatically exceeded.” It was a great day for Blue Origin and its beautifully engineered New Shepard launch system.