Enlarge / On Friday afternoon, Coinbase sent email and SMS text messages to 125,000 customers, erroneously telling them that their 2FA settings had been changed. (credit: SOPA Images)

According to Coinbase’s own acknowledgment Saturday, its system began sending the erroneous messages at 1:45PM Pacific time on Friday, and kept sending them until the error was mitigated at 3:07PM.

In that Twitter thread, Coinbase acknowledges the mistaken 2FA messages’ potential for confusion—confusion which retiree Don Pirtle told CNBC led him to panic-sell more than $60,000 of cryptocurrency. Pirtle was holding this large wallet as an investment for his grandson, so the panicked sale may have been as much blessing as curse—he now questions whether cryptocurrency was a safe investment in the first place.

Enlarge / An interdisciplinary team of roboticists, engineers and biologists modeled the mechanics of the mantis shrimp’s punch and built a robot that mimics the movement. (credit: Second Bay Studios and Roy Caldwell/Harvard SEAS)

The mantis shrimp boasts one of the most powerful, ultrafast punches in nature—it’s on par with the force generated by a .22 caliber bullet. This makes the creature an attractive object of study for scientists eager to learn more about the relevant biomechanics. Among other uses, it could lead to small robots capable of equally fast, powerful movements. Now a team of Harvard University researchers have come up with a new biomechanical model for the mantis shrimp’s mighty appendage, and they built a tiny robot to mimic that movement, according to a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“We are fascinated by so many remarkable behaviors we see in nature, in particular when these behaviors meet or exceed what can be achieved by human-made devices,” said senior author Robert Wood, a roboticist at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). “The speed and force of mantis shrimp strikes, for example, are a consequence of a complex underlying mechanism. By constructing a robotic model of a mantis shrimp striking appendage, we are able to study these mechanisms in unprecedented detail.”

Wood’s research group made headlines several years ago when they constructed RoboBee, a tiny robot capable of partially untethered flight. The ultimate goal of that initiative is to build a swarm of tiny interconnected robots capable of sustained untethered flight—a significant technological challenge, given the insect-sized scale, which changes the various forces at play. In 2019, Wood’s group announced their achievement of the lightest insect-scale robot so far to have achieved sustained, untethered flight—an improved version called the RoboBee X-Wing. (Kenny Breuer, writing in Nature, described it as a “a tour de force of system design and engineering.”)

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

“It is absurd that this order was issued,” Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told Ars. “If I were these doctors, I simply wouldn’t do it.”

The order was spurred by a lawsuit filed by Julie Smith, whose 51-year-old husband, Jeffrey, is being treated in West Chester Hospital for COVID-19. The lawsuit was first reported by the Ohio Capital Journal. Jeffrey has been in the hospital since July 15, and as his condition declined, his wife Julie began investigating alternative treatments.

Enlarge / LaPlace, Louisiana: Jacqueline Smith waits with her mother Lucille Matthew for transportation after they were rescued from their flooded neighborhood in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on August 30, 2021. (credit: Getty Images | Scott Olson)

“Our Louisiana wireless network is operating at 60 percent of normal and we have significant outages in New Orleans and Baton Rouge due to power outages, flooding and storm damage,” AT&T said in a network-status update. “We had key network facilities go offline overnight, and while some have already been restored, some facilities remain down and are inaccessible due to flooding and storm damage.”

AT&T said it has “mobilized additional disaster recovery equipment in the region to assist in the recovery and will work around the clock until service is restored.” AT&T said its wireless network in Alabama is operating normally and that it’s “seen only a very small wireless impact in Mississippi.”

Enlarge / Two classrooms had to be shut down due to a series of problems with maintaining policies meant to limit the spread of the pandemic. (credit: Andrew Lichtenstein / Getty Images)

On Friday, the CDC released a report that traced the spread of the delta variant through a California elementary school. It’s tempting to make this into a story of gross irresponsibility—a teacher was unvaccinated and read to the class while unmasked. But beyond that, it provides a number of warnings about how our public health system remains under stress as we close in on two years since the start of the pandemic. It also reemphasizes how the delta variant ensures that small errors can easily explode into big problems.

One bad apple

The school in question was a small one, with only a bit over 200 students and 24 staff. It is an elementary school, meaning that its student population is also younger than the cutoff for approved vaccine use. The school did a number of things right, though. Class sizes were kept small, and individual classes were kept in separate rooms, with doors and windows kept open and air filtration equipment installed. There was also a standing policy requiring mask use in place.

But not everything was ideal. The CDC notes that two of the 24 staff members were unvaccinated. While the vaccinated can clearly transmit the delta variant, they are likely to be less infectious, and in a worst case they’d be infectious for a shorter period of time.

Before Samsung showed up and took over the Wear OS ecosystem, the top Android smartwatch manufacturer was Fossil. Even after Samsung’s arrival, Fossil is still going, and today the company announced the Fossil Gen 6 watches.

The Gen 6 Fossil watches are the company’s first to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 4100+, a 12 nm, Cortex A53-based ARM chip. The “plus” at the end of that 4100 model number means there’s a low-power co-process on the SoC now, which can handle things like health tracking without waking up the big cores. It looks like the new SoC is the only upgrade over the gen 5 watches. There’s still a 1.28-inch OLED display, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. Fossil doesn’t say how big the battery is, but it charges to 80 percent in 30 minutes. The watch has GPS, NFC, Wi-Fi, a PPG heart rate sensor, and is water-resistant.

Fossil’s new watches range from $299 to $319, and compared to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4’s $250-$350 price, Fossil’s new watches don’t make a ton of sense in a post-Samsung Wear OS world.

Over the weekend, Sony’s curious new PlayStation 5 hardware revision—same price, same performance, slightly changed internals—began finding its way into fans’ hands, and at least one rushed to figure out exactly why it weighs 0.6 lb less than the launch model. The most obvious answer, at least parceled out on a measuring scale, is a smaller, wholly redesigned heatsink element, though the person behind the discovery didn’t necessarily make the right call about this PS5 revision being “worse.”

Tech reporter Austin Evans posted his findings on YouTube on Saturday, after sourcing a new Japanese PS5 and upgrading his purchase to overnight shipping (holy bank account, Batman). The resulting breakdown is informative, though not entirely authoritative. Evans and fellow YouTuber Jimmy Champane tore down both the new PS5 and a launch model in short order, noticing almost immediately that the newer heatsink takes up far less physical real estate. Before the teardown is complete, one visible heatsink portion near the system’s primary fan is reduced enough that a finger can fit in, but that’s nothing compared to the final comparison.

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  Old PS5 heatsink (left), new “11-series” PS5 heatsink (right). [credit:
  Austin Evans
  ]

The launch model’s heatsink included a complete airflow-encompassing plate of copper, along with conductive metal all along the way. The updated heatsink, on the other hand, has been re-engineered to reduce both the base copper plate and the amount of metal attached to the cooling system’s heat pipes, all while leaving the heat pipe concept intact—and likely still relying on a liquid metal application on PS5’s System-on-Chip (SoC). After weighing the two consoles while fully assembled, Evans then weighed the extracted heatsink constructions, finding these accounted for nearly the entirety of the 0.6 lb difference.

Enlarge / Students practicing computer games in an eSports class at the Lanxiang technical school in Jinan, in China’s eastern Shandong province, on January 29, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | AFP | Greg Baker)

“Gaming companies will be barred from providing services to minors in any form outside the stipulated hours and must ensure they have put real-name verification systems in place, said the regulator, which oversees the country’s video games market,” a Reuters article said. “Previously, China had limited the length of time under-18s could play video games to 1.5 hours on any day and three hours on holidays under 2019 rules.”

People under 18 will reportedly be allowed to play video games only from 8pm to 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays—limiting minors to three hours most weeks and not even letting them choose which three hours. Young people are reportedly prohibited from gaming at any time from Monday to Thursday each week under the new rules, which apply to all devices, including phones.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | naruecha jenthaisong)

The judge said that until Firlit receives the vaccine, she cannot see her son in person, according to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times. Since the hearing, her interactions with him have been limited to phone calls and care packages. It’s unclear what prompted Shapiro to ask the question, and the Cook County clerk’s website was down for maintenance at the time of publication.

Enlarge / The latest Windows focuses heavily on improved task management, prettier UI, and a much more ambitious Microsoft Store. (credit: Microsoft)

There are still a lot of question marks about running Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. We know that Microsoft won’t go to extraordinary lengths to keep you from running it, we know that the new OS won’t be offered to older PCs automatically using Windows Update, and we know that although Microsoft’s preferred security settings can degrade performance on older hardware, those settings still won’t be the defaults for new installs. But now, Microsoft has added another question to that list: Will unsupported PCs be able to get updates?

The company hasn’t out-and-out refused to offer updates for PCs that don’t meet the official requirements, but Microsoft told The Verge that old PCs running Windows 11 wouldn’t be “entitled” to Windows Updates, including security and driver updates. Assuming Windows 11 receives major updates once every six months or so, as Windows 10 does, those releases may also need to be installed manually on unsupported computers.

However updating unsupported PCs works in Windows 11, it’s clear that Microsoft doesn’t want to encourage the use of the operating system on PCs that don’t meet the minimum performance and security requirements. The news that unsupported Windows 11 installs would be allowed at all was told to reporters on background, and not announced in last week’s official post on the Windows blog. The company has told us that running Windows 11 on unsupported PCs was “not recommended” and that these installs are best used for temporary test machines and not hardware you rely on day-to-day. The company has continually reminded users that Windows 10 will be receiving a 21H2 update in the fall and that it will get security updates through October 14, 2025. It all adds up to a giant implied “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

Enlarge / Hurricane Ida had a distinct eye as it approached the Louisiana coast on Sunday morning. (credit: NOAA)

Hurricane Ida roared into the southern US state of Louisiana on Sunday at 11:55 am local time (16:55 UTC) with sustained winds of 150 mph. The storm’s distinct eye moved into the state’s southernmost seaport, Port Fourchon, setting about destroying buildings and scattering boats moored nearby.

But Ida did not stop there. Instead of weakening as it marched northward toward the larger cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Ida appeared to maintain its organization with a distinct eye and even small vortices rotating around the center of the storm.

I count 4 mesovortices rotating around the outer portion of #Ida‘s eye, evident in the low cloud field. And the eye is now *completely over land*! I don’t think I’ve seen this before with a storm over land. #GOES16 pic.twitter.com/34i1ovISZp

— Dan Lindsey (@DanLindsey77) August 29, 2021

Ida brought many forms of devastation to Louisiana. Its storm surge swamped coastal areas and pushed water levels to flooding levels in Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans. Heavy rains flooded low-lying areas of the state.

Enlarge (credit: jozefmicic via Getty Images)

Trying to read the man pages for the utilities most frequently seen in these extended command chains didn’t make them seem more approachable, either. For example, the sed man page weighs in at around 1,800 words alone without ever really explaining how regular expressions work or the most common uses of sed itself.

If you find yourself in the same boat, grab a beverage and buckle in. Instead of giving you encyclopedic listings of every possible argument and use case for each of these ubiquitous commands, we’re going to teach you how to think about them—and how to easily, productively incorporate them in your own daily command-line use.

Enlarge / More and more these days, your ability to play new games depends on the quality of your Internet connection. (credit: Sean MacEntee / Flickr)

Pointing out the frustration of large day-one updates has been a feature of the gaming industry for more than a decade now. The topic perhaps reached its global breakthrough with the November 13 announcement that the Xbox One would require a day-one update to function. More recently, the Xbox Series X requires a one-time online check-in before some disc-based games will work.

Both Sony and Microsoft also introduced disc-drive-free options for their latest consoles, perhaps presaging the day when those drives are gone from consoles for good. And that’s not even mentioning the many multiplayer games that require a strong online connection for a reasonable play experience or the offline games that require not only day-one updates, but sometimes months of patching and downloadable fixes before they begin to resemble the product which consumers had hoped for.

Enlarge / The high-contract backgrounds in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart are just one of the more prominent examples of game designs tuned for the visually impaired. (credit: Sony)

According to a recent study, more than 2 percent of the US population can’t play video games due to poor accessibility options. This same study suggests more than 9 percent are unable to enjoy the traditional gaming experience because of visual, cognitive, or physical impairments. Additional research suggests 20 percent of the casual gaming audience is disabled in some fashion.

That amounts to millions of disabled players who are locked out of games because of a lack of support. But after decades in which accessibility options were absent or an afterthought, game developers in recent years have shown an increasing willingness to cater to this audience explicitly.

The Last of Us Part 2 launched in 2020 with a wide array of heightened accessibility options, for instance. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla offers multiple forms of eye-tracking support, as well as colorblind options for the visually impaired.

Enlarge / Even if the power comes back after the next big solar storm, the internet may not. (credit: Jean Claude Moschetti | REA | REDUX)

Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to Internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on Internet infrastructure specifically. New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global Internet.

At the SIGCOMM 2021 data communication conference on Thursday, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi of the University of California, Irvine presented “Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse,” an examination of the damage a fast-moving cloud of magnetized solar particles could cause the global Internet. Abdu Jyothi’s research points out an additional nuance to a blackout-causing solar storm: the scenario where even if power returns in hours or days, mass Internet outages persist.