Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testifies about AI rules before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law on May 16, 2023, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Win McNamee )

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E, announced Friday that co-founder and CEO Sam Altman will be departing the company and vacating his seat on the board. CTO Mira Murati has been appointed interim CEO effective immediately, according to a blog post from the board of directors.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the blog reads, in part. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

“We are grateful for Sam’s many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI,” the board writes in a prepared statement. “At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward.”

Enlarge / Artist’s conception of a gamma-ray burst. (credit: NASA)

An astounding gamma-ray burst, dubbed GRB 221009A, continues to amaze even though it has been more than a year since it was detected. Scientists from Italy have recently published a study that shows how our planet’s ionosphere was impacted as a result of its high intensity and long duration.

The ionosphere is one of the Earth’s atmospheric layers, stretching from 60 km to more than 950 km in altitude. Containing electrically charged plasma, its lower half, called the bottom-side, extends until 350 km. Beyond 350 km lies the upper half, called the top-side.

Charging the top-side

According to Mirko Piersanti, who is a professor at the University of L’Aquila, gamma-ray burst effects have often been observed in the bottom-side but rarely in the top-side of the ionosphere. “That’s because the plasma density and conductivity in the top-side is much lower than the bottom-side. Also, to observe this effect, you need a satellite that can make observations, orbiting in this layer,” Piersanti said.

Enlarge (credit: University of Arizona)

The hugely popular British quiz show Mastermind has been a fixture on BBC television since its debut in 1972, spawning multiple international versions as well as a video game and countless parodies. Now it has inspired researchers at the University of Arizona, Tucson, to use several recent seasons as a “real-world” lab to study physiological responses to stress, according to a new paper published in the journal Psychophysiology. The findings reaffirmed some prior conclusions of lab-based studies and contradicted others. The Arizona team also found that random variations in the time the host takes to ask different questions means that Mastermind is not perfectly “fair” when it comes to determining the winner.

Why a game show? According to the authors, it’s because lab-based experiments in psychology have inherent limitations, in that it is simply too difficult to accurately reproduce complex human cognition in such a controlled setting—particularly when studying things like stress and cognition. “The stakes are too low, the tasks too simple, participants are often bored, and the equipment, such as MRI scanners, too cumbersome, making lab-based experiments a poor reflection of real-world cognition,” the authors wrote.

A seminal 1927 study by Eric Ponder and W.P. Kennedy on whether blinking increases when people are under stress is an illustrative case. Ponder and Kennedy initially tried to prove this connection in a lab-based setting with participants hooked up to clunky, uncomfortable devices to measure blink frequency. But they only succeeded in generating the appropriate degree of stress in the test subjects once, when a frustrated participant became genuinely angry. They turned instead to surreptitiously measuring the blink frequency of witnesses under hostile cross-examination in a courtroom. That did the trick, confirming Ponder and Kennedy’s hypothesis that blinking does indeed increase in stressful situations.

Enlarge / The OnePlus 11. (credit: OnePlus)

The release of Android 14 to the rest of the Android ecosystem is slowly happening. Today, OnePlus is joining the party, with the flagship OnePlus 11 getting the update. The company posted the news on its forum.

The update is first launching in India, OnePlus’ biggest market, but there’s no reason for other markets to not get the update quickly. Phone manufacturers like to roll out these new Android updates slowly, and for now, the “stable” release is opt-in via the beta program.

What will you be getting with your exciting new Android 14 update? Honestly, there’s not a lot to care about here. OnePlus’ OS is now so heavy that it paves over many of the Android 14 changes. A customizable lock screen was one of the few user-facing changes in Android 14, but OnePlus, which has its own lock screen, isn’t offering that. You should still get the included performance improvements, a block for often-malicious old app updates, and one or two permission changes. The small update size is probably why companies are getting the new Android release out the door in record time this year. The OS was released 44 days ago, and Xiaomi, Samsung, and OnePlus have all started rolling it out.

Enlarge / Candy-coated color correction. (credit: Valve)

With the release of the Steam Deck OLED this week, Valve has greatly improved on the “ho-hum” screen that was our biggest complaint about the original Steam Deck. But Valve hasn’t forgotten about users who are still stuck using that old LCD display. Thursday’s stable release of SteamOS version 3.5.5 offers a suite of free, system-level updates to improve and tweak the display performance on the original Steam Deck.

The release notes for the new SteamOS boast of much-needed improvements to the “default color rendering” on the Steam Deck LCD, which should help the older hardware “emulate the sRGB color gamut, resulting in a slightly warmer and more vibrant color appearance,” Valve writes. Even better, a new “adjust display colors” option in the settings menu now lets users easily adjust both the color vibrancy and color temperature to best fit their preferences and the games they’re playing. Before the new update, these kinds of options were only available to users who went to the trouble of installing third-party plug-ins. Now, Valve has finally brought these basic adjustments to the Steam Deck-owning masses.

• 

  Native color vibrancy shows “the color rendering for Steam Deck prior to this update” [credit:
  Kyle Orland / Valve ]

The results, as you can see in the gallery of off-screen photos above, can have a dramatic impact on the look of in-game scenes. You can see a noticeable difference going from “Native” color vibrance (which Valve describes as “the color rendering for Steam Deck prior to this update”) to the new “default” sRGB rendering. There’s an even bigger change when you crank the vibrance slider all the way to “Boosted,” which Valve says should “emulate a wider-gamut display appearance, resulting in increased apparent vibrance.”

Enlarge (credit: Leon Neal / Staff | Getty Images Europe)

Outcry over antisemitic content on X (formerly Twitter) continues as the White House condemns a post from X owner Elon Musk and IBM halts advertising on the platform after a Media Matters report showed one of its ads was placed next to pro-Hitler content.

“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination, and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” an IBM spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars.

Media Matters’ report came a day after X owner Elon Musk sparked outrage by endorsing an X post that referenced an antisemitic conspiracy theory that “hordes of minorities” are flooding Western countries and claimed that Jews have been “pushing hatred” against White people. Since Musk responded to that post—saying, “you have said the actual truth”—it has been viewed more than 1 million times. The exchange drew so much controversy that a White House spokesperson, Andrew Bates, released a statement condemning Musk’s post.

Enlarge / A baby with measles. (credit: CDC)

The World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are sounding the alarm over the global rise of measles cases, deaths, and outbreaks as vaccination rates struggle to recover from a crash during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Between 2000 and 2019, estimated worldwide coverage of the first dose of a measles-containing vaccine rose from 72 percent to 86 percent. But amid the global public health crisis in 2020, the vaccination rate fell to 83 percent, and then to 81 percent in 2021—the lowest since 2008.

According to a new joint report by WHO and the CDC published this week, coverage of first-dose measles vaccines recovered slightly in 2022, rising to 83 percent. But of 194 WHO countries, only 65 (34 percent) reached a target vaccination rate of 95 percent or above for the first measles vaccine. Further, two doses are needed to stop the disease, and the estimated coverage rate for two doses was only 74 percent in 2022, up from 71 percent in 2021. Overall, the gains in vaccination weren’t enough to prevent a comeback from the highly contagious and sometimes deadly virus.

Enlarge / A screenshot of the Cambridge Dictionary website where it announced its 2023 word of the year, “hallucinate.” (credit: Cambridge Dictionary)

On Wednesday, Cambridge Dictionary announced that its 2023 word of the year is “hallucinate,” owing to the popularity of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, which sometimes produce erroneous information. The Dictionary also published an illustrated site explaining the term, saying, “When an artificial intelligence hallucinates, it produces false information.”

“The Cambridge Dictionary team chose hallucinate as its Word of the Year 2023 as it recognized that the new meaning gets to the heart of why people are talking about AI,” the dictionary writes. “Generative AI is a powerful tool but one we’re all still learning how to interact with safely and effectively—this means being aware of both its potential strengths and its current weaknesses.”

As we’ve previously covered in various articles, “hallucination” in relation to AI originated as a term of art in the machine learning space. As LLMs entered mainstream use through applications like ChatGPT late last year, the term spilled over into general use and began to cause confusion among some, who saw it as unnecessary anthropomorphism. Cambridge Dictionary’s first definition of hallucination (for humans) is “to seem to see, hear, feel, or smell something that does not exist.” It involves perception from a conscious mind, and some object to that association.

Enlarge / Falcon 9 interstage from the right. Note grid fins. (credit: Lee Hutchinson)

SpaceX’s Starship rocket did not launch on Friday morning from South Texas as intended because the company had to replace the actuator on a grid fin. The rocket is now being prepared for a launch during a tight window on Saturday morning, from 7 to 7:20 am local time.

Here’s an explanation of why grid fins are so important to the rocket’s flight—or, more precisely, its landing.

A little Falcon 9 history

The better part of a decade ago, SpaceX maneuvered an autonomous drone ship into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time with the intent of catching a falling rocket.

Enlarge / The heart of the Heart Nebula.

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

The pressure tactic came to light in a post published on Wednesday on the dark web site run by AlphV, a ransomware crime syndicate that’s been in operation for two years. After first claiming to have breached the network of the publicly traded digital lending company MeridianLink, AlphV officials posted a screenshot of a complaint it said it filed with the SEC through the agency’s website. Under a recently adopted rule that goes into effect next month, publicly traded companies must file an SEC disclosure within four days of learning of a security incident that had a “material” impact on their business.

“We want to bring to your attention a concerning issue regarding MeridianLink’s compliance with the recently adopted cybersecurity incident disclosure rules,” AlphV officials wrote in the complaint. “It has come to our attention that MeridianLink, in light of a significant breach compromising customer data and operational information, has failed to file the requisite disclosure under item 1.05 of form 8-K within the stipulated four business days, as mandated by the new SEC rules.”

Enlarge / McLaren Automotive got its start with the clinical MP4-12C. The 750S is an evolutionary descendant of that car and shows how far McLaren has come since 2011. (credit: McLaren)

What do you get the supercar that has everything? McLaren must have been thinking about that question when it came time to give the already rather good 720S a bit of a midlife refresh. The answer is more power, less weight, and a raft of updates here and there that make the new McLaren 750S more useable but also even better on track, if that’s your thing.

Starting from a standard configuration, a 750S weighs 3,062 lbs (1,388 kg), 66 lbs (30 kg) less than the car it’s replacing. But if you select the right combination of options, from single-piece carbon fiber racing seats to titanium wheel bolts, you can trim that down even further—McLaren says to as little as 2,815 lbs (1,277 kg), but that’s a dry weight.

Regardless, the all-carbon fiber construction results in a car that’s both very stiff and lighter than the competition. And the penalty for switching to a retractable hardtop roof is just 108 lbs (50 kg), although it does bring the car’s center of gravity up a smidge.

Enlarge / UnitedHealthcare (UHC) health insurance company signage is displayed on an office building in Phoenix on July 19, 2023. (credit: Getty | Patrick Fallon)

That’s all according to a lawsuit filed this week in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota. The lawsuit is brought by the estates of two deceased people who were denied health coverage by UnitedHealth. The suit also seeks class-action status for similarly situated people, of which there may be tens of thousands across the country.

The lawsuit lands alongside an investigation by Stat News that largely backs the lawsuit’s claims. The investigation’s findings stem from internal documents and communications the outlet obtained, as well as interviews with former employees of NaviHealth, the UnitedHealth subsidiary that developed the AI algorithm called nH Predict.

Enlarge / A shot of tldraw’s “Make it Real” in action, provided by Ashe on X: “Ok…@tldraw
is super fun. I iterated through ~10 builds today and it cost me $0.90 using GPT4. The pong game is playable as described.” (credit: Ashe Oro)

On Wednesday, a collaborative whiteboard app maker called “tldraw” made waves online by releasing a prototype of a feature called “Make it Real” that lets users draw an image of software and bring it to life using AI. The feature uses OpenAI’s GPT-4V API to visually interpret a vector drawing into functioning Tailwind CSS and JavaScript web code that can replicate user interfaces or even create simple implementations of games like Breakout.

“I think I need to go lie down,” posted designer Kevin Cannon at the start of a viral X thread that featured the creation of functioning sliders that rotate objects on screen, an interface for changing object colors, and a working game of tic-tac-toe. Soon, others followed with demonstrations of drawing a clone of Breakout, creating a working dial clock that ticks, drawing the snake game, making a Pong game, interpreting a visual state chart, and much more.

Users can experiment with a live demo of Make It Real online. However, running it requires providing an API key from OpenAI, which is a security risk. If others intercept your API key, they could use it to rack up a very large bill in your name (OpenAI charges by the amount of data moving into and out of its API). Those technically inclined can run the code locally, but it will still require OpenAI API access.

Enlarge / Sonos notes that its Arc soundbar pairs “Dolby Atmos and the upward-firing drivers,” which some users have not enjoyed during cacophonous pops. (credit: Sonos)

A bang, a gunshot, a “pop of death“: Some owners of Sonos’ Arc and second-gen Beam soundbars have been dealing with a striking audio disruption with their audio systems since at least December 2020.

The issue now has a fix, and it should already be available to users. Updating a Sonos mobile or desktop app and then checking for system updates should push the changes to Sonos speakers.

A Sonos staff member writes that the Arc and Beam soundbars “in certain home theater configurations process Dolby MAT,” which delivers Atmos audio over HDMI connections. Sonos products could receive corrupted audio from that connection but were failing to filter out those bits, playing them instead. The corrupted audio “can manifest as a popping sound.” The Sonos devices’ improved Dolby decoder should no longer force listeners to hear what it sounds like when digital audio transmissions go awry.

Enlarge / Screen capture from a demo video of an AI-generated unauthorized David Attenborough voice narrating a developer’s video feed. (credit: Charlie Holtz)

On Wednesday, Replicate developer Charlie Holtz combined GPT-4 Vision (commonly called GPT-4V) and ElevenLabs voice cloning technology to create an unauthorized AI version of the famous naturalist David Attenborough narrating Holtz’s every move on camera. As of Thursday afternoon, the X post describing the stunt had garnered over 21,000 likes.

“Here we have a remarkable specimen of Homo sapiens distinguished by his silver circular spectacles and a mane of tousled curly locks,” the false Attenborough says in the demo as Holtz looks on with a grin. “He’s wearing what appears to be a blue fabric covering, which can only be assumed to be part of his mating display.”

“Look closely at the subtle arch of his eyebrow,” it continues, as if narrating a BBC wildlife documentary. “It’s as if he’s in the midst of an intricate ritual of curiosity or skepticism. The backdrop suggests a sheltered habitat, possibly a communal feeding area or watering hole.”

Enlarge (credit: Javier Zayas Photography | Moment)

Police were called to dismantle a secret cryptomining rig winding throughout the floors and ventilation ducts of a Polish court in September, according to Polish news channel TVN24.

Several secured computers were discovered, potentially stealing thousands of Polish Zlotys worth of energy per month (the equivalent of roughly $250 per 1,000 Zlotys.) It’s currently unknown how long the rig was running because the illegal operation went undetected, partly because the computers used were connected to the Internet through their own modems rather than through the court’s network.

While no one has been charged yet with any crimes, the court seemingly has suspects. Within two weeks of finding the rig, the court terminated a contract with a company responsible for IT maintenance in the building, TVN24 reported. Before the contract ended, the company fired two employees that it said were responsible for maintenance in the parts of the building where the cryptomine was hidden.