Enlarge / US Energy Secretary Rick Perry in the East Room of the White House in 2018. (credit: Getty Images) At a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Energy Secretary Rick Perry expressed his willingness to help coal and nuclear plants out with...
Enlarge / Sophie Thatcher (right) and Pedro Pascal in Prospect. Check out the trailer here. (credit: Prospect film still) AUSTIN, Texas—Make no mistake, South by Southwest conference film darling Prospect takes place within a giant,...
Enlarge / Downtown Los Angeles from the 110 Freeway in 2017. (credit: FG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images) In the wake of complaints about Waze and similar smartphone traffic apps routing through the smaller streets of Los Angeles, one city councilman has...
Enlarge / A MacBook Pro with an eGPU enclosure and an external monitor. (credit: Samuel Axon) When Apple released macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 on March 29, fully supported external graphics-card functionality was one of the flagship features. Most...
Enlarge / The player boards. (credit: Charlie Theel) Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com. Fallout, Star Wars, and The Godfather all became...
Enlarge / It's never a good day to be a lab mouse. (credit: Getty | Portland Press Herald ) Norovirus inflames the stomach and/or intestines and causes pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. It is super contagious and kills tens of thousands of...
Enlarge (credit: Peter Opaskar / YouTube) Early in 2018, YouTube made changes to how us commoners can earn money through its Partner Program (or “YPP”). You probably heard about it here and, oh yeah, here. Now seems like a good time to...
Enlarge / Former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski speaks onstage at Spike TV's 2011 Video Game Awards at Sony Studios on December 10, 2011 in Los Angeles, California. (credit: Getty Images / Jeff Kravitz) Former Epic Games developer and ...
Enlarge / Wichita Police. (credit: Wichita Police) Authorities have decided not to file charges against a Wichita police officer who shot and killed 28-year-old Andrew Finch last December, the Wichita Eagle reports. The deadly confrontation...
Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks about the new Apple headquarters during a media event in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2017. (credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images) Apple recently sent a lengthy memo warning employees about leaking....

Apple has long been obsessed with secrecy, but a new memo seems to take it to the next level. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports on a memo recently sent to all Apple employees stating that 29 Apple people were caught leaking secrets about...
Bloomberg got its hands on a leaked Apple memo today regarding, funnily enough, leaks. The company is well-known for liking to keep things under wraps, but its leadership isn't pleased with how often Apple employees are leaking information to...

Drink in the irony.

Apple has had 12 employees arrested over the course of last year for leaking internal information about future software plans, according to a memo leaked (ironically) today, spotted by Bloomberg. The company said in a strongly worded memo that it...
Enlarge A Russian court has paved the way for the government to block the Telegram messaging app over its creators' failure to provide authorities with access to users' encrypted messages, it was widely reported on Friday. Russia's state...
Enlarge / Google's screenshot looks nothing like the current Android P build, and exists in a halfway point between Android and the iPhone X. It looks like Google just leaked a major new feature of Android P in a blog post. The post, which...
Enlarge / One voice is amplified, the other is muted. (credit: YouTube) Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy environment. As noted in a...
Enlarge / SHANGHAI, CHINA - APRIL 13: Kimi Raikkonen of Finland driving the (7) Scuderia Ferrari SF71H leaves the garage during practice for the Formula One Grand Prix of China at Shanghai International Circuit on April 13, 2018 in Shanghai, China. ...
We're almost halfway through April, and Formula 1's streaming service hasn't launched as promised. The racing organization announced today that F1 TV will now be available next month ahead of the 2018 Gran Premio De Espana. Annual...
Enlarge / Some of the equipment (and a team member) that made this new work possible. (credit: Holger Müller lab) Measurements in physics are funny things. You'd hope that attempts to quantify some of the fundamental properties of the Universe...
Enlarge (credit: Mazda) I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it has never been easier to get into motorsport. A plethora of grassroots endurance racing series have sprung up in recent years, making wheel-to-wheel racing cheaper than it has...
Enlarge / Ryzen die shot. (credit: AMD) The second generation of AMD Ryzen desktop processors opens for preorders today. Shipping on April 19th, the new chips start at $199 for a six-core, 12-thread part running at a base of 3.4GHz and a turbo of...
Enlarge / No, this Lost in Space moment between Will Robinson and his new robot friend isn't followed by a joyous devouring of Reese's Pieces. (credit: Netflix) My patience with Netflix's new Lost in Space reboot ran out at roughly halfway through ...
Enlarge / “This world doesn‘t belong to you. It belongs to us.” (credit: HBO) Ars was on the list of sites to receive advance screeners for the first five episodes of Westworld’s second season, and this preview was written after having...
Enlarge / Scott Pruitt during his confirmation hearings. (credit: Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images) Two Democratic senators have written a formal letter to the Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog, asking a basic question: how...
Enlarge (credit: Fairfax Media via Getty Images) Carl Ferrer, the co-founder of Backpage, the notorious and now-shuttered site that once hosted a vast quantity of prostitution-related ads, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and money laundering...
Documents unsealed today reveal Backpage.com and its CEO Carl Ferrer pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges in Arizona on April 5th, a day before the site was seized and shut down. Additionally, attorneys general in California and Texas...
The chief executive of a website that authorities have dubbed a lucrative nationwide "online brothel" pleaded guilty to state and federal charges, and agreed to testify in ongoing prosecutions against others at Backpage.com
A Connecticut man has pleaded guilty to hacking into the iCloud accounts of Hollywood stars and others so he could steal personal information,...
Carl Ferrer, 57, pleaded guilty to facilitating prostitution.

Carl Ferrer and his company, the sex advertising website Backpage, entered state and federal plea deals. He will serve no more than five years in prison.

The classifieds site has been likened to an online brothel.
Enlarge / Various configurations of the SLS rocket. (credit: NASA) NASA will likely launch its first astronauts into deep space since the Apollo program on a less powerful version of its Space Launch System rocket than originally planned. Although ...
Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaks to the media after the vote to repeal net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong ) Democratic lawmakers yesterday followed in President Trump's footsteps by asking the...
Enlarge / The Goldman Sachs bank logo is seen reflected on the screen of a mobile phone in this photo illustration on November 15, 2017. (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images) One-shot cures for diseases are not great for business—more ...
Enlarge / Elon Musk unveiling the Model X in 2012. (credit: Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images) The National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that it has revoked Tesla's status as a party to its investigation of a fatal Model X crash in ...

Tesla has been removed from the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into a fatal crash of a Tesla Model X in the Bay Area. The advisory group pulled the electric car maker from the investigation after Tesla continued to...
A timeline of who fired when.
Enlarge / Luke Woodham (left) is a professional drift racer. Theo Thomas (right) is a gamer and vlogger. They both raced on an off-road track in real cars but without being able to see out the windshield. (credit: Castrol / EA Games) I don't know...
Enlarge / Windows Admin Center Announced last year as Project Honolulu, Microsoft today released Windows Admin Center, the new Web-based graphical administrative interface for Windows systems. Admin Center is intended to provide a common...
Enlarge / The Uber ride-sharing app is seen on a mobile phone on February 12, 2018. (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images) The Federal Trade Commission will expand its oversight of Uber following the disclosure of its improper...
Names, phone numbers and email addresses were exposed.
Last year, Uber settled with the FTC over allegations that it hadn't protected it's customers' data in 2014, and actually misrepresented how secure that data was. Soon after that, the now-current CEO of the ride-sharing firm found...

The FTC is expanding its complaint with Uber after the company failed to notify the public after paying hackers $100,000 to delete stolen data on 57 million people.
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Amazon on Thursday announced it has sealed its acquisition of smart home device-maker Ring, and to celebrate, the company is doing a very Amazon...
The price cut comes after Amazon closed its deal to purchase Ring

Now that Amazon has finalized its acquisition of Ring, it’s slashing the cost of the smart doorbell to $100, down from about $150 previously. Ring’s doorbell has a built-in camera, intercom, and Wi-Fi connection, so you can see and...
Amazon's acquisition of connected home company Ring is complete, and to celebrate, the online retail giant is offering a nice deal. For a limited time, you can get a Ring Wi-Fi Enabled Video Doorbell in Satin Nickel for just $100. At the time...

As of today, Amazon officially owns Ring, the smart home company that was famously rejected on Shark Tank and went on to popularize the smart doorbells with built-in security cameras. Amazon purchased Ring in February for more than $1 billion, and...

Ring, now owned by Amazon, just lowered the price of its original Video Doorbell to $100.
Enlarge / That's Kubrick Mons to you, sir! (credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute) On Wednesday, the International Astronomical Union officially announced the names of features on Pluto's...
Enlarge (credit: Book Catalog) Facebook recently teamed up with Google, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon in order to kill a privacy law that's being considered in California. The five companies each donated $200,000 to create a $1 million fund to...
Enlarge / Sweet potatoes growing in a field. (credit: Robert Scotland) Sweet potatoes are a staple food crop in most of the world today, but they're also a bit of an enigma. We don't know for sure how or when they evolved from their closest wild...
Enlarge / Artist's conception of Mitchell reacting to the news (actually a parody of Mitchell featured in a Regular Show cartoon, but still...) Twin Galaxies, the long-running video game high score tracker recognized by Guinness World Records,...
Enlarge / In January, Rocket Lab reached orbit for the first time with the second launch of its Electron vehicle. (credit: Rocket Lab) Life is pretty good for Rocket Lab and its founder Peter Beck right now. With two test flights of its Electron...
Enlarge (credit: Getty | John Greim) It is fairly common knowledge that the uterine environment affects fetal development; if you don’t believe that, you have clearly never tried to order a coffee or have a sip of wine in public while pregnant....
Max Schrems is leading a group called Europe vs. Facebook to force the social network to comply with EU data protection law. (credit: Europe vs. Facebook) The Irish High Court has formally asked the Court of Justice of the European Union...
Enlarge / Tesla's Model X. (credit: Jordan Golson) Tesla on Tuesday escalated its media battle with the family of Apple engineer Walter Huang. Huang died in Silicon Valley last month when his Model X vehicle crashed into a concrete lane divider at ...
Filed under: Government/Legal,Green,Tesla,Safety,Technology,SUV,Electric,Luxury The family of a driver killed in a Tesla car crash has hired law firm Minami Tamaki LLP to explore legal options, the law firm said on Wednesday,...
When Tesla revealed that Autopilot was engaged during the March 23rd fatal Model X crash, it only said that the vehicle's "logs show[ed] that no action was taken" even though the driver had time to react. Now, the automaker has issued ...

The company is being criticized from all sides for once again blaming the March 23 death of Apple engineer Walter Huang for the crash that killed him, reports Bloomberg. In a statement following an ABC7 news report with Huang’s family, the...
Enlarge / Mother with newborn. (credit: Getty | Tim Clayton) In the US, the rate of women dying from pregnancy and childbirth is higher than in any other developed country—much, much higher. And we’re bucking the global trend of improving the...
Enlarge (credit: Eric Bangeman) Like many Gen Xers, my first car was a Volkswagen—a 1973 Beetle, to be exact. Back then, VW was known primarily for making quirky, fun cars like the Beetle, the Thing, the Bus, and the Karmann Ghia. You could get...
Enlarge / "It really has been a meaningful journey full of mutual understanding, hasn't it son?" / "Dad, let go, I want to go play with my friends!" Hey, remember Kratos? You know, Kratos... the bloodthirsty Greek god in the God of War series who ...
Enlarge / High Sierra wallpaper. The low-hanging clouds in the background may or may not be related to the name. (credit: Apple) Today and tomorrow, macOS users will begin seeing notifications informing them that 32-bit apps will not be supported...

The company's computer operating system has been moving to more advanced technology, though MacOS High Sierra and at least the next version of Apple's software will still support older apps.

Apple will start warning Mac users this week that 32-bit app support in macOS is coming to an end. Ars Technica notes that Mac users running macOS 10.13.4 will receive a one-time alert tomorrow that will trigger once a 32-bit app is opened. The...
Starting tomorrow, you'll see an alert box when you open a 32-bit app in MacOS 10.13.4. The one-time-per-app warning is designed to encourage users -- and developers -- to update their apps before Apple's full transition to 64-bit....
Enlarge / President Donald Trump, before signing the "Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act" at the White House. (credit: Getty Images | Chris Kleponis) President Donald Trump today signed the controversial FOSTA/SESTA bill...
Enlarge / Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Penn.), shows his phone to the media as he FaceTimes his daughter at the Capitol in 2015. (credit: Al Drago/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images) VirnetX Holding Corporation—a Nevada company that many would dub a "patent...
The Vela pulsar, as imaged by the Chandra X-ray telescope. (credit: NASA/CXC/University of Toronto/M. Durant, et al.) Neutron stars are the most dense form of matter in our Universe (black holes cram more stuff into a smaller space, and it's not...
Enlarge (credit: Mike Mozart) AT&T says its 5G wireless trials have been producing speeds of more than a gigabit per second from millimeter wave frequencies, even in bad weather and—in some cases—without a line-of-sight connection....
Enlarge / An AMD Ryzen. (credit: Fritzchens Fritz) The latest Windows 10 fixes, released as part of yesterday's Patch Tuesday, enable protection against the Spectre variant 2 attacks on systems with AMD processors. Earlier this year, attacks that...
Enlarge / ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA - SEPTEMBER 29: Tesla Powerpack batteries during Tesla Powerpack Launch Event at Hornsdale Wind Farm on September 29, 2017 in Adelaide, Australia. (Photo by Mark Brake/Getty Images) (credit: Getty Images) Last...
Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo) Google is apparently done selling its flagship smartphones from 2016. The Pixel and Pixel XL have both been removed from the Google Store and the Project Fi store, suggesting the stock is all dried up and no more will...