Enlarge / When you're a legendary F1 designer like Adrian Newey, it's easy to persuade the team to let you have a go in one of your own creations. (credit: Andrew Hone/Getty Images for Red Bull)

In Formula 1, the car isn't quite everything, but ultimately, how well the team's designers did their job creating a racing car is a more important factor in a team's success on track than how good their drivers are. It's not that F1 drivers don't matter, but even the best driver on the grid will struggle to earn points if they're not in a competitive car.

One designer has been responsible for creating competitive cars more than any other, penning 12 championship-winning cars in 32 years. His name is Adrian Newey, and this week, we discovered he's looking for a new job.

As in other sports, F1's "silly season" is what they call that time period when contracts are up and people are switching to new teams; it's named as such because it's what happens when there's no real news to report but you need a story anyway.

Last summer's Hollywood strikes delayed a number of releases, among them the fourth season of Prime Video's The Boys. We're longtime fans of this incredibly violent, darkly funny anti-homage to superheroes, and thus are thrilled to see there's finally an official trailer for S4. It's filled with the bloody mayhem we've come to expect from the show, as well as a tantalizing glimpse of the chief villain, Homelander (Antony Starr), performing in what appears to be an ice skating extravaganza.

(Spoilers for prior seasons below, especially S3.)

As I've written previously, the show is based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Boys is set in a fictional universe where superheroes are real but are corrupted by corporate interests and a toxic celebrity-obsessed culture. The most elite superhero group is called the Seven, operated by the Vought Corporation, which created the supes with a substance called Compound V. The Seven is headed up by Homelander, a violent and unstable psychopath disguised as the All-American hero. Homelander's counterpart as the head of the titular "Boys" is Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), a self-appointed vigilante intent on checking the bad behavior of the Seven—especially Homelander, who brutally raped Butcher's wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), unknowingly fathering a son, Ryan, in the process..

It's Star Wars Day, and to mark the occasion, Disney+ has dropped a new trailer for Star Wars: The Acolyte. As previously reported, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Galactic Republic and its Jedi masters symbolized the epitome of enlightenment and peace. Then came the inevitable downfall and outbreak of war as the Sith, who embraced the Dark Side of the Force, came to power. Star Wars: The Acolyte will explore those final days of the Republic as the seeds of its destruction were sown.

The eight-episode series was created by Leslye Headland. It's set at the end of the High Republic Era, about a century before the events of The Phantom Menace. Apparently Headland rather cheekily pitched The Acolyte as "Frozen meets Kill Bill." She drew on wuxia martial arts films for inspiration, much like George Lucas was originally inspired by Westerns and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa. Per the official premise:

The first trailer dropped in March, in which we saw young padawans in training; Indara battling a mysterious masked figure; learned that somebody is out there killing Jedi; and were told that there is a growing sense of darkness. This latest trailer reinforces those themes. The assassin, Mae (Stenberg), once trained with Master Sol (Lee), and he thinks he should be the one to bring her in—although Master Vernestra correctly suspects Mae's killings are a small part a larger plan, i.e, the eventual return of the Sith.

Enlarge (credit: Kuzmik_A/Getty Images)

Most scammers and cybercriminals operate in the digital shadows and don’t want you to know how they make money. But that’s not the case for the Yahoo Boys, a loose collective of young men in West Africa who are some of the web’s most prolific—and increasingly dangerous—scammers.

Thousands of people are members of dozens of Yahoo Boy groups operating across Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram, a WIRED analysis has found. The scammers, who deal in types of fraud that total hundreds of millions of dollars each year, also have dozens of accounts on TikTok, YouTube, and the document-sharing service Scribd that are getting thousands of views.

Enlarge / Artist impression of a glory on exoplanet WASP-76b. (credit: ESA)

Do rainbows exist on distant worlds? Many phenomena that happen on Earth—such as rain, hurricanes, and auroras—also occur on other planets in our Solar System if the conditions are right. Now we have evidence from outside our Solar System that one particularly strange exoplanet might even be displaying something close to a rainbow.

Appearing in the sky as a halo of colors, a phenomenon called a "glory" occurs when light hits clouds made up of a homogeneous substance in the form of spherical droplets. It might be the explanation for a mystery regarding observations of exoplanet WASP-76B. This planet, a scorching gas giant that experiences molten iron rain, has also been observed to have more light on its eastern terminator (a line used to separate the day side from the night side) than its western terminator. Why was there more light on one side of the planet?

After observing it with the CHEOPS space telescope, then combining that with previous observations from Hubble, Spitzer, and TESS, a team of researchers from ESA and the University of Bern in Switzerland now think that the most likely reason for the extra light is a glory.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Translating human-readable domain names into numerical IP addresses has long been fraught with gaping security risks. After all, lookups are rarely end-to-end encrypted. The servers providing domain name lookups provide translations for virtually any IP address—even when they’re known to be malicious. And many end-user devices can easily be configured to stop using authorized lookup servers and instead use malicious ones.

Microsoft on Friday provided a peek at a comprehensive framework that aims to sort out the Domain Name System (DNS) mess so that it’s better locked down inside Windows networks. It’s called ZTDNS (zero trust DNS). Its two main features are (1) encrypted and cryptographically authenticated connections between end-user clients and DNS servers and (2) the ability for administrators to tightly restrict the domains these servers will resolve.

Clearing the minefield

One of the reasons DNS has been such a security minefield is that these two features can be mutually exclusive. Adding cryptographic authentication and encryption to DNS often obscures the visibility admins need to prevent user devices from connecting to malicious domains or detect anomalous behavior inside a network. As a result, DNS traffic is either sent in clear text or it's encrypted in a way that allows admins to decrypt it in transit through what is essentially an adversary-in-the-middle attack.

Enlarge / Kenneth Dintzer, litigator for the US Department of Justice, exits federal court in Washington, DC, on September 20, 2023, during the antitrust trial to determine if Alphabet Inc.'s Google maintains a monopoly in the online search business. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

Near the end of the second day of closing arguments in the Google monopoly trial, US district judge Amit Mehta weighed whether sanctions were warranted over what the US Department of Justice described as Google's "routine, regular, and normal destruction" of evidence.

Google was accused of enacting a policy instructing employees to turn chat history off by default when discussing sensitive topics, including Google's revenue-sharing and mobile application distribution agreements. These agreements, the DOJ and state attorneys general argued, work to maintain Google's monopoly over search.

According to the DOJ, Google destroyed potentially hundreds of thousands of chat sessions not just during their investigation but also during litigation. Google only stopped the practice after the DOJ discovered the policy. DOJ's attorney Kenneth Dintzer told Mehta Friday that the DOJ believed the court should "conclude that communicating with history off shows anti-competitive intent to hide information because they knew they were violating antitrust law."

Enlarge / This gear is from the upcoming "Polar Patriots" Premium Warbond in Helldivers 2. It's an upcoming change the developer and publisher likely wish was getting more attention of late. (credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

There's a lot of stories about the modern PC gaming industry balled up inside one recent "update" to Helldivers 2.

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Thursday night that current players of the runaway hit co-op shooter will have to connect their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network (PSN) account starting on May 30, with a hard deadline of June 4. New players will be required to connect the two starting Monday, May 6.

Officially, this is happening because of the "safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games." Account linking allows Sony to ban abusive players, and also gives banned players the right to appeal. Sony writes that it would have done this at launch, but "Due to technical issues … we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire."

Enlarge / Cisco Systems headquarters in San Jose, California. (credit: Getty)

A Florida resident was sentenced to 78 months for running a counterfeit scam that generated $100 million in revenue from fake networking gear and put the US military's security at risk, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday.

Onur Aksoy, aka Ron Aksoy and Dave Durden, pleaded guilty on June 5, 2023, to two counts of an indictment charging him with conspiring with others to traffic in counterfeit goods, to commit mail fraud, and to commit wire fraud. His sentence, handed down on May 1, also includes an order to pay $100 million in restitution to Cisco, a $40,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Aksoy will also have to pay his victims a sum that a court will determine at an unspecified future date, the DOJ said.

According to the indictment [PDF], Aksoy began plotting the scam around August 2013, and the operation ran until at least April 2022. Aksoy used at least 19 companies and about 15 Amazon storefronts, 10 eBay ones, and direct sales—known collectively as Pro Network Entities—to sell tens of thousands of computer networking devices. He imported the products from China and Hong Kong and used fake Cisco packaging, labels, and documents to sell them as new and real. Legitimate versions of the products would've sold for over $1 billion, per the indictment.

Enlarge / Holstein dairy cows in a freestall barn. (credit: Getty | )

The US Department of Agriculture this week posted an unpublished version of its genetic analysis into the spillover and spread of bird flu into US dairy cattle, offering the most complete look yet at the data state and federal investigators have amassed in the unexpected and worrisome outbreak—and what it might mean.

The preprint analysis provides several significant insights into the outbreak—from when it may have actually started, just how much transmission we're missing, stunning unknowns about the only human infection linked to the outbreak, and how much the virus continues to evolve in cows. The information is critical as flu experts fear the outbreak is heightening the ever-present risk that this wily flu virus will evolve to spread among humans and spark a pandemic.

But, the information hasn't been easy to come by. Since March 25—when the USDA confirmed for the first time that a herd of US dairy cows had contracted the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus—the agency has garnered international criticism for not sharing data quickly or completely. On April 21, the agency dumped over 200 genetic sequences into public databases amid pressure from outside experts. However, many of those sequences lack descriptive metadata, which normally contains basic and key bits of information, like when and where the viral sample was taken. Outside experts don't have that crucial information, making independent analyses frustratingly limited. Thus, the new USDA analysis—which presumably includes that data—offers the best yet glimpse of the complete information on the outbreak.

Enlarge / The promotional image for Apple's May 7 event. (credit: Apple)

On May 7, Apple will host a product announcement event at 9 am ET. Labeled "Let loose," we expect it will focus on new iPads and iPad accessories.

We won't be liveblogging the stream, but you can expect some news coverage as it happens. Below, we'll go over our educated guesses about why Apple might be doing this.

Why hold an event now?

It's unusual for Apple to host an event shortly before WWDC. New products debut at that event all the time, so if it's just a faster chip and a nicer screen for the iPad Pro and iPad Air, why not wait until June?

Enlarge / A PC running Windows 11. (credit: Microsoft)

It's been a bad couple of years for Microsoft's security and privacy efforts. Misconfigured endpoints, rogue security certificates, and weak passwords have all caused or risked the exposure of sensitive data, and Microsoft has been criticized by security researchers, US lawmakers, and regulatory agencies for how it has responded to and disclosed these threats.

The most high-profile of these breaches involved a China-based hacking group named Storm-0558, which breached Microsoft's Azure service and collected data for over a month in mid-2023 before being discovered and driven out. After months of ambiguity, Microsoft disclosed that a series of security failures gave Storm-0558 access to an engineer's account, which allowed Storm-0558 to collect data from 25 of Microsoft's Azure customers, including US federal agencies.

In January, Microsoft disclosed that it had been breached again, this time by Russian state-sponsored hacking group Midnight Blizzard. The group was able "to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account" to gain access to Microsoft's systems for "as long as two months."

Enlarge / A Long March 5 rocket carrying the Chang'e-6 lunar probe blasts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center on May 3, 2024 in Wenchang, China. (credit: Li Zhenzhou/VCG via Getty Images)

China is going back to the Moon for more samples.

On Friday the country launched its largest rocket, the Long March 5, carrying an orbiter, lander, ascent vehicle, and a return spacecraft. The combined mass of the Chang'e-6 spacecraft is about 8 metric tons, and it will attempt to return rocks and soil from the far side of the Moon—something scientists have never been able to study before in-depth.

The mission's goal is to bring about 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of rocks back to Earth a little more than a month from now.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

On Thursday, renowned AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, formerly of OpenAI and Tesla, tweeted a lighthearted proposal that large language models (LLMs) like the one that runs ChatGPT could one day be modified to operate in or be transmitted to space, potentially to communicate with extraterrestrial life. He said the idea was "just for fun," but with his influential profile in the field, the idea may inspire others in the future.

Karpathy's bona fides in AI almost speak for themselves, receiving a PhD from Stanford under computer scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li in 2015. He then became one of the founding members of OpenAI as a research scientist, then served as senior director of AI at Tesla between 2017 and 2022. In 2023, Karpathy rejoined OpenAI for a year, leaving this past February. He's posted several highly regarded tutorials covering AI concepts on YouTube, and whenever he talks about AI, people listen.

Most recently, Karpathy has been working on a project called "llm.c" that implements the training process for OpenAI's 2019 GPT-2 LLM in pure C, dramatically speeding up the process and demonstrating that working with LLMs doesn't necessarily require complex development environments. The project's streamlined approach and concise codebase sparked Karpathy's imagination.

Enlarge / The first Ecobee Thermostat, may it rest in peace. (credit: Ecobee)

Ecobee is killing off some of its oldest thermostats. The "Ecobee Smart Thermostat" (Model # : EB-STAT-02) and the Ecobee Energy Management System (EMS) business thermostat (Model #: EB-EMS-02) are losing web access on July 31, 2024. Every Ecobee device has nearly the same name, but these are older devices. Ecobee says these will still function as local thermostats after the shutdown, but "any features requiring connectivity to the Ecobee servers, such as control from the Ecobee Web Portal, weather information, integrations etc, will no longer function."

The EB-STAT-02 was "the world’s first Wi-Fi enabled thermostat" when it launched in 2008, and sales ended in 2013. Unlike the current Ecobees, this is a white rectangle that connected to a giant "equipment interface module" box you needed to hide in your HVAC system somewhere. The wall-mounted controller used an old-even-in-2009 resistive touchscreen, was an inch thick, and had a colorful interface that looked a lot like early versions of iOS. Most of the basics were here though, with an app that mimicked the wall controller interface, over-the-Internet control, a web portal, and access to lots of data. The EB-EMS-02 launched two years later as a commercial version of the Stat 02 and needed a subscription fee to work.

As you'd expect from an old Internet-connected device, the Wi-Fi support of the Stat 02 is pretty bad nowadays. According to Ecobee's support page, it only supported 802.11b/g for Wi-Fi (that would be "Wi-Fi 3" under the current naming scheme). Encryption went up to WPA2, and even with firmware updates, you have to start questioning the security of a 16-year-old Internet-connected device. Not relying on the cloud would be nice, but at some point, you just have to throw this stuff out.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Kirill Kudryavtsev)

Google urged a federal court to reject Epic Games' request for an injunction that would reduce Google's control of the Android app distribution and in-app payment markets.

"Rather than a judicial injunction against alleged violations of law, Epic asks this Court to create a new global regulatory regime that would set prices, impose ongoing duties to deal, and require the Court to micromanage on an ongoing basis a highly complex and dynamic ecosystem that is used by billions of consumers and millions of app developers and that supports the business of hundreds of OEMs and carriers around the world," stated Google's objections filed yesterday in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

In December 2023, the maker of Fortnite won a jury ruling that found Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct in order to maintain monopolies in the Android app distribution market and the Android market for in-app billing. The jury sided with Epic on every question it was presented.

Enlarge / Mayans built impressive structures and occasionally put interesting items in the construction fill. (credit: Dr. Jürgen Tenckhoff)

As civilizations evolve, so do the political regimes that govern them. But the transition from one era to another is not always quiet. Some ancient Mayan rulers made a very fiery public statement about who was in charge.

When archaeologists dug up the burned fragments of royal bodies and artifacts at the Mayan archaeological site of Ucanal in Guatemala, they realized they were looking at the last remnants of a fallen regime. There was no scorching on the walls of the structure they were found beneath. This could have only meant that the remains (which had already been in their tombs a hundred years) were consumed by flames in one place and buried in another. But why?

The team of archaeologists, led by Christina T. Halperin of the University of Montreal, think this was the doing of a new leader who wanted to annihilate all traces of the old regime. He couldn’t just burn them. He also had to bury them where they would be forgotten.

Enlarge / Its unlikely the next electric Jaguar will look much like these extreme coupés, designed by the brand for Gran Turismo. (credit: Jaguar)

MONACO—It may be hard to remember, but not too long ago, Jaguar made a very nice electric vehicle. The I-Pace arrived in 2018, and it was the only EV other than the bare-bones Chevy Bolt that could compete with a Tesla on range. It was great to drive, too. An electric replacement for the XJ sedan was meant to be next until it was canceled months before production was supposed to begin.

"I'd seen the car, it was a beautiful car, but when I look at the designs that we have now, when I look at the technology that we'll bring in the vehicle, it's night-and-day different," said Rawdon Glover, managing director of Jaguar. "I think that previous car would have been sort of a segue into something else, where we're doing a step change."

And a step change is what Jaguar Land Rover CEO (and Glover's boss) Thierry Bolloré wants for Jaguar: for it to move upmarket, the way Range Rover has. Tearing up the electric XJ was a bold step—it meant the only new electric Jaguars to debut from 2021 until 2025 would be the brand's Formula E race cars.

Enlarge / The interior or the DIII-D tokamak. (credit: General Atomics)

Using nuclear fusion, the process that powers the stars, to produce electricity on Earth has famously been 30 years away for more than 70 years. But now, a breakthrough experiment done at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego may finally push nuclear fusion power plants to be roughly 29 years away.

Nuclear fusion ceiling

The DIII-D facility is run by General Atomics for the Department of Energy. It includes an experimental tokamak, a donut-shaped nuclear fusion device that works by trapping astonishingly hot plasma in very strong, toroidal magnetic fields. Tokamaks, compared to other fusion reactor designs like stellarators, are the furthest along in their development; ITER, the world’s first power-plant-size fusion device now under construction in France, is scheduled to run its first tests with plasma in December 2025.

But tokamaks have always had some issues. Back in 1988, Martin Greenwald, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology expert on plasma physics, proposed an equation that described an apparent limit on how dense plasma could get in tokamaks. He argued that maximum attainable density is dictated by the minor radius of a tokamak and the current induced in the plasma to maintain magnetic stability. Going beyond that limit was supposed to make the magnets incapable of holding the plasma, heated up to north of 150 million degrees Celsius away from the walls of the machine.

Enlarge / FX/Hulu's Shōgun is a stunning new adaptation of the bestselling 1975 novel by James Clavell. (credit: FX/Hulu)

FX/Hulu's new historical epic series, Shōgun, based on the bestselling 1975 novel by James Clavell, has met with both popular and critical acclaim since its February premiere, drawing over 9 million views across all platforms in the first six days alone. The storytelling, the characters, the stellar performances, the expert pacing all contribute to that success. But it's also a visually stunning achievement that brings 17th-century feudal Japan to vivid life, thanks to masterful visual effects that have been woven in so seamlessly, it can be challenging to distinguish between the CGI and the real footage.

The novel is a fictionalized account of the key players and events in 17th-century feudal Japan that ultimately led to the naming of a new shōgun (central ruler), Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the advent of the Edo period. The climactic event was the October 21, 1600, Battle of Sekigahara, in which Tokugawa defeated a coalition of clans led by Ishida Mitsunari. Clavell's novel also includes a fictionalized version of an English navigator named William Adams, aka Miura Anjiin ("the pilot of Miura"), who was the first of his nation to reach Japan in 1600, eventually becoming a samurai and one of Tokugawa's key advisers.

Clavell's epic saga was a blockbuster success, selling over 6 million copies by 1980. The author changed the names of all the main characters, purportedly to "add narrative deniability," and despite some inevitable inaccuracies and authorial liberties, the novel is breathtaking in scope, chock-full of encyclopedic period details. In fact, Shōgun is often credited with introducing an entire generation of Western readers to Japanese history and culture. "In sheer quantity, Shōgun has probably conveyed more information about Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War," an editor named Henry Smith wrote in 1980.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto via Getty)

“Join Your Local Militia or III% Patriot Group,” a post urged the more than 650 members of a Facebook group called the Free American Army. Accompanied by the logo for the Three Percenters militia network and an image of a man in tactical gear holding a long rifle, the post continues: “Now more than ever. Support the American militia page.”

Other content and messaging in the group is similar. And despite the fact that Facebook bans paramilitary organizing and deemed the Three Percenters an “armed militia group" on its 2021 Dangerous Individuals and Organizations List, the post and group remained up until WIRED contacted Meta for comment about its existence.

Free American Army is just one of around 200 similar Facebook groups and profiles, most of which are still live, that anti-government and far-right extremists are using to coordinate local militia activity around the country.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Beata Zawrzel)

No car company in recent years has been able to generate more news headlines than Tesla. Its original founders were among the very first to realize that lithium-ion laptop cells were just about good enough to power a car, assuming you put enough of them in a pack, and with critical funding from current CEO Elon Musk, the company was able to kick-start an electric vehicle revolution. But those headlines of late have been painting a picture of a company in chaos. Sales are down, the cars are barely profitable, and now the CEO is culling vast swaths of the company. Just what is going on?

Tesla had some good times

Always erratic, Musk's leadership has nevertheless seen the company sell electric cars in volume, profitably. What's more, Musk has at times been able to inspire faith in and devotion to his company's products in a way that makes the late Steve Jobs look like a neophyte—after the Model 3 debuted in 2016, 450,000 people gave $1,000 deposits to Tesla for a product that wouldn't go into production for at least 18 months.

Of course, that example also illustrates a long-running concern with the company and Musk's investment-attracting pitches: overhyping and underdelivering. By 2018, more than one in five reservation holders wanted a refund after cheaper models were delayed and delayed.

Enlarge / Are you enticed by this kind of orderly madness with a clean graphical layout? Then I suggest you… settle in. (credit: Goblinz Studio)

You can't buy Mini Settlers right now, but I think you should play the free "Prologue" demo and wishlist the full game if you dig it. It's not quite like any other city builder I've played.

Mini Settlers is "mini" like minimalism. It is in the same genre, but quite far from, games like Cities: Skylines 2 (a choice with some proven merit). Your buildings are not 3D-rendered with real-time lighting. Your buildings are colored squares, sometimes with a few disc tokens stacked on them, tabletop-style. Your roads don't have traffic, but they have drivers (tiny squares) that take resources between nodes. When things go wrong, you don't get depressing news about pollution and riots; some people just leave their homes, but they'll come back if you fix what's wrong.

Mini Settlers is not the game to play to satisfy your long-running suspicion that urban planning was your missed calling. In the (non-progress-saving) Prologue-free demo out this week, the mines and quarries have infinite resources. There is no "money" to speak of, so far as I can tell. Apple farms must be placed near apple orchards and water pumps by water, and the rest is up to you. The interface looks like a thought experiment in how far you can get from traditional city sim HUDs, but then someone implemented it.

Enlarge / This image captured by Astroscale's ADRAS-J satellite shows the discarded upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale)

Welcome to Edition 6.42 of the Rocket Report! Several major missions are set for launch in the next few months. These include the first crew flight on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, set for liftoff on May 6, and the next test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket, which could happen before the end of May. Perhaps as soon as early summer, SpaceX could launch the Polaris Dawn mission with four private astronauts, who will perform the first fully commercial spacewalk in orbit. In June or July, Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket is slated to launch for the first time. Rest assured, Ars will have it all covered.

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.

German rocket arrives at Scottish spaceport. Rocket Factory Augsburg has delivered a booster for its privately developed RFA One rocket to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, the company announced on X. The first stage for the RFA One rocket was installed on its launch pad at SaxaVord to undergo preparations for a static fire test. The booster arrived at the Scottish launch site with five of its kerosene-fueled Helix engines. The remaining four Helix engines, for a total of nine, will be fitted to the RFA One booster at SaxaVord, the company said.

Enlarge / The Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. (credit: Anadolu Agency | Getty)

Apple's earnings report for the second quarter of the company's 2024 fiscal year showed a slide in hardware sales, especially for the iPhone. Nonetheless, Apple beat analysts' estimates for the quarter thanks to the company's rapidly growing services revenue.

iPhone revenue dropped from $51.33 billion in the same quarter last year to $45.96 billion, a fall of about 10 percent. This was the second consecutive quarter with declining iPhone revenues. That said, investors feared a sharp drop before the earnings call.

Notably, Apple's revenue in the region it dubs Greater China (which includes China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) fell 8 percent overall. The company fared a little better in other regions. China's economy is slowing even as China-based Huawei is taking bigger slices of the pie in the region.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

AT&T is now charging mobile customers an extra $7 per month for faster wireless data speeds. AT&T says the Turbo add-on, available starting today, is "built to support high-performance mobile applications, like gaming, social video broadcasting and live video conferencing, with optimized data while customers are on the go."

While Turbo "boosts all the high-speed and hotspot data on a user's connection," AT&T said the difference will be more noticeable for certain kinds of applications. For example, gaming applications using Turbo will experience "less freezing or stuttering and lower latency," AT&T said.

The $7 charge is for each line. Adding Turbo to multiple lines on the same account requires paying the extra fee for each line. AT&T said that Turbo lets users "optimize their plan's high-speed (premium) and hotspot data allotments" and provides better data performance "even during busy times on the network."

Enlarge / John Schmidtlein, partner at Williams & Connolly LLP and lead litigator for Alphabet Inc.'s Google, arrives to federal court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Oct. 2, 2023. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

Halfway through the first day of closing arguments in the Department of Justice's big antitrust trial against Google, US District Judge Amit Mehta posed the question that likely many Google users have pondered over years of DOJ claims that Google's market dominance has harmed users.

"What should Google have done to remain outside the crosshairs of the DOJ?" Mehta asked plaintiffs halfway through the first of two full days of closing arguments.

According to the DOJ and state attorneys general suing, Google has diminished search quality everywhere online, primarily by locking rivals out of default positions on devices and in browsers. By paying billions for default placements that the government has argued allowed Google to hoard traffic and profits, Google allegedly made it nearly impossible for rivals to secure enough traffic to compete, ultimately decreasing competition and innovation in search by limiting the number of viable search engines in the market.

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  Weird Al's Rambo parody was a drop in the bucket amidst all the other jokes in the film, but it's among the most memorable. [credit: Shout Factory ]

Believe it or not, it's been 35 years since Weird Al's quotable cult classic UHF first came out. Right on time for that anniversary, Shout Factory will release an UltraHD Blu-ray of the movie. This will be the first time it has ever been available in 4K.

Releasing July 2 but pre-ordering now, the disc will include a new 4K scan of the original 35mm negative, along with audio commentary from Weird Al and Jay Levy, the film's director.

It will also come bundled with a standard HD Blu-ray that includes the film in that older format along with a bunch of special features, including video of a 2014 Comic-Con panel on the movie, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes videos, and some other assets. Some of those return from the movie's last physical edition, which was a 25th anniversary HD Blu-ray, but not 4K.

Enlarge / A big erdtree casts a big shadow. (credit: Namco Bandai)

The good news for Elden Ring fans is that the two-plus-year wait for the game's first DLC, "Shadow of the Erdtree," will end in just a couple of months. The bad news is that "Shadow of the Erdtree" will also be the last bit of DLC for FromSoftware's multimillion-selling action RPG.

In a wide-ranging interview with Chinese site Zhihu (machine translation), Elden Ring producer Hidetaka Miyazaki said "Shadow of the Erdtree" contains a lot of existing lore and content that was created for the original game but couldn't fit into the final package. Miyazaki said the team decided to release all of that unused content as one large DLC expansion, rather than multiple smaller bits, because "if they were sold separately, the freedom of exploration and sense of adventure would be reduced."

As for just how big the DLC will be, Miyazaki balked when the interviewer asked how long it would take players to complete. Miyazaki brought up memories of being called a liar after estimating in an earlier interview that the original game would only take about 30 hours of play to complete—crowdsourced game-length database HowLongToBeat puts the "main story" estimate closer to 60 hours.

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A maximum severity vulnerability that allows hackers to hijack GitLab accounts with no user interaction required is now under active exploitation, federal government officials warned as data showed that thousands of users had yet to install a patch released in January.

A change GitLab implemented in May 2023 made it possible for users to initiate password changes through links sent to secondary email addresses. The move was designed to permit resets when users didn’t have access to the email address used to establish the account. In January, GitLab disclosed that the feature allowed attackers to send reset emails to accounts they controlled and from there click on the embedded link and take over the account.

While exploits require no user interaction, hijackings work only against accounts that aren’t configured to use multifactor authentication. Even with MFA, accounts remained vulnerable to password resets, but the attackers ultimately are unable to access the account, allowing the rightful owner to change the reset password. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-7028, carries a severity rating of 10 out of 10.

Enlarge / Streaming Fallout 4 from GeForce Now might seem unnecessary, unless you know how running it natively has been going. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

The Steam Deck is a Linux computer. There is, technically, very little you cannot get running on it, given enough knowledge, time, and patience. That said, it's never a bad thing when someone has done all the work for you, leaving you to focus on what matters: sneaking game time on the couch.

GeForce Now, Nvidia's game-streaming service that uses your own PC gaming libraries, has made it easier for Steam Deck owners to get its service set up on their Deck. On the service's Download page, there is now a section for Gaming Handheld Devices. Most of the device links provide the service's Windows installer, since devices like the ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go run Windows. Some note that GeForce Now is already installed on devices like the Razer Edge and Logitech G Cloud.

But Steam Deck types are special. We get a Unix-style executable script, a folder with all the necessary Steam icon image assets, and a README.md file.

Enlarge / The Samsung Watch 6 classic. (credit: Samsung)

Wear OS was nearly dead a few years ago but is now on a remarkable comeback trajectory, thanks to renewed commitment from Google and a hardware team-up with Samsung. Wear OS is still in a distant second place compared to the Apple Watch, but a new Counterpoint Research report has the wearable OS at 21 percent market share, with the OS expected to hit 27 percent in 2024.

Counterpoint's market segmentation for this report is basically "smartwatches with an app store," so it excludes cheaper fitness bands and other, more simple electronic watches. We're also focusing on the non-China market for now. The report has Apple's market share at 53 percent and expects it to fall to 49 percent in 2024. The "Other" category is at 26 percent currently. That "Other" group would have to be Garmin watches, a few remaining Fitbit smartwatches like the Versa and Ionic, and Amazfit watches. Counterpoint expects the whole market (including China) to grow 15 percent in 2024 and that a "major part" of the growth will be non-Apple watches. Counterpoint lists Samsung as the major Wear OS driver, with OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Google getting shout-outs too.

2023 are actual numbers, while 2024 is a forecast. (credit: Counterpoint Research)

China is a completely different world, with Huawei's HarmonyOS currently dominating with 48 percent. Counterpoint expects the OS's smartwatch market share to grow to 61 percent this year. Under the hood, HarmonyOS-for-smartwatches is an Android fork, and for hardware, the company is gearing up to launch an Apple Watch clone. Apple is only at 28 percent in China, and Wear OS is relegated to somewhere in the "Other" category. There's no Play Store in China, so Wear OS is less appealing, but some Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Oppo are still building Wear OS watches.

Enlarge / New gods, same old drama. (credit: Supergiant)

Here at Ars, we were obviously excited by the late 2022 announcement of Hades II as a follow-up to our favorite game of 2020. But when early coverage of that sequel suggested major changes to the game's core combat, we were a bit worried that the developers at Supergiant risked messing up the core gameplay loop that made the original game so satisfying.

So far, it seems like those worries were unfounded. After spending a few hours playing through the game's recent technical test—which covers content up through the game's first major "boss" character—we found a confident sequel that keeps the original games familiar flow while adding just enough changes to avoid feeling like a rehash. If anything, the new systems in Hades II make the original game's positional combat more satisfying than ever.

Spoiler warning: The rest of this piece offers minor spoilers for the early parts of Hades II.

Enlarge / A decorative ring made from carved stone is embedded in the wall of a ballcourt in the ancient Maya city of Chichen Itza. (credit: Kåre Thor Olsen/CC BY-SA 3.0)

It's well-known that the ancient Maya had their own version of ball games, which were played with a rubber ball on stone courts. Such games served not just as athletic events but also religious ones that often involved ritual sacrifices. Archaeologists have now found evidence that the Maya may have blessed newly constructed ball courts in rituals involving plants with hallucinogenic properties, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE.

“When they erected a new building, they asked the goodwill of the gods to protect the people inhabiting it,” said co-author David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati. “Some people call it an ensouling ritual, to get a blessing from and appease the gods.” Lentz and his team previously used genetic and pollen analyses of the wild and cultivated plants found in the ancient Maya city Yaxnohcah in what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, revealing evidence of sustainable agriculture and forestry spanning a millennia.

As we've reported previously, there is ample evidence that humans in many cultures throughout history used various hallucinogenic substances in religious ceremonies or shamanic rituals. That includes not just ancient Egypt but also ancient Greek, Vedic, Maya, Inca, and Aztec cultures. The Urarina people who live in the Peruvian Amazon Basin still use a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca in their rituals, and Westerners seeking their own brand of enlightenment have also been known to participate.

Enlarge / Sony Honda Mobility will start taking orders for its AFEELA EV next year. (credit: Peter Nelson)

We're living through a period of radically shifting automotive technology. Companies are working on increasing electric vehicle range and redefining our concept of reenergizing. They're also gradually refining driver assistance technology and figuring out how to make vehicles an extension of their drivers.

Sony Honda Mobility's (SHM) main aim with its AFEELA luxury-tier sedan concept is to put the emphasis on the latter. The dynamic duo's website is filled with marketing buzzwords, but what is the concept actually like in person?

Recently, I was invited by SHM to check out AFEELA firsthand. It's still very much a prototype, so certain key information like price, range, and charging times weren't disclosed. But it was still worthwhile to see how these two Japanese institutions put their know-how into this spacious sedan.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is currently investigating a bug in its most recent batch of Windows 10 and Windows 11 updates that is preventing some VPN software from working properly. The company updated its list of known Windows issues to say that it has recreated the issue on its end and that it's currently working on a fix.

The VPN issue affects all currently supported versions of Windows: Windows 10 21H2 and 22H2; Windows 11 versions 21H2, 22H2, and 23H2; and Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, and 2022.

Microsoft says the problem was caused by update KB5036893, which was initially released on April 9, 2024. The update makes "miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality," among a few other minor changes. The company hasn't provided specific information on what's been broken or what needs fixing, noting only that PCs "might face VPN connection failures" after installing the update.

Enlarge / A rendering of Silver City Energy Centre, a compressed air energy storage plant to be built by Hydrostor in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia. (credit: Hydrostor)

The need for long-duration energy storage, which helps to fill the longest gaps when wind and solar are not producing enough electricity to meet demand, is as clear as ever. Several technologies could help to meet this need.

But which approaches could be viable on a commercial scale?

Toronto-based Hydrostor Inc. is one of the businesses developing long-duration energy storage that has moved beyond lab scale and is now focusing on building big things. The company makes systems that store energy underground in the form of compressed air, which can be released to produce electricity for eight hours or longer.

Enlarge / Orion, the Moon, and Earth in one photo in December 2022. (credit: NASA)

NASA's acting inspector general, George A. Scott, released a report Wednesday that provided an assessment of NASA's readiness to launch the Artemis II mission next year. This is an important flight for the space agency because, while the crew of four will not land on the Moon, it will be the first time humans have flown into deep space in more than half a century.

The report did not contain any huge surprises. In recent months the biggest hurdle for the Artemis II mission has been the performance of the heat shield that protects the Orion spacecraft during its fiery reentry at more than 25,000 mph from the Moon.

Although NASA downplayed the heat shield issue in the immediate aftermath of the uncrewed Artemis I flight in late 2022, it is clear that the unexpected damage and charring during that uncrewed mission is a significant concern. As recently as last week, Amit Kshatriya, who oversees development for the Artemis missions in NASA's exploration division, said the agency is still looking for the root cause of the problem.

Enlarge / When fitted with the optional carbon-fiber appearance pack, the ZDX manages to give off station wagon vibes. But others thought it looked a bit like a hearse. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

MONTECITO, Calif.—Acura's first fully electric SUV has just gone on sale. The luxury automaker wants all its vehicles to be zero-emissions by 2040, and parent company Honda is investing billions of dollars in electric vehicle manufacturing in North America to help that happen. But its homegrown EVs aren't quite ready yet, and in the meantime, Acura has resorted to a bit of platform-sharing to fill the gap. Scratch under the skin of the 2024 Acura ZDX Type-S and it's pure General Motors, using the same Ultium platform as the Cadillac Lyriq. But the polish is all Acura, including the software.

The ZDX range starts at $64,500 for the single-motor, rear-wheel drive A-Spec model, which is similar in specs to the Cadillac Lyriq we drove a couple of years ago. But Acura brought the $73,500 2024 ZDX Type-S to the first drive. This is the top-spec model, with a 499 hp (372 kW), 544 lb-ft (738 Nm) twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain, air suspension, and rather large Brembo brakes.

It’s no lightweight

Those last two features are highly welcome, because they help control the ZDX Type-S's considerable mass—its curb weight is a hefty 6,052 lbs (2,745 kg). Air springs are fast becoming the default choice for premium EVs, and it's quite remarkable how quickly they can react to weight transfer. But the steering lacks feel and makes up for it with weight, and maneuvers like avoiding road debris on the highway will give you a definite reminder that you're driving nearly 3 tons of vehicle. You do get a smooth ride thanks to those air springs, though.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica)

Cybercriminals and spies working for nation-states are surreptitiously coexisting inside compromised name-brand routers as they use the devices to disguise attacks motivated both by financial gain and strategic espionage, researchers said.

In some cases, the coexistence is peaceful, as financially motivated hackers provide spies with access to already compromised routers in exchange for a fee, researchers from security firm Trend Micro reported Wednesday. In other cases, hackers working in nation-state-backed advanced persistent threat groups take control of devices previously hacked by the cybercrime groups. Sometimes the devices are independently compromised multiple times by different groups. The result is a free-for-all inside routers and, to a lesser extent, VPN devices and virtual private servers provided by hosting companies.

“Cybercriminals and Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors share a common interest in proxy anonymization layers and Virtual Private Network (VPN) nodes to hide traces of their presence and make detection of malicious activities more difficult,” Trend Micro researchers Feike Hacquebord and Fernando Merces wrote. “This shared interest results in malicious internet traffic blending financial and espionage motives.”

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

Streaming services like Netflix and Peacock have already found multiple ways to aggravate paying subscribers this week.

The streaming industry has been heating up. As media giants rush to establish a successful video streaming business, they often make platform changes that test subscribers' patience and the value of streaming.

Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.

Enlarge / The Claude AI iOS app running on an iPhone. (credit: Anthropic)

On Wednesday, Anthropic announced the launch of an iOS mobile app for its Claude 3 AI language models that are similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. It also introduced a new subscription tier designed for group collaboration. Before the app launch, Claude was only available through a website, an API, and other apps that integrated Claude through API.

Like the ChatGPT app, Claude's new mobile app serves as a gateway to chatbot interactions, and it also allows uploading photos for analysis. While it's only available on Apple devices for now, Anthropic says that an Android app is coming soon.

Anthropic rolled out the Claude 3 large language model (LLM) family in March, featuring three different model sizes: Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, and Claude Haiku. Currently, the app uses Sonnet for regular users and Opus for Pro users.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino)

The Federal Communications Commission chair today made a final plea to Congress, asking for money to continue a broadband-affordability program that gave out its last round of $30 discounts to people with low incomes in April.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has lowered monthly Internet bills for people who qualify for benefits, but Congress allowed funding to run out. People may receive up to $14 in May if their ISP opted in to offering a partial discount during the program's final month. After that there will be no financial help for the 23 million households enrolled in the program.

"Additional funding from Congress is the only near-term solution for keeping the ACP going," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in a letter to members of Congress today. "If additional funding is not promptly appropriated, the one in six households nationwide that rely on this program will face rising bills and increasing disconnection. In fact, according to our survey of ACP beneficiaries, 77 percent of participating households report that losing this benefit would disrupt their service by making them change their plan or lead to them dropping Internet service entirely."

Enlarge / It's a good thing this kid is too young to bet on Skee-Ball, because his dad is getting beat. (credit: Getty Images)

Anyone who's been to a Dave & Buster's location in recent years knows the arcade's heavy reliance on so-called redemption games makes the experience more like an ersatz casino than the quarter-munching video game halls of the '70s and '80s. On the vast majority of D&B games, you end up wagering money (in the form of gameplay chips) to win virtual tickets that can be traded for trinkets at the rewards counter.

Now, the massive arcade chain has announced that players will soon be able to use the D&B app to directly wager on the results of arcade games through "real-money contests." The arcade giant, which has over 200 locations across North America, is partnering with "gamification layer" platform Lucra on a system that will let D&B Rewards members "digitally compete with each other, earn rewards, and unlock exclusive perks while competing with friends at Dave & Buster’s," according to Tuesday's announcement.

Neither Lucra nor Dave & Buster's has responded to a request for comment from Ars Technica, so we're still missing extremely basic information, like what games will support app-based wagering, minimum and maximum bet sizes, or what kinds of fees might be involved. CNBC's report on the announcement suggests the system will be launching "in the next few months" to players 18 and older across 44 states (and specifically mention Skee-Ball and Hot Shots Basketball competitions). Lucra's webpage simply says the integration will "provide... social connectivity and friendly competition," suggesting you'll probably face off against friends playing in the same location.

Enlarge / A dog gets examined by veterinary technicians in Texas. (credit: Getty | Michael Paulsen)

Two separately owned dogs in New Jersey tested positive last year for a dreaded, extensively drug resistant bacterial strain spread in the US by contaminated artificial eye drops manufactured in India. Those drops caused a deadly multi-state outbreak in humans over many months last year, with at least 81 people ultimately infected across 18 states. Fourteen people lost their vision, an additional four had eyeballs surgically removed, and four people died.

The preliminary data on the dogs—presented recently at a conference of disease detectives hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—highlights that now that the deadly outbreak strain has been introduced around the US, it has the potential to lurk in unexpected places, spread its drug resistance to fellow bacteria, and cause new infections in people and animals who may have never used the drops.

The two dogs in New Jersey were not known to have received the drops linked to the outbreak: EzriCare Artificial Tears and two additional products made by the same manufacturer, which were recalled in February 2023. Such over-the-counter products are sometimes used in animals as well as people. But the dogs' separate owners said they didn't recall using the drops either. They also didn't report any exposures in health care settings or recent international travel that could explain the infections. One of the dogs did, at one point, receive eye drops, but they were not an outbreak-associated brand. The only connection between the two dogs was that they were both treated at the same veterinary hospital, which didn't stock the outbreak-associated eyedrops.

Enlarge (credit: HJBC | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus)

In mid-June 2019, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella received a rude awakening in an email warning that Google had officially gotten too far ahead on AI and that Microsoft may never catch up without investing in OpenAI.

With the subject line "Thoughts on OpenAI," the email came from Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, who is also the company’s executive vice president of AI. In it, Scott said that he was "very, very worried" that he had made "a mistake" by dismissing Google's initial AI efforts as a "game-playing stunt."

It turned out, Scott suggested, that instead of goofing around, Google had been building critical AI infrastructure that was already paying off, according to a competitive analysis of Google's products that Scott said showed that Google was competing even more effectively in search. Scott realized that while Google was already moving on to production for "larger scale, more interesting" AI models, it might take Microsoft "multiple years" before it could even attempt to compete with Google.

Enlarge / Congress provides government support for other industries, so why not AM radio? (credit: Getty Images)

A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act" now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.

"Democrats and Republicans are tuning in to the millions of listeners, thousands of broadcasters, and countless emergency management officials who depend on AM radio in their vehicles. AM radio is a lifeline for people in every corner of the United States to get news, sports, and local updates in times of emergencies. Our commonsense bill makes sure this fundamental, essential tool doesn’t get lost on the dial. With a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, Congress should quickly take it up and pass it," said Sen. Markey and his co-sponsor Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

About 82 million people still listen to AM radio, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, which as you can imagine was rather pleased with the congressional support for its industry.

Enlarge / Judging moral weights (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

When it comes to judging which large language models are the "best," most evaluations tend to look at whether or not a machine can retrieve accurate information, perform logical reasoning, or show human-like creativity. Recently, though, a team of researchers at Georgia State University set out to determine if LLMs could match or surpass human performance in the field of moral guidance.

In "Attributions toward artificial agents in a modified Moral Turing Test"—which was recently published in Nature's online, open-access Scientific Reports journal—those researchers found that morality judgments given by ChatGPT4 were "perceived as superior in quality to humans'" along a variety of dimensions like virtuosity and intelligence. But before you start to worry that philosophy professors will soon be replaced by hyper-moral AIs, there are some important caveats to consider.

Better than which humans?

For the study, the researchers used a modified version of a Moral Turing Test first proposed in 2000 to judge "human-like performance" on theoretical moral challenges. The researchers started with a set of 10 moral scenarios originally designed to evaluate the moral reasoning of psychopaths. These scenarios ranged from ones that are almost unquestionably morally wrong ("Hoping to get money for drugs, a man follows a passerby to an alley and holds him at gunpoint") to ones that merely transgress social conventions ("Just to push his limits, a man wears a colorful skirt to the office for everyone else to see.")

Enlarge / The Rabbit R1. (credit: Rabbit Inc)

If you haven't heard of the Rabbit R1, this is yet another "AI box" that is trying to replace your smartphone with a voice command device that runs zero apps. Just like the Humane AI Pin, this thing recently launched and seems to be dead on arrival as a completely non-viable device that doesn't solve any real problems, has terrible battery life, and is missing big chunks of core functionality. Before the device fades into obscurity, though, Android Authority's Mishaal Rahman looked at the software and found the "smartphone replacement" device just runs a smartphone OS. It's Android—both an Android OS and Android app, just in a very limited $200 box.

OK, technically, we can't call it "Android" since that's a Google trademark that you can only access after licensing Google Play. It runs AOSP (the Android Open Source Project codebase), which is the open source bits of Android without any proprietary Google code. The interface—which is mostly just a clock, settings screen, and voice input—is also just an Android app. Being a normal Android app means you can install it on an Android phone, and Rahman was able to get the Rabbit R1 software running on a Pixel 6. He even got the AI assistant to answer questions on the phone.

Rabbit Inc. does not sound happy about Rahman's discovery. The company posted on X that it is "aware there are some unofficial rabbit OS app/website emulators out there" and that since it does not want to support "third-party clients," a "local bootleg APK without the proper OS and Cloud endpoints won’t be able to access our service." The company describes its device as a "very bespoke AOSP and lower level firmware modifications," but that's a statement that would be true for many phones. In another statement to Rahman, the company threatens that it will "reserve all rights for any malicious and illegal cyber security activities towards our services."