Technology News

Swifties say they’re leaving X over Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump—and the rhetoric that has erupted on the platform following Trump’s win.

Anthropic has announced a partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to bring its Claude AI models to unspecified US intelligence and defense agencies. Claude, a family of AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT, will work within Palantir's platform using AWS hosting to process and analyze data. But some critics have called out the deal as contradictory to Anthropic's widely-publicized "AI safety" aims.

On X, former Google co-head of AI ethics Timnit Gebru wrote of Anthropic's new deal with Palantir, "Look at how they care so much about 'existential risks to humanity.'"

The partnership makes Claude available within Palantir's Impact Level 6 environment (IL6), a defense-accredited system that handles data critical to national security up to the "secret" classification level. This move follows a broader trend of AI companies seeking defense contracts, with Meta offering its Llama models to defense partners and OpenAI pursuing closer ties with the Defense Department.

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Broadcom has a new subscription tier for VMware virtualization software that may appease some disgruntled VMware customers, especially small to medium-sized businesses. The new VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus subscription tier creates a more digestible bundle that's more appropriate for smaller customers. But it may be too late to convince some SMBs not to abandon VMware.

Soon after Broadcom bought VMware, it stopped the sale of VMware perpetual licenses and started requiring subscriptions. Broadcom also bundled VMware's products into a smaller number of SKUs, resulting in higher costs and frustration for customers that felt like they were being forced to pay for products that they didn't want. All that, combined with Broadcom ditching some smaller VMware channel partners (and reportedly taking the biggest clients direct), have raised doubts that Broadcom's VMware would be a good fit for smaller customers.

“The challenge with much of the VMware by Broadcom changes to date and before the announcement [of the vSphere Enterprise Plus subscription tier] is that it also forced many organizations to a much higher offering and much more components to a stack that they were previously uninterested in deploying," Rick Vanover, Veeam's product strategy VP, told Ars.

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A judge tossed out a case against OpenAI brought by Alternet and Raw Story, in what could be a significant ruling in the larger battle between AI companies and publishers.

A judge tossed out a case against OpenAI brought by Alternet and Raw Story, in what could be a significant ruling in the larger battle between AI companies and publishers.

Matter, the smart home standard that promises an interoperable future for home automation, even if it's scattered and a bit buggy right now, is out with a new version, 1.4. It promises more device types, improvements for working across ecosystems, and tools for managing battery backups, solar panels, and heat pumps.

"Enhanced Multi-Admin" is the headline feature for anybody invested in Matter's original promise, one where you can buy a device and it doesn't matter if your other gear is meant for Amazon (Alexa), Google, Apple, or whatever, it should just connect and work. With 1.4, a home administrator should be able to let a device onto their network just once, and then have that device picked up by whatever controller they're using. There have technically been ways for a device to be set up on, say, Alexa and Apple Home, but the process has been buggy, involves generating "secondary codes," and is kind of an unpaid junior sysadmin job.

What's now available is "Fabric Sync," which sounds like something that happens in a static-ridden dryer. But "Fabrics" is how the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) describes smart home systems, like Alexa or Google Home. In theory, with every tech company doing their best, you'd set up a smart light bulb with your iPhone, add it to your Apple Home, but still have it be able to be added to a Google Home system, Android phones included. Even better, ecosystems that don't offer controls for entire categories, like Apple and smart displays (because it doesn't make any), should still be able to pick up and control them.

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Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are continuing their fight against fines for selling user location data, with two of the big three carriers submitting new court briefs arguing that the Federal Communications Commission can't punish them.

A Verizon brief filed on November 4 and an AT&T brief on November 1 contest the legal basis for the FCC fines issued in April 2024. T-Mobile also sued the FCC, but briefs haven't been filed yet in that case.

"Verizon's petition for review stems from the multiple and significant errors that the FCC, in purporting to enforce statutory consumer data privacy provisions, made in overstepping its authority," Verizon wrote. "The FCC's Forfeiture Order violated both the Communications Act and the Constitution, while failing to benefit the consumers it purported to protect."

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A Michigan man who ran chat rooms and Discord servers targeting children playing online games and coercing them into self-harm, sexually explicit acts, suicide, and other violence was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday.

According to the US Department of Justice, Richard Densmore was a member of an online terrorist network called 764, which the FBI considers a "tier one" terrorist threat. He pled guilty to sexual exploitation of a child as "part of a broader indictment that charged him with other child exploitation offenses." In the DOJ's press release, FBI Director Christopher Wray committed to bring to justice any abusive groups known to be preying on vulnerable kids online.

“This defendant orchestrated a community to target children through online gaming sites and used extortion and blackmail to force his minor victims to record themselves committing acts of self-harm and violence,” Wray said. “If you prey on children online, you can’t hide behind a keyboard. The FBI will use all our resources and authorities to arrest you and hold you accountable.”

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The global space community awoke to a new reality on Wednesday morning.

The founder of this century's most innovative space company, Elon Musk, successfully used his fortune, time, and energy to help elect Donald Trump to president of the United States. Already, Musk was the dominant Western player in space. SpaceX launches national security satellites and NASA astronauts and operates a megaconstellation. He controls the machines that provide essential space services to NASA and the US military. And now, thanks to his gamble on backing Trump, Musk has strong-armed himself into Trump's inner circle.

Although he may not have a cabinet-appointed position, Musk will have a broad portfolio in the new administration for as long as his relations with Trump remain positive. This gives Musk extraordinary power over a number of areas, including spaceflight. Already this week, he has been soliciting ideas and input from colleagues. The New York Times reported that Musk has advised Trump to hire key employees from SpaceX into his administration, including at the Department of Defense. This reflects the huge conflict of interest that Musk will face when it comes to space policy. His actions could significantly benefit SpaceX, of which he is the majority owner and has the final say in major decisions.

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People have long been fascinated by the haunting plaster casts of the bodies of people who died in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Archaeologists have presented certain popular narratives about who these people might have been and how they might have been related. But ancient DNA analysis has revealed that those preferred narratives were not entirely accurate and may reflect certain cultural biases, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The results also corroborate prior research suggesting that the people of ancient Pompeii were the descendants of immigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean.

As previously reported, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius released thermal energy roughly equivalent to 100,000 times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, spewing molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in particular. The vast majority of people in Pompeii and Herculaneum—the cities hardest hit—perished from asphyxiation, choking on the thick clouds of noxious gas and ash. But at least some of the Vesuvian victims probably died instantaneously from the intense heat of fast-moving lava flows, with temperatures high enough to boil brains and explode skulls.

In the first phase, immediately after the eruption, a long column of ash and pumice blanketed the surrounding towns, most notably Pompeii and Herculaneum. By late night or early morning, pyroclastic flows (fast-moving hot ash, lava fragments, and gases) swept through and obliterated what remained, leaving the bodies of the victims frozen in seeming suspended action.

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TV brands are taking prices down a notch ahead of Black Friday for some of the best deals of the year.

Meta has defeated a lawsuit—for now—that attempted to invoke Section 230 protections for a third-party tool that would have made it easy for Facebook users to toggle on and off their news feeds as they pleased.

The lawsuit was filed by Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He feared that Meta might sue to block his tool, Unfollow Everything 2.0, because Meta threatened to sue to block the original tool when it was released by another developer. In May, Zuckerman told Ars that he was "suing Facebook to make it better" and planned to use Section 230's shield to do it.

Zuckerman's novel legal theory argued that Congress always intended for Section 230 to protect third-party tools designed to empower users to take control over potentially toxic online environments. In his complaint, Zuckerman tried to convince a US district court in California that:

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On Tuesday, Elwood Edwards, the voice behind the online service America Online's iconic "You've got mail" greeting, died at age 74, one day before his 75th birthday, according to Cleveland's WKYC Studios, where he worked for many years. The greeting became a cultural touchstone in the 1990s and early 2000s in the early Internet era; it was heard by hundreds of millions of users when they logged in to the service and new email was waiting for them.

The story of Edwards' famous recording began in 1989 when Steve Case, CEO of Quantum Computer Services (which later became America Online—or AOL for short), wanted to add a human voice to the company's Quantum Link online service. Karen Edwards, who worked as a customer service representative, heard Case discussing the plan and suggested her husband Elwood, a professional broadcaster.

Edwards recorded the famous phrase (and several others) into a cassette recorder in his living room in 1989 and was paid $200 for the service. His voice recordings of "Welcome," "You've got mail," "File's done," and "Goodbye" went on to reach millions of users during AOL's rise to dominance in the 1990s online landscape.

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Hyte’s panoramic PC case puts your building skills on display, for better or worse.

Spending many hours daily looking at screens feels like a foregone conclusion. The new challenge is paring down what fills them.

He’s not even the biggest one. Monumental change will instead come from tech—from AI.

He’s not even the biggest one. Monumental change will instead come from tech—from AI.

Ask a few random people about Apple Intelligence and you’ll probably get quite different responses.

One might be excited about the new features. Another could opine that no one asked for this and the company is throwing away its reputation with creatives and artists to chase a fad. Another still might tell you that regardless of the potential value, Apple is simply too late to the game to make a mark.

The release of Apple’s first Apple Intelligence-branded AI tools in iOS 18.1 last week makes all those perspectives understandable.

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These are our favorite Windows laptops, MacBooks, Chromebooks, and Linux portables.

These nontoxic beds and bedsheets are easier on the environment and your health—and they feel like a dream.