Ars Technica

Google's stated mission is to "organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." For a very long time, then, it has been odd that one of its biggest platforms, Android, lacked for a real default weather app. You know, weather—the kind of information that's relevant to almost everybody, every single day and is one of humanity's default topics of conversation.

Android phones had, for a while, a "Weather" widget (and an icon inside the "At a Glance" widget) that essentially provided a framed webpage of useful weather data, accompanied by a plucky frog who illustrated the conditions. The frog was popular (even getting his own New Year's doodle), and the basic weather stats were useful. But it couldn't compare to Apple's weather, which nabbed the minute-by-minute precipitation of Dark Sky and ended its life on Android. There were lots of third-party weather apps—Ars staffers like RadarScope and Carrot Weather, for example—but it remained an odd choice for Google to mostly ignore the category.

Google, and its all-in AI obsession, cedes no longer. As suggested by Google in October, and spotted by blogs like 9to5Google, an honest-to-goodness weather app, named "Weather," is rolling out to Pixel phones model 6 and newer running Android 15, having started on the Pixel 9 models. As with most Android things, the rollout is gradual, and you may not have it right away; check that you're updated to the latest Android 15 and Play Services versions to clear the way.

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More than 500 Amazon workers reportedly signed a letter to Amazon Web Services' (AWS) CEO this week, sharing their outrage over Amazon's upcoming return-to-office (RTO) policy that will force workers into offices five days per week.

In September, Amazon announced that starting in 2025, workers will no longer be allowed to work remotely twice a week. At the time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the move would make it easier for workers "to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture."

Reuters reported today that it viewed a letter from a swath of workers sent to AWS chief Matt Garman on Wednesday regarding claims he reportedly made during an all-hands meeting this month. Garman reportedly told attendees that 9 out of 10 employees he spoke with support the five-day in-office work policy. The letter called the statements “inconsistent with the experiences of many employees” and “misrepresenting the realities of working at Amazon,” Reuters reported.

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Russia has fined Google an amount that no entity on the planet could pay in hopes of getting YouTube to lift bans on Russian channels, including pro-Kremlin and state-run news outlets.

The BBC wrote that a Russian court fined Google two undecillion rubles, which in dollar terms is $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The amount "is far greater than the world's total GDP, which is estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be $110 trillion."

The fine is apparently that large because it was issued several years ago and has been repeatedly doubling. An RBC news report this week provided details on the court case from an anonymous source.

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One of the biggest bummers about the modern Internet has been the decline of Google Search. Once an essential part of using the web, it's now a shadow of its former self, full of SEO-fueled junk and AI-generated spam.

On Thursday, OpenAI announced a new feature of ChatGPT that could potentially replace Google Search for some people: an upgraded web search capability for its AI assistant that provides answers with source attribution during conversations. The feature, officially called "ChatGPT with Search," makes web search automatic based on user questions, with an option to manually trigger searches through a new web search icon.

OpenAI hopes the new capability will streamline web searching by eliminating the need for multiple searches and link exploration that traditional search engines sometimes require. Users can ask follow-up questions, with ChatGPT considering the context of the entire conversation to provide answers.

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Most Windows 10 PCs will stop getting new security updates in October 2025, less than a year from today. For businesses and schools, the company is offering up to three years of extended security updates, with prices that increase steadily year by year to incentivize switching to Windows 11.

But Microsoft announced today that end users would only be able to buy a single year of extended security updates for their Windows 10 PCs at the price of $30 per PC. The company confirmed to us that the second and third years of security updates would be exclusive to businesses and schools.

Microsoft says consumers will be able to enroll in the Windows 10 Extended Security Update (ESU) program "closer to the end of support in 2025."

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Last night, Nintendo pulled off a surprise launch of a new Nintendo Music smartphone app, offering many of the company's staple soundtrack songs as a perk to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. But the new subscription freebie could give Nintendo additional motivation to once again crack down on Internet users who have been collecting and posting Nintendo music online for years now.

The Nintendo Music app includes hundreds of songs from titles to download or stream, ranging from 1985's Super Mario Bros. to last year's Pikmin 4. The current music selection is far from comprehensive, but it at least touches on many of Nintendo's most popular series, including Zelda, Pokemon, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Metroid, and Animal Crossing (plus some popular background music from various Wii Channels). Nintendo promises that more tracks will be "added over time," mirroring the process Nintendo has used to add to its Nintendo Switch Online classic game downloads.

A new trailer introduces some of the features of the Nintendo Music app.

Nintendo Music users can build their own playlists, of course, or choose from a number of pre-arranged playlists to suit different moods or character themes. The app also syncs with your Nintendo account to highlight music from games you play and offers options to avoid "spoilers" from certain game music or extend songs in lengthy loops.

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Google revealed today how it plans to use generative AI to enhance its mapping activities. It's the latest application of Gemini, the company's in-house rival to GPT-4, which the company wants to use to improve the experience when searching for something. Google Maps, Google Earth, and Waze will all get feature upgrades thanks to Gemini, although in some cases only with Google's "trusted testers" at first.

Google Maps

More than 2 billion people use Google Maps every month, according to the company, and in fact, AI is nothing new to Google Maps. "A lot of those features that we've introduced over the years have been thanks to AI," said Chris Phillips,VP and general manager of Geo at Google. "Think of features like Lens and maps. When you're on a street corner, you can lift up your phone and look, and through your camera view, you can actually see we laid places on top of your view. So you can see a business. Is it open? What are the ratings for it? Is it busy? You can even see businesses that are out of your line of sight," he explained.

At some point this week, if you use the Android or iOS Google Maps app here in the US, you should start seeing more detailed and contextual search results. Maps will now respond to conversational requests—during a demo, Google asked it what to do on a night out with friends in Boston, with the app returning a set of results curated by Gemini. These included categories of places—speakeasies, for example—with review summaries and answers from users.

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As the Popo Agie River wends its way down from the glaciers atop Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains toward the city of Lander, it flows into a limestone cave and disappears. The formation, known as the Sinks, spits the river back out at another feature called the Rise a quarter of a mile east, a little more voluminous and a little warmer, with brown and rainbow trout weighing as much as 10 pounds mingling in its now smooth pools. The quarter-mile journey from the Sinks to the Rise takes the river two hours.

Scientists first discovered this quirk of the middle fork of the Popo Agie (pronounced puh-po zuh) in 1983 by pouring red dye into the river upstream and waiting for it to resurface. Geologists attribute the river’s mysterious delay to the water passing through exceedingly small crevasses in the rock that slow its flow.

Like many rivers in the arid West, the Popo Agie is an important aquifer. Ranchers, farmers, businesses, and recreationists rely on detailed data about it—especially day-to-day streamflow measurements. That’s exactly the type of empirical information collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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After closing a $69 billion deal to buy virtualization technology company VMware a year ago, Broadcom wasted no time ushering in big changes to the ways customers and partners buy and sell VMware offerings—and many of those clients aren't happy.

To get a deeper look at the impact that rising costs and overhauls like the end of VMware perpetual license sales have had on VMware users, Ars spoke with several companies in the process of quitting the software due to Broadcom's changes.

Here's what's pushing them over the edge.

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Microsoft reported quarterly earnings that impressed investors and showed how resilient the company is even as it spends heavily on AI.

Some investors have been uneasy about the company's aggressive spending on AI, while others have demanded it. During this quarter, Microsoft reported that it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures, nearly double what it had spent during the same quarter last year.

However, the company satisfied both groups of investors, as it revealed it has still been doing well in the short term amid those long-term investments. The fiscal quarter, which covered July through September, saw overall sales rise 16 percent year over year to $65.6 billion. Despite all that AI spending, profits were up 11 percent, too.

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Slivered onions are the likely source of the multi-state E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounder burgers that continues to grow, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.

Onions were one of two primary suspects when the CDC announced the outbreak on October 22, with the other being the beef patties used on the burgers. But onions quickly became the leading suspect. The day after the CDC's announcement, McDonald's onion supplier, Taylor Farms, recalled peeled and diced yellow onion products, and several other fast food chains took onions off the menu as a precaution. (No other restaurants have been linked to the outbreak to date.)

According to the CDC, traceback information and epidemiological data collected since then have all pointed to the onions, and, according to McDonald's, state and federal testing of the beef patties has all come back negative.

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Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most graphically demanding and visually impressive games in recent years, will soon get a Mac release, according to developer and publisher CD Projekt Red.

The announcement was published on CD Projekt Red's blog and also appeared briefly during Apple's pre-recorded MacBook Pro announcement video. The game will be sold on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG, and the Epic Game Store when it launches, and it will be labeled the Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, which simply means it also includes Phantom Liberty, the expansion that was released a couple of years after the original game.

Cyberpunk 2027 launched in a rough state in 2020, especially on low-end hardware. Subsequent patches and a significant overhaul with Phantom Liberty largely redeemed it in critics' eyes—the result of all that post-launch work is the version Mac users will get.

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For some, microwaving fish in the employee lunch room is the ultimate work faux pas. But for one (likely mortified) employee of a seafood distribution plant in Maryland, it's probably causing a mass poisoning with the homemade noodle dish they brought to share for lunch. The dish sickened 46 employees, spurring their employer to hastily release a statement assuring customers that it wasn't the company's food that caused the illnesses.

On October 21, first responders and paramedics arrived at the NAFCO Wholesale Fish Distribution Facility in Jessup, where dozens of employees had abruptly fallen ill about three hours after lunch. Helicopter footage of the event captured images of workers around picnic tables outside the plant, some doubled over and with their heads down.

Ultimately, 46 people were sickened, and at least 26 were treated at an area hospital with symptoms of food poisoning, according to The Baltimore Banner. They all recovered.

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Apple's week of Mac announcements has wrapped up this morning with the launch of the new M4 MacBook Pros, and we now have a full picture of the M4 chip lineup that will drive the Mac for the next year or so (excepting the M4 Ultra, if we end up getting one).

Because Apple staggered its product and chip announcements, we've gathered some basic specs from all versions of the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max to help compare them to the outgoing M2 and M3 chip families, including the slightly cut-down versions that Apple sells in the cheaper new Macs. We've also rounded up some of Apple's performance claims, so people with older Macs can see exactly what they're getting if they upgrade (Apple still likes to use the M1 as a baseline, acknowledging that the year-over-year gains are sometimes minor and that many people are still getting by just fine with some version of the M1 chip).

Comparing all the M4 chips CPU P/E-cores GPU cores RAM options Display support (including internal) Memory bandwidth Available in Apple M4 (low) 4/4 8 16/24GB Up to two 120GB/s $1,299 iMac Apple M4 (high) 4/6 10 16/24/32GB Up to three 120GB/s $1,499 iMac, $599 Mac mini, $1,599 MacBook Pro Apple M4 Pro (low) 8/4 16 24/48/64GB Up to three 273GB/s $1,399 Mac mini, $1,999 14-inch MBP Apple M4 Pro (high) 10/4 20 24/48/64GB Up to three 273GB/s $1,599 Mac mini, $2,199 14-inch MBP, $2,499 16-inch MBP Apple M4 Max (low) 10/4 32 36GB Up to five 410GB/s $3,199 14-inch MBP, $3,499 16-inch MBP Apple M4 Max (high) 12/4 40 48/64/128GB Up to five 546GB/s $3,699 14-inch MBP, $3,999 16-inch MBP

At least as far as the Mac is concerned, Apple has technically released six different chips this week under three different brand names. The M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max all have one slightly cut-down entry-level version with fewer CPU and GPU cores and one more-expensive, fully enabled version.

Generally, in the places where Apple offers both versions of each chip, you can upgrade to the better CPU/GPU without also having to pay for more RAM or anything else. But the M4 Max is an exception—buying the fully enabled M3 Max also requires you to pay for a jump from 36GB to 48GB of memory, making the total cost an additional $500. Apple's site lists it, somewhat misleadingly, as a $300 addition, but toggling the selection also automatically selects the $200 RAM upgrade.

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Dropbox is laying off 528 employees in a move that will reduce its global workforce by 20 percent, CEO Drew Houston announced today.

Houston wrote that Dropbox's core file sync and sharing "business has matured, and we've been working to build our next phase of growth with products like Dash," an "AI-powered universal search" product targeted to business customers. The company's "current structure and investment levels" are "no longer sustainable," according to Houston.

"We continue to see softening demand and macro headwinds in our core business," Houston wrote. "But external factors are only part of the story. We've heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down."

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Researchers have found new versions of a sophisticated Android financial-fraud Trojan that’s notable for its ability to intercept calls a victim tries to place to customer-support personnel of their banks.

FakeCall first came to public attention in 2022, when researchers from security firm Kaspersky reported that the malicious app wasn’t your average banking Trojan. Besides containing the usual capabilities for stealing account credentials, FakeCall could reroute voice calls to numbers controlled by the attackers.

A strategic evolution

The malware, available on websites masquerading as Google Play, could also simulate incoming calls from bank employees. The intention of the novel feature was to provide reassurances to victims that nothing was amiss and to more effectively trick them into divulging account credentials by having the social-engineering come from a live human.

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Robert Downey Jr. has declared that he will sue any future Hollywood executives who try to re-create his likeness using AI digital replicas, as reported by Variety. His comments came during an appearance on the "On With Kara Swisher" podcast, where he discussed AI's growing role in entertainment.

"I intend to sue all future executives just on spec," Downey told Swisher when discussing the possibility of studios using AI or deepfakes to re-create his performances after his death. When Swisher pointed out he would be deceased at the time, Downey responded that his law firm "will still be very active."

The Oscar winner expressed confidence that Marvel Studios would not use AI to re-create his Tony Stark character, citing his trust in decision-makers there. "I am not worried about them hijacking my character's soul because there's like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me," he said.

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Streaming in the US has become a broken and fiendishly complex tangle of ephemeral choices—and that's before you factor in sports. You can see why it might seem somehow easier to stream shows from other countries, where the networks, some of them with public dollars behind them, offer broader access if you seem to be located there.

So it is that privacy-focused Swiss firm Proton has released a Proton VPN app for Apple TV. The firm notes that it "offers over 6,200 servers across 100 countries" and its own guides to accessing various regional content providers, such as Britain's BBC and France.tv, or sports and live event channels, "no matter where you are."

That this—virtual geolocation—is mentioned ahead of "privacy and security benefits" is notable, but only if you haven't looked. I typed "VPN" into an Apple TV's App Store search interface today and learned that Proton was now one among dozens and dozens of VPN offerings for Apple TV. "Dozens" is as far as I can go, because I eventually got tired of clicking to keep scrolling down.

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AT&T improperly obtained money from a government-run broadband discount program by submitting duplicate requests and by claiming subsidies for thousands of subscribers who weren't using AT&T's service. AT&T obtained funding based on false certifications it made under penalty of perjury.

AT&T on Friday agreed to pay $2.3 million in a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau. That includes a civil penalty of $1,921,068 and a repayment of $378,922 to the US Treasury.

The settlement fully resolves the FCC investigation into AT&T's apparent violations, the consent decree said. "AT&T admits for the purpose of this Consent Decree and for Commission civil enforcement purposes" that the findings described by the FCC "contain a true and accurate description of the facts underlying the Investigation," the document said.

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In May 2023, Reddit announced that its API would no longer be free, signaling the demise of most third-party Reddit apps and the start of a new Reddit era. Reddit was always interested in making money, but the social media platform’s drive to reach profitability intensified with its API rule changes, which was followed by it going public and other big moves. With Reddit reporting this week that it has finally turned its first profit, we can expect further evolution from Reddit, whether old-time Redditors like it or not.

In its fiscal Q4 2024 results announced on Tuesday [PDF], Reddit said that in the quarter ending on September 30, it made a profit of $29.9 million. This is significant growth from fiscal Q3 2024, when Reddit lost $7.4 million. Revenue, meanwhile, was up 68 percent year over year, going from $207.5 million to $384.4 million. Reddit is expecting $385 to $400 million in revenue for fiscal Q4.

More Redditors

During the Reddit app-ocalypse, many Reddit users and moderators said they would quit the platform because they were disgusted with how Reddit treated third-party developers and moderators, particularly during user protests against the API rule changes.

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