#ars-technica

#ars-technica

Activision has sent cease-and-desist letters to two makers of popular fan clients for legacy Call of Duty titles in recent weeks.The move cuts off access to the many gameplay and quality-of-life improvements brought by these clients and stops what fans say is the only safe way to play these older games without the threat of damaging hacking by opponents.

On October 26, 2012, Microsoft released Windows 8, a hybrid tablet/desktop operating system that took bold risks but garnered mixed reviews.Ten years later, we've caught up with former Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky to explore how Windows 8 got started, how it predicted several current trends in computing, and how he feels about the OS in retrospect.

What Is Going On?Not sure how to feel about AI? You're in good company.During a conference on Wednesday, Variety asked rapper and business mogul Calvin "Snoop Dogg" Broadus Junior to share his thoughts on AI in regard to the ongoing Writer's Guild strike.And, well, Snoop didn't hold back.He expressed a mix of fascination and concern, comparing the rise of AI to sci-fi movies, and questioned whether he should just give up and invest in the buzzy tech.

Big Upgrade
Midjourney recently announced its latest iteration, V5, and it's set a new bar in achieving uncanny, Instagram-filtered photorealism."MJ v5 currently feels to me like finally getting glasses after ignoring bad eyesight for a little bit too long," Julie Wireland, a graphic designer who frequently shares Midjourney generated images, told Ars Technica.

On Wednesday, Midjourney announced version 5 of its commercial AI image synthesis service, which can produce photorealistic images at a quality level that some AI art fans are calling creepy and " too perfect."Midjourney v5 is available now as an alpha test for customers who subscribe to the Midjourney service, which is available through Discord.

Not to be left out of the rush to integrate generative AI into search, on Wednesday DuckDuckGo announced DuckAssist, an AI-powered factual summary service powered by technology from Anthropic and OpenAI.It is available for free today as a wide beta test for users of DuckDuckGo's browser extensions and browsing apps.

Image: ShotPrime via Getty Images Microsoft's new AI-powered chatbot for its Bing search engine is going totally off the rails, users are reporting.The tech giant partnered with OpenAI to bring its popular GPT language model to Bing in an effort to challenge Google's dominance of both search and AI.

In brief GitHub is testing a new feature that will allow developers to instruct its AI-powered programming assistant Copilot to generate code using voice commands.The legally troubled, license-bothering technology isn't a plain speech-to-text dictation engine that would require developers to read out their program source line by line.

Whether you want to enjoy higher-fidelity music or are looking to cancel out ambient noise, the Dealmaster is here with deals on some of the top headphones on the market.If you're an Apple user, the Apple AirPods Max or the AirPods Pro (2nd Gen) are easy to pair to your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or MacBook.

We're entering the last week of the year and, as you might've guessed, there's still a fair amount of last-minute gifts to grab at some of the best prices you'll find all year.In this week's Dealmaster we have some of our favorite big-ticket items matching their all-time low prices, including the latest iPad, Google Pixel's ( 6, 6a, and 7), Sony headphones and earphones, and the latest Apple AirPods Pro, to name a few.

Black Friday and Cyber Week are technically done and dusted.But the season of deals and record-low pricing continues for a variety of electronics as we wind down the year.Among some of the best deals running are a few of Apple's iPads, MacBooks, and Apple TVs.Both the latest iPad and iPad Air are on sale right now for their lowest-ever prices.

For high-capacity storage needs, the average consumer turns to hard disk drives (HDDs).They're generally not as speedy or reliable as SSDs, but they're a heck of a lot cheaper.The Apex Storage X21 add-in card (AIC) currently making its rounds on the Internet isn't about using the most cost-effective storage, though.

If you're looking for a premium Android tablet, Samsung's Galaxy Tabs are terrific options.Not only do the latest Galaxy Tab S8 models compete head to head with the rival iPad in terms of design and build quality, but Samsung's slate also comes with a few features not available on Apple's tablet, including a desktop DeX mode, various screen sizes and resolutions, and integration into the Samsung and Windows ecosystems.

Black Friday is in full swing, and that's great news if you've had your eyes on an Apple device but have been waiting for a solid discount to pull the trigger.Apple devices are notoriously expensive, and you typically don't see many discounts throughout the year.Fortunately, Black Friday brings notable Apple deals not only from retailers, but Apple itself.

Another week, another roundup of today's best tech deals.Today's Dealmaster features a new all-time low ($998, $1,500) on Samsung's art-inspired "The Frame" 4K TV.This TV has a unique party trick where it can display famous paintings on the screen when not in use, lending itself to a classier decor than just a regular black square.

Whether or not Blue Origin puts a lander on the Moon, it might play a key role in sustaining lunar operations.Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company has revealed that it can produce solar cells and transmission wire using simulated Moon regolith.The firm's Blue Alchemist technique uses molten electrolysis to separate the lunar soil's aluminum, iron and silicon from bound oxygen to extract key materials.

On Monday, NASA's uncrewed Orion spacecraft reached its farthest distance from Earth at nearly 270,000 miles away as part of the agency's Artemis I mission.It's the farthest a spacecraft capable of carrying human passengers has ever traveled, in fact, at about 20,000 miles clear of the previous record set by the crewed Apollo 13 mission way back in 1970.

A study in the journal iScience suggests that, in some noise situations, AirPods, particularly the Pro model, can work just as well as far pricier prescription-only models.AirPods are not sold or approved by the Food and Drug Administration as devices for those with mild to moderate hearing loss.But with cheaper, over-the-counter hearing aids now available at common retailers, there's a renewed interest in non-medical companies moving into the space to help people who don't need expert care-including from Apple itself.

It's time for another end-of-the-week Dealmaster.In this week's roundup of the web's best tech deals, we have a $100 gift card offer for preordering the just-announced OnePlus 11 smartphone, record lows on Google Pixels, and a handful of Amazon tablets and e-readers matching their own record low prices.

LastPass says that a threat actor was able to steal corporate and customer data by hacking an employee's personal computer and installing keylogger malware, which let them gain access to the company's cloud storage.The update provides more information about how the series of hacks happened last year that resulted in the popular password manager's source code and customer vault data being stolen by an unauthorized third party.

Rapeepong Puttakumwong via Getty Images
The threat actors who infiltrated News Corp., the company that owns The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets, apparently had access to its network for two full years.In February last year, News Corp. admitted that it had discovered a security breach a month earlier and that hackers broke into a third-party cloud service that contained employees' information.

Image: SOPA Images/Contributor Hacking.Disinformation.Surveillance.CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.LastPass, the popular password manager, is out of good will.Ever since the company first disclosed a breach in August, it has slowly provided consumers with drips of information, and the new details that do come out increasingly paint a picture of a company that should not be trusted with your passwords.

When 2022 dawned, there were a few things we knew we would be writing about: The global pandemic, whatever cool things Apple and Google did, rocket launches, and cool artificial intelligence stuff.But every year offers surprises, and 2022 was no exception.Yes, we figured there would be plenty of articles about Elon Musk on Ars Technica this year.

Amazon's Ad Verification program offers select users $2 per month for sharing their traffic data.It is part of Amazon's Shopper Panel, an invite-only program that offers users financial rewards.The voluntary program could raise privacy concerns over how Amazon handles customer data.Some Amazon users will now earn $2 dollar per month for agreeing to share their traffic data with the retail giant.

Nintendo has issued a number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests against SteamGridDB (SGDB), a site that hosts custom fan-made icons and images used to represent games on Steam's front-end interface.Since 2015, SGDB's collection has grown to include hundreds of thousands of images representing tens of thousands of titles.