Organizers had a way for attendees to track CO2 levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived. Hacker conferences—like all conventions—are notorious for giving attendees a parting gift of mystery illness. To combat “con crud,” New Zealand’s premier hacker conference, Kawaiicon, quietly launched a real-time, room-by-room carbon dioxide monitoring system…
Voting system required three keys. One of them has been “irretrievably lost.” One of the world’s premier security organizations has canceled the results of its annual leadership election after an official lost an encryption key needed to unlock results stored in a verifiable and privacy-preserving voting system. The International…
Curiosity Stream’s owner has more content for AI companies than it does for subscribers. We all know streaming services’ usual tricks for making more money: get more subscribers, charge those subscribers more money, and sell ads. But science streaming service Curiosity Stream is taking a new route that could…
There are fan-made browser versions of Red Alert, Unreal Tournament, and more. Over the past couple of weeks, friends and colleagues have made me aware of multiple ingeniously implemented, browser-based ways to play classic MS-DOS and Windows games with other people on basically any hardware. The late 1990s and…
So far, the hackers are laying low, likely for later use. Thousands of Asus routers have been hacked and are under the control of a suspected China-state group that has yet to reveal its intentions for the mass compromise, researchers said. The hacking spree is either primarily or exclusively…
Google’s AI infrastructure chief tells staff it needs thousandfold capacity increase in 5 years. While AI bubble talk fills the air these days, with fears of overinvestment that could pop at any time, something of a contradiction is brewing on the ground: Companies like Google and OpenAI can barely…
Genes with related functions cluster together, and the AI uses that. AI systems have recently had a lot of success in one key aspect of biology: the relationship between a protein’s structure and its function. These efforts have included the ability to predict the structure of most proteins and…
Since the last time we spoke to Red Bull, its cars have 3 times as many sensors on them. AT&T provided flights from Washington, DC, to Las Vegas and accommodation so Ars could attend the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. LAS VEGAS—A Formula…
Ars chats with director Tom Barbor-Might about new National Geographic documentary A Road Trip to Remember. Millions of people around the world are living with the harsh reality of Alzheimer’s disease, which also significantly impacts family members. Nobody is immune, as A-list actor Chris Hemsworth discovered when his own…
An unexpectedly large city lies in a sea of grass inhabited largely by nomads. Today all that’s left of the ancient city of Semiyarka are a few low earthen mounds and some scattered artifacts, nearly hidden beneath the waving grasses of the Kazakh Steppe, a vast swath of grassland…
