Enlarge / Some of the structures present in the area around the recently described star system.

We know two facts about our galaxy that are, in isolation, mundane. One is that many stars are part of a two-star system and may orbit each other at distances similar to those of the planets in our own Solar System. The second is that stars that are similar in mass to the Sun will end their fusion-driven existences by expanding into bloated red giants. Put those two facts together and you have an inescapable and intriguing consequence: a lot of stars are going to end up expanding enough to swallow their neighbor.

What happens then can be hard to understand, in part because there are so many potential options. If the companion star is massive enough, the transfer of mass could trigger its explosion. It's also possible that friction could bleed energy from the orbit of the companion star, reducing its orbit until it is merged. Or, because the outer layers of the red giant are so diffuse, it's possible that the cores of the two stars could end up sharing a single envelope, continuing to orbit each other.

While it's easy to know when we've observed an explosion, it's much harder to figure out when we're looking at either of the latter two options. Normally, we'd rely on physical models to tell us what would happen in these cases, but generating a model of these conditions has turned out to be pretty complex. Now, however, some researchers are suggesting that a common-envelope binary star is the best way of explaining an object they've imaged.

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The coming launch of Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X later this year (along with the continued success of the Nintendo Switch) point to a pretty familiar battle brewing in the ever-cyclical console wars. But Microsoft President of Gaming Phil Spencer said in a recent interview with tech site Protocol that the gaming giant is more focused on cloud-based threats than any specific console maker in the coming years.

"When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward," Spencer told the site. "That's not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we've invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years."

The bit about trying to "re-create Azure" seems like an especially odd boast considering that Sony purchased cloud gaming service Gaikai in 2012 has been streaming games through its PlayStation Now service since 2014. Sony also recently partnered with Microsoft to now use Azure data centers to power PlayStation Now streaming, which would seem to obviate their need to "re-create" anything.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA (credit: Ikhlasul Amal)

An ongoing attack has so far delivered a cocktail of malicious wares to more than 500,000 machines on the Internet by abusing Bitbucket, the source code management system operated by Atlassian, researchers reported on Wednesday.

The attack, carried out by multiple holders of malicious Bitbucket accounts, distributes an array of malware that carries out a wide range of nefarious actions. Siphoning email credentials and other sensitive data, installing ransomware, stealing cryptocurrency, and surreptitiously freeloading on electricity and computing resources to mine cryptocurrency are all included. Researchers at security firm Cybereason said the ongoing attack has already generated more than 500,000 downloads, an indication that the attack may be infecting a sizable number of users.

"This campaign deploys an arsenal of malware for a multi-pronged assault on businesses," Cybereason researchers Lior Rochberger and Assaf Dahan wrote in a report. "It is able to steal sensitive browser data, cookies, email client data, system information, and two-factor authentication software data, along with cryptocurrency from digital wallets. It is also able to take pictures using the camera, take screenshots, mine Monero, and in certain cases also deploy ransomware."

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Enlarge / The YouTube TV logo before the MLS regular season match between Real Salt Lake and Seattle Sounders on April 06, 2019, at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington. (credit: Getty Images | Icon Sportswire )

Google Fiber will no longer offer cable-style TV service to new customers, but it will continue selling broadband and urge customers to sign up for streaming video plans such as YouTube TV.

"The best TV is already online," and the only thing customers need to get TV is "fast, fair, reliable Internet," Google Fiber said in an announcement yesterday. "So, as of today, Google Fiber will no longer offer a linear TV product to new customers."

Existing customers who already subscribe to Google Fiber TV can continue to use the service. New customers can buy Google Fiber broadband on its own or in a bundle with Google's YouTube TV, which is similar to cable TV but is provided entirely over the Internet and works with any Internet provider. YouTube TV costs $50 a month and provides live TV from more than 70 channels.

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  The homescreen for iCloud on mobile Web in Safari on an iPhone XS. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

With no fanfare or public announcement, Apple has launched a mobile version of its Web-based interface for accessing iCloud services like Notes, Reminders, and Photos. Located at icloud.com just like the desktop version, this mobile site works on the default browsers for both iOS and Android devices (with some caveats for the latter) and has a more limited scope than users already saw on the desktop Web.

That smaller scope starts with the Web apps that are available: the mobile version only offers Photos, Notes, Find iPhone, and Reminders. By contrast, the desktop version also offers Mail, Contacts, Calendar, iCloud Drive, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Find Friends. It's possible Apple will add more apps to mobile Web over time.

You can look through the screenshots above to see exactly how it all works. Generally, the core features of a given app are included but with no additional frills. The Photos app lets you browse, view, and share photos (though the share sheet is much more limited than what you'll see on the native mobile app). Notes lets you browse and write notes—you get the idea.

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  The Moto Razr, about to be ripped apart. [credit: PBKreviews ]

YouTube channel PBKreviews has a new Moto Razr and has already ripped the thing apart despite the phone not officially launching until tomorrow.

We can't imagine the phone will be easy to repair, since the first step is heating, picking, and prying at the glued-together shell, a process the video described as "pretty difficult." You get at the phone through the back, where the top and bottom halves can be popped off, and you'll have to slowly work your way down to the flexible display, which, assembly-wise, is one of the last parts to get removed from the phone.

Once you're inside the phone, you'll find it held together with a ton of screws—PBKreviews pointed out 25 screws in the video, and that's not even counting the hinge, which, unfortunately, didn't get disassembled.

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Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | MassimoVernicesole)

The Federal Communications Commission is asking phone carriers for help blocking robocalls made from outside the US and is implementing a congressionally mandated system to trace the origin of illegal robocalls.

The FCC yesterday sent letters to seven US-based voice providers "that accept foreign call traffic and terminate it to US consumers." Tracebacks conducted by the USTelecom trade group and the FCC found that each of these companies' services is "being used as a gateway into the United States for many apparently illegal robocalls that originate overseas," the FCC's letters to the companies say.

The FCC letters were sent to All Access Telecom, Globex, Piratel, Talkie, Telcast, ThinQ, and Third Base. These are mainly wholesale voice providers rather than companies that sell phone service directly to home or business customers. For example, All Access Telecom says it provides "wholesale VoIP termination services" to phone providers.

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Enlarge / Facebook has patched a WhatsApp bug that would let someone read files off your desktop. (credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Facebook has issued a security advisory for a flaw in WhatsApp Desktop that could allow an attacker to use cross-site scripting attacks and read the files on MacOS or Windows PCs by using a specially crafted text message. The attacker could retrieve the contents of files on the computer on the other end of a WhatsApp text message and potentially do other illicit things.

The flaw, discovered by researcher Gal Weizman at PerimeterX, is a result of a weakness in how WhatsApp's desktop was implemented using the Electron software framework, which has had significant security issues of its own in the past. Electron allows developers to create cross-platform applications based on Web and browser technologies but is only as secure as the components developers deploy with their Electron apps.

Weizman first found cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in WhatsApp in 2017, when he found he could tamper with the metadata of messages, craft bogus preview banners for Web links, and create URLs that could conceal hostile intent within WhatsApp messages. But as he continued his explorations into the WhatsApp client, he found that he could inject JavaScript code into messages that would run within WhatsApp Desktop—and then gain access to the local file system using the JavaScript Fetch API.

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Enlarge / Artist's depiction of Houser departing Rockstar, shown here as (somewhat exaggerated) flaming wreckage without his guidance.

Rockstar co-founder and Creative Vice President Dan Houser will be leaving the company in March "after an extended break beginning in spring of 2019," according to a document filed with the SEC by Rockstar parent Take Two Tuesday evening. Take Two stock is down more than 4 percent in early trading following the news, dipping to its lowest level since December 9.

"We are extremely grateful for his contributions," Take Two wrote in the filing. "Rockstar Games has built some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful game worlds, a global community of passionate fans and an incredibly talented team, which remains focused on current and future projects."

Houser has been instrumental in creating Rockstar's wry, satirical voice over the past two decades, serving as the writer or co-writer for most of the company's best-selling titles, including the Grand Theft Auto series. Houser's brother Sam, who co-founded the company with Dan in 1998 and serves as executive producer on most of Rockstar's products, will continue to work at Rockstar, and his role at the company "remains unchanged," according to a statement Take Two issued in the wake of the news.

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Enlarge / Local residents call the tracks Ciampate del Diavolo, or the Devil's Path.

Roccamonfina volcano, about 60km northwest of Vesuvius, erupted violently around 350,000 years ago. Pyroclastic flows—deadly torrents of hot gas and volcanic ash—raced down the sides of the mountain. But within a few days, a small group of hominins trekked across the layer of ash and pumice that covered the steep mountainside. Recent analysis and some newly identified prints suggest that the intrepid (or reckless) hominins may have been Homo heidelbergensis who lived and hunted near the volcano.

Another layer of ash later covered the slope, sealing away at least 81 tracks until the early 1800s, when erosion revealed them to the local humans. The tracks record where at least five climbers, all with different foot sizes, walked down the steep, ash-covered hillside. One trail zigzags back and forth downhill, and you can easily picture climbers carefully working their way diagonally across the slope. Along another, more curving path, there are still handprints where the climbers reached out to steady themselves, and a slide mark reveals where one climber slipped.

The ash must have been cool enough to walk on but still soft enough to preserve tracks—very detailed ones, in a few cases. According to ichnologist Adolfo Panarello (of University of Cassino and Southern Latium) and his colleagues, that must have happened within a few days of the pyroclastic flow; Roccamonfina may even still have been erupting. In the 1800s, people living around the now-extinct volcano were sure that only the devil could have left those tracks.

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  Behold, one of *two* new Dell XPS 13 DE editions: the 2019 model released at the end of last year. [credit: Dell ]

Dell's XPS 13 Developer Edition, the company's flagship "just works" Ubuntu-based machine, was recently refreshed. These days Dell's XPS line is not the cheapest Linux option, nor is it the most configurable or user-upgradable. And if any of those factors are a big part of your criteria, this is likely not the laptop for you.

On top of that, many Linux users still have a strong DIY streak and will turn up their noses at the XPS 13. After all, in a day and age when just about every laptop I test seems to run Linux fairly well right out of the box, do you need official support? If you know what you're doing and don't mind troubleshooting your own problems, the answer is probably not.

Yet after spending a few weeks with the latest XPS 13 (the fourth refresh I've tested), it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the closest any company has come to Linux-computing nirvana. The XPS 13 Developer Edition makes an excellent choice for anyone who prefers Linux but wants hardware support from the manufacturer. All these years into its Linux odyssey, Dell continues to stand behind the operating system on these machines in a way that, in my experience, few other computer makers do.

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Enlarge / Physicist Justin Burton (left) experiments with giant soap bubbles on Emory University's Quad with graduate student Stephen Frazier. (credit: Burton Lab/Emory University)

Everybody loves bubbles, regardless of age—the bigger the better. But to blow really big, world-record-scale bubbles requires a very precise bubble mixture. Physicists have determined that a key ingredient is mixing in polymers of varying strand lengths, according to a new paper in Physical Review Fluids. That produces a soap film able to stretch sufficiently thin to make a giant bubble without breaking.

Bubbles may seem frivolous, but there is some complex underlying physics, and hence their study has long been serious science. In the 1800s, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau outlined four basic laws of surface tension that determine the structure of soapy films. Surface tension is why bubbles are round; that shape has the least surface area for a given volume, so it requires the least energy to maintain. Over time, that shape will start to look more like a soccer ball than a perfect sphere as gravity pulls the liquid downward ("coarsening").

Bubbles and foams remain an active area of research. For instance, in 2016, French physicists worked out a theoretical model for the exact mechanism for how soap bubbles form when jets of air hit a soapy film. They found that bubbles only formed above a certain speed, which in turn depends on the width of the jet of air. If the jet is wide, there will be a lower threshold for forming bubbles, and those bubbles will be larger than ones produced by narrower jets, which have higher speed thresholds. That's what's happening, physics-wise, when we blow bubbles through a little plastic wand: the jet forms at our lips and is wider than the soapy film suspended within the wand.

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Note (February 5): In the original version of this story I was comparing a low-quality copy of the 1896 film to the upscaled version. Shiryaev actually started with a higher-quality scan of the film, and many of the differences I observed actually reflected his better source material, not the upscaling algorithm. I've updated the first video below to the one Shiryaev used, but I left the text of the story as-is.

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat is one of the most famous films in cinema history. Shot by French filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière, it achieved an unprecedented level of quality for its time. Some people regard its commercial exhibition in 1896 as the birth of the film industry. An urban legend—likely apocryphal—says that viewers found the footage so realistic that they screamed and ran to the back of the room as the train approached. I've embedded a video of the original film above.

Of course, humanity's standards for realism have risen dramatically over the last 125 years. Today, the Lumière brothers' masterpiece looks grainy, murky, and basically ancient. But a man named Denis Shiryaev used modern machine-learning techniques to upscale the classic film to 21st-century video standards.

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Enlarge (credit: carrotmadman6 / Flickr)

In September 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown set a greenhouse goal for the state: net-zero emissions by 2045. It's a very aggressive goal. The easiest part of the energy transition is the first bit: growing the meager share of renewables on the grid. But cleaning up the last 20 percent or so of our energy use is a bigger challenge and one that has yet to be tackled. From industry to air travel to agriculture, some things look like a very heavy lift.

However, achieving net-zero emissions is easier than "actual" zero because activities that actively remove CO₂ from the atmosphere (sometimes called "negative emissions") could cancel out some of the stubborn emissions we can't get rid of. To find out how that might work in California's case, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory report analyzed options to estimate costs. It points to a hefty—though not impossible—price tag to meet that 2045 goal.

Drawdown

The first question is just how much CO₂ California is going to need to suck out of the atmosphere to achieve its goal. The Golden State's current plan is to see emissions cut from over 400 million tons per year to about 86 million tons by 2050. To hit net-zero in that case, negative emissions would have to grow to 125 million tons per year by 2045.

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Enlarge / A test of radiative cooling panels at the University of Colorado. (credit: University of Colorado)

Moving from the present world to one where renewable power dominates our energy economy is going to require some additional technologies. These may include storage, enhanced grid management, and demand-response power management, but they could also include something entirely new. Recently, a paper took a look at a technology I hadn't realized even existed.

The paper evaluates the potential of what its authors are terming "nighttime photovoltaic power," and the simplest way of thinking about it is "running solar panels in reverse": generating electricity by radiating energy away into space. The efficiency is nothing like that of standard photovoltaics and can't even get there except in unusual circumstances. But as the name implies, it can keep generating power long after the Sun goes down.

Photovoltaics at night

The easiest way to understand this tech is to think of a photovoltaic device in equilibrium with its environment. Here, incoming photons will occasionally liberate an electron, leaving behind a positively charged hole. These can then combine, radiating a photon back out of the device. When operating as a photovoltaic device, there's a large excess of photons coming in, producing a corresponding excess of electrons and holes that can then be harvested as electricity.

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Enlarge / Your local police might like to interest you in this product. (credit: Amazon)

Amazon's Ring line of cloud-connected home surveillance equipment has for several months faced steep criticism not only for its nearly 900 "partnerships" with law enforcement agencies but also for lax account protections that put users' privacy at risk. Now, the company is hoping to assuage concerns from civil rights advocates, privacy advocates, lawmakers, and some users with a slate of updates.

Ring a few days ago began pushing an update to all users that creates a new "control center" in the Ring app. The control center adds several account and camera privacy settings to Ring and brings them all together into one area.

Among the new settings is an option to check for or enable two-factor authentication on one's Ring account. Ring did not previously require users to set up two-factor authentication on setup or prompt them to do so later. The lack of heavy two-factor usage was implicated in a wave of Ring camera hacks that began late last year.

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Enlarge (credit: xkcd)

Sudo, a utility found in dozens of Unix-like operating systems, has received a patch for a potentially serious bug that allows unprivileged users to easily obtain unfettered root privileges on vulnerable systems.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-18634, is the result of a stack-based buffer-overflow bug found in versions 1.7.1 through 1.8.25p1. It can be triggered only when either an administrator or a downstream OS, such as Linux Mint and Elementary OS, has enabled an option known as pwfeedback. With pwfeedback turned on, the vulnerability can be exploited even by users who aren't listed in sudoers, a file that contains rules that users must follow when using the sudo command.

Sudo is a powerful utility that’s included in most if not all Unix- and Linux-based OSes. It lets administrators allow specific individuals or groups to run commands or applications with higher-than-usual system privileges. Both Apple’s macOS and Debian distributions of Linux received updates last week. People using other OSes should check their configurations and version numbers to ensure they’re not vulnerable.

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  The Poco X2. [credit: Poco ]

Xiaomi is launching a follow-up to one of India's most popular smartphones, the Poco F1, with the Poco X2. Just like the first version, this is a phone that aims to push the boundaries of bang-for-your-buck with a really big spec sheet and a really low price. A phone with a 120Hz display and six cameras for just ₹15,999 ($225)? That's crazy!

India is a major battleground country for smartphone manufacturers, thanks to the combination of the world's second-highest population along with a more open market compared to the tyrannical rules imposed by the government in China. Xiaomi really went after this market in 2018 with the launch of the Poco F1, which offered flagship-class specs (a Snapdragon 845) for $340. Naturally, the first Poco was a real hit with Indian users, but a lot of evidence suggests that Xiaomi was just using the phone as a loss leader. For about half a year, the Poco F1 was a sweetheart deal made just for India, and Xiaomi even did its best to limit the phone's overseas appeal by stripping down the cellular connectivity to India-specific bands.

For the sequel, Xiaomi isn't going quite as hard as it did with the Poco F1. Instead of Qualcomm's highest-end chipset, the Snapdragon 865, this is a Snapdragon 730G. The phone is actually just a rebrand of an earlier Xiaomi phone meant for the Chinese market, the Redmi K30. But again, this was probably the plan. Release a crazy-cheap phone in the Poco F1, build a fan base, then sell more sustainably priced devices under the same brand name.

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Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Duncan Hull / Getty)

The price of Tesla stock soared by 21 percent on Tuesday, rising above $940 for the first time.

Tesla's value has more than doubled since the start of the year—and quadrupled since last September.

What's driving the dramatic rise in Tesla's share price is not clear. Last week, Tesla reported solid but unspectacular profits of $105 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. A number of Wall Street analysts have upgraded their share price targets for Tesla in recent weeks, but Tesla's value is now far above most analysts' estimates.

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Enlarge / Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey on "Friends," on the set at the Warner Bros lot on Sept. 12, 2003 in Burbank, California. (credit: Getty Images | David Hume Kennerly )

AT&T's decision to prevent Time Warner-owned shows from streaming on Netflix and other non-AT&T services reduced the company's quarterly revenue by $1.2 billion, a sacrifice that AT&T is making to give its planned HBO Max service more exclusive content. AT&T took the $1.2-billion hit despite previously telling Congress that it would not restrict distribution of Time Warner content, claiming that would be "irrational business behavior."

AT&T's actual Q4 2019 revenue was $46.8 billion, but the company said it would have been $48 billion if not for "HBO Max investments in the form of foregone WarnerMedia content licensing revenues."

An AT&T spokesperson told Ars that the $1.2 billion in lost revenue was primarily caused by the decision "not to sell existing content—mainly Friends, The Big Bang Theory, and Fresh Prince—to third parties such as Netflix." As we've previously reported, AT&T took Time Warner shows off Netflix in order to give the exclusive streaming rights to AT&T's HBO Max, which is scheduled to debut in May 2020 for $14.99 a month.

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