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Notepad.exe, now an actively maintained app, has gotten its inevitable AI update
Other Windows Insider updates include new CPU instructions for Prism x86 emulator.
Among the decades-old Windows apps to get renewed attention from Microsoft during the Windows 11 era is Notepad, the basic built-in text editor that was much the same in early 2021 as it had been in the ’90 and 2000s. Since then, it has gotten a raft of updates, including a visual redesign, spellcheck and autocorrect, and window tabs.
Given Microsoft’s continuing obsession with all things AI, it’s perhaps not surprising that the app’s latest update (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI. Users will be offered three rewritten options based on what they’ve highlighted, and they can select the one they like best or tell the app to try again.
Rewrite appears to be based on the same technology as the Copilot assistant, since it uses cloud-side processing (rather than your local CPU, GPU, or NPU) and requires Microsoft account sign-in to work. The initial preview is available to users in the US, France, the UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany.
Rocket Report: Australia says yes to the launch; Russia delivers for Iran
The world’s first wooden satellite arrived at the International Space Station this week.
Welcome to Edition 7.19 of the Rocket Report! Okay, we get it. We received more submissions from our readers on Australia’s approval of a launch permit for Gilmour Space than we’ve received on any other news story in recent memory. Thank you for your submissions as global rocket activity continues apace. We’ll cover Gilmour in more detail as they get closer to launch. There will be no Rocket Report next week as Eric and I join the rest of the Ars team for our 2024 Technicon in New York.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Gilmour Space has a permit to fly. Gilmour Space Technologies has been granted a permit to launch its 82-foot-tall (25-meter) orbital rocket from a spaceport in Queensland, Australia. The space company, founded in 2012, had initially planned to lift off in March but was unable to do so without approval from the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. The government approved Gilmour’s launch permit Monday, although the company is still weeks away from flying its three-stage Eris rocket.
Law enforcement operation takes down 22,000 malicious IP addresses worldwide
Operation Synergia II took aim at phishing, ransomware, and information stealing.
An international coalition of police agencies has taken a major whack at criminals accused of running a host of online scams, including phishing, the stealing of account credentials and other sensitive data, and the spreading of ransomware, Interpol said recently.
The operation, which ran from the beginning of April through the end of August, resulted in the arrest of 41 people and the takedown of 1,037 servers and other infrastructure running on 22,000 IP addresses. Synergia II, as the operation was named, was the work of multiple law enforcement agencies across the world, as well as three cybersecurity organizations.
A global response
“The global nature of cybercrime requires a global response which is evident by the support member countries provided to Operation Synergia II,” Neal Jetton, director of the Cybercrime Directorate at INTERPOL, said. “Together, we’ve not only dismantled malicious infrastructure but also prevented hundreds of thousands of potential victims from falling prey to cybercrime. INTERPOL is proud to bring together a diverse team of member countries to fight this ever-evolving threat and make our world a safer place.”
Amazon’s Mass Effect TV series is actually going to be made
The pedigree of the producers and writers involved is cause for concern, though.
Confirming previous rumors, Variety reports that Amazon will be moving ahead with producing a TV series based on the popular Mass Effect video game franchise. The writing and production staff involved might not inspire confidence from fans, though.
The series’ writer and executive producer is slated to be Daniel Casey, who until now was best known as the primary screenwriter on F9: The Fast Saga, one of the late sequels in the Fast and the Furious franchise. He was also part of a team of writers behind the relatively little-known 2018 science fiction film Kin.
Karim Zreik will also produce, and his background is a little more encouraging; his main claim to fame is in the short-lived Marvel Television unit, which produced relatively well-received series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix before Disney+ launched with its Marvel Cinematic Universe shows.
Why you can expect higher prices, more ads from Max next year
WBD chief hopeful that Trump administration could enable more streaming M&As.
Subscribing to the Max streaming service is expected to become more costly in 2025. That could mean indirectly, like through another streaming password crackdown, or directly, like through increases to monthly and/or annual subscription prices.
Password crackdowns as a “form of price rises”
During the earnings call for parent company Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for its fiscal Q3 2024, which ended on September 30, WBD signaled that it’s gearing up to roll out its next strategy for growing streaming revenue—charging subscribers extra for sharing passwords—over the next few months. This will start with “very soft messaging” toward Max users before the crackdown intensifies in 2025 and 2026, WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said.
Wiedenfels admitted that on their own, password crackdowns are “a form of price rises.” Netflix kicked off this form of price hike in the US in May 2023, and other streaming services have followed. That means Max is behind some rivals when it comes to implementing this restriction. Further, Max has been discussing its password crackdown since March, so subscribers could take some comfort in not seeing the restrictions launch sooner.
Man sick of crashes sues Intel for allegedly hiding CPU defects
Intel’s faulty 13th- and 14th-gen CPUs trigger lawsuit out for blood.
One frustrated customer wants to force Intel to pay untold millions in damages, claiming the company deceptively marketed faulty 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs as “enabling amazing experiences to happen on the PC,” when instead products were prone to crashes and blue screens.
In a proposed class action, a New York man, Mark Vanvalkenburgh, said that he regretted falling for Intel’s marketing of its 13th-gen CPU as “the world’s fastest desktop processor” capable of delivering “the best gaming, streaming and recording experience” available today.
He and possibly millions of others “reasonably” believed both the 13th- and 14th-gen CPUs would “perform as advertised”—only to discover they’d purchased a reliably “unstable” product triggering “random screen blackouts and random computer restarts” that PC Mag warned perhaps caused “permanent” CPU damage.
Secondhand EVs will flood the market in 2026, JD Power says
Used EV supply is set to grow by 230% as 215,000 cars come off lease.
If you’ve been wanting an electric car but everything seems too expensive, there’s some good news on the horizon. A whole lot of EV leases are due to expire in 2026, which should lead to something of a glut, according to data analyzed by JD Power.
We have the revised IRS clean vehicle tax credit to thank. This was revamped under the Inflation Reduction Act, and while tough new battery sourcing rules and a requirement for final assembly in North America have meant many fewer EVs are eligible for the tax credit when bought new, a loophole that considers a leased vehicle to be a commercial sale means any leased EV is eligible for the $7,500 incentive, which can now be subtracted from the price of the EV at the time of sale or leasing.
Since there’s also no price cap on the EV or income cap on the buyer, leasing is often a better idea than purchasing outright when it comes to new EVs, particularly for people who are worried about long-term battery degradation. (In fact, this is an overblown fear that is not backed up by data from older EVs, other than the early Nissan Leaf, which does not have active battery cooling.)
What makes baseball’s “magic mud” so special?
It has just the right mix of spreadability, stickiness, and friction to give pitchers a better grip on the ball.
Since the 1940s, baseball players have been spreading a special kind of “magic mud” on new baseballs to reduce the slick, glossy shine and give pitchers a firmer grip. Now, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified just what gives that magic mud its special properties, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Before magic mud came along, baseballs were treated with a mix of water and soil from the infield or, alternatively, tobacco juice or shoe polish. But these substances stained and scratched up the ball’s leather surface. Lena Blackburne was a third-base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1930s when an umpire complained about that, so he hunted for a better mud. Blackburne found that mud in a still-secret location purportedly near Palmyra, New Jersey, and a baseball dynasty was born: Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud. Once harvested, the mud is strained, skimmed of excess water, rinsed with tap water, and then subjected to a secret “proprietary treatment” before being allowed to settle.
Yet there hasn’t been much scientific research on the magic mud apart from one 2022 study. We do know quite a bit about the complex behavior of soil in general, including mud. Per the authors, mud is essentially “a dense suspension of predominantly clay and silt particles in water,” sometimes with a bit of sand in the mix, although this has little effect on how mud behaves under shearing forces (rheology). Technically, it falls into the non-Newtonian fluid category, in which the viscosity changes (either thickening or thinning) in response to an applied strain or shearing force, thereby straddling the boundary between liquid and solid behavior.
Recap: Our “AI in DC” conference was great—here’s what you missed
Experts were assembled, tales told, and cocktails consumed. It was fun!
Ars Technica descended in force last week upon our nation’s capital, setting up shop in the International Spy Museum for a three-panel discussion on artificial intelligence, infrastructure, security, and how compliance with policy changes over the next decade or so might shape the future of business computing in all its forms. Much like our San Jose event last month, the venue was packed to the rafters with Ars readers eager for knowledge (and perhaps some free drinks, which is definitely why I was there!). A bit over two hundred people were eventually herded into one of the conference spaces in the venue’s upper floors, and Ars Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher hopped on stage to take us in.
Credit:
DC Event Photojournalism
Credit:
DC Event Photojournalism
“Today’s event about privacy, compliance, and making infrastructure smarter, I think could not be more perfectly timed,” said Fisher. “I don’t know about your orgs, but I know Ars Technica and our parent company, Conde Nast, are currently thinking about generative AI and how it touches almost every aspect or could touch almost every aspect of our business.”
Fisher continued: “I think the media talks about how [generative AI] is going to maybe write news and take over content, but the reality is that generative AI has a lot of potential to help us in finance, to help us with opex, to help us with planning—to help us with pretty much every aspect of our business and in our business. And from what I’m reading online, many folks are starting to have this dream that generative AI is going to lead them into a world where they can replace a lot of SaaS services where they can make a pivot to first-party data.”
Mercedes-Benz previews next CLA, breaks EV distance record in testing
A CLA covered 2,309 miles in 24 hours in testing.
Mercedes-Benz is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the next generation of its sleek CLA sedan. Due to be officially introduced next year, it will feature the latest and greatest in Mercedes’ powertrain technology and software, and ahead of that formal reveal, the automaker sent out some images of a camouflaged CLA being driven around its test track in southern Germany by company CEO Ola Källenius.
The next CLA will be the first Mercedes to use the new MB.OS as its underlying operating system, a Linux-based system that also runs QNX in a hypervisor for the safety-critical stuff like the dashboard display. CEO Källenius gave Ars a run-through of MB.UX in 2023, explaining that while it will still work with third parties, it remains in charge.
“We are the full architects of the stack. That doesn’t mean we need to program every line of code. It doesn’t make technological sense, and it doesn’t make economic sense,” he told Ars.