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“Windows 365 Link” is Microsoft’s $349 thin client for Windows in the cloud
Small, plastic thin client is Microsoft’s first “Cloud PC,” launches in April.
Microsoft is announcing some new hardware today, but it’s a bit different from a typical Surface device. The Windows 365 Link, which launches in April for $349, is a mini desktop PC that exists exclusively to connect to the Windows 365 cloud service rather than running Windows locally.
The Windows 365 Link is a plain black plastic box with a Windows logo imprinted on the top—it looks like a smaller, squarer version of the Windows Dev Kit 2023, an Arm desktop that Microsoft released for developers a couple of years ago. The box has one USB-A port on the front for easy access. On the back, you get a single USB-C 3.2 port, two more USB-A ports, a full-size DisplayPort, a full-size HDMI port, an Ethernet port, and a power jack.
Windows Central reports that the device is fanless, uses an unspecified Intel processor, and includes 8GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It runs a cut-down Windows variant that exists only to connect to local peripherals and make contact with Microsoft’s Windows 365 service. When not connected to the Internet, the PC is mostly non-functional, though there is presumably some kind of basic UI available for connecting to networks and accessories locally.
Novo Nordisk sells hit weight-loss drug in China—at fraction of US price
As US struggles to afford GLP-1 drugs, the rest of the world sees much lower prices.
Patients in China will be able to purchase the blockbuster weight-loss drug Wegovy for 1,400 yuan, or about $193, just a fraction of the US list price of $1,349, according to media reports.
The price in China is in line with pricing elsewhere outside of the US. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in a September Senate hearing, Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, is sold for $265 in Canada, $186 in Denmark, $137 in Germany, and just $92 in the United Kingdom. In the hearing, Sanders and other senators grilled Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Jørgensen on the “outrageously high prices” in the US of Wegovy and the company’s other popular GLP-1 drug, Ozempic, used for diabetes.
“What we are dealing with today is not just an issue of economics, it is not just an issue of corporate greed. It is a profound moral issue,” Sanders said in opening remarks about the prices of the highly effective drugs.
Report: DOJ wants to force Google Chrome sale, Android de-bundling
Cutting off Google’s control of the world’s most popular browser may be necessary.
Preferred by 61 percent of Internet users, Google’s Chrome browser plays too big a role in maintaining the tech giant’s search monopoly, the US Department of Justice has reportedly decided.
On Monday, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that top antitrust officials are planning to ask the court on Wednesday to order Google to sell off Chrome. In addition to banning Google’s exclusive default deals, cutting off Google’s control of the world’s most popular browser may be necessary, sources suggested, to level the playing field for rivals.
Additionally, the DOJ intends to ask for a range of other remedies, Bloomberg reported, all of them discussed in a court filing last month. These include imposing data licensing requirements and requiring more transparency for advertisers on where their ads appear, as well as requiring “measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system,” sources said. Those measures will likely stop Google from hoarding user data for both search results and AI products, with the DOJ seemingly paving the way for more users to opt their content out of AI training.
SpaceX will try some new tricks on Starship’s sixth test flight
“An additional objective for this flight will be attempting an in-space burn using a single Raptor engine.”
The sixth flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, set for takeoff on Tuesday from South Texas, will test the vehicle’s limits in new ways.
Most importantly, SpaceX will attempt to briefly reignite one of Starship’s six Raptor engines in space. SpaceX tried this on Starship’s third launch in March but aborted the engine restart after the rocket lost roll control during the flight’s coast phase.
A successful engine relight demonstration would pave the way for future Starships to ascend into stable, sustainable orbits. It’s essential to test the Raptor engine’s ability to reignite in space for a deorbit burn to steer Starship out of orbit toward an atmospheric reentry.
Emergent gravity may be a dead idea, but it’s not a bad one
Gravity may not emerge, but some interesting ideas did.
Emergent gravity is a bold idea.
It claims that the force of gravity is a mere illusion, more akin to friction or heat—a property that emerges from some deeper physical interaction. This emergent gravity idea might hold the key to rewriting one of the fundamental forces of nature—and it could explain the mysterious nature of dark matter.
But in the years since its original proposal, it has not held up well to either experiment or further theoretical inquiry. Emergent gravity may not be a right answer. But it is a clever one, and it’s still worth considering, as it may hold the seeds of a greater understanding.
The 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denali brings big power at a bigger cost
It’s a big, luxurious—but expensive—electric pickup truck with a huge battery.
GMC provided flights from Albany, New York, to San Francisco and accommodation so Ars could test the 2025 Sierra EV. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
Electric trucks aren’t exactly blowing up the sales charts right now. A market that’s increasingly skeptical of EVs in general isn’t helping, but that age-old work-minded segment that looked set for a reinvention just a few years ago now seems increasingly reluctant to change.
Rivian’s excellent R1T hasn’t taken the market by storm, while Ford’s F-150 Lightning isn’t reinventing the work truck landscape the way many (including myself) had hoped. On the Chevrolet side of the equation, the Silverado EV likewise hasn’t challenged the sales of its internally combusted siblings.
General Motors is bringing another contender to the fray, the 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denali, and if you thought the $94,500 initial price on the Silverado RST First Edition was a bit much, prepare for more sticker shock, as the Max Range Denali starts at $100,495. Is the solution to electric truck woes an even more expensive model? After a few days in the saddle, I’m not so sure.
Can going to a haunted house boost the immune system?
Study found marked decrease in inflammatory markers and white blood cells after visiting a haunted house.
Spooky season has come and gone, but those Halloween revelers who took in a haunted house during the season might just have boosted their immune systems by doing so, according to a new paper published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
As previously reported, fear is typically viewed as a negative emotion, an adverse reaction to keep us on our toes with regard to potential dangers in our environment. But human beings also tend to seek out scary movies, horror novels, or haunted houses—and not just during the Halloween season. This tendency has been dubbed “recreational fear” in the academic literature: a “mixed emotional experience of fear and enjoyment.”
Co-author Mathias Clasen of Aarhus University, author of Why Horror Seduces, specializes in studying recreational fear. For instance, Clasen has examined the dominant personality traits of horror fans. (They tend to score high on openness to experience, also called intellect imagination.) In 2019 we reported on his investigation of two different fear-regulation strategies employed by subjects participating in a Danish haunted house: “adrenaline junkies,” who lean into the fear, and “white-knucklers,” who try to tamp down their fear.
Ben Affleck warns that visual effects industry faces AI disruption
AI won’t replace human artistry, says actor, but it will wildly drive down costs.
Last week, actor and director Ben Affleck shared his views on AI’s role in filmmaking during the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, arguing that AI models will transform visual effects but won’t replace creative filmmaking anytime soon. A video clip of Affleck’s opinion began circulating widely on social media not long after.
“Didn’t expect Ben Affleck to have the most articulate and realistic explanation where video models and Hollywood is going,” wrote one X user.
In the clip, Affleck spoke of current AI models’ abilities as imitators and conceptual translators—mimics that are typically better at translating one style into another instead of originating deeply creative material.
The ISS has been leaking air for 5 years, and engineers still don’t know why
“This is a an engineering problem, and good engineers should be able to agree on it.”
Officials from NASA and Russia’s space agency don’t see eye to eye on the causes and risks of small but persistent air leaks on the International Space Station.
That was the word from the new chair of NASA’s International Space Station Advisory Committee last week. The air leaks are located in the transfer tunnel of the space station’s Russian Zvezda service module, one of the oldest elements of the complex.
US and Russian officials “don’t have a common understanding of what the likely root cause is, or the severity of the consequences of these leaks,” said Bob Cabana, a retired NASA astronaut who took the helm of the advisory committee earlier this year. Cabana replaced former Apollo astronaut Tom Stafford, who chaired the committee before he died in March.
Trust in scientists hasn’t recovered from COVID. Some humility could help.
Intellectual humility could win back much-needed trust in science, study finds
Scientists could win back trust lost during the COVID-19 pandemic if they just showed a little intellectual humility, according to a study published Monday in Nature Human Behavior.
It’s no secret that scientists—and the science generally—took a hit during the health crisis. Public confidence in scientists fell from 87 percent in April 2000 to a low of 73 percent in October 2023, according to survey data from the Pew Research Center. And the latest Pew data released last week suggests it will be an uphill battle to regain what was lost, with confidence in scientists only rebounding three percentage points, to 76 percent in a poll from October.
Building trust
The new study in Nature Human Behavior may guide the way forward, though. The study encompasses five smaller studies probing the perceptions of scientists’ trustworthiness, which previous research has linked to willingness to follow research-based recommendations.