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Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report
Elon Musk is on record as saying it would hurt competitors more than Tesla.
Some electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are set to get less affordable from next year, it seems. As expected, the incoming Trump administration has set its sights on killing off the IRS clean vehicle tax credit, according to a report in Reuters this afternoon.
The clean vehicle tax credit was overhauled as part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation. Until then, the size of a plug-in vehicle’s tax credit was based on its battery capacity, with a credit of up to $7,500 available. But from 2023 the rules changed, requiring a certain amount of domestic production to qualify, as well as adding price and income caps to address criticism that the tax credit mostly subsidized the already-wealthy.
Far fewer vehicles are now eligible for the rebate at time of purchase, particularly after the US Treasury Department got tougher about Chinese content, although a loophole means that none of these conditions apply to leased EVs.
Microsoft finally releases generic install ISOs for the Arm version of Windows
Generic install media brings Arm PCs closer to feeling like any old x86 PC.
For some PC buyers, doing a clean install of Windows right out of the box is part of the setup ritual. But for Arm-based PCs, including the Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips in them, it hasn’t been possible in the same way. Microsoft (mostly) hasn’t offered generic install media that can be used to reinstall Windows on an Arm PC from scratch.
Microsoft is fixing that today—the company finally has a download page for the official Arm release of Windows 11, linked to but separate from the ISOs for the x86 versions of Windows. These are useful not just for because-I-feel-like-it clean installs, but for reinstalling Windows after you’ve upgraded your SSD and setting up Windows virtual machines on Arm-based PCs and Macs.
Previously, Microsoft did offer install media for some Windows Insider Preview Arm builds, though these are for beta versions of Windows that may or may not be feature-complete or stable. Various apps, scripts, and websites also exist to grab files from Microsoft’s servers and build “unofficial” ISOs for the Arm version of Windows, though obviously this is more complicated than just downloading a single file directly.
Are standing desks good for you? The answer is getting clearer.
Whatever your office setup, the most important thing is to move.
Without question, inactivity is bad for us. Prolonged sitting is consistently linked to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and death. The obvious response to this frightful fate is to not sit— move. Even a few moments of exercise can have benefits, studies suggest. But in our modern times, sitting is hard to avoid, especially at the office. This has led to a range of strategies to get ourselves up, including the rise of standing desks. If you have to be tethered to a desk, at least you can do it while on your feet, the thinking goes.
However, studies on whether standing desks are beneficial have been sparse and sometimes inconclusive. Further, prolonged standing can have its own risks, and data on work-related sitting has also been mixed. While the final verdict on standing desks is still unclear, two studies out this year offer some of the most nuanced evidence yet about the potential benefits and risks of working on your feet.
Take a seat
For years, studies have pointed to standing desks improving markers for cardiovascular and metabolic health, such as lipid levels, insulin resistance, and arterial flow-mediated dilation (the ability of arteries to widen in response to increased blood flow). But it’s unclear how significant those improvements are to averting bad health outcomes, such as heart attacks. One 2018 analysis suggested the benefits might be minor.
ChatGPT’s success could have come sooner, says former Google AI researcher
A co-author of Attention Is All You Need reflects on ChatGPT’s surprise and Google’s conservatism.
In 2017, eight machine-learning researchers at Google released a groundbreaking research paper called Attention Is All You Need, which introduced the Transformer AI architecture that underpins almost all of today’s high-profile generative AI models.
The Transformer has made a key component of the modern AI boom possible by translating (or transforming, if you will) input chunks of data called “tokens” into another desired form of output using a neural network. Variations of the Transformer architecture power language models like GPT-4o (and ChatGPT), audio synthesis models that run Google’s NotebookLM and OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode, video synthesis models like Sora, and image synthesis models like Midjourney.
At TED AI 2024 in October, one of those eight researchers, Jakob Uszkoreit, spoke with Ars Technica about the development of transformers, Google’s early work on large language models, and his new venture in biological computing.
EU fines Meta €800 million for breaking law with Marketplace
EU: Tying the free Facebook Marketplace to the social network undermines rivals.
Meta has been fined nearly €800 million by Brussels after regulators accused Facebook’s parent company of stifling competition by “tying” its free Marketplace services with the social network.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s outgoing competition chief, said on Thursday that by linking Facebook with its classified ads service Meta had “imposed unfair trading conditions” on other providers.
She added: “It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that [others] could not match. This is illegal.”
Faulty Colorsofts have left some Kindle owners without an e-reader
A trade-in program doesn’t work too well when the new product has tech issues.
The launch of the first-ever color Kindle isn’t going so great. Amazon’s Colorsoftbegan shipping on October 30, but shipments were paused after some customers complained about a yellow bar at the bottom of the screen and discoloration around the edges. Amazon is working on a fix and is offering a replacement or refund.
That’s where another problem comes in. Leading up to the launch, Amazon ran a promotion advertising that its customers could trade in their old Kindle for a 20 percent discount on the Colorsoft. And some of those customers are now returning their new Colorsoft due to the yellow bar defect—leaving them without an e-reader altogether. Amazon has yet to provide any concrete information on when the fix will be ready for the Colorsoft and when it will resume shipping. It’s a mess.
It started with an advertisement for a limited-time discount on the Colorsoft via Amazon’s trade-in program. If the device was eligible, you had to answer a few questions about its condition and then ship it off. Once Amazon appraises it, the trade-in value appears in the form of an Amazon gift card. Amazon also offered an additional 20 percent off the Colorsoft along with the trade-in credit.
Half-Life 2 pushed Steam on the gaming masses… and the masses pushed back
Back in 2004, many players saw Valve’s new platform as nothing but “fancy DRM.”
It’s Half-Life 2 week at Ars Technica! This Saturday, November 16, is the 20th anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2—a game of historical importance for the artistic medium and technology of computer games. Each day leading up through the 16th, we’ll be running a new article looking back at the game and its impact.
When millions of eager gamers first installed Half-Life 2 20 years ago, many, if not most, of them found they needed to install another piece of software alongside it. Few at the time could imagine that piece of companion software–with the pithy name Steam–would eventually become the key distribution point and social networking center for the entire PC gaming ecosystem, making the idea of physical PC games an anachronism in the process.
While Half-Life 2 wasn’t the first Valve game released on Steam, it was the first high-profile title to require the platform, even for players installing the game from physical retail discs. That requirement gave Valve access to millions of gamers with new Steam accounts and helped the company bypass traditional retail publishers of the day by directly marketing and selling its games (and, eventually, games from other developers). But 2004-era Steam also faced a vociferous backlash from players that saw the software as a piece of nuisance DRM (digital rights management) that did little to justify its existence at the time.
After working with a dual-screen portable monitor for a month, I’m a believer
More pixels and versatility, but without the sacrifices of dual-screen PCs.
Having two displays in a single device is a growing trend that appeals to people with limited desk space or who need extra pixels to work with when on the go. But often, dual-screen devices, like laptops, are loaded with trade-offs that detract from the convenience two screens should provide.
I’ve tried using dual-screen laptops as my primary display/computing device before. But if I were to buy a dual-screen gadget today, it would be a dual-screen portable monitor. After spending the last month using a dual-screen portable monitor as my main work display, I believe that laptops should leave the dual-display thing to portable monitors. At least for now.
Clever design tricks simplify use
Credit:
Scharon Harding
Credit:
Scharon Harding
Credit:
Scharon Harding
Credit:
Scharon Harding
Credit:
Scharon Harding
These days, several companies offer dual-screen monitors, including some Chinese brands you may not have heard of on Amazon and Acer. The monitor I tested is from JSAUX, a Shenzhen-headquartered company that has been around for eight years and has made a name for itself selling Steam Deck accessories.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the choices you make while saving the world
“Events are weaving together quickly. The fate of the world shall be decided.”
BioWare’s reputation as a AAA game development studio is built on three pillars: world-building, storytelling, and character development. In-game codices offer textual support for fan theories, replays are kept fresh by systems that encourage experimenting with alternative quest resolutions, and players get so attached to their characters that an entire fan-built ecosystem of player-generated fiction and artwork has sprung up over the years.
After two very publicly disappointing releases with Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, BioWare pivoted back to the formula that brought it success, but I’m wrapping up the first third of The Veilguard, and it feels like there’s an ingredient missing from the special sauce. Where are the quests that really let me agonize over the potential repercussions of my choices?
I love Thedas, and I love the ragtag group of friends my hero has to assemble anew in each game, but what really gets me going as a roleplayer are the morally ambiguous questions that make me squirm: the dreadful and delicious BioWare decisions.
IBM boosts the amount of computation you can get done on quantum hardware
Incremental improvements across the hardware and software stacks add up.
There’s a general consensus that we won’t be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It’s still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies that’s betting the answer is yes, and on Wednesday, it announced a series of developments aimed at making that possible.
On their own, none of the changes being announced are revolutionary. But collectively, changes across the hardware and software stacks have produced much more efficient and less error-prone operations. The net result is a system that supports the most complicated calculations yet on IBM’s hardware, leaving the company optimistic that its users will find some calculations where quantum hardware provides an advantage.
Better hardware and software
IBM’s early efforts in the quantum computing space saw it ramp up the qubit count rapidly, being one of the first companies to reach the 1,000 qubit count. However, each of those qubits had an error rate that ensured that any algorithms that tried to use all of these qubits in a single calculation would inevitably trigger one. Since then, the company’s focus has been on improving the performance of smaller processors. Wednesday’s announcement was based on the introduction of the second version of its Heron processor, which has 133 qubits. That’s still beyond the capability of simulations on classical computers, should it be able to operate with sufficiently low errors.