Tag Archives: Tech

CrowdStrike blames testing bugs for security update that took down 8.5M Windows PCs

Enlarge / CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software brought down as many as 8.5 million Windows PCs over the weekend. CrowdStrike reader comments 143 Security firm CrowdStrike has posted a preliminary post-incident report about the botched update to its Falcon security software that caused as many as 8.5 million Windows PCs to crash over the weekend, delaying… Read More »

Microsoft says 8.5M systems hit by CrowdStrike BSOD, releases USB recovery tool

Enlarge / A bad update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software crashed millions of Windows PCs last week. CrowdStrike reader comments 88 By Monday morning, many of the major disruptions from the flawed CrowdStrike security update late last week had cleared up. Flight delays and cancellations were no longer front-page news, and multiple Starbucks locations near… Read More »

CrowdStrike fixes start at “reboot up to 15 times” and get more complex from there

reader comments 114 Airlines, payment processors, 911 call centers, TV networks, and other businesses have been scrambling this morning after a buggy update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software caused Windows-based systems to crash with a dreaded blue screen of death (BSOD) error message. We’re updating our story about the outage with new details as we… Read More »

The next Nvidia driver makes even more GPUs “open,” in a specific, quirky way

Getty Images reader comments 26 You have to read the headline on Nvidia’s latest GPU announcement slowly, parsing each clause as it arrives. “Nvidia transitions fully” sounds like real commitment, a burn-the-boats call. “Towards open-source GPU,” yes, evoking the company’s “first step” announcement a little over two years ago, so this must be progress, right?… Read More »

Researchers craft smiling robot face from living human skin cells

Enlarge / A movable robotic face covered with living human skin cells. reader comments 81 In a new study, researchers from the University of Tokyo, Harvard University, and the International Research Center for Neurointelligence have unveiled a technique for creating lifelike robotic skin using living human cells. As a proof of concept, the team engineered… Read More »

Proton is taking its privacy-first apps to a nonprofit foundation model

Getty Images reader comments 53 Proton, the secure-minded email and productivity suite, is becoming a nonprofit foundation, but it doesn’t want you to think about it in the way you think about other notable privacy and web foundations. “We believe that if we want to bring about large-scale change, Proton can’t be billionaire-subsidized (like Signal),… Read More »

Retired engineer discovers 55-year-old bug in Lunar Lander computer game code

Enlarge / Illustration of the Apollo lunar lander Eagle over the Moon. reader comments 49 On Friday, a retired software engineer named Martin C. Martin announced that he recently discovered a bug in the original Lunar Lander computer game’s physics code while tinkering with the software. Created by a 17-year-old high school student named Jim… Read More »

“Simulation of keyboard activity” leads to firing of Wells Fargo employees

reader comments 136 Last month, Wells Fargo terminated over a dozen bank employees following an investigation into claims of faking work activity on their computers, according to a Bloomberg report. A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) search conducted by Ars confirmed that the fired members of the firm’s wealth and investment management division were “discharged… Read More »

Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has

Getty Images reader comments 42 Bing, Microsoft’s search engine platform, went down in the very early morning today. That meant that searches from Microsoft’s Edge browsers that had yet to change their default providers didn’t work. It also meant that services relying on Bing’s search API—Microsoft’s own Copilot, ChatGPT search, Yahoo, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo—similarly failed.… Read More »

New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC

Enlarge / A screenshot of Microsoft’s new “Recall” feature in action. reader comments 142 At a Build conference event on Monday, Microsoft revealed a new AI-powered feature called “Recall” for Copilot+ PCs that will allow Windows 11 users to search and retrieve their past activities on their PC. To make it work, Recall records everything… Read More »