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      Discord says hackers stole government IDs of 70,000 users

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    Discord says that hackers made off with images of 70,000 users’ government IDs that they were required to provide in order to use the site.

    Like an increasing number of sites, Discord requires certain users to provide a photo or scan of their driver's license or other government ID that shows they meet the minimum age requirements in their country. In some cases, Discord allows users to prove their age by providing a selfie that shows their faces (it’s not clear how a face proves someone’s age, but there you go). The social media site imposes these requirements on users who are reported by other users to be under the minimum age for the country they’re connecting from.

    “A substantial risk for identity theft”

    On Wednesday, Discord said that ID images of roughly 70,000 users “may have had government-ID photos exposed” in a recent breach of a third-party service Discord entrusted to manage the data. The affected users had communicated with Discord’s Customer Support or Trust & Safety teams and subsequently submitted the IDs in reviews of age-related appeals.

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      Rubik’s Cube gets a $299 update, complete with IPS screens and its own apps

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    The Rubik’s Cube has been reinvented with more games and many more screens for much more money.

    What has long been cherished as a simple toy yet complex puzzle requiring nothing but a healthy amount of twisting, turning, and patience has been rebooted for the 21st century. Naturally, that calls for a few dashes of technology.

    Differing from the original Rubik’s Cube, which has six faces that each contain a 3×3 grid, the Rubik’s WOWCube, made available for preorder today, as spotted by The Verge , has six faces with 2×2 grids.

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      Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    Elon Musk's social media posts helped The New York Times win its fight to secure a list detailing the billionaire's top-secret security clearances after a US agency tried to block the disclosures by claiming that Musk had a right to privacy.

    In an opinion issued Wednesday, US District Judge Denise Cote said that Musk publicly discussing his security clearances on X—as well as his drug use and foreign contacts—tipped the balance so that the public's substantial interest in the list the NYT sought clearly outweighed "any privacy interest" Musk may have.

    "To the extent Musk has a privacy interest in the fact that he holds a security clearance, he has waived it," Cote wrote. Meanwhile, "the public has an interest in knowing whether the leader of SpaceX and Starlink holds the appropriate security clearances," as those companies "continue to provide the federal government with critical national security services and handle sensitive government information."

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      We’re about to find many more interstellar interlopers—here’s how to visit one

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    A few days ago, an inscrutable interstellar interloper made its closest approach to Mars, where a fleet of international spacecraft seek to unravel the red planet's ancient mysteries.

    Several of the probes encircling Mars took a break from their usual activities and turned their cameras toward space to catch a glimpse of an object named 3I/ATLAS, a rogue comet that arrived in our Solar System from interstellar space and is now barreling toward perihelion—its closest approach to the Sun—at the end of this month.

    This is the third interstellar object astronomers have detected within our Solar System, following 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov discovered in 2017 and 2019. Scientists think interstellar objects routinely transit among the planets, but telescopes have only recently had the ability to find one. For example, the telescope that discovered Oumuamua only came online in 2010.

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      How Easter Island’s giant statues “walked” to their final platforms

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October • 1 minute

    Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai , built some 800 years ago and typically mounted on platforms called ahu . Scholars have puzzled over the moai on Easter Island for decades, pondering their cultural significance, as well as how a Stone Age culture managed to carve and transport statues weighing as much as 92 tons. One hypothesis, championed by archaeologist Carl Lipo of Binghamton University, among others, is that the statues were transported in a vertical position, with workers using ropes to essentially "walk" the moai onto their platforms.

    The oral traditions of the people of Rapa Nui certainly include references to the moai "walking" from the quarry to their platforms, such as a song that tells of an early ancestor who made the statues walk. While there have been rudimentary field tests showing it might have been possible, the hypothesis has also generated a fair amount of criticism. So Lipo has co-authored a new paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science offering fresh experimental evidence of "walking" moai, based on 3D modeling of the physics and new field tests to recreate that motion.

    The first Europeans arrived in the 17th century and found only a few thousand inhabitants on the tiny island (just 14 by 7 miles across) thousands of miles away from any other land. In order to explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people . But Lipo thought perhaps the feat could be accomplished with fewer workers. In 2012, Lipo and his colleague, Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona, showed that you could transport a 10-foot, 5-ton moai a few hundred yards with just 18 people and three strong ropes by employing a rocking motion .

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      Tax credits for electric cars are no more. What’s next for the US EV industry?

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    The end of US tax credits for buying electric vehicles has changed the market in ways that are still unfolding.

    I spoke this week with people closely monitoring the auto industry to get a sense of what’s next. They said the loss of federal incentives is likely to dampen shoppers’ enthusiasm, but the upcoming arrival of several dozen new or redesigned models could help fuel a comeback.

    “I think the dust needs to settle for everyone to figure out what’s going to happen near term,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights for Cox Automotive.

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      Intel’s next-generation Panther Lake laptop chips could be a return to form

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October • 1 minute

    They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but the press that Intel has generated in the last year has certainly been testing the boundaries of the aphorism.

    Is it good when your company posts an annual loss for the first time in almost 40 years? When you're doing multiple rounds of mass layoffs ? When your board pushes your CEO into leaving , and starts arguing with the new CEO about major strategy decisions almost immediately? When you're either losing or failing to gain market share in areas critical to your bottom line? When you need to explain to the president why your CEO should keep his job, and then explain to investors the many possible downsides of a mercurial president deciding he wants a stake in your company?

    I feel like the answer to these questions is "mostly no." Even Intel's recent investment from and partnership with Nvidia came with a tacit admission that Intel was mostly failing to make a dent in AI hardware and software and the gaming and workstation GPU markets. (Reports that Intel could start manufacturing chips for AMD would be good news, as bizarre as that arrangement would have been at any other point in the two companies' history with one another, but those talks could still fall apart.)

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      Everything we know about Ferrari’s first electric vehicle

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October • 1 minute

    Ferrari provided flights from Washington to Bologna and accommodation so Ars could visit its factory. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

    MARANELLO, ITALY—The E-Building is one of the newest on Ferrari's sprawling factory complex. One of the first LEED-certified buildings in Italy, the gleaming white interior is the latest in flexible factory design, capable of assembling any model in the automaker's range. And from next year, that will include Ferrari's first electric vehicle.

    It's a momentous occasion for Ferrari, and one it's taking its time over—although it has now briefed us on some powertrain and chassis details, we'll have to wait until next year before seeing the interior or exterior of a car that it's calling the Ferrari Elettrica—for now at least.

    Ferrari says it considered an all-electric two-seater or even something with occasional rear seats, but the performance benefit of an electric powertrain wasn't enough to offset the added mass for either of those applications. Those calculations did work out in favor of a four-seater, though; the battery pack lowers the center of gravity by 3.1 inches (80 mm) compared to an internal combustion engine powertrain and reduces the polar moment of inertia by 20 percent.

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      One NASA science mission saved from Trump’s cuts, but others still in limbo

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica • 9 October

    NASA has thrown a lifeline to scientists working on a mission to visit an asteroid that will make an unusually close flyby of the Earth in 2029, reversing the Trump administration's previous plan to shut it down.

    This mission, named OSIRIS-APEX, was one of 19 operating NASA science missions the White House proposed canceling in a budget blueprint released earlier this year.

    "We were called for cancellation as part to the president's budget request, and we were reinstated and given a plan to move ahead in FY26 (Fiscal Year 2026) just two weeks ago," said Dani DellaGiustina, principal investigator for OSIRIS-APEX at the University of Arizona. "Our spacecraft appears happy and healthy."

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