Enlarge / This Lenovo Google Assistant Smart Display is one of the first devices to ship with Android Things.

Android Things, Google's stripped-down version of Android named for its focus on the "Internet of Things" (IoT), is now no longer focused on IoT. A post on the Android Developers Blog announced the pivot, saying, "Given the successes we have seen with our partners in smart speakers and smart displays, we are refocusing Android Things as a platform for OEM partners to build devices in those categories moving forward."

Originally, Android Things was Google's stripped-down version of Android for everything smaller than a smartphone or smartwatch. The goal was to have the OS be the IoT version of Android, but rather than the skinnable, open source version of Android that exists on phones, Android Things is a "managed platform"—a hands-off OS with a centralized, Google-managed update system. Just like Windows, manufacturers would load an untouched version of the OS and be restricted to the app layer of the software package. Today, legions of IoT devices are out there running random operating systems with basically no plan to keep up with security vulnerabilities, and the result is a security nightmare. The wider Android ecosystem doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to security, but Android Things updates are completely managed by Google via a centralized update system, and just like a Pixel phone, devices running Things would have been some of the most up-to-date and secure devices available.

Seeing Android Things undergo a major pivot now is pretty strange. The OS has just survived a lengthy initial development cycle (originally, Android Things started out as a rebrand of "Project Brillo"), and it only hit version 1.0 nine months ago. The first consumer products with Android Things, third-party smart displays like the Lenovo Smart Display, only launched in July.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has egg on its face after a small research and consulting firm called Quality Control Systems produced a devastating critique of a 2017 agency report finding that Tesla's Autopilot reduced crashes by 40 percent. The new analysis is coming out now—almost two years after the original report—because QCS had to sue NHTSA under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the data underlying the agency's findings. In its report, QCS highlights flaws in NHTSA's methodology that are serious enough to completely discredit the 40 percent figure, which Tesla has cited multiple times over the last two years.

NHTSA undertook its study of Autopilot safety in the wake of the fatal crash of Tesla owner Josh Brown in 2016. Autopilot—more specifically Tesla's lane-keeping function called Autosteer—was active at the time of the crash, and Brown ignored multiple warnings to put his hands back on the wheel. Critics questioned whether Autopilot actually made Tesla owners less safe by encouraging them to pay less attention to the road.

NHTSA's 2017 finding that Autosteer reduced crash rates by 40 percent seemed to put that concern to rest. When another Tesla customer, Walter Huang, died in an Autosteer-related crash last March, Tesla cited NHTSA's 40 percent figure in a blog post defending the technology. A few weeks later, Tesla CEO Elon Musk berated reporters for focusing on stories about crashes instead of touting the safety benefits of Autopilot.

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An app that can be used by men to stop women leaving the country will be investigated by Apple.

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If you're trying to extort money from people, there are probably better choices for a victim than William H. Webster. Back in 2014, Webster was called by a Jamaican man, 29-year-old Keniel Aeon Thomas, who was attempting to perpetrate the all too common advance-fee fraud scam (often known as the 419 scam, after the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that addresses fraud). According to Thomas, Webster and his wife had won $15.5 million and a Mercedes-Benz in the Mega Millions lottery, and the caller would be all too happy to release those funds, just as long as Websters first paid $50,000 to cover taxes.

Over a number of weeks, Thomas, calling himself David Morgan, made a series of calls to the Websters, and they soon turned threatening: he described their house, and he said that if they didn't hand over $6,000, he'd shoot them in the head or burn their house down, boasting that the FBI and CIA would never find him.

But unknown to Thomas, William H. Webster is a man with a considerable past. He was director of the FBI under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan (1978-1987), and then director of the CIA under Reagan and George H.W. Bush (1987-1991), making him the only person to have led both intelligence agencies. Now aged 94, he still works in government and has been chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council since 2005. As such, he's a little better connected than most victims of these phone scams, and both he and his wife Lynda swiftly took advantage of these connections. They reached out to contacts at the FBI, calling an agent while talking to Thomas so that the agent could listen in.

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Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell return to voice Anna and Elsa, respectively, in first teaser trailer for Disney’s Frozen 2.

We awoke this morning to the first teaser trailer for Frozen 2, the sequel to Frozen, Disney's inventive 2013 re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen." The original was such a blockbuster that it will be hard for any sequel to recreate the magic, but the new teaser certainly looks promising.

(Spoilers for original Frozen below.)

The first film told the story of two princesses of Arendelle. The elder, Elsa (Idina Menzel), has the power to control and create ice and snow, but she struggles to control it. When she accidentally injures her young sister Anna (Kristen Bell), local trolls heal Anna but caution that Elsa must learn to control her magic. In response, their parents lock them both away. When Elsa turns 21, she's crowned queen but a spat with Anna after the coronation reveals her magic. She's exiled from the kingdom, flees to the mountains, and builds a gorgeous castle of ice and snow in which to live out her days in isolation. But she doesn't realize Arendelle has also frozen over, endangering the people.

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Blizzard fans are going to have to wait a little bit longer for any major new titles from the company. In a conference call accompanying yesterday's quarterly earnings announcement (where the company announced record results and significant layoffs), Activision Blizzard CFO Dennis Durkin said the company is "not planning a major frontline release for Blizzard in 2019," and it expects "materially lower financial performance" for the developer in the coming year.

That doesn't mean Blizzard will be taking the year off, of course. The company will be diving into its past catalog for previously announced releases like World of Warcraft Classic and Warcraft 3: Reforged, both coming later this year. Continuing games like Overwatch and Hearthstone will also see their usual slate of regular content updates.

But Durkin's statement makes it clear we'll have to wait until 2020 for any truly new titles from Blizzard. That includes the recently announced mobile Diablo Immortal and any other PC or console-based Diablo titles. It also means no new World of Warcraft expansion is expected for the year—Durkin specifically used 2018's Battle for Azeroth expansion as a contrast with the 2019 slate.

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Enlarge / Four seasons of Metro await. (credit: Deep Silver / 4A Games)

The best thing I can say about Metro Exodus, to anybody unfamiliar with its place in a trilogy of post-nuclear, first-person monster combat games, is that this is the best Eurojank game I've ever seen.

"Eurojank" is an unofficial term for that class of sprawling, verbose, and oftentimes glitchy action/RPG titles originating from Eastern European nations like Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. (At the top of that heap is The Witcher 3, whose previous two games were decidedly less even; more recent examples include Elex, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and The Technomancer.) And rarely do these games hold players' hands, usually because they lack tutorials or because of unclear GUI elements.

Metro Exodus, like the two Metro games that 4A Studios made before it, has all of those qualities in spades—though it's definitely the most accessible Eurojank shooter I've come across. And yes, calling this the "most accessible Eurojank shooter" is like calling Taco Bell the "most flavorful national Mexican chain restaurant." But its strides toward accessibility are important, because this is a game of high highs and so-so lows. You'll need to slog through some obvious imperfections. Do that, however, and you're in for the kind of player- and challenge-respecting solo experience that people say they're always dreaming about in comment threads about always-online games.

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Enlarge / The Opportunity rover leaves its landing site in Eagle Crater on Mars back in 2004. (credit: NASA)

Late Tuesday night, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent their final data uplink to the Opportunity rover on Mars. Over this connection, via the Deep Space Network, the American jazz singer Billie Holiday crooned "I'll Be Seeing You," a song that closes with the lines:

I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you

The scientists waited to hear some response from their long-silent rover, which had been engulfed in a global dust storm last June, likely coating its solar panels in a fatal layer of dust. Since then, the team of scientists and engineers has sent more than 835 commands, hoping the rover will wake up from its long slumber—that perhaps winds on Mars might have blown off some of the dust that covered the panels.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook alluded to more services coming this year, and this week we're learning more about what the company has in store for news. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple has been in talks with publishers about a subscription news service that would be a new paid tier of its existing Apple News app. However, the company has been butting heads with publishers over monetary details—Apple reportedly wants to keep 50 percent of subscription revenue from the service.

This so-called "Netflix for news" service would allow customers to access an unlimited amount of content from included publishers for a monthly fee. The service could be around $10 per month, similar to Apple Music, but the cost hasn't been finalized yet.

Apple has talked with publishers including The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, but they (and others) have concerns about Apple's terms. The company wants 50 percent of revenue for itself, and the remaining 50 percent would be divided among participating publishers "according to the amount of time users spend engaged with their articles."

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The choice has raised eyebrows because of the controversial nature of some of Mr Musk's tweets.

Apex Legends, a new Battle Royale game has had over 25 million downloads in its first week - will it be a threat?

Activision Blizzard will lay off about 800 people, despite announcing record revenue.

Visual effects supervisor Chris Lawrence explains how they helped make the film.

A pop-up recycling shop in Hove collects unwanted tech items, erases the data and recycles them.

Enlarge / Visitors to a haunted house in Vejle, Denmark, respond differently to being confronted by "scare actors" depending on whether they are "adrenaline junkies" or "white-knucklers." (credit: Andrés Baldursson, Baldursson Photography)

It's no secret that many of us here at Ars are genuine fans of horror. As a child, I would compulsively devour horror short stories and watch classic movies on late-night TV, like Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) or I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Then I'd lie awake at night in terror, convinced a werewolf was lurking just outside my bedroom window. (In reality, it was a trick of light and shadow against the curtains.) That's the central paradox of horror: we both fear the experience of watching a scary movie, or reading a terrifying book, and compulsively seek it out.

According to Mathias Clasen of Aarhus University in Denmark, we seek out being afraid in controlled settings as a means of confronting our fears in a safe environment. Clasen specializes in studying our response to horror in books, film, video games, and other forms of entertainment, and he is the author of Why Horror Seduces. It's one way we can explore "issues of morality and evil and the contours of our own psychological landscape," he said. "We find and challenge our own limits. And we may even practice coping strategies. It does not make us fearless, but it does seem to make us better at regulating fear."

Like me, Clasen has a lifelong love of horror, even though as a child he was terrified of scary stories. "I would have nightmares and would sleep with the lights on," he admitted. That changed in his teenage years. "What psychologists call a hedonic reversal took place," he said. "I started feeling this weird attraction [to horror] that I couldn't really understand." He devoured the writings of Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft. While earning his various degrees in literature, he found a rich collection of dark gothic material in the English literature canon.

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Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday this month had higher-than-usual stakes with fixes for a zero-day Internet Explorer vulnerability under active exploit and an Exchange Server flaw that was disclosed last month with proof-of-concept code.

The IE vulnerability, Microsoft said, allows attackers to test whether one or more files are stored on disks of vulnerable PCs. Attackers first must lure targets to a malicious site. Microsoft, without elaborating, said it has detected active exploits against the vulnerability, which is indexed as CVE-2019-0676 and affects IE version 10 or 11 running on all supported versions of Windows. The flaw was discovered by members of Google’s Project Zero vulnerability research team.

Microsoft also patched Exchange against a vulnerability that allowed remote attackers with little more than an unprivileged mailbox account to gain administrative control over the server. Dubbed PrivExchange, CVE-2019-0686 was publicly disclosed last month, along with proof-of-concept code that exploited it. In Tuesday’s advisory, Microsoft officials said they haven’t seen active exploits yet but that they were “likely.”

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Overwork is a longstanding problem in Japan and companies are turning to technology for solutions.

Cartoon figures and young stars will be banned from many adverts in a bid to protect children.

Enlarge / A central location from the Blackout map in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. (credit: Activision)

Game publisher Activision-Blizzard will lay off 8 percent of its work force, or around 775 people, CEO Bobby Kotick announced on the company's earnings call today. The move is being made in an effort at "de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business," Kotick explained.

The layoffs, which will mostly be in non-game-development areas like publishing, will impact Activision, Blizzard, and King. In one case, an entire studio of 78 people was shut down—Seattle-based mobile game studio Z2Live. This is in spite of Kotick saying that the company achieved "record results in 2018." Activision made a statement about exceeding its expectations, but other market-watchers clearly had higher numbers in mind.

The implication is that the positive results reported came thanks to a fairly narrow bench of franchises, with many of the company's efforts outside those franchises not meeting expectations.

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Ubisoft's Commit-Assistant

In a bid to cut the number of coding errors made in its Firefox browser, Mozilla is deploying Clever-Commit, a machine-learning-driven coding assistant developed in conjunction with game developer Ubisoft.

Clever-Commit analyzes code changes as developers commit them to the Firefox codebase. It compares them to all the code it has seen before to see if they look similar to code that the system knows to be buggy. If the assistant thinks that a commit looks suspicious, it warns the developer. Presuming its analysis is correct, it means that the bug can be fixed before it gets committed into the source repository. Clever-Commit can even suggest fixes for the bugs that it finds. Initially, Mozilla plans to use Clever-Commit during code reviews, and in time this will expand to other phases of development, too. It works with all three of the languages that Mozilla uses for Firefox: C++, JavaScript, and Rust.

The tool builds on work by Ubisoft La Forge, Ubisoft's research lab. Last year, Ubisoft presented the Commit-Assistant, based on research called CLEVER, a system for finding bugs and suggesting fixes. That system found some 60-70 percent of buggy commits, though it also had a false positive rate of 30 percent. Even though this false positive rate is quite high, users of this system nonetheless felt that it was worthwhile, thanks to the time saved when it did correctly identify a bug.

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