Millions of low-cost devices for media streaming, in-vehicle entertainment, and video projection are infected with malware that turns consumer networks into platforms for distributing malware, concealing nefarious communications, and performing other illicit activities, the FBI has warned.

The malware infecting these devices, known as BadBox, is based on Triada, a malware strain discovered in 2016 by Kaspersky Lab, which called it "one of the most advanced mobile Trojans" the security firm's analysts had ever encountered. It employed an impressive kit of tools, including rooting exploits that bypassed security protections built into Android and functions for modifying the Android OS's all-powerful Zygote process. Google eventually updated Android to block the methods Triada used to infect devices.

The threat remains

A year later, Triada returned, only this time, devices came pre-infected before they reached consumers’ hands. In 2019, Google confirmed that the supply-chain attack affected thousands of devices and that the company had once again taken measures to thwart it.

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As consumers around the world have gotten their hands on the Switch 2 in the last day or so, we're still working hard to fully test the system here at the Ars Orbiting HQ. As we do, we thought we'd share some initial impressions after having Nintendo's new console in hand for 48 hours or so. Consider these first thoughts an extended version of our notes from a review in progress and a starting point for discussion of the first completely new Nintendo platform in over eight years.

The Switch 2 Joy-Cons feel great

There's something incredibly satisfying about the magnetic "snap" when you plug the new Joy-Cons into the Switch 2 horizontally, and the handy release lever makes it much easier to disconnect the controllers from the tablet with one hand. Even without a physical rail holding the Joy-Cons to the system (as on the Switch), the magnetic connection feels remarkably sturdy in portable mode.

The Switch 2 Joy-Con (left) and a right-side original Switch Joy-Con.

Though the Switch 2's expanded Joy-Cons generally feel more comfortable for adult hands, I have noticed that the analog stick encroaches a little more on the space for the face buttons on the right Joy-Con. I've found myself accidentally nudging that analog stick with the bottom of my thumb when pressing the lower "B" button on the Joy-Con, a problem I never recall encountering on the original Switch.

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© Kyle Orland

Galaxies are far more than the sum of their stars. Long before stars even formed, dark matter clumped up and drew regular matter together with its gravity, providing the invisible scaffolding upon which stars and galaxies eventually grew.

Today, nearly all galaxies are still embedded in giant “halos” of dark matter that extend far beyond their visible borders and hold them together, anchoring stars that move so quickly they would otherwise break out of their galaxy’s gravitational grip and spend their lives adrift in intergalactic space.

The way dark matter and stars interact influences how galaxies change over time. But until recently, scientists had mainly only examined one side of that relationship, exploring the way dark matter pulls on normal matter.

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© ESO/S. Brunier

A robotic lander developed by a Japanese company named ispace plummeted to the Moon's surface Thursday, destroying a small rover and several experiments intended to demonstrate how future missions could mine and harvest lunar resources.

Ground teams at ispace's mission control center in Tokyo lost contact with the Resilience lunar lander moments before it was supposed to touch down in a region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold, a basaltic plain in the Moon's northern hemisphere.

A few hours later, ispace officials confirmed what many observers suspected. The mission was lost. It's the second time ispace has failed to land on the Moon in as many tries.

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Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday with the company's standard keynote presentation—a combination of PR about how great Apple and its existing products are and a first look at the next-generation versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and the company's other operating systems.

Reporting before the keynote rarely captures everything that Apple has planned at its presentations, but the reliable information we've seen so far is that Apple will keep the focus on its software this year rather than using the keynote to demo splashy new hardware like the Vision Pro and Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which the company introduced at WWDC a couple years back.

If you haven't been keeping track, here are a few of the things that are most likely to happen when the pre-recorded announcement videos start rolling next week.

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In 2019, we told you about a new interactive digital "murder map" of London compiled by University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner. Drawing on data catalogued in the city coroners' rolls, the map showed the approximate location of 142 homicide cases in late medieval London. The Medieval Murder Maps project has since expanded to include maps of York and Oxford homicides, as well as podcast episodes focusing on individual cases.

It's easy to lose oneself down the rabbit hole of medieval murder for hours, filtering the killings by year, choice of weapon, and location. Think of it as a kind of 14th-century version of Clue: It was the noblewoman's hired assassins armed with daggers in the streets of Cheapside near St. Paul's Cathedral. And that's just the juiciest of the various cases described in a new paper published in the journal Criminal Law Forum.

The noblewoman was Ela Fitzpayne, wife of a knight named Sir Robert Fitzpayne, lord of Stogursey. The victim was a priest and her erstwhile lover, John Forde, who was stabbed to death in the streets of Cheapside on May 3, 1337. “We are looking at a murder commissioned by a leading figure of the English aristocracy," said University of Cambridge criminologist Manuel Eisner, who heads the Medieval Murder Maps project. "It is planned and cold-blooded, with a family member and close associates carrying it out, all of which suggests a revenge motive."

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© Medieval Murder Maps. University of Cambridge: Institute of Criminology

Everyone in quantum computing agrees that error correction will be the key to doing a broad range of useful calculations. But early every company in the field seems to have a different vision of how best to get there. Almost all of their plans share a key feature: some variation on logical qubits built by linking together multiple hardware qubits.

A key exception is Nord Quantique, which aims to dramatically cut the amount of hardware needed to support an error-corrected quantum computer. It does this by putting enough quantum states into a single piece of hardware, allowing each of those pieces to hold an error-corrected qubit. Last week, the company shared results showing that it could make hardware that used photons at two different frequencies to successfully identify every case where a logical qubit lost its state.

That still doesn't provide error correction, and they didn't use the logical qubit to perform operations. But it's an important validation of the company's approach.

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This week, Republicans in Congress and the executive branch stepped up their efforts to roll back clean vehicle legislation and regulations. Antipathy toward environmental protections was a hallmark of the first Trump administration, but in his second term, the president and his congressional allies are redoubling their efforts to allow cars to pollute more and limit the adoption of electric vehicles.

Congressional republicans have been working on a budget bill that would radically transform many aspects of American life. Among the environmental protections being stripped away in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (yes, that's what it's called) is a repeal of the US Environmental Protection Agency's rules on "greenhouse gas and multi-pollutant emissions standards."

These regulations are meant to limit the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the US vehicle fleet, a major driver of climate change, as well as the noxious pollutants containing sulfur and nitrogen compounds that have more immediate and deleterious effects on human health. And if the budget bill is sent to Trump to sign, the existing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules, implemented in 2022, and the future rules meant to take effect next year will be no more.

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Late Thursday, OpenAI confronted user panic over a sweeping court order requiring widespread chat log retention—including users' deleted chats—after moving to appeal the order that allegedly impacts the privacy of hundreds of millions of ChatGPT users globally.

In a statement, OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap explained that the court order came in a lawsuit with The New York Times and other news organizations, which alleged that deleted chats may contain evidence of users prompting ChatGPT to generate copyrighted news articles.

To comply with the order, OpenAI must "retain all user content indefinitely going forward, based on speculation" that the news plaintiffs "might find something that supports their case," OpenAI's statement alleged.

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© Leonid Korchenko | Moment

As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.

The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

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As you might imagine, a steady stream of cars to review comes and goes from my parking spot. Some weeks, they stand out, like the bright green Aston Martin, the murdered-out Bentley, or the VW ID. Buzz you can read about soon; these cars usually spark conversations with neighbors, particularly those who don't know why there's a different vehicle in that spot each week.

At other times, the vehicles are more anonymous, and I'm not sure this ADX sparked any community discussions. Compact crossovers are a popular breed and blend into the background—particularly when they're painted an unobtrusive shade.

Which is not to say the ADX is not handsome; the Urban Gray Pearl paint looked good even in the near-constant rain (which explains the Acura-supplied images rather than my own) that coincided with our time with the tester. And from the driver's seat, the view down the hood, along those creases, is a lot more interesting than most comparable crossovers, considering the ADX's $35,000 starting price.

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© Acura

Since 1998, Ars has covered desktop computing, IT, gaming, and personal gadgets. Over the years, the remit has broadened to increase focus on science, space, policy, culture, automobiles, AI, and more.

You can expect our coverage in those areas to continue, but it's important for Ars to ensure our editors stay on top of what our readers are most interested in. As we plan our approach for the coming months, we'd like to hear from you about what you'd like to see more of at Ars.

For example, do you want to see more focus on reviews of consumer technology? Is there a hunger for closer coverage of applications, toolkits, and issues relevant to professional software developers? Should we invest more effort in covering the latest AAA games on Steam? Are Ars readers excited to read more about 3D printing or drones?

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Welcome to Edition 7.47 of the Rocket Report! Let's hope not, but the quarrel between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk may be remembered as "Black Thursday" for the US space program. A simmering disagreement over Trump's signature "One Big Beautiful Bill" coursing its way through Congress erupted into public view, with two of the most powerful Americans trading insults and threats on social media. Trump suggested the government should terminate "Elon's governmental contracts and subsidies." Musk responded with a post saying SpaceX will begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft used to transport crew and cargo to the International Space Station. This could go a number of ways, but it's hard to think anything good will come of it.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin aces suborbital space shot. Blue Origin, the space company founded and owned by Jeff Bezos, launched six people to the edge of space Saturday, May 31, from Bezos' ranch in West Texas, CBS News reports. A hydrogen-fueled New Shepard booster propelled a crew capsule, equipped with the largest windows of any operational spaceship, to an altitude of nearly 65 miles (105 kilometers), just above the internationally recognized boundary between the discernible atmosphere and space, before beginning the descent to landing. The passengers included three Americans—Aymette Medina Jorge, Gretchen Green, and Paul Jeris—along with Canadian Jesse Williams, New Zealand's Mark Rocket, and Panamanian Jaime Alemán, who served as his country's ambassador to the United States.

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Google wasn't around for the advent of the World Wide Web, but it successfully remade the web on its own terms. Today, any website that wants to be findable has to play by Google's rules, and after years of search dominance, the company has lost a major antitrust case that could reshape both it and the web.

The closing arguments in the case just wrapped up last week, and Google could be facing serious consequences when the ruling comes down in August. Losing Chrome would certainly change things for Google, but the Department of Justice is pursuing other remedies that could have even more lasting impacts. During his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of being forced to license Google's search index and algorithm, the so-called data remedies in the case. He claimed this would be no better than a spinoff of Google Search. The company's statements have sometimes derisively referred to this process as "white labeling" Google Search.

But does a white label Google Search sound so bad? Google has built an unrivaled index of the web, but the way it shows results has become increasingly frustrating. A handful of smaller players in search have tried to offer alternatives to Google's search tools. They all have different approaches to retrieving information for you, but they agree that spinning off Google Search could change the web again. Whether or not those changes are positive depends on who you ask.

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© Aurich Lawson

Negotiations over the US federal budget for fiscal year 2026 are in the beginning stages, but when it comes to space, the fault lines are already solidifying in the Senate.

The Trump White House released its budget request last Friday, and this included detailed information about its plans for NASA. On Thursday, just days later, the US Senate shot back with its own budget priorities for the space agency.

The US budget process is complicated and somewhat broken in recent years, as Congress has failed to pass a budget on time. So, we are probably at least several months away from seeing a final fiscal year 2026 budget from Congress. But we got our first glimpse of the Senate's thinking when the chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released his "legislative directives" for NASA on Thursday.

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Discord members are biting their nails. As reports swirl that the social media company is planning an initial public offering this year and increasingly leans on advertising revenue, there's fear that Discord will become engulfed in the enshittification that has already scarred so many online communities. Co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy claims he's worried about that, too.

In an interview with Engadget published today, Vishnevskiy claimed that Discord employees regularly discuss concerns about Discord going astray and angering users.

"I understand the anxiety and concern," Vishnevskiy said. "I think the things that people are afraid of are what separate a great, long-term focused company from just any other company."

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A remarkable schoolyard brawl erupted online Thursday between President Donald Trump and his former "First Buddy" Elon Musk during which the pair traded insults and barbs. The war of words reached a crescendo during the afternoon when Trump threatened Musk's federal contracts.

"The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!" Trump wrote on his social media network, Truth Social, at 2:37 pm ET.

Anyone with a reasonable grasp of reality understood that the "bromance" between the president of the United States and the most wealthy person in the world was going to blow up at some point, but even so, the online brouhaha that has played out Thursday is spectacular—at one point Musk suggested that Trump was in the Epstein files, for goodness' sake.

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It seems like hardly a day goes by anymore without a new version of Google's Gemini AI landing, and sure enough, Google is rolling out a major update to its most powerful 2.5 Pro model. This release is aimed at fixing some problems that cropped up in an earlier Gemini Pro update, and the word is, this version will become a stable release that comes to the Gemini app for everyone to use.

The previous Gemini 2.5 Pro release, known as the I/O Edition, or simply 05-06, was focused on coding upgrades. Google claims the new version is even better at generating code, with a new high score of 82.2 percent in the Aider Polyglot test. That beats the best from OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek by a comfortable margin.

While the general-purpose Gemini 2.5 Flash has left preview, the Pro version is lagging behind. In fact, the last several updates have attracted some valid criticism of 2.5 Pro's performance outside of coding tasks since the big 03-25 update. Google's Logan Kilpatrick says the team has taken that feedback to heart and that the new model "closes [the] gap on 03-25 regressions." For example, users will supposedly see more creativity with better formatting of responses.

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© Ryan Whitwam

When it comes to Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5060 graphics card, the GPU itself is less interesting than the storm Nvidia stirred up by trying to earn it better reviews. If you don’t follow the twists and turns of graphics card launch metanarratives, allow me to recap the company's behavior for you.

Though the RTX 5060 launched on May 19, Nvidia and its partners were uncharacteristically slow to ship graphics cards to reviewers. For outlets that received pre-launch hardware, Nvidia didn’t provide the pre-launch drivers that it usually sends out so that reviewers could run their own tests on the cards, informing reviewers on a call that drivers would be available to them and the public on the 19th.

Except! Nvidia did offer advance drivers to a handful of publications on the condition that they run a few benchmarks that had been pre-selected by Nvidia and that they only report numbers from tests performed with the 50-series new DLSS Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) setting enabled.

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© Andrew Cunningham

Last month, ahead of the launch of the Switch 2 and its GameChat communication features, Nintendo updated its privacy policy to note that the company "may also monitor and record your video and audio interactions with other users." Now that the Switch 2 has officially launched, we have a clearer understanding of how the console handles audio and video recorded during GameChat sessions, as well as when that footage may be sent to Nintendo or shared with partners, including law enforcement.

Before using GameChat on Switch 2 for the first time, you must consent to a set of GameChat Terms displayed on the system itself. These terms warn that chat content is "recorded and stored temporarily" both on your system and the system of those you chat with. But those stored recordings are only shared with Nintendo if a user reports a violation of Nintendo's Community Guidelines, the company writes.

That reporting feature lets a user "review a recording of the last three minutes of the latest three GameChat sessions" to highlight a particular section for review, suggesting that chat sessions are not being captured and stored in full. The terms also lay out that "these recordings are available only if the report is submitted within 24 hours," suggesting that recordings are deleted from local storage after a full day.

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© Aurich Lawson | Nintendo