With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight. For me, the film provided a welcome excuse to read up on Dylan, who has always been a reputable source of enjoyably gnomic quotes, self-mythologizing, and enigmatic asides. Even in his old age, Dylan still delivers—especially when he gets going on technology, joysticks, and "dog ass" television programs.

Consider the interview Dylan gave to The Wall Street Journal in December 2022. (You can read the whole thing on BobDylan.com.) The piece was, notionally, about Dylan's book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. But it quickly morphed into a meditation on creativity in the era of on-demand streaming content, along with a discussion about how Dylan had spent his time during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Dylan claims that he spent the pandemic replacing door panels on a ’56 Chevy, painting some landscapes, and re-reading “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” while pondering the mysteries of opium. Okay. He also had time left over to stream some TV:

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The US government finally got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33-year-old Korean national who built a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the "stablecoin" TerraUSD, only to see it all come crashing down in a wipeout that cost investors $40 billion.

As private investors filed lawsuits, and as the governments of South Korea and the United States launched fraud investigations, Do Kwon was nowhere to be found. In 2022, the Korean government filed a "red notice" with Interpol, seeking Kwon's arrest and his return to Korea. A few months later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with fraud in the US.

On September 17, 2022, Kwon famously tweeted, "I am not 'on the run' or anything similar"—but he also wouldn't say where he was. He didn't help his case when he was arrested in March 2023 by the authorities in Montenegro. At an airport. With fake travel documents. On his way to a country with no US extradition agreement.

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At their best, "remastered" video games keep terrific older titles viable on new generations of hardware and for new generations of fans. At their worst, they can feel like a cash-in.

So it was with some trepidation that I recently fired up the "remastered" Horizon: Zero Dawn, a game which won me over years ago with its PS4 version due to the simple fact that it was ONE OF THE BEST VIDEO GAMES OF ALL TIME and featured ONE OF THE BEST PROTAGONISTS OF ALL TIME in one of the BEST STORIES OF ALL TIME. (Yes, I like superlatives, which are some of the BEST WORDS OF ALL TIME. But the game world really was terrific.) Even my kids were won over, playing through the game and its sequel multiple times.

The game tells the story of a future Earth long after catastrophe—in the form of an autonomous robotic swarm—has ruined the planet. But it's not mere dystopia, though one does come across many wrecked and overgrown spaces from that earlier age. Horizon instead focuses on how humans, having lost most of their past knowledge, rebuilt a world in tribal fashion, a world populated by animal-inspired machines. The game's story operates ambitiously in two timelines and features massive killer robots, cults, and mad Sun Kings, all set against the gorgeous background of the American West.

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Matthew Decker is the former chief information officer for Penn State University’s Applied Research Laboratory. As of October, he's also $250,000 richer.

In his Penn State position, Decker was well placed to see that the university was not implementing all of the cybersecurity controls that were required by its various contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD). It did not, for instance, use an external cloud services provider that met the DoD's security guidelines, and it fudged some of the self-submitted "scores" it made to the government about Penn State's IT security.

So Decker sued the school under the False Claims Act, which lets private individuals bring cases against organizations on behalf of the government if they come across evidence of wrongdoing related to government contracts. In many of these cases, the government later "intervenes" to assist with the case (as it did here), but whether it does so or not, whistleblowers stand to collect a percentage of any fines if they win.

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Like many sites, apps, and operating systems, Ars Technica has both "Light" and "Dark" visual styles. They look great! But even the "Light" mode has darker elements in it, and after our recent redesign, some Ars readers asked for an even lighter "Light" mode, one that would allow them to absolutely sear their own retinas with various shades of blinding white. (I kid, of course; for some readers, it's a serious visual comfort issue.)

We've spent the last month working up a third visual style to give the people what they want. Behold the fully armed and operational "Hyperlight" mode, our new visual theme featuring a white background, light gray headline boxes, and black text. You can activate it right now from the visual style menu on the navigation bar at the top of the page.

In total, we now have four visual modes. Hyperlight is the brightest of these, while Day & Night is our rebranded "Light mode" and mixes light and dark elements. Dark is all dark backgrounds with light text. The fourth mode is System, which automatically switches between Day & Night and Dark modes based on your operating system setting. (System will not switch the site to Hyperlight.)

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