放大 /在切尔诺贝利灾难后被废弃的小镇上，一所旧医院附近生长着树木。(credit: Canvan Images / Getty Images)

Chernobyl is generally recognized as the worst nuclear accident on record, directly killing 31 people and causing widespread contamination in Eurasia. It's estimated that thousands of people will eventually die earlier than they would have due to the cancers caused by their exposure.

Now, international teams of researchers have looked at the genetic damage that's the legacy of Chernobyl exposures. One group looked at the genetic changes found in thyroid tumors that have been linked to exposure to the radioactive iodine spewed out during the disaster. And another team looked at the children of people assigned to the Chernobyl cleanup and found that the damage seems to be limited to those exposed rather than being passed down.

Radiation and DNA

Radiation causes long-term problems because it can cause damage to our DNA. The precise nature of the damage, however, is complicated. The radiation can damage individual bases of DNA, leading to minor mutations. But it can also make breaks in both of the strands of DNA's double helix (which biologists creatively call "double-stranded breaks").

Enlarge /也许这本教科书是马贝尔时代的?#ThanksStockGettyImages (credit: designer491 / Getty Images)

Josh Hawley had some questions about how Apple came up with the money to buy back $58 billion in stock over the past year.

“I just want to focus on one major source of that income,” the Republican senator said to Apple’s lawyer. “It’s not innovation, it’s not research and development. It’s the monopoly rents that you collect out of your app store.”

放大Apple)

AirDrop, the feature that allows Mac and iPhone users to wirelessly transfer files between devices, is leaking user emails and phone numbers, and there's not much anyone can do to stop it other than to turn it off, researchers said.

AirDrop uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy to establish direct connections with nearby devices so they can beam pictures, documents, and other things from one iOS or macOS device to another. One mode allows only contacts to connect, a second allows anyone to connect, and the last allows no connections at all.

A matter of milliseconds

To determine if the device of a would-be sender should connect with other nearby devices, AirDrop broadcasts Bluetooth advertisements that contain a partial cryptographic hash of the sender's phone number and email address. If any of the truncated hashes matches any phone number or email address in the address book of the receiving device or the device is set to receive from everyone, the two devices will engage in a mutual authentication handshake over Wi-Fi. During the handshake, the devices exchange the full SHA-256 hashes of the owners' phone numbers and email addresses.

Enlarge /参议员罗杰·威克(R-MS)和参议员特德·克鲁兹(R-TX)在2019年的听证会上。在2021年确认莉娜·汗在联邦贸易委员会任职的听证会上，两位参议员都严厉批评了大型科技公司。(credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

When President Joe Biden chose Lina Khan for one of the Federal Trade Commission's five seats, it was an ominous sign for the nation's largest technology companies. While still a law student, Khan made her academic career penning "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a scholarly 2017 treatise arguing for a tougher approach to regulating the Seattle behemoth.

Prior to law school, Khan worked for Barry Lynn, a scholar who was fired from the centrist New America Foundation over his aggressive criticism of Google, a major New America funder. After law school, Khan worked as the legal director of Lynn's new organization, the Open Markets Institute.

So if we can expect anyone to push the Federal Trade Commission to enforce antitrust laws more aggressively against big technology companies, it would be Khan. The choice of Khan could also signal that the Biden administration more broadly will take a confrontational posture toward Big Tech.

放大Aurich Lawson)

On the day Apple was set to announce a slew of new products at its Spring Loaded event, a leak appeared from an unexpected quarter. The notorious ransomware gang REvil said they had stolen data and schematics from Apple supplier Quanta Computer about unreleased products and that they would sell the data to the highest bidder if they didn’t get a $50 million payment. As proof, they released a cache of documents about upcoming, unreleased MacBook Pros. They've since added iMac schematics to the pile.

The connection to Apple and dramatic timing generated buzz about the attack. But it also reflects the confluence of a number of disturbing trends in ransomware. After years of refining their mass data encryption techniques to lock victims out of their own systems, criminal gangs are increasingly focusing on data theft and extortion as the centerpiece of their attacks—and making eye-popping demands in the process.

放大 / Boxes of Johnson &在佛罗里达州的一个疫苗接种地点，约翰逊的詹森COVID-19疫苗。(credit: Getty | Paul Hennessy)

Update 7:00 pm EDT: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration announced late Friday that the pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot COVID-19 vaccine is now lifted.

The announcement comes just hours after a panel of CDC advisors voted largely in favor of resuming use, reaffirming its recommendation that it be used in all adults.

The two agencies paused use on April 13 after six women developed dangerous blood clots after receiving the vaccine. Though the CDC confirmed nine additional cases during the 11-day pause, the agencies and their advisors determined that the benefits of the vaccine greatly outweigh risks of the extremely rare condition.

放大Getty Images)

As many as 29,000 users of the Passwordstate password manager downloaded a malicious update that extracted data from the app and sent it to an attacker-controlled server, the app maker told customers.

In an email, Passwordstate creator Click Studios told customers that bad actors compromised its upgrade mechanism and used it to install a malicious file on user computers. The file, named “moserware.secretsplitter.dll,” contained a legitimate copy of an app called SecretSplitter, along with malicious code named "Loader," according to a brief writeup from security firm CSIS Group.

The Loader code attempts to retrieve the file archive at https://passwordstate-18ed2.kxcdn[.]com/upgrade_service_upgrade.zip so it can retrieve an encrypted second-stage payload. Once decrypted, the code is executed directly in memory. The email from Click Studios said that the code “extracts information about the computer system, and select Passwordstate data, which is then posted to the bad actors’ CDN Network.”

• 

  The Magic Keyboard with a 12.9-inch 2020 iPad Pro. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Despite its apparently unwavering commitment to using the Lightning port in iPhones, Apple is not usually squeamish about ending support for old accessories and products when it heralds the latest, greatest version of something.

That's especially apparent this week, as it's been revealed that the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro won't work with the Magic Keyboard Apple made for its predecessor just one year ago.

French website iGeneration was the first to cover the news, explaining that although the 2020 and 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro are mostly similar, the new one is 0.5 mm thicker. The site claimed to have seen Apple documentation saying that the older Magic Keyboard would not be supported. AppleInsider later claimed to receive confirmation directly from Apple that this is the case.

• 

  Carolyn Wolfman-Estrada, engineering program manager at Apple, presents AirTags (with one visible in her right hand). [credit: Apple ]

Apple began taking orders Friday for its new AirTags location-tracking product and the new purple color for the iPhone 12, but AirTag supply is already falling behind demand.

Announced earlier this week, AirTags are Apple's answer to the already established and relatively popular Tile product. Each AirTag is a small disc that can be attached to a valuable possession so you can track it with your iPhone if you lose it.

Each AirTag sends out a Bluetooth signal that nearby compatible devices in the "Find My" network detect. When a device detects the AirTag, it reports its location, and you can use the newly rebranded "Find My" app to locate it; Apple claims the process is anonymous, secure, and encrypted.

• 

  All of those cracked helmets behind our hero look identical. There's a reason. Returnal sees its players die and retry as an explorer of a strange alien planet. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment / Housemarque ]

Ahead of next week's launch of the PlayStation 5 exclusive Returnal, Sony has given me an opportunity to show exactly how the game looks and plays via stream before I start writing a review.

For some video games, this kind of "Twitch it early" opportunity is a no-brainer, like when I got to test Diablo II: Resurrected ahead of its closed beta earlier this month. Returnal is a trickier one, since it's for a console that a lot of readers say they've struggled to buy. And it's a brand-new IP, so you may look at the headline and ask what the heck a Returnawhatzit is.

But after playing a few hours of the game already, I'm compelled to connect my PS5 to my streaming rig and show you what Returnal is all about. This is partially because I've watched the game's official, weirdly edited video previews since its announcement last year and not understood what is going on in this procedurally generated sci-fi shooter. Seeing the game in action helps a lot. Its earliest moments feel like a refined Housemarque classic—this studio has previously impressed with games like Resogun and Nex Machina—but Returnal is supercharged with the exploration, production values, and dark mystery of Metroid Prime. Some good chocolate-and-peanut-butter right there.

• 

  L-R: Luigi, Super Mario series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and Mario, posing at Universal Studios Japan's upcoming Super Nintendo World theme park in Osaka. [credit: Nintendo / Universal Studios Japan ]

The highly anticipated Super Nintendo World section of Universal Studios Japan will be temporarily closing a little more than a month after its delayed opening, along with the rest of the park, due to the increased spread of COVID-19 in Osaka.

"Today, Universal Studios Japan has decided to temporarily close our park due to the substantial business shutdown request to operate with no spectators which was issued under the state of emergency for Osaka prefecture," reads a note on the Universal Studios Japan website.

The closure comes just weeks after Universal Studios Japan was forced to limit visitor numbers amid rising case rates in Osaka. Universal Studios Japan was previously closed for COVID from February 29 through June 7 of last year. The latest closure will be effective April 25 and will last "until the request has been lifted."

< p类=“标题”样式=“字体大小:0.8 em > < a href = " https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/getty-supreme-court-roberts-breyer-kagan.jpg " class = " enlarge-link data-height = " 2085 " data-width = " 3128 " >扩大< / > <跨类=“9”> / < / span >最高法院大法官,从左,首席大法官约翰·罗伯茨,斯蒂芬•布雷耶和埃琳娜•卡根听当时的特朗普的国情咨文国会联席会议在华盛顿美国国会大厦,周二,1月30日,2018.(credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

A Supreme Court ruling yesterday killed the Federal Trade Commission's "strongest tool" for fighting scam artists and securing refunds for wronged consumers, the FTC's acting chairwoman said.

"The Supreme Court ruled in favor of scam artists and dishonest corporations, leaving average Americans to pay for illegal behavior," FTC Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said in a statement after the ruling. "With this ruling, the Court has deprived the FTC of the strongest tool we had to help consumers when they need it most. We urge Congress to act swiftly to restore and strengthen the powers of the agency so we can make wronged consumers whole."

Though it was criticized by Slaughter and consumer advocates, the Supreme Court's ruling in a case involving deceptive payday lending practices was unanimous. In AMG Capital Management v. Federal Trade Commission, the court ruled that Section 13(b) of the Federal Trade Commission Act "does not authorize the Commission to seek, or a court to award, equitable monetary relief such as restitution or disgorgement" for consumers.

Enlarge / Christopher Poole, founder of 4chan, speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. (credit: Getty Images / Ramin Talaie)

CNBC reports that 4chan founder Chris Poole no longer works at Google. Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed social media project, Google+. Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.

Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015, a year before joining Google.

Back when Poole was hired, Google's fear of Facebook gave it an unhinged obsession with social media, but nobody at Google really understood how social media worked. Poole's hiring at the company was controversial, but high-ranking Google+ execs defended the move. 4chan is a social site with millions of monthly visitors, and that made Poole one of the company's few experienced social experts when he arrived.

放大Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Texas’ deep freeze didn’t just disrupt natural gas supplies throughout Lone Star country—its effects rippled across the country, extending as far north as Minnesota. There, gas utilities had to pay $800 million more than they anticipated during the event, and Minnesota regulators are furious.

“The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, told The Washington Post. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.”

The gas and electric markets in Texas are lightly regulated and highly competitive, which has pushed companies to deliver energy at the lowest possible cost. But it also means that many companies were ill-prepared when the mercury dropped. To save money, they had skimped on winterizing their equipment. As a result, gas lines across the state—which has about 23 percent of the country’s reserves—quite literally froze. The spot price of natural gas soared to 70-times what it would normally be in Minnesota, and gas utilities paid a hefty premium when they used the daily market to match demand.

放大撒母耳轴突)

Apple is facing two class-action lawsuits over the meaning of the words “rent” and “buy.”

In the first suit, lead plaintiff David Andino argues that Apple’s definition of the two words is deceptive since the company can terminate people’s Apple IDs and, along with them, access to content they purchased using the “buy” button. Thus, Andino is arguing that Apple allows consumers to rent content rather than purchase it outright. If he had known that his access could be cut off at any time, he says he would have not spent as much on iTunes content.

“Just like Best Buy cannot come into a person’s home to repossess the movie DVD that such person purchased from it, [Apple] should not be able to remove digital content from its customers’ Purchased folders,” the suit says.

放大Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster includes a solid deal on Apple's latest MacBook Air, as the entry-level model is currently down to $899 at various retailers. That's $100 off its typical going rate and tied for the lowest price we've tracked. While this model only comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage, making it better suited for more casual usage, it's also equipped with Apple's new M1 silicon, which our review found to provide supremely impressive value in terms of both speed and battery life. That's on top of the typically sturdy hardware we've come to expect from non-butterfly-keyboard MacBooks.

Elsewhere, our deals roundup has a rare $10 discount on Sony's DualSense wireless controller for the PlayStation 5, good prices on wireless noise-canceling headphones and USB-C chargers we like, and much more. You can peruse the full selection below.

Note: Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

• 

  Aftermath of the liftoff of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission taking four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

In three months, NASA will come upon the 10th anniversary of the final space shuttle flight, a period that was surely melancholy for the space agency.

When the big, white, winged vehicles touched down for the final time in July 2011, NASA surrendered its ability to get humans into space. It had to rely on Russia for access to the International Space Station. And the space agency had to fight the public perception that NASA was somehow a fading force, heading into the sunset.

Now we know that will not be the case, and the future appears bright for the space agency and its international partners. On Friday morning, NASA and SpaceX launched the third mission of Crew Dragon that has carried astronauts into space. After nearly a decade with no human orbital launches from the United States, there have been three in less than 11 months. Another successful mission further confirmed that the combination of Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft is a reliable means of getting crews to the International Space Station.

< A href="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/clubhouse-list.jpg" class=" Enlarge -link" data-height="675" data-width="1200">放大Sam Whitney | Wired | Getty Images)

“Basically, I'm going to keep talking to you, but I’m going to disappear," longtime security researcher Katie Moussouris told me in a private Clubhouse room in February. “We'll still be talking, but I'll be gone.” And then her avatar vanished. I was alone, or at least that's how it seemed. “That’s it," she said from the digital beyond. "That's the bug. I am a fucking ghost.”

It's been more than a year since the audio social network Clubhouse debuted. In that time, its explosive growth has come with a panoply of security, privacy, and abuse issues. That includes a newly disclosed pair of vulnerabilities, discovered by Moussouris and now fixed, that could have allowed an attacker to lurk and listen in a Clubhouse room undetected or verbally disrupt a discussion beyond a moderator's control.

The vulnerability could also be exploited with virtually no technical knowledge. All you needed was two iPhones that had Clubhouse installed and a Clubhouse account. (Clubhouse is still only available on iOS.) To launch the attack, you would first log in to your Clubhouse account on Phone A and then join or start a room. Then you'd log in to your Clubhouse account on Phone B—which would automatically log you out on Phone A—and join the same room. That's where the problems started. Phone A would show a login screen but wouldn't fully log you out. You'd still have a live connection to the room you were in. Once you “left” that same room on Phone B, you would disappear but could maintain your ghost connection on Phone A.

<图class="intro-image intro-left">Enlarge /未来，如果NASA每年都能向月球发射多艘星际飞船，月球探索将会是什么样子?SpaceX的这张效果图展示了这样一个未来。(credit: SpaceX)

When NASA astronauts return to the Moon in a few years, they will do so inside a lander that dwarfs that of the Apollo era. SpaceX's Starship vehicle measures 50 meters from its nose cone to landing legs. By contrast, the cramped Lunar Module that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the Moon in 1969 stood just 7 meters tall.

This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024.

NASA awarded SpaceX $2.89 billion for these two missions. But this contract would balloon in amount should NASA select SpaceX to fly recurring lunar missions later in the 2020s. And it has value to SpaceX and NASA in myriad other ways. Perhaps most significantly, with this contract NASA has bet on a bold future of exploration. Until now, the plans NASA had contemplated for human exploration in deep space all had echoes of the Apollo program. NASA talked about "sustainable" missions and plans in terms of cost, but they were sustainable in name only.