Google’s first Chromecast was a hit. With 10 million units sold in 2014, it excelled as an easy solution for streaming TV and movies from the Internet to a TV. Released at a time when dumb TVs were more common, the first-generation Chromecast has a simplicity you don’t find in streaming devices these days. Press “Cast” in an app, select a TV with a Chromecast, and start watching. Foregoing extras…

Pilots’ voices from the last seconds of a fatal cargo plane crash have been re-created by Internet sleuths using software and AI tools. The spread of reconstructed audio recordings has prompted a US government agency to suspend all public access to its database of civil transportation accidents—because federal law prohibits investigators from publicly releasing audio from cockpit voice recorders. The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) usually shares factual reports…

The Texas Attorney General has sued Meta over allegations that the company’s WhatsApp messenger, used by more than 3 billion people, doesn’t provide the end-to-end encryption (E2EE) it has long claimed. Since at least 2016, Meta (then named Facebook) has said WhatsApp provides robust end-to-end encryption, meaning that messages are encrypted on a sender’s device with keys that are available only to the receiver’s. By definition, E2EE means that no…

A so-called software supply chain attack, in which hackers corrupt a legitimate piece of software to hide their own malicious code, was once a relatively rare event but one that haunted the cybersecurity world with its insidious threat of turning any innocent application into a dangerous foothold in a victim’s network. Now one group of cybercriminals has turned that occasional nightmare into a near-weekly episode, corrupting hundreds of open source…

AcuRite must kill its customers’ favorite companion app due to “obsolete technology,” VP of product development Jeff Bovee tells Ars Technica. AcuRite, which makes smart weather-monitoring devices, announced this month that the My AcuRite iOS and Android app that has been around since 2016 won’t be available after May 30. After that date, device owners must use AcuRite NOW, which AcuRite released in June 2025, to control their gadgets. The…

The US government will take equity stakes worth a total of $2 billion in a slew of quantum computing companies, including a startup backed by a firm with links to the Trump family and one taken public by a Pentagon official. The announcement by the commerce department that it had signed letters of intent with nine companies—including GlobalFoundries and IBM—sent shares in quantum specialists soaring on Thursday. Both IBM, which…

It’s not an ideal time to be buying a new PC or doing a major upgrade. Price crunches for RAM and storage chips are making all kinds of components more expensive, and the shift to DDR5 in modern Intel and AMD CPUs means that a lot of people would need to pay money to replace their current DDR4 kits if they wanted to step up to a significantly newer, faster…

Google on Wednesday published exploit code for an unfixed vulnerability in its Chromium browser codebase that threatens millions of people using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and virtually all other Chromium-based browsers. The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of…

President Donald Trump’s latest pitch for using taxpayer dollars to secure his White House ballroom featured a militarized building—including a rooftop hardened against drone strikes and a “drone port” that could potentially house military drones. The remarks came on May 19 as Trump gave reporters a personal tour of the ballroom project that has already involved the demolition of the White House mansion’s East Wing. The president spoke of installing…

As of July 1, at 12:01 am UTC—or June 30 at 8:01 pm ET—people seeking access to Plex’s media server features through a one-time purchase will have to pay $750. That’s three times the current price of $250. The new price will not affect current Lifetime Plex Pass holders. A Lifetime Plex Pass allows you to stream from your own Plex Media Server to a device connected to your own…