Enlarge / Harvard Business School was targeted by a faculty member's lawsuit. (credit: APCortizasJr )

Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations.

But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation—which is probably a very good thing for science.

Data and defamation

The researchers who had been sued, Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joe Simmons, run a blog called Data Colada where, among other things, they note cases of suspicious-looking data in the behavioral sciences. As we detailed in our earlier coverage, they published a series of blog posts describing an apparent case of fabricated data in four different papers published by the high-profile researcher Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School.

Enlarge (credit: Unity)

Unity, maker of a popular cross-platform engine and toolkit, will not pursue a broadly unpopular Runtime Fee that would have charged developers based on game installs rather than per-seat licenses. The move comes exactly one year after the fee's initial announcement.

In a blog post attributed to President and CEO Matt Bromberg, the CEO writes that the company cannot continue "democratizing game development" without "a partnership built on trust." Bromberg states that customers understand the necessity of price increases, but not in "a novel and controversial new form." So game developers will not be charged per installation, but they will be sorted into Personal, Pro, and Enterprise tiers by level of revenue or funding.

"Canceling the Runtime Fee for games and instituting these pricing changes will allow us to continue investing to improve game development for everyone while also being better partners," Bromberg writes.

Enlarge (credit: Vlatko Gasparic via Getty Images )

OpenAI finally unveiled its rumored "Strawberry" AI language model on Thursday, claiming significant improvements in what it calls "reasoning" and problem-solving capabilities over previous large language models (LLMs). Formally named " OpenAI o1 ," the model family will initially launch in two forms, o1-preview and o1-mini , available today for ChatGPT Plus and certain API users.

OpenAI claims that o1-preview outperforms its predecessor, GPT-4o , on multiple benchmarks, including competitive programming, mathematics, and "scientific reasoning." However, people who have used the model say it does not yet outclass GPT-4o in every metric. Other users have criticized the delay in receiving a response from the model, owing to the multi-step processing occurring behind the scenes before answering a query.

In a rare display of public hype-busting, OpenAI product manager Joanne Jang tweeted , "There's a lot of o1 hype on my feed, so I'm worried that it might be setting the wrong expectations. what o1 is: the first reasoning model that shines in really hard tasks, and it'll only get better. (I'm personally psyched about the model's potential & trajectory!) what o1 isn't (yet!): a miracle model that does everything better than previous models. you might be disappointed if this is your expectation for today's launch—but we're working to get there!"

Enlarge / Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji. (credit: Emojipedia )

The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard , the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998.

Of those 5,185 characters, the ones that will get the most attention are the eight new emoji characters, including a shovel, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish (formally classified as "root vegetable"), a harp, a purple splat that evokes the '90s Nickelodeon logo , and a flag for the island of Sark . The standout, of course, is "face with bags under eyes," whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into. Per usual, Emojipedia has sample images that give you some idea of what these will look like when they're implemented by various operating systems, apps, and services.

Unicode 16.0 also adds support for seven new modern and historical scripts: the West African Garay alphabet ; the Gurung Khema , Kirat Rai , Ol Onal , and Sunuwar scripts from Northeast India and Nepal; and historical Todhri and Tulu-Tigalari scripts from Albania and Southwest India, respectively.

Enlarge / Hard drives, unfortunately, tend to die not with a spectacular and sparkly bang, but with a head-is-stuck whimper. (credit: Getty Images)

One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry's vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are entirely unreadable.

Music industry publication Mix spoke with the people in charge of backing up the entertainment industry. The resulting tale is part explainer on how music is so complicated to archive now, part warning about everyone's data stored on spinning disks.

"In our line of work, if we discover an inherent problem with a format, it makes sense to let everybody know," Robert Koszela, global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives at Iron Mountain, told Mix. "It may sound like a sales pitch, but it's not; it's a call for action."

Enlarge / A woman wearing a sweatshirt for the QAnon conspiracy theory on October 11, 2020 in Ronkonkoma, New York. (credit: Stephanie Keith | Getty Images)

Belief in conspiracy theories is rampant, particularly in the US, where some estimates suggest as much as 50 percent of the population believes in at least one outlandish claim. And those beliefs are notoriously difficult to debunk. Challenge a committed conspiracy theorist with facts and evidence, and they'll usually just double down—a phenomenon psychologists usually attribute to motivated reasoning , i.e., a biased way of processing information.

A new paper published in the journal Science is challenging that conventional wisdom, however. Experiments in which an AI chatbot engaged in conversations with people who believed at least one conspiracy theory showed that the interaction significantly reduced the strength of those beliefs, even two months later. The secret to its success: the chatbot, with its access to vast amounts of information across an enormous range of topics, could precisely tailor its counterarguments to each individual.

"These are some of the most fascinating results I've ever seen," co-author Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist at Cornell University, said during a media briefing. "The work overturns a lot of how we thought about conspiracies, that they're the result of various psychological motives and needs. [Participants] were remarkably responsive to evidence. There's been a lot of ink spilled about being in a post-truth world. It's really validating to know that evidence does matter. We can act in a more adaptive way using this new technology to get good evidence in front of people that is specifically relevant to what they think, so it's a much more powerful approach."

Enlarge / The "VP" on the cab light is a nice touch. (credit: Itch.io )

Last month, in a profile of newly named Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz , The New York Times included a throwaway line about "the time his wife had seized his Dreamcast, the Sega video game console, because he had been playing to excess." Weeks later, that anecdote formed the unlikely basis for the unlikely Crazy Taxi: Tim Walz Edition mod, which inserts the Minnesota governor (and top-of-the-ticket running mate Kamala Harris) into the Dreamcast classic driving game.

"Rumor has it that Tim Walz played Crazy Taxi so much his wife took his Dreamcast away from him... so I decided to put him in the game," modder Edward La Barbera wrote on the game's Itch.io page .

Unfortunately, the pay-what-you-want mod can't just be burned to a CD-R and played on actual Dreamcast hardware . Currently, the mod's visual files are tuned to work only with Dreamcast emulator Flycast , which includes built-in features for replacing in-game textures.

Enlarge (credit: Dmitri Toms | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

Federal authorities have seized more than 350 websites after an undercover investigation revealed that the sites were used to illegally import gun parts into the US from China. To get the illegal items through customs, the sites described the items as toys, necklaces, car parts, tools, and even a fidget spinner.

The sites violated import bans and the National Firearms Act by selling switches—which are "parts designed to convert semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machineguns"—and silencers—which "suppress the sound of a firearm when discharged," a Department of Justice press release said.

Some sites also marketed counterfeit Glock parts, infringing trademark laws, including a phony Glock switch that Glock confirmed to investigators was "never manufactured."

Enlarge / Are you getting gas station vibes? Because I'm getting gas station vibes. (credit: GM)

Several years ago, General Motors and EVgo teamed up to build out a network of fast chargers for electric vehicles. As Tesla proved, giving your customers confidence that they won't be stranded on a long drive with a dead battery really helps sell EVs, and GM's sometimes-shifting target currently stands at deploying 2,850 chargers. Today, the two partners showed off their concept for an improved charging experience, which they say will come to a number of flagship charger locations around the US.

The most obvious thing to notice is the large canopy, co-branded with EVgo and GM Energy, similar to those found at virtually every gas station across the country. The gas station vibes don't end there, either. Ample lighting and security cameras are meant to combat the sometimes sketchy vibes that can be found at other banks of (often dimly lit) fast chargers after dark, located as they often are in the far reaches of a mall parking lot.

And the chargers are sited between the charging bays the same way gas pumps are located, allowing a driver to pull through. Most fast chargers require a driver to pull in or back into the space even when the chargers are located to one side, a fact that complicates long-distance towing with an EV.