Enlarge (credit: Memento | Aurich Lawson)

Given the flood of photorealistic AI-generated images washing over social media networks like X and Facebook these days, we're seemingly entering a new age of media skepticism: the era of what I'm calling "deep doubt." While questioning the authenticity of digital content stretches back decades—and analog media long before that—easy access to tools that generate convincing fake content has led to a new wave of liars using AI-generated scenes to deny real documentary evidence. Along the way, people's existing skepticism toward online content from strangers may be reaching new heights.

Deep doubt is skepticism of real media that stems from the existence of generative AI. This manifests as broad public skepticism toward the veracity of media artifacts, which in turn leads to a notable consequence: People can now more credibly claim that real events did not happen and suggest that documentary evidence was fabricated using AI tools.

The concept behind "deep doubt" isn't new, but its real-world impact is becoming increasingly apparent. Since the term "deepfake" first surfaced in 2017, we've seen a rapid evolution in AI-generated media capabilities. This has led to recent examples of deep doubt in action, such as conspiracy theorists claiming that President Joe Biden has been replaced by an AI-powered hologram and former President Donald Trump's baseless accusation in August that Vice President Kamala Harris used AI to fake crowd sizes at her rallies. And on Friday, Trump cried "AI" again at a photo of him with E. Jean Carroll, a writer who successfully sued him for sexual assault, that contradicts his claim of never having met her.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as "the AI one" in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of " Apple Intelligence " features.

That's funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that's coming out today. A lot of it is coming "later this fall" in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won't be ready until after that —rumors say image generation won't be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet.

But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. Apple Intelligence is sucking up a lot of the media oxygen, but in most other ways, this is a typical 2020s-era macOS release, with one or two headliners, several quality-of-life tweaks, and some sparsely documented under-the-hood stuff that will subtly change how you experience the operating system.

Enlarge / The Ig Nobel Prizes honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Curiosity is the driving force behind all science, which may explain why so many scientists sometimes find themselves going in some decidedly eccentric research directions. Did you hear about the WWII plan to train pigeons as missile guidance systems? How about experiments on the swimming ability of a dead rainbow trout or that time biologists tried to startle cows by popping paper bags by their heads? These and other unusual research endeavors were honored tonight in a virtual ceremony to announce the 2024 recipients of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. Yes, it's that time of year again, when the serious and the silly converge—for science.

Established in 1991, the Ig Nobels are a good-natured parody of the Nobel Prizes; they honor "achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think." The unapologetically campy awards ceremony features miniature operas, scientific demos, and the 24/7 lectures whereby experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words. Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the motto implies, the research being honored might seem ridiculous at first glance, but that doesn't mean it's devoid of scientific merit.

Viewers can tune in for the usual 24/7 lectures, as well as the premiere of a "non-opera" featuring various songs about water, in keeping with the evening's theme. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public talks, which will be posted on the Improbable Research website.

Enlarge / An AI-generated image featuring my late father's handwriting. (credit: Benj Edwards / Flux)

Growing up, if I wanted to experiment with something technical, my dad made it happen. We shared dozens of tech adventures together, but those adventures were cut short when he died of cancer in 2013. Thanks to a new AI image generator, it turns out that my dad and I still have one more adventure to go.

Recently, an anonymous AI hobbyist discovered that an image synthesis model called Flux can reproduce someone's handwriting very accurately if specially trained to do so. I decided to experiment with the technique using written journals my dad left behind. The results astounded me and raised deep questions about ethics, the authenticity of media artifacts, and the personal meaning behind handwriting itself.

Beyond that, I'm also happy that I get to see my dad's handwriting again. Captured by a neural network, part of him will live on in a dynamic way that was impossible a decade ago. It's been a while since he died, and I am no longer grieving. From my perspective, this is a celebration of something great about my dad—reviving the distinct way he wrote and what that conveys about who he was.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

It’s not every day that a security researcher acquires the ability to generate counterfeit HTTPS certificates, track email activity, and execute code of his choice on thousands of servers—all in a single blow that cost only $20 and a few minutes to land. But that’s exactly what happened recently to Benjamin Harris.

Harris, the CEO and founder of security firm watchTowr, did all of this by registering the domain dotmobilregistry.net. The domain was once the official home of the authoritative WHOIS server for .mobi, a top-level domain used to indicate that a website is optimized for mobile devices. At some point—it’s not clear precisely when—this WHOIS server, which acts as the official directory for every domain ending in .mobi, was relocated, from whois.dotmobiregistry.net to whois.nic.mobi. While retreating to his Las Vegas hotel room during last month’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Harris noticed that the previous dotmobiregistry.net owners had allowed the domain to expire. He then scooped it up and set up his own .mobi WHOIS server there.

Misplaced trust

To Harris’s surprise, his server received queries from slightly more than 76,000 unique IP addresses within a few hours of setting it up. Over five days, it received roughly 2.5 million queries from about 135,000 unique systems. The entities behind the systems querying his deprecated domain included a who’s who of Internet heavyweights comprising domain registrars, providers of online security tools, governments from the US and around the world, universities, and certificate authorities, the entities that issue browser-trusted TLS certificates that make HTTPS work.

Enlarge / An Aurora truck departs the company’s depot in Palmer, Texas. (credit: Aurora)

On a sunny morning in December, an 18-wheeler will pull into a truck depot in Palmer, Texas, just south of Dallas. The driver will step out of the cab and help transfer his trailer to a second rig outfitted with powerful sensors.

This second truck will head south on Interstate 45 toward Houston. It will move cautiously, mostly cruising in the right lane at 65 mph despite the 75 mph speed limit.

After three and a half hours, the truck will exit the freeway in Greenpoint, a neighborhood in the north of Houston. It will proceed to a second truck depot, where the trailer will again be transferred to a new rig. A different driver will get in and haul the cargo to its final destination a few miles away.

Enlarge / The reMarkable Paper Pro tablet. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Our main critique of Amazon's Kindle Scribe when it launched in late 2022—and one that still mostly holds up—was that it felt like a big e-reader with writing functionality tacked on rather than a tablet designed specifically for writing and note-taking. Though Amazon's hardware is arguably superior (and definitely more affordable), we definitely wanted software that was closer to what was available on the reMarkable 2 tablet.

The reMarkable 2 mostly doesn't bother with e-reader features, though it does support EPUB and PDF documents; it's focused almost entirely on the creation and organizing of notes in various formats. And now reMarkable (the company) is out with a new reMarkable (the tablet), one that attempts to catch up with and surpass Amazon's hardware while still keeping the focus on writing.

Writing is fun

The new $579 reMarkable Paper Plus is an evolution of the previous design—slightly larger and heavier, but with a much bigger 11.8-inch display (up from 10.3 inches in the reMarkable 2) that also adds a front-light and color e-ink support. Where most color e-readers use E Ink's Kaleido technology , which offers faster page refresh times but relatively dull, washed-out color, the reMarkable Paper Pro uses E Ink Gallery, which has richer color reproduction at the expense of refresh speed.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 7700X makes enough sense to feature in our higher-end gaming build. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It's been a while since our last system guide , and a few new products—most notably AMD's Ryzen 9000 series CPUs —have been released since then. But there haven't been many notable graphics card launches, and new ones are still rumored to be a few months off as both Nvidia and AMD prioritize their money-printing AI accelerators.

But that doesn't make it a bad time to buy a PC, especially if you're looking for some cost-efficient builds. Prices of CPUs and GPUs have both fallen a fair bit since we did our last build guide a year or so ago, which means all of our builds are either cheaper than they were before or we can squeeze out a little more performance than before at similar prices.

We have six builds across four broad tiers—a budget office desktop, a budget 1080p gaming PC, a mainstream 1440p-to-4K gaming PC, and a price-conscious workstation build with a powerful CPU and lots of room for future expandability.

Enlarge / The Terran 1 rocket made its only flight (a beautiful one) in March 2023. (credit: Relativity Space/John Kraus)

A splashy California-based launch company named Relativity Space shared a photo of sleek-looking rocket hardware on its social media channels last week. The image featured an impressively large payload fairing, which protects satellites on the ride into space.

"Time to take a look at Terran R’s payload envelope," the company said, calling attention to three people standing to the left of the tall fairing.

Such an anodyne post seems an unlikely candidate to spark an analysis of what is really happening at Relativity Space, but that’s exactly what happened. Less than an hour after its publication, a source I've been talking to about Relativity for a while contacted me again.