The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to unmask the operator of Archive.is, also known as Archive.today, a website that saves snapshots of webpages and is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.

The FBI sent a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows, seeking “subscriber information on [the] customer behind archive.today” in connection with “a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.” The subpoena tells Tucows that “your company is required to furnish this information.”

The subpoena is supposed to be secret, but the Archive.today X account posted the document on October 30, the same day the subpoena was issued. The X post contained a link to the PDF and the word “canary.”

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At a White House event Thursday, President Trump announced deals with drug makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to offer their popular GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs at lower prices for some Americans, namely some on Medicare and Medicaid plans. But questions linger about the significance of the deal.

According to the announcement , Medicare and state Medicaid programs will be able to purchase a month’s supply of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound at $245 each for eligible patients. Eligible people on Medicare will have a $50 co-pay for them.

The negotiated price is a significant cut from the drugs’ list prices: The list price for Ozempic is $997; Wegovy is $1,350; Mounjaro is $1,080; and Zepbound is $1,086. But, of course, purchasers rarely pay drug list prices. It’s unclear how much Medicare and Medicaid would have paid for the drugs without this deal and what the savings will be.

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For months, extremely personal and sensitive ChatGPT conversations have been leaking into an unexpected destination: Google Search Console (GSC), a tool that developers typically use to monitor search traffic, not lurk private chats.

Normally, when site managers access GSC performance reports, they see queries based on keywords or short phrases that Internet users type into Google to find relevant content. But starting this September, odd queries, sometimes more than 300 characters long, could also be found in GSC. Showing only user inputs, the chats appeared to be from unwitting people prompting a chatbot to help solve relationship or business problems, who likely expected those conversations would remain private.

Jason Packer, owner of an analytics consulting firm called Quantable, was among the first to flag the issue in a detailed blog last month.

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If you’ve played any number of RPGs, you probably know the skill tree as a break from the game’s core action. It’s a place to pause, take a breather, and scroll through a massive visual menu of upgrade options, considering which path of stat and ability tweaks best fits your character and your play style.

With Skigill , indie developer Achromi has taken that break-time menu and transformed it into the playing field for an intriguing Vampire Survivors -style roguelike. And while the Early Access game currently lacks the kind of deep content that will keep players coming back for a long time, it’s still a clever and engaging take on the genre that I haven’t been able to put down for long.

Clear the way, I need +5 armor!

Like Vampire Survivors and its many imitators, Skigill is all about navigating through waves of enemies that converge somewhat mindlessly on your position. The game automatically aims and deploys weapons to carve some safe space through what can be screens full of hazardous enemies, which leave behind coins as they explode in puffs of yellow smoke.

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When Ford electrified its best-selling pickup truck, it pulled out the stops. The F-150 Lightning may look virtually identical to other versions of the pickup, but it’s smoother, faster, and obviously far, far more efficient than the ones that run on gas, diesel, or hybrid power. But the future of the country’s best-selling electric truck may be in doubt.

That’s according to a report in The Wall Street Journal , which claims that Ford’s management is “in active discussions about scrapping” the Lightning. Production had already been suspended a few weeks ago as a result of an aluminum shortage following a destructive fire at a supplier’s factory in New York, which Ford estimates may result in as much as $2 billion of losses to the company.

While Ford told Ars it doesn’t comment on speculation on its future product plans, the automaker said that “F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electric pickup truck in the US—despite new competition from CyberTruck, Chevy, GMC, Hummer and Rivian—and delivered record sales in Q3.”

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At a site in Kenya, archaeologists recently unearthed layer upon layer of stone stools from deposits that span 300,000 years, and include a period of intense environmental upheaval. The oldest tools at the site date back to 2.75 million years ago. According to a recent study, the finds suggest that for hundreds of millennia, ancient hominins relied on the same stone tool technology as an anchor while the world changed around them.

Oldowan choppers dated to 1.7 million years ago, from Melka Kunture, Ethiopia. Credit: By Didier Descouens - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11291046

“ An extraordinary story of cultural continuity”

George Washington University archaeologist David Braun and his colleagues recently unearthed stone tools from a 2.75 million-year-old layer of Kenyan sediment at a site called Nomorotukunan. They’re classic examples of a type of tools archaeologists call Oldowan: the earliest types of sharp-edged stone tools made by hominins. The tools unearthed at Nomorotukunan are some of the oldest Olduwan tools ever found; only three other Oldowan sites in Africa date back any farther than 2.6 million years ago.

These hand-sized chunks of river rock, with flakes chipped off one or two sides to make sharp edges, were cutting-edge technology (not sorry) from 2.9 million years ago until about 1.7 million years ago. In technical terms, that’s what’s called a long flipping time, enough to span several hominin species and more than one genus. The last hominins to use Oldowan tools looked very different, and probably lived and behaved very differently, from the first; over this huge span of time, the stone tool technology itself changed less than the beings using it.

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The Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, California, has some of the best real estate in the country, with a charming hodgepodge of homes ranging in style from Tudor revival to modern farmhouse and contemporary Mediterranean. It also has a gigantic compound that is home to Mark Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, and their daughters Maxima, August, and Aurelia. Their land has expanded to include 11 previously separate properties, five of which are connected by at least one property line.

The Zuckerberg compound’s expansion first became a concern for Crescent Park neighbors as early as 2016 , due to fears that his purchases were driving up the market. Then, about five years later, neighbors noticed that a school appeared to be operating out of the Zuckerberg compound. This would be illegal under the area’s residential zoning code without a permit. They began a crusade to shut it down that did not end until summer 2025.

WIRED obtained 1,665 pages of documents about the neighborhood dispute—including 311 records, legal filings, construction plans, and emails—through a public record request filed to the Palo Alto Department of Planning and Development Services. (Mentions of “Zuckerberg” or “the Zuckerbergs” appear to have been redacted. However, neighbors and separate public records confirm that the property in question belongs to the family. The names of the neighbors who were in touch with the city were also redacted.)

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Welcome to Edition 8.18 of the Rocket Report! NASA is getting a heck of a deal from Blue Origin for launching the agency’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Blue Origin is charging NASA about $20 million for the launch on the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. A dedicated ride on any other rocket capable of the job would undoubtedly cost more.

But there are tradeoffs. First, there’s the question of risk. The New Glenn rocket is only making its second flight, and it hasn’t been certified by NASA or the US Space Force. Second, the schedule for ESCAPADE’s launch has been at the whim of Blue Origin, which has delayed the mission several times due to issues developing New Glenn. NASA’s interplanetary missions typically have a fixed launch period, and the agency pays providers like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a premium to ensure the launch happens when it needs to happen.

New Glenn is ready, the satellites are ready, and Blue Origin has set a launch date for Sunday, November 9. The mission will depart the Earth outside of the usual interplanetary launch window, so orbital dynamics wizards came up with a unique trajectory that will get the satellites to Mars in 2027.

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Helping companies pay ransoms to digital extortionists is kind of a weird business.

On the one hand, you “negotiate” with cybercriminals and in so doing may drive down the costs of recovering from a particular ransomware incident. On the other hand, you’re helping criminals get paid, funding their operations and making further attacks more likely.

And there’s always a temptation built in to this kind of work. Seeing lucrative sums being whisked away through cryptocurrency exchanges and “mixing services”… Realizing from up close just how vulnerable companies are… Learning that modern ransomware can operate as a service where you essentially “rent” the code from its developers in return for a cut of the profits…

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