Any company that makes Arm chips must license technology from Arm Holdings plc, the British company that develops the instruction set. Companies can license the instruction set and create their own CPU designs or license one of Arm's ready-made Cortex CPU core designs to incorporate into their own chips.

Bloomberg reports that Arm is canceling Qualcomm's license, an escalation of a fight that began in late 2022 when Arm sued Qualcomm over its acquisition of Nuvia in 2021 . Arm has given Qualcomm 60 days' notice of the cancellation, giving the companies two months to come to some kind of agreement before Qualcomm is forced to stop manufacturing and selling its Arm chips.

A Qualcomm spokesperson told Bloomberg that Arm Holdings plc was attempting to "strong-arm a longtime partner" and that Qualcomm was "confident that Qualcomm’s rights under its agreement with Arm will be affirmed."

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board has agreed to spend $212 million to get its Muni Metro light rail off floppy disks.

The Muni Metro’s Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) has required 5¼-inch floppy disks since 1998, when it was installed at San Francisco’s Market Street subway station. The system uses three floppy disks for loading DOS software that controls the system’s central servers. Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, gave further details on how the light rail operates to Ars Technica in April, saying: “When a train enters the subway, its onboard computer connects to the train control system to run the train in automatic mode, where the trains drive themselves while the operators supervise. When they exit the subway, they disconnect from the ATCS and return to manual operation on the street." After starting initial planning in 2018, the SFMTA originally expected to move to a floppy-disk-free train control system by 2028. But with COVID-19 preventing work for 18 months, the estimated completion date was delayed.

On October 15, the SFMTA moved closer to ditching floppies when its board approved a contract with Hitachi Rail for implementing a new train control system that doesn't use floppy disks, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Hitachi Rail tech is said to power train systems, including Japan’s bullet train, in more than 50 countries. The $212 million contract includes support services from Hitachi for "20 to 25 years," the Chronicle said.

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One person is dead and 48 others across 10 states have been sickened in an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that appears to be linked to McDonald's Quarter Pounders and the slivered onions used on the burgers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McDonald's has paused distribution of the slivered onions and removed Quarter Pounders from the menus of restaurants in areas known to be affected. As of now, those areas include Colorado, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as portions of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

However, the CDC was quick to note that the size and span of the outbreak are likely larger than is currently known. "This outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses, and the true number of sick people is likely much higher than the number reported," the agency said in its outbreak notice posted Tuesday afternoon.

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When Canadian developer Peter Todd found out that a new HBO documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, was set to identify him as Satoshi Nakamoto , the creator of Bitcoin, he was mostly just pissed. “This was clearly going to be a circus,” Todd told WIRED in an email.

The identity of the person—or people—who created Bitcoin has been the subject of speculation since December 2010, when they disappeared from public view. The mystery has proved all the more irresistible for the trove of bitcoin Satoshi is widely believed to have controlled, suspected to be worth many billions of dollars today. When the documentary was released on October 8, Todd joined a long line of alleged Satoshis.

Documentary maker Cullen Hoback, who in a previous film claimed to have identified the individual behind QAnon , laid out his theory to Todd on camera. The confrontation would become the climactic scene of the documentary. But Todd nonetheless claims he didn’t see it coming; he alleges he was left with the impression the film was about the history of Bitcoin, not the identity of its creator.

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T-Mobile promised users who bought certain mobile plans that it would never raise their prices for as long as they lived—but then raised their prices this year. So it's no surprise that 2,000 T-Mobile customers complained to the government about a price hike on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price lock.

"I am still alive and T-Mobile is increasing the price for service by $5 per line. How is this a lifetime price lock?" one customer in Connecticut asked the Federal Communications Commission in a complaint that we obtained through a public records request.

"I am not dead yet," a customer in New York wrote bluntly, saying they had bought a plan with a "guarantee for life."

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United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon's most precious national security satellites.

Space Force officials expect to approve ULA's Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem on the rocket's second demonstration flight earlier this month.

ULA has launched two Vulcan test flights. Military officials watched closely, gathering data to formally certify the rocket is reliable enough to launch national security missions. The first test flight in January, designated Cert-1, was nearly flawless . The Cert-2 launch October 4 overcame an anomaly on one of Vulcan's strap-on solid rocket boosters, which lost its exhaust nozzle but kept firing with degraded thrust.

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Colossal, the company founded to try to restore the mammoth to the Arctic tundra, has also decided to tackle a number of other species that have gone extinct relatively recently: the dodo and the thylacine . Because of significant differences in biology, not the least of which is the generation time of Proboscideans, these other efforts may reach many critical milestones well in advance of the work on mammoths.

Late last week, Colossal released a progress report on the work involved in resurrecting the thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct when the last known survivor died in a zoo in 1936. Marsupial biology has some features that may make de-extinction somewhat easier, but we have far less sophisticated ways of manipulating it compared to the technology we've developed for working with the stem cells and reproduction of placental mammals. But, based on these new announcements, the technology available for working with marsupials is expanding rapidly.

Cane toad resistance

Colossal has branched out from its original de-extinction mission to include efforts to keep species from ever needing its services. In the case of marsupial predators, the de-extinction effort is incorporating work that will benefit existing marsupial predators: generating resistance to the toxins found on the cane toad, an invasive species that has spread widely across Australia.

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Amid ongoing legal battles over coveted GLP-1 therapies, a drug vendor in Washington state is accused of running an outlandish scheme to sell do-it-yourself kits to make illicit knockoff versions of weight-loss and diabetes drugs, Zepbound and Mounjaro.

For the alleged scheme, vendor Pivotal Peptides has customers buy a set of ingredients they have to mix together to create their own injectable versions of the drugs. Customers don't need a prescription or even a medical consultation to order the kit, even though the brand-name drugs are prescription-only. That may not be surprising, though, since the dubious white powder customers receive is stated to be "a research chemical for lab research and veterinary purposes only." Once purchased, the kit's instructions recommend users disinfect their home work surface before beginning and stress the importance of using the sterile water included in the kit to dissolve the powder to the desired concentration. The instructions then explain how to inject oneself with the homemade mixture using a 30-gauge syringe.

That's all according to a lawsuit filed Monday by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly , maker of tirzepatide-based Zepbound and Mounjaro, which are sold as ready-to-use medicines in single-dose pens or vials. The lawsuit against Pivotal Peptides is one of three that Lilly filed this week, all accusing questionable drugmakers of unlawfully selling knockoff versions of its tirzepatide drugs that have not been tested or approved. But the one against Pivotal Peptides stands out for the scheme the owners allegedly used to sell their knockoff version.

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Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline . But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest that viewers are becoming less satisfied with what's available to watch.

At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV , a term coined by FX Networks chairman John Landgraf, refers to an era of rampant content spending that gave us shows like The Wire , Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones . For streaming services, the Peak TV era meant trying to lure subscribers with original content that was often buoyed by critical acclaim and/or top-tier actors, writers, and/or directors. However, as streaming services struggle to reach or maintain profitability, 2024 saw a drop in the number of new scripted shows for the first time in at least 10 years, FX Research found .

Meanwhile, overall satisfaction with the quality of content available on streaming services seems to have declined for the past couple of years. Most surveys suggest a generally small decline in perceived quality, but that’s still perturbing considering how frequently streaming services increase subscription fees . There was a time when a streaming subscription represented an exclusive ticket to viewing some of the best new TV shows and movies. But we’ve reached a point where the most streamed TV show last year was Suits —an original from the USA Network cable channel that ended in 2019.

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