Passengers from hantavirus ship arrive in US; 3 people in biocontainment

Passengers from hantavirus ship arrive in US; 3 people in biocontainment

fivenewscrypto    mai 13, 2026   

The cruise ship rocked by an unprecedented Andes hantavirus outbreak arrived in the Canary Islands off the coast of Tenerife Island over the weekend and is being evacuated. At least one new case has been identified amid the disembarkment.

As of Monday morning, officials for the World Health Organization reported that the last of the passengers of the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to be evacuated today. Thirty crew will remain on board and see the ship back to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Prior to the evacuation there were 147 people on board.

All of those evacuated from the ship are being transported off the island on specially arranged repatriation flights, not commercial flights. The evacuations and flights are being coordinated by Spanish authorities as well as the WHO and other national health officials.

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Starlink shuts down its GPS-style cheat code. Researchers may unlock it anyway.

Starlink shuts down its GPS-style cheat code. Researchers may unlock it anyway.

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

Starlink is unceremoniously shutting down a GPS-style feature that most of the Internet satellite provider’s customers probably never realized existed. But that won’t stop broader momentum toward harnessing Starlink’s satellite constellation as a navigation alternative—especially when GPS jamming and spoofing have become more widespread.

The Starlink satellite constellation owned by SpaceX is designed to provide communications services first and foremost, rather than pinpointing users’ locations like GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). However, SpaceX publicly acknowledged in a May 2025 letter to the US Federal Communications Commission that Starlink could deliver positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. A handful of savvy Starlink customers had even been accessing Starlink PNT capability for several years until Starlink recently decided to shut down access, according to PCMag.

“The beauty of Starlink as a backup to GNSS is that it's such a different system—frequencies 10 times higher, bandwidths 10 to 100 times wider, power 100 to 1,000 times stronger, satellites 100 times more proliferated,” said Todd Humphreys, director of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) and the Radionavigation Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, in correspondence with Ars.

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iOS, macOS, and iPadOS 26.5 updates arrive with encrypted RCS messaging and more

iOS, macOS, and iPadOS 26.5 updates arrive with encrypted RCS messaging and more

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

Apple has released version 26.5 of all of its operating systems today: iOS 26.5, iPadOS 26.5, macOS 26.5, watchOS 26.5, tvOS 26.5, visionOS 26.5, and version 26.5 of the HomePod software (whew).

None of these are particularly momentous updates, which is pretty normal this late in their lifecycle, but they add a small batch of new features alongside the pile of patches outlined on Apple’s security vulnerabilities page. This is Apple’s first release to support end-to-end encryption for the RCS messaging standard, for example, which, when enabled, can give green-bubble messages some of the same security and privacy advantages that iMessage users have long enjoyed.

Encrypted RCS messaging has a “beta” label in this release, and Apple says it’s limited to a subset of supported cellular carriers. Expanded support “will roll out over time.” Encrypted chats will show up with a padlock icon in the Messages app; if you don’t see a padlock, the message isn’t encrypted, even if you’re using RCS.

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Samsung made a “mockery” of Dua Lipa by putting her picture on TV boxes, lawsuit says

Samsung made a “mockery” of Dua Lipa by putting her picture on TV boxes, lawsuit says

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

About a year ago, I was in my parents’ living room, where a new TV sat in its box, waiting to be set up. My sister-in-law pointed to a woman on the packaging and said, “Oh, that’s Dua Lipa!” I barely know who she is, so I didn’t think it was unusual for the singer to be featured on the box. But at least one person thinks it's a big deal: Lipa herself.

On Friday, Lipa filed a lawsuit against Samsung for using her image on some of its TV boxes, alleging that its use constitutes copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and a violation of her right of publicity. The complaint (PDF), filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, says that Lipa owns all “rights, title, and interest in the image titled ‘Dua Lipa - Backstage at Austin City Limits, 2024.’”

“Samsung mass-manufactured, distributed (or caused to be distributed) marketed, and sold in interstate commerce across the United States a vast number of its televisions in various sizes in these cardboard boxes containing the [image],” the lawsuit says.

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Pirates are already playing Forza Horizon 6 days before its launch

Pirates are already playing Forza Horizon 6 days before its launch

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

Playable copies of Microsoft's Forza Horizon 6 have appeared on game piracy sites more than a week before the game's official launch, the apparent result of a mistake in uploading the game's files to Steam over the weekend.

Since the early days of Steam, players have been able to preload encrypted versions of supported games well ahead of release so the game is ready to play when the encryption key is released on launch day. But early Sunday morning, Microsoft mistakenly uploaded roughly 155 GB of Forza Horizon 6 files to Steam in unencrypted form, as tracked by SteamDB.

That unprotected upload was noticed almost immediately across social media sites and Reddit. Within hours, Reddit's CrackWatch community was reporting that the game's copy protection had been broken, allowing for easy downloads of pirated versions across multiple piracy sites reviewed by Ars (while that initial CrackWatch post has since been "removed by Reddit’s Legal Operations team," details of another crack were being discussed on CrackWatch as of Monday morning).

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F1 set for another engine tweak in 2027, and what's this about V8s?

F1 set for another engine tweak in 2027, and what's this about V8s?

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

Formula 1's on-track racing might look a bit different in 2026 than it did in 2006 or 1986, but it's reassuring to know that the sport's off-track action remains as engrossing as ever. Right now, that involves F1's stakeholders trying to get out of a corner they painted themselves into with the introduction of new V6 hybrid power units for 2026. We saw the first stab of that in Miami, with small tweaks meant to return some of the spectacle to qualifying, which succeeded. But it seems the sport is in a proactive mood, and further changes are coming to the power balance for 2027. But as we'll see, trade-offs remain.

F1's current technical regulations, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, have been in the works for a while. As far back as 2022, we knew there would be a greater emphasis on the electric side, a near-50:50 split with an all-new, supposedly less complex V6 turbo powered by carbon-neutral fuels, and active aerodynamics to cut drag. Two years later, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (which organizes the sport) published the final regulations.

A greater emphasis on the electrical side of the hybrid system was put in place as a sop to the auto industry, and it indeed succeeded in attracting new OEMs. But there were early concerns that the battery capacity would be too small to feed the powerful electric motor for most of a lap. And because there can only be an electric motor at the rear axle, not the front—supposedly out of fear that new entrant Audi would have too much of an advantage—cars could regenerate just a fraction of the total energy possible under braking.

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A promising Indian launch startup nears its first orbital test flight

A promising Indian launch startup nears its first orbital test flight

fivenewscrypto    mai 12, 2026   

After decades of controlling all aspects of spaceflight, the Indian government decided in 2020 to open things up to private industry. Essentially, the government said, companies could build their own rockets, obtain permission to launch them, and even use state-operated facilities.

The government and the country's space agency, ISRO, instituted this change in response to the rise of commercial space industries in the United States, and later China, that were playing an increasingly important role in global spaceflight.

Now, six years later, this structural shift is beginning to bear some fruit. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket.

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