Egyptologists have long debated whether the earliest pharoahs of the First Dynasty were buried with various servants and officials to serve them in the afterlife—a form of human sacrifice. But there is very little archaeological evidence available, given that many of the earliest Egyptian tombs were plundered and/or hastily excavated. A new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology reassesses a collection of skulls excavated from tombs in the 1920s and concludes that over one-third show evidence of blunt force trauma. This suggests that they may have been victims of so-called "retainer sacrifice."

Author Roselyn Campbell is a bioarchaeologist at Purdue University who has long been fascinated with the history of human sacrifice. "I'm interested in how we as human beings decide which types of violence are okay and which are not, and how we even define violence," Campbell told Ars. "It's very context specific. We have to be careful not to extend our own ideas about what violence is and how it's used into other cultures. With Egypt, we have such a long history of European and colonial archeology; they came in with very specific ideas about what this culture was. You really have to make an effort to contextualize the legacy data we have."

Naturally she found the debate over whether ancient Egyptians practiced retainer sacrifice pertinent to her interests. "People tend to fall into one of two camps," said Campbell. "Either retainer sacrifice definitely happened, end of discussion, or it definitely didn't happen, end of discussion. But nobody's actually looked at the bones in a very long time." Forensic science has advanced considerably over the last century, so re-analysis could be useful. Complicating matters is the fact that older sets of remains are often incomplete and/or modified for preservation, destroying vital forensic information in the process.

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A wild African black panther prowls for prey. An orphaned baby pangolin must learn how to climb on its own. And a green turtle struggles to make it back to the water after laying her eggs on a remote island, rescued by local humans who carry the exhuasted turtle to the water's edge. These animals and many other species are featured in Africa: Earth's Wild Home, a new documentary series from National Geographic. It's meant to launch a new franchise, with separate series documenting the wildlife and environmental ecosystems of all seven continents in turn.

The seven-episode documentary series took four years to complete, with filming taking place across nearly 30 different African countries. Each episode focuses on a specific ecosystem, from the jungle and the desert, to the plains, mountains, and islands of Africa, and closes by spotlighting the various scientists, photographers, and NatGeo explorers whose work made the series possible. The final episode focuses on the local conservation leaders and researchers working to preserve Africa's rich biodiversity for future generations.

The producers found the perfect narrator in Wunmi Mosaku, who has delivered powerful performances in such works as Sinners, Loki, and Lovecraft Country. "I was incredibly honored that they even know my name at Nat Geo," Mosaku told Ars. "It was wonderful to be asked to narrate the series, it means so much to me. As someone who was born in Nigeria and raised in England, I'll take any opportunity I can to reconnect and celebrate this incredible continent where life is so diverse and so extreme and beautiful and relentless and peaceful. I wanted to be a part of that because it's a part of me."

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If one form of energy becomes the cheapest, most secure, and cleanest, you’d probably adjust your economy to use more of it, right?

That’s one of the ideas underpinning a report the International Energy Agency issued last week about the global move toward electrification. Fatih Birol, head of the IEA, discussed some of the concepts from the report the following day at the United Nations.

“Many, many years in the energy world, we had three choices in front of us. Shall I choose the most secure energy option? Shall I choose the most economic energy option? Or shall I choose the cleanest energy option?” he asked. “We have to make choices, we have to make trade-offs but when we look at the world today, for the first time in years, all of these three objectives are getting aligned.”

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Milt Windler, one of the four leaders of Mission Control who in 1970 directed the round-the-clock efforts to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts back to Earth safely, has died at the age of 94.

Windler died on Thursday, surrounded by his loving family, according to a brief notice posted online.

Named a NASA flight director in 1968 after working on recovery operations during the Mercury and Gemini programs, Windler also led a shift of flight controllers for the Apollo 8 first circumlunar flight and Apollo 10 lunar landing dress rehearsal, as well as the second, third and fourth moon landings — Apollo 12, Apollo 14 and Apollo 15. He then served as a flight director for all three crewed missions to the United States' first space station, Skylab.

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This year, members of Seattle Mountain Rescue have been setting off into the wilds of the US Pacific Northwest wearing an unusual piece of kit.

They’ve been hiking into the wilderness with powered assistive devices attached to their hips and legs. Designed to increase lower-body strength when climbing or carrying heavy loads, these pieces of equipment are being tested to see if they can boost rescuers’ speed and endurance when it matters most—during searches for stranded people.

Devices like these are called human exoskeletons. They attach to parts of the body to create an external—or “exo”—mechanical structure. This powered frame enhances the wearer’s physical capabilities.

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Apple says it is changing its macOS privacy settings to stop third-party app developers from misusing them to access message histories.

Friday's announcement comes two weeks after tech columnist Jason Aten said that Meta’s new general-purpose AI agent Muse sent him an unsolicited notification referencing a thread between him and a co-worker over Apple Messages. Aten said he never granted Muse permissions to read his messages and had assumed they were off-limits. Social media last week blew up with masses of people who agreed and said the incident showed that AI assistants given access to calendars, emails, messages, shopping accounts, and other resources are akin to a skill saw or other power tool. While potentially useful, they can do real damage if not used carefully.

He said/she said

Meta CTO David Singleton joined the fray with a rebuttal that appeared solid. For Muse to access Apple Messages, a user must manually give it two privileges. One is full-disk access, a macOS system-level permission. The other is to enable a Messages connector setting in Muse.

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"Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea," Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database.

OK, that's not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game's timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behind that, a series of CedarDB tables tracks the game geometry and state, while about 1,300 lines of SQL queries spread across 89 common table expressions implement the game logic and generate 35 bitmap framebuffers per second.

In this, SQLDoom is a major improvement over Vogel's previous DoomQL project, which last year set out to build "a multiplayer Doom-like shooter entirely in SQL." Unfortunately, that effort ended up with raycasting-based, grayscale ASCII graphics that were more akin to the simplistic 90-degree-angled maps of Wolfenstein 3D. The newer SQLDoom, on the other hand, generates full-color 640x480 frames that look like they could have come from the original Doom executable.

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On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.

In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.”

Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter, Amazon promised to be “water positive” by 2030, while claiming that 75 percent of projects have already met this goal.

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COVID-19 made the weaknesses in our pandemic preparedness at national and global levels painfully clear. But a new study highlights that even at the first, local steps of an outbreak with pandemic-potential, we are worryingly underprepared.

Health officials in New York set up a regional test of healthcare facilities to identify and respond to a patient with a mystery infection that could pose a pandemic-level threat. But things didn't go well. Overall, responses were slow, appropriate use of personal protective equipment was spotty, and only 60 percent of facilities passed the basics of the test—an overall failing grade.

"These drills identified needs for health care workers and health care facility staff member training to achieve earlier identification, masking, and isolation of potentially infectious febrile patients," the officials wrote in the study, which was published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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