2020’s 20 most-read stories on Ars Technica

Let's just state the obvious: 2020 stank. It has been a terrible year on so many metrics, no matter where on this celestial orb you live. So we're going to do something slightly different this time around for our top 20 most-read stories. We're going to have two lists: the top 5 COVID-19 related stories and everything else. So if you have had more COVID coverage than you can possibly handle, please—skip ahead with our blessing. If not, here we go:

2020 in review, COVID section

5. Here’s what WHO says your mask should have to prevent COVID-19 spread

One thing we've prided ourselves on throughout our 22-year history is that we educate people. When we launched back in late 1998, that meant covering stuff like overclocking Celerons. In 2020, we did the same thing, but with COVID-19. So it's fitting that the first story on the COVID-only countdown is about how to choose a good mask.

Early on in the pandemic, there was confusing messaging on masks, and it wasn't until late spring that the World Health Organization issued guidance to mask the public. "This is new novel research, that WHO commissioned, that we didn't have a month ago," said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on the COVID-19 response. In short, three-layer masks are the best, with hydrophobic material on the outside and hydrophilic materials on the inside.

4. SARS-CoV-2 looks like a hybrid of viruses from two different species

In order to treat the novel coronavirus, you need to grok the coronavirus. Or as Dr. John Timmer put it,

One of the longest-running questions about this pandemic is a simple one: where did it come from? How did a virus that had seemingly never infected a human before make a sudden appearance in our species, equipped with what it needed to sweep from China through the globe in a matter of months?

What we've learned from studying SARS-Covid-2 will help us once the next pandemic comes along. Hopefully we have at least another century until that happens.

3. Results from the remdesivir COVID-19 trial are out, and it’s good news

At our current point in 2020, this story by Jonathan Gitlin is a great illustration of how treatment modalities evolve as more research is done and data is accumulated. In the early days of the pandemic, remdesivir, an antiviral developed in response to Ebola outbreaks, seemed like a promising avenue of treatment. And in the study we reported in May, it certainly was: study participants infected with COVID-19 saw their recovery time drop from an average of 15 days to 11.

But then remdesivir didn't turn out to be the breakthrough treatment we were all hoping for. In fact, a massive global study that reported results in October showed that remdesivir doesn't do a whole lot to treat COVID-19. "Between the two groups, WHO found that remdesivir did not reduce mortality. It also did not change how many patients progressed to needing mechanical ventilation, nor did it change the proportion of patients discharged after seven days of hospitalization," Dr. Beth Mole wrote.

2. CDC's failed coronavirus tests were tainted with coronavirus, feds confirm

Another one from the early days of the pandemic. In this case, it's a story that presaged the difficulties faced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As COVID-19 was in the beginning stages of its march across the US in February, the CDC sent lab test kits to states. There was one major problem: the kits themselves were contaminated with SARS-CoV-2.

"It was just tragic," Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said at the time. "All that time when we were sitting there waiting, I really felt like, here we were at one of the most critical junctures in public health history, and the biggest tool in our toolbox was missing."

1. Don’t Panic: The comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus

This was also the most-read story of the year (and one of the most-read stories of the past decade on Ars). Updated over 20 times in the period of a month, this guide was an invaluable resource to our readers in the early stages of the pandemic.

Nearly 10 months after initial publication, with first responders getting vaccinated, we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. It may be faint, but it's there, and it's approaching. So let's end this section of the 2020 recap with a reminder from our comprehensive guide.

You should be concerned and take this seriously. But you should not panic.

2020 in review, non-COVID section

15. China’s lander releases data, high-resolution images of the Moon

In 2019, China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft landed on the far side of the Moon. On the first anniversary of the landing, China showed us a bunch of high-resolution images taken by the Yutu 2 rover, and do they look good.

"The lander itself carried an excellent camera to image its surroundings," wrote Eric Berger. "Extra sharp with a good color balance, the Terrain Camera was mounted at the top of the lander, with the ability to rotate 360 degrees. Before it died at the end of the first lunar day, this TCAM returned detailed images of the Moon."

Chang'e 5, the successor mission, launched earlier this week.

14. Iranian state hackers caught with their pants down in intercepted videos

The best hackers are arguably those who don't get caught. In that case, a band of Iranian state hackers failed, as researchers were able to find 40GB of data associated with the group. From our story by Dan Goodin:

The haul of data is a potential intelligence coup because it allows researchers (and presumably US officials) to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an adversary that is steadily improving its hacking talent. Defenders can then improve protections designed to keep the attackers out. The bird’s-eye view may also have signaled plans for future ITG18 operations.

The data trove also revealed some limitations of Iran's hackers, including their inability to bypass multifactor authentication. Unfortunately, the minds behind the SolarWinds hack figured that out.

13. Mac mini and Apple Silicon M1 review: Not so crazy after all

Despite a successful track record of swapping architectures (680x0 to PowerPC and then PowerPC to x86), Apple's decision to move from x86 to ARM processors across its laptop and desktop line was greeted with surprise and a dose of skepticism. Well, the first laptops and desktops with Apple's new M1 chip arrived in the last couple of months, and Apple appears to have done it again.

As Samuel Axon said in our review of the Mac mini, "As the first of Apple's Mac chips, and as one designed for its lowest-end devices, this is probably the slowest Mac silicon Apple will have ever made. But already, it is the beating heart of some of the fastest Macs produced to date."

12. We bought Walmart’s $140 laptop so you wouldn’t have to

The previous entry was an example of great hardware. This one? Not so much.

Jim Salter apparently made someone angry in a previous life, or maybe he's a masochist. Either way, he got to review the $140 EVOO EV-C-116-5 laptop from Walmart. The specs on this machine are truly frightening. After all, when you see "32GB" in a Wintel laptop spec sheet, it usually refers to RAM. Not in this case—this laptop has 32GB of SSD storage. And it goes downhill from there:

The one part of this system that looks legitimately suited for the purpose—the AMD A4-9120 CPU—also turns out to be a problem. Normally, the A4-9120 would be an excellent choice for a budget laptop or netbook, and it would compete strongly with Intel's Celeron counterparts. The EV-C-116-5, unfortunately, is anything but "normal"—and the A4-9120 can't perform up to its normal specifications.

11. Inside Elon Musk’s plan to build one Starship a week—and settle Mars

2020 has actually been a good year for SpaceX. One of its high points was the successful test flight of the Starship vehicle. (If only the company had nailed the landing.) Earlier in the year, Eric Berger took us down to Boca Chica Beach, where SpaceX's South Texas Launch Site is located, to give us a look at Musk's plans for eventually churning out Starships.

Elon Musk will spend money to go fast, and in South Texas he is proving it. In a matter of weeks, SpaceX has built a small city down here, hard by the Rio Grande River. It is all rather astonishing. And maybe, just maybe, this new Muskville really will serve as a launch pad to the first city on Mars.

10. Flight Simulator hands-on: Microsoft looks different 20,000 feet in the air

The latest version of Flight Simulator launched in August, and it's amazing. The new version lets anyone with the right hardware fly across the surface of the Earth, including every known airport as a possible destination. The software is powered by about 2 petabytes of map data served up from Azure Cloud Services. And it will support VR. The result, according to our Sam Machkovech, is impressive:

MSFS won't be everyone's cup of high-flying tea, but it's absolutely the best thing to ever happen to Microsoft's Bing and Azure divisions, in terms of a PR coup. This is a gorgeous proof-of-concept of how an authentic physics system, a top-to-bottom feed of weather and navigation data, and a mother lode of global imaging and mapping can deliver an exhilarating, one-of-a-kind experience—especially while many of us are stuck at home, wishing we could get away.

9. Samsung Galaxy Fold review: The future is an ugly disappointment

Raise your hand if you've been dying to own a foldable smartphone. Yeah, I thought so.

Despite that, some Android OEMs are making foldable phones, with not-so-great results. The highest-profile effort comes from Samsung, which sells more Android handsets than anyone else. Early prototypes of the phone that were sent to reviewers in 2019 had major issues, so Samsung cancelled the launch and went back to the drawing table. The result, released in January of this year, was... I'll let Ron sum it up from his review.

Should you buy a Galaxy Fold? NO! God no. Are you crazy? The sky-high price, durability issues, nascent form factor, and new screen technology should rule the phone out for just about everyone.

8. Amazon Prime Video will finally offer one of Netflix’s most basic features

In addition to being the Year Almost Everything Sucked, 2020 was also the year of the streaming service. It seems like just about every network has launched its own bespoke streaming service as subscribers flee traditional cable and satellite TV services in droves. But the biggest streaming news, at least for our readers, was something a lot more mundane.

Amazon Prime Video finally got user profiles last summer, at long last letting family members each have their own watch histories and watch lists. Parental controls are also available from Amazon's streaming service.

7. Review: We do not recommend the $299 Oculus Quest 2 as your next VR system

One of the things that I've learned in my two decades at Ars Technica is that readers enjoy reading reviews of bad products. We try to approach all review hardware with an open mind—even $140 Walmart laptops and $99 Android tablets—but if a product is bad, we'll let you know.

Such is the case for the Oculus Quest 2, Facebook's latest VR system. The problems with this hardware are legion, starting with Facebook's insistence that all Oculus VR sets need to be tied to a Facebook profile. And to get the price down to $299, Facebook had to cut all kinds of corners. The result is a piece of hardware no one should ever buy.

6. Goop’s Netflix series: It’s so much worse than I expected and I can’t unsee it

Gwyneth Paltrow made a name as an actor, and she has taken the fame and money from that career and funneled them into a pseudoscience-peddling outfit. Early in 2020, it was Beth Mole's turn to spin the Wheel-O-Suck, and as a result, she was made to watch several episodes of The Goop Lab, the Netflix series named after the Oscar winner's "contextual commerce" company.

During the episodes, Beth (and viewers) were treated to Paltrow getting a lesson on the female anatomy in addition to a slew of "junk science, gibberish, and unproven health claims." In other words, par for the course from Paltrow and her company. It was every bit as bad as we thought it would be, and you shouldn't watch it under any circumstances.

5. macOS 11.0 Big Sur: The Ars Technica review

Another thing Ars has been doing for over two decades is reviewing Apple's operating systems. And those reviews always do big traffic. Since John Siracusa decided to stop writing 40,000-word missives on OS X, Andrew Cunningham has stepped into his shoes.

This year's release, Big Sur, is a bit of a departure from Catalina. It brings elements of iOS/iPad OS to the Mac desktop. It also took the X out of macOS, as Big Sur was officially dubbed 11.0. The big takeaway?

"When you pair it with Apple's first processor architecture transition in 15 years," said Andrew, "it becomes easier to see Big Sur as a statement about where the Mac is headed (the long-awaited bump to version 11.0 drives this home, too, of course). A Big Sur Mac, especially one running on Apple Silicon, is another hop closer to being an iPad, both visually and functionally. Apple Silicon Macs will literally run unaltered iPad apps. I don’t think those will replace native Mac apps that already exist any time soon, but it's easy to see how things could go that way."

4. I played 15 hours of Baldur’s Gate 3 early access, and I want them back

Jim Salter is the newest addition to the Ars family, and he's fitting in great. He called dibs on Baldur's Gate 3, in part because he's been playing D&D for decades. Unfortunately for Jim—and fans of Baldur's Gate—the latest installment of the franchise was disappointing.

The game's rendering engine is incredibly beautiful, but the characters it renders are shallow, trite, and frequently downright hateful—and the storyline, at least for the first 15 hours, is pretty similar.

If you want to play a game and come away with the feeling that literally every NPC hates you, Baldur's Gate 3 seems like a sound choice.

3. Mounting poisonings, blindness, deaths as toxic hand sanitizers flood market

This entry is sort of COVID-adjacent. With the onset of the pandemic, sales of hand sanitizers went through the roof. Unfortunately, unscrupulous companies have mixed up some batches of hand sanitizer made with toxic methanol instead of ethyl alcohol. Methanol is metabolized to formaldehyde and then formic acid, and it's toxic even if it's absorbed through the skin. So this stuff is bad news in hand sanitizers.

The FDA has a list of products you should avoid at all costs. If you find you have one of these products, stop using it immediately, dispose of it in a hazardous-waste container (do not flush it down the drain), seek medical attention promptly if necessary, and report the case to the FDA.

2. Shkreli’s plea from prison: Free me and I’ll cure COVID-19

Martin Shkreli is the "pharmabro" everyone loves to hate—and with good reason. Sentenced to seven years in federal prison for securities and wire fraud, Shkreli's appeals failed.

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to take root, Shkreli came up with a novel argument for an early release: he could save the world. "I am one of the few executives experienced in ALL aspects of drug development from molecule creation and hypothesis generation, to preclinical assessments and clinical trial design/target engagement demonstration, and manufacturing/synthesis and global logistics and deployment of medicines," he wrote in a document outlining his plans to develop a cure for COVID-19—if only he could get out of jail for just a few short months.