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Chemistry Nobel goes to reactions like those that gave life a hand
Life is remarkably selective. Life relies on many molecules with what is termed "handedness"—they're chemically identical but are mirror images of each other. Most chemical reactions will make a 50-50 mix of the left- and right-handed forms of a chemical, but life uses only one of them. In fact, because of the differences between left- and right-handed chemicals, most of the key enzymes used by organisms will fail to work if they're presented with chemicals that have the wrong handedness.
Pediatricians renew call to ban raw milk as anti-science rhetoric reigns
As many doctors are moving ahead with the latest advances of modern medicine—from powerful obesity drugs to breakthrough cancer treatments—pediatricians are being forced to turn back, fighting to maintain advances in children's health that were hard-won decades ago.
Fraudster jailed for using 10K bots and AI songs to outstream Taylor Swift
After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms. In a press release Tuesday, the US Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud. First charged in 2024, Smith successfully ran the scheme for seven years without detection. Read full article Comments
Jaguar Type 01 debuts; now, no one remembers the electric Ferrari
Does it feel like people are perhaps a little grumpier or more on edge these days? It’s not like it’s without reason. There are wars. The climate is going haywire. Someone just died of plague. Scientific research is under attack. Machines keep stealing humans’ work. The media is a mess. And just when it all starts to feel a little overwhelming, Jaguar goes and unveils a new car.
Trade group crunches numbers on Trump’s impossible push for 100% US-made tech
One of Donald Trump’s biggest goals as president is to increase domestic manufacturing and reshore supply chains so that the most in-demand technologies in the world can be 100 percent made in the United States.
Mistral says “Le Chonk” can challenge the best AI models
As tensions mount over who gets access to top-end artificial intelligence, French company Mistral has released a new freely available model that it claims can compete with the very best from the US and China.
Google rolls out improved SynthID AI content detector, now available globally
Every piece of AI content from Google's Gemini models has a hidden SynthID label, which makes it very difficult to pass the content off as authentic. SynthID has also gotten buy-in from other major AI players, but actually checking for those invisible watermarks has been a convoluted process. It's going to be a little easier going forward, though. Google has announced that its SynthID detector now supports watermarks from all its partners, and it's available for anyone to use on a new dedicated website.
AI/ML is becoming a performance factor in motorsport
There’s been something of a change in the world of motorsport over the past few years. It has to do with where the money comes from. In the old days, it was tobacco, and to a lesser extent booze. Today such things are mostly banned, and when you look at a racecar covered in sponsor logos, you’re likely to see something crypto-, cyber-, or AI-related.
Review: Fine, let’s talk about Digger
I found the trailer for Digger intriguing, starring a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise and giving off strong Doctor Strangelove vibes. Plus, it is four-time Oscar-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s (Birdman) first English-language film since 2015’s The Revenant. Those elements quickly moved it near the top of my "must-see" list even if details about the actual plot were lacking. Given Iñárritu’s pedigree, the film seemed poised to be prime Oscar bait.
If you’re looking, here’s a “good deal” for NASA and the European Space Agency
It's no surprise that NASA's new tack toward foreign partnerships—good deals only, please—is challenging preconceived notions of international cooperation in space.
Drones sink ships near NATO countries in “unacceptable” attacks, EU says
Drones sank two cargo ships and damaged a third in the exclusive economic zones of NATO member countries for the first time, killing at least two sailors. The attacks represent a notable escalation as Black Sea commercial shipping has increasingly come under attack during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Russia also being accused of carrying out “hybrid warfare” incidents across Europe.
OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT outputs by default—but only in the EU
OpenAI will begin automatically watermarking text generated with ChatGPT in the European Union, the company has announced. It will also offer the watermarking feature in other regions, but it will be off by default outside of the EU.
HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+ “will unify into a single service”
After months of industry and customer speculation, Paramount Skydance has shed some light on the future of the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming services.
It looks like the Atlantic storm season may finally produce a hurricane
A low-pressure system in the western Gulf of Mexico should soon become a tropical storm, and based on the latest forecast modeling, it has a decent chance of becoming a hurricane.
Hackers obtain counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large services
Attackers hijacked three top-level domains and used their control to mint counterfeit TLS certificates for Google and other large organizations, Google said Tuesday.
Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating “Skydance” behemoth
Paramount Skydance completed its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery today, after a last-ditch effort to block the deal was rejected by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
Support Ars and get a better reading experience in return
When Ars launched in 1998, there was one way to read it: in a web browser on a PC (or Mac). Your screen of choice was either some massive CRT or a very expensive LCD monitor (or, in my case, the less-expensive grayscale, passive-matrix LCD on a PowerBook). Either way, it was butt in chair, chair at desk.
Amazon kills Alexa’s ability to control Echo speakers’ AUX input
Amazon has disabled Alexa control of devices plugged into the company's Echo smart speaker’s AUX port.
Neutrino physicist wins 2026 Nobel Physics Prize
Francis Halzen, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics "for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.” Halzen spearheaded the development and construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, enabling physicists to capture high-energy neutrinos created in the distant universe.
Googlebook “Better Together” phone features don’t work with Samsung at launch
Googlebooks are Google's latest attempt to carve out a piece of the premium laptop market, and tight integration with Android phones is a key part of that effort. Now that Googlebooks are available, we're learning of some frustrating limitations of that plan. For now, Googlebooks will only play nicely with your phone if you have a Pixel.
Why is NASA bringing 7,500 contractors back to work as civil servants?
As a flight director during NASA's Apollo missions, Gerry Griffin led several lunar landings. He helped bring the crew of Apollo 13 safely back to Earth. Later, he directed Johnson Space Center in Houston.
All-electric camping gets a solar upgrade: The 2027 Pebble Flow
There is, I think, a pent-up demand for bringing electrification to camping. Anyone who’s had their sleep disturbed by the sound of someone else’s generator running at night would probably agree.
Big Oil asks Supreme Court to kill climate lawsuits before trial
The US Supreme Court heard arguments from oil companies on Monday that could help decide the fate of more than two dozen lawsuits accusing the industry of deceiving the public about climate change. The claims seek potentially billions of dollars in damages to help pay the costs imposed by climate-related extreme weather.
OpenAI agents tried to hack Wikipedia tools and flooded it with traffic
The publisher of Wikipedia said Monday that OpenAI agents attempted to hack a note-taking tool it hosts, made unauthorized edits, and sent millions of resource-intensive requests to its infrastructure, in the latest instance of OpenAI systems taking harmful and potentially dangerous actions.
Licensing costs driving 90 percent of VMware users to explore options: Survey
VMware customers face multiple obstacles as they rethink their virtualization strategy to reduce dependence on VMware.
MCP for agent-to-agent comms may be the riskiest protocol you’ve never heard of
The adoption of AI agents in millions of organizations is creating new opportunities for attackers to make them take malicious actions, such as exfiltrating database contents and sensitive business and personal information.
Cable lobby to sue Trump FCC over repeal of national TV ownership cap
Cable lobby groups notified the Federal Communications Commission that they will sue the agency to block its controversial repeal of the National Television Ownership Rule, which limits the number of broadcast TV stations a single company may own.
Texas city demands $2M for public records on Flock usage
As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities are asking anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees—including charging tens of thousands or even millions—to get information about how police departments are using and potentially abusing AI-enabled camera systems that track every vehicle that passes them.
Command-line tool quickly removes Apple Intelligence from macOS 27
A new tool is allowing Mac users the ability again to easily turn off Apple Intelligence with one click and free up to 12GB of storage.
Controlling the brain with light earns a physiology Nobel
Over decades of research, scientists have built up a partial picture of what specialized cells within the brain and spinal cord do. By studying how the brain develops, they could identify genes that were active in different populations of neurons and where in the brain those neurons resided. In some cases, these genes could then be used to genetically delete the neurons, allowing us to get some indication of what they might be doing, building on the information we've obtained from studies of brains with damaged regions.
Russian drones strike Ukraine’s data centers by exploiting air defense gaps
A surge in Russian jet-powered drone strikes on Ukrainian data centers has increasingly disrupted mobile phone and Internet services for thousands of people. Now Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other government officials are warning of the need for more air defense capabilities, as such telecommunication outages could threaten Ukraine’s digital economy and undermine the country’s ongoing resistance to Russia’s invasion.
F1 in Bahrain... in Malaysia: The race needed a software update to start
Well, it’s safe to say no Bahrain Grand Prix has been affected by torrential rain quite like the 2026 race.
Mass quarantine issued in Russia after unexplained death of plague researcher
Roughly 200 people are under medical observation, several hospitals are under quarantine, and dozens are in isolation in Russia following the unexplained death of an infectious disease researcher at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia, in the town of Shelekhov, according to early reports of the situation on Sunday and Monday.
AI glasses face their first major government crackdown
Norway has become the first major country to propose a temporary ban on the use of AI glasses in selected public places amid growing privacy concerns over wearable technology.
Explaining Hall-effect, TMR, and other new types of “mechanical” switches
The mechanical keyboard isn't always so mechanical anymore. Over the past six years, keyboards with optical, Hall-effect, and other "contactless" switches have become increasingly common, often going for higher prices than traditional mechanical keyboards, which already command a premium over basic membrane boards. In return, they promise some theoretical advantages, particularly for gamers. In daily use, though, the differences can be pretty subtle. So what exactly are you paying for?
New forensic evidence supports Egyptian “retainer sacrifice”
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.
Lions and cheetahs and chimps, oh my: A spotlight on Africa’s diverse wildlife
Chimps fish for algae in a rare example of primate tool use. Credit: National Geographic 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.
Milt Windler, NASA flight director who helped save Apollo 13, dies at 94
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.
Apple changes full-disk access permissions to curb abuse from AI agents
Apple says it is changing its macOS privacy settings to stop third-party app developers from misusing them to access message histories.
Someone got Doom in an SQL database
"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.
Amazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers.
Patient-zero drill put health facilities to the test—40% of them failed
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.
Lyft settles landmark driver misclassification lawsuit for $272.5M
California’s attorney general and three city attorneys announced a $272.5 million settlement with Lyft after allegations that the company “committed wage theft by misclassifying drivers as independent contractors rather than employees” between 2016 and 2020, according to a Thursday statement.
The 2008 economic crisis changed the US’s relationship with energy
One argument that often comes up about climate change is that fossil fuels are good because they powered economic growth that has left most people better off overall. And, to an extent, that has been true, but it's also an extremely limited perspective.
US arrests tech CEO accused of smuggling $300M in Nvidia chips into China
The US has arrested another suspect accused of smuggling high-end computer servers containing export-controlled Nvidia chips into China.
Research roundup: 6 cool science stories we almost missed
It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. September’s list includes a tantalizing hint of the elusive dark matter at the LUX-ZEPLIN detector; entangled Z bosons at the Large Hadron Collider; possible use of psychoactive substances in the Late Pleistocene; and an intriguing technical description of a telescope attributed to Galileo.
US military ends long-running program to spot nuclear missile launches
In late 1970, a Titan IIIC rocket launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at what was then called Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. It carried a top-secret payload for the US military.
How I kept cool with NYC’s free battery program for window AC units
My family has spent four summers participating in demand response programs whereby utility companies pay customers to reduce energy use on the hottest summer days. Most summers have involved carefully precooling our New York City apartment before switching off the air conditioners and sweating it out during the designated demand response periods.
Cybertruck sales in free fall as Tesla reports mediocre sales for Q3
Tesla sold 486,532 electric vehicles during the third quarter of 2026. That’s a 2.1 percent decrease on the same quarter in 2025, when the company found homes for 497,099 EVs, and one might think that would be bad news for a company valued on the premise of near-constant growth.
The 7-year-old Nvidia Shield TV is now $100 more expensive due to AI
The era of generative AI has upended technology supply chains, and there is one ironclad rule in 2026: If it has memory or storage, it's getting more expensive. Even devices with years-old tech inside are still apparently subject to that unwritten rule. Nvidia has just announced that the Shield TV Pro is getting $100 more expensive, effective immediately.
Rocket Report: SpaceX completes launch triple-header; Rocket Lab nets big contract
Welcome to Edition 9.13 of the Rocket Report! This week, SpaceX celebrated the first orbital launch of its new Starship rocket. I'm not sure many people, at least those outside of SpaceX, expected it to take 14 flights of Starship before it technically reached low-Earth orbit, but Monday morning's launch finally added that to SpaceX's list of accomplishments with its new super-heavy rocket. Starship had gone 99 percent of the way to orbit before, only held back by safety concerns around the possibility of stranding the huge rocket in space.
TCL is right to question Samsung’s use of the term “Mini LED”
What makes a display a Mini LED display? It's a question that sounds like it should have a simple answer. But it's now at the center of a lawsuit between two of the biggest names in TVs, with TCL accusing its longtime competitor Samsung of falsely advertising budget LCD-LED TVs as Mini LED sets. TCL may have a point. Samsung's M-series TVs, which range from $300 for a 43-inch model to $2,300 for a 100-inch model, do raise some legitimate questions about what should qualify as Mini LED.
Venus’ mysterious haze is actually cosmic dust
Venus is shrouded in a veil of mystery. The yellowish “lower haze” at the bottom of its atmosphere was discovered by the Venera and Pioneer Venus probes in the 1970s. These spacecraft were some of the first to successfully send images of the planet back to Earth, but the haze they saw went unexplained for decades. Now the mystery Venus was keeping has been unveiled.
SpaceX describes surgical intervention before launch of latest crew mission
A four-person crew rocketed into orbit Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, heading for a six-month expedition on the International Space Station.
Hacks of 2 federal agencies in a month have spilled a bonanza of sensitive data
The Pentagon is informing more than 2 million current and former military members that their personnel records storing sensitive personal information were stolen over a monthslong compromise of one of its networks. The breach is the second one in recent months to expose sensitive government information.
Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust lawsuits targeting Google AI search
In a setback for publishers worried about the effects of AI search, a US federal judge has dismissed lawsuits filed by Chegg and Penske Media against Google. The companies accused Google of antitrust violations in products like AI overviews, which have led to decreasing traffic at numerous sites. However, US District Judge Amit Mehta has ruled that Google's conduct is not illegal under antitrust law.
Can good design stop content creators from having sex in robotaxis?
Humans can be a frisky bunch, and it wasn’t very long after Tesla Autopilot started letting drivers go hands-free before people decided to post footage of themselves having sex from the driver’s seat. Recently, The San Francisco Standard interviewed multiple people who claimed to have had sex in robotaxis belonging to General Motors’ now-defunct Cruise. “There’s no one to tell you, 'You can’t do that.'
Marvel releases one last VisionQuest trailer
With its premiere just two weeks away, Marvel Studios has dropped one last trailer for the limited series, VisionQuest, which will complete the trilogy begun with WandaVision and Agatha All Along.
Memory executives expect RAM shortage to continue through 2028
Micron and Samsung executives this week said the memory shortage will continue for at least the next couple of years.
Florida cops say they don’t know who owns 11 unpermitted Flock cameras
Florida cops are facing questions after a mandate to remove all Flock cameras tracking cars on St. Lucie County roads led local police to uncover more than a dozen suspicious cameras operating without permits.
With most information hidden, the game Stratego
Deep Blue took down Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol at Go in 2016, and poker bots have been beating professionals for years. But one classic game called Stratego held out. Even DeepMind, with its exceptional budget, couldn't build a machine that reliably beat the best human players.
As US relations fray, Canada gets serious about its own launch industry
A year or two ago, a few Canadian launch companies were trying to develop small rockets, but if we're being frank, the industry was not particularly notable. Sure, something interesting might eventually happen, but no one outside of a few Canadian space geeks was paying much attention.
PS5 emulation is suddenly making big strides on PC
For a long time, PC gamers could access many PlayStation 5 games only if the publisher invested in a bespoke port (something Sony has recently said it will be scaling back). Now, though, rapid advancements in PS5 emulators and other tools are making recent PlayStation titles increasingly playable on generic PCs.
NASA squeezed Treasury, vibe coded, and broke the mold in bid to save Swift
An attempt to save NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from dropping out of orbit fell short, but the behind-the-scenes machinations required just to make a rescue possible deserve recognition, government and commercial space officials said in a recounting of the mission.
Dinosaur-killing impact crater might have been teeming with life
About 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid smashed into Earth, kicking up tsunamis and dropping hot debris that annihilated non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. But not everything it left in its wake was destructive. This space rock hit what is now the partially submerged Yucatan Peninsula, and at the bottom of the ocean, the impact generated enough heat to create a hydrothermal system that persisted for 8 million years and may have been a hotbed of life.
Fifth unvaccinated person dies of measles; CDC still not counting all deaths
A fifth, unvaccinated person has died of measles in Pennsylvania, the state's health department announced Wednesday.
Returning from vacation? The government can search your phone without a warrant
An Argentinian-American writer and immigration advocate recently sued the federal government, demanding that it delete data that he believes was copied off of his phone when he re-entered the United States earlier this month.
A local network of implants uses your body as the wiring
Most implants like pacemakers and insulin pumps work in isolation. To help them coordinate with each other, a team of Georgia Tech researchers built a networking system that sends signals through body tissue instead of antennas and radio waves.
Attackers have been exploiting critical Zimbra flaw to steal emails
Hackers have been exploiting a critical vulnerability in the Zimbra Collaboration Suite in an attempt to obtain email backups and authentication credentials of vulnerable organzations, Microsoft has warned.
Google announces Gemini 4 Argon AI model, but you can’t use it yet
Google promised Gemini 3.5 Pro in June, but it spent the summer trotting out smaller Flash models. Now, Google is ready to take on the frontier again with Gemini 4 Argon. The company claims this new AI offers industry-leading performance in coding, knowledge work, and cybersecurity, but you aren't allowed to use it yet.
Reddit is putting more limits on Old.Reddit.com
Soon, Reddit won’t let people use Old.Reddit.com unless they have used the site while logged in within the previous six months.
RFK Jr. thinks AI will free us from the “tyranny” of medical facts, expertise
At a Make America Healthy Again event Tuesday, anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy opened a "fireside chat" with Vice President JD Vance on the topic of artificial intelligence. While MAHA generally coalesces around things like healthy lifestyles and mistrust of drugmakers, Kennedy quickly turned to extolling the potential of artificial intelligence, surprising Vance, who said he was expecting to discuss "weight loss and acid, not AI."
The Disney protests were a wake-up call about the risks of streaming mergers
There was a call to boycott Disney last fall. The owner of the ABC network had taken Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air over comments Kimmel made about responses to Charlie Kirk's murder, sending free speech proponents into a frenzy.
Trump plan to combat AI risks hinges on Big Tech pals policing themselves
Amid escalating AI security incidents causing OpenAI to halt training and pause releases, Donald Trump continues to advocate for the AI industry to regulate itself as the best path to combat emerging risks when developing frontier AI.
Lawsuit demands OpenAI halt unsafe development that caused Hugging Face hack
OpenAI's hack of Hugging Face in July 2026 has spurred a lawsuit demanding that the company stop accessing third-party computer systems and halt AI development practices that can harm the public. The lawsuit was filed by Legal Advocates for Safe Science & Technology (LASST), which said yesterday that the hack in which OpenAI "agents stole credentials, uploaded malicious files, and gained control over key parts of Hugging Face’s internal systems... is unquestionably illegal under California law."
So what’s happening with Russia’s new, long-delayed crewed spacecraft?
In what seems like an alternate universe in hindsight, Russia and the European Space Agency began discussing collaboration on next-generation crewed spacecraft two decades ago. Under the agreement, Europe would have provided a service module to power a crew capsule carrying up to six passengers.
Google’s early attempt to pay websites for AI answers is struggling
Google's shift to AI-powered search has upended the way the world's largest search engine generates web traffic, rankling large and small publishers alike. In recent months, the company has experimented with paying publishers when their content appears in AI answers, but a new report claims the payouts in this pilot program are miniscule. That has publishers in the program, as well as those watching from the sidelines, feeling skeptical.
Google figures out how to watermark AI-designed proteins
AI-based tools seem to be causing security threats on a nearly daily basis, in part because we've been slow to recognize potential threats. One area where we seem to be ahead of the game, however, is in biosecurity.
The PS5 hacking scene just took a big leap forward
For a few years now, the PS5 hacking community has been chipping away at various exploits that let users fully jailbreak their locked-down console. For the most part, though, those exploits have only worked with years-old versions of the PS5's frequently updated firmware, making them less than useful for many everyday users.
Discord gives more advertisers more tools to target its users
Discord has announced tools aimed at expanding the number and types of companies that advertise on the platform.
What butterfly wings have in common with barbershop poles
Old-fashioned striped barbershop poles turn in place on a vertical axis, but humans typically perceive the stripes moving upward rather than turning with the pole. It's a well-known visual illusion arising from processing biases in human vision. According to a new paper published in the journal Nature, a similar effect could explain how butterflies often evade predatory birds: Their flight patterns and wing patterns combine to make it hard for predators to accurately gauge speed and direction.
BMW reveals US 3 series pricing: The EV carries a hefty premium
BMW has opened the US order books for its hotly anticipated new 3 Series sedan. Built on an all-new platform called Neue Klasse, it now offers a fully electric version for the first time, using BMW’s advanced sixth-generation electric powertrain we liked so much in the iX3. And for those not quite ready to make the switch from liquid hydrocarbons to pure electron power, there are also a pair of gasoline-powered variants.
OpenAI delays IPO over AI safety concerns
OpenAI will not go public until it can “make confident safety decisions,” according to chief executive Sam Altman, as the company faces a new lawsuit over its tools hacking a third party.
Cloudflare plans to issue quantum-safe TLS certificates
Cloudflare said Tuesday it plans to issue quantum-proof TLS certificates, making it one of the first authorities to issue such certificates that use a form of cryptography that is widely believed to withstand attacks from quantum computers.
Most powerful obesity drug yet: People lost up to 25% of weight in trial
Researchers published late-stage clinical trial data today for the latest obesity drug, retatrutide—expected to be the most powerful formula yet—and the results appear in line with high expectations. Patients with obesity on the highest retatrutide dose lost an average of 25 percent of their body weight after 80 weeks, and an average of 30 percent after an extension period to 104 weeks. Overall, more than a third of participants taking retatrutide lost 30 percent or more of their weight.
Protests against OpenAI get increasingly creative
Two artists from a Bay Area studio unveiled What Iceberg?, a table-sized installation placed at the public entrance to an OpenAI developer event in San Francisco on Tuesday.
AMD acquires World Labs AI startup, upping the ante against Nvidia
Chipmaker AMD and world models company World Labs announced that AMD will acquire the AI company by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval. The transaction is valued at $8.2 billion.
Trump ads paid for by US government allegedly violate anti-propaganda laws
Broadcasters should be ordered to stop running Trump commercials that appear to violate US laws, consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said today in a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission. The ads appear to violate laws against using taxpayer funds for propaganda and a law that restricts political activity by federal government employees, the group said.
NASA has a Dragon dilemma, and there appear to be no good answers
For two decades, largely in service to the International Space Station, NASA has sought to foster an "economy" in low-Earth orbit.
Here’s what actually happened in OpenAI’s Australian gov’t server hack
Last week, when Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the world that an OpenAI agent had accessed "non-public files" from his country's Medicare statistics portal during testing, his description of the incident was a little light on details. Today, we're getting new information on just how far OpenAI's overzealous agent went in attempting to satisfy a rather innocuous-sounding informational prompt.
Apple pressured to explain Trump role in ICE-tracking app removals
Apple continues to face backlash for removing ICE-tracking apps like ICEBlock from the App Store, a drastic step that seemed to be triggered by Trump administration claims that the apps endangered officers.
This study looks at how and with whom connected cars share your data
In news that should surprise very few, connected cars remain a complete privacy nightmare. But now we have a better idea of what data those cars are giving away, and to whom, thanks to a study conducted by a team of researchers at Northeastern University and Consumer Reports. Testing 21 cars from 19 different brands revealed patterns of traffic to advertisers and trackers, as well as data shared with Big Tech firms like Microsoft and Adobe. And using a car’s companion app can multiply the problem, their testing found.
Less protein for maggots means longer lives for fruit flies
Back in the 1930s, scientists noticed that water fleas and rats fed restricted diets while young went on to live longer. The same effect has since turned up in fruit flies and mice. What we did not know was how a meal eaten in infancy could affect health weeks, months, or even years later. A recent Nature study might have found the answer.
OpenAI says planned GPT-6.1 is too insecure to release
OpenAI says it has canceled plans to release its updated GPT-6.1 model next month as it continues to investigate what testing shows to be a regression in terms of safety compared to previous models.
Anthropic’s IPO pitch includes a warning about human extinction
Anthropic has formally warned investors that its technology may pose “existential risks to humanity” in a long-awaited initial public offering prospectus circulated with a small group of partners in recent days.
Interview: Firefox’s chief on why he hopes a redesign will help win users from Chrome
Today, the Firefox 157 update will roll out a redesign of the web browser across desktop and mobile platforms. The team that made it hopes it will help expand the browser's audience beyond privacy-conscious techies and open-web or open source advocates to a broader audience who might simply pick the browser because they prefer its user experience over competitors like Chrome, Edge, and Safari.
Boeing “incredibly excited” to serve as nation’s only astronaut transportation
NASA announced on Monday that it will exercise options to purchase two additional flights on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, as well as financially support the company in its efforts to return the crewed vehicle to flight and find a new rocket after the Atlas V vehicle retires.
Experts worry about Nvidia’s AI chip sales in China and influence over Trump
On its face, the recent summit between Donald Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping didn’t change much in the world of AI regulation. Export controls were not discussed, with neither country seemingly interested in making concessions. An already tenuous trade truce was temporarily extended for just two months, and looming US controls that could drop soon could easily end that and trigger China to retaliate by cutting off exports of rare earths, analysts expect.
SpaceX’s Starship goes orbital, deploying first next-gen Starlinks
SpaceX's Starship rocket thundered into the sky over South Texas early Monday. It was the 14th test flight of the world's most powerful launch vehicle. This time, however, the rocket's massive upper stage squeezed out some extra oomph from its Raptor engines and accelerated to orbital velocity.
Florida invokes extinction fears in legal bid to halt OpenAI development
The state of Florida is seeking a temporary injunction to stop OpenAI from continuing to develop what it calls a "reckless, unacceptably risky product" without the deployment of "third-party approved safety guardrails."
New device captures carbon dioxide by pumping it across a battery
Equipment to capture carbon dioxide from ambient air or smokestacks generally works through a sort of reversible filter. Air is passed through granules or a liquid that absorbs the CO2, then that CO2-loaded substance undergoes a process (usually heating) that causes it to let go of all that CO2. The resulting gas can be collected in a separated stream.
To keep drug prices high, pharma has been piling up the patents
The cost of healthcare in general is a debilitating, pre-existing condition for Americans. But the high prices of prescription drugs usually stand out as a pain point. While there are many insidious reasons why Americans pay more—often far more—for their medicines than people in peer countries, exploitation of the US patent system is an obvious one.
Trump cuts fuel economy standards back to 2014 levels
The federal government’s war on fuel efficiency claimed another victim today. The Department of Transportation released a new rule for the country’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which, as expected, discourage the very idea of economical vehicles. Among the changes is a rollback to fuel economy numbers not seen in more than a decade, below even the low standards implemented in 2020, the last time President Trump was in power. The new goal is just 34.9 mpg by model year 2031.
Kalshi loses again as judges rule prediction markets must obey gambling laws
Another federal appeals court has ruled that states can enforce their gambling laws against the prediction market Kalshi, which asserts that it can only be regulated by the US government. On Friday, a three-judge panel in the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously against Kalshi and in favor of Ohio and Tennessee.
Google seemingly confirms plans to kill ChromeOS in 2034
We are mere days away from the launch of Googlebooks, the long-awaited Android laptops that Google hopes will compete with macOS and Windows. But what of Chromebooks? There have been hints that Google plans to sunset its web-first ChromeOS platform, and a new support page lays out some of the specifics.
Scientists solve 1840s space weather mystery
The infamous Carrington Event of 1859 has long been considered the first extreme space weather event, but there have been reports of minor disturbances to telegraph equipment during geomagnetic storms since the late 1840s. In 2013, scholars discovered an anonymous report published in 1871 in Nature describing how a "very intense magnetic disturbance" disrupted rail travel in Exeter on the southern coast of England in October 1841. If accurate, this would be the earliest such account.
F1 in Azerbaijan: That was almost a close-run thing
Formula 1 raced on the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, this past weekend. Although the race predates Liberty’s acquisition of the sport by a few months, it’s a rather good microcosm of the sport as it exists today. The track is a real challenge; it takes place on dusty city streets lined with concrete walls and through a medieval fortress gate, followed by a 1.4-mile (2.2 km) flat-out blast to the finish line, with gusts of wind from the Caspian Sea a block away.
OpenAI halts frontier-model training amid string of agent misalignment incidents
OpenAI says it has paused all internal training of "our most capable models" as it continues what CEO Sam Altman is calling "an extensive and ongoing review related to our agents’ use of internet access during training and evaluation."
NASA ‘troubleshooting’ transporter for space station’s robotic arm [Updated]
Recently, the astronauts on board the International Space Station performed a routine "walk-off" maneuver with the large, 58-foot-long robotic arm attached to the orbiting laboratory.
Microsoft goes quiet after church groups ask for 1% of data center costs
Microsoft has spent all year telling communities that when it brings a new data center into their area, it is committed to being a “good neighbor." It will pay local property taxes that support local hospitals, schools, parks, and libraries, and it will invest in “vital services the community cares about,” the company promised. And it has sent liaisons into those communities to learn what those needs are.
How the Smithsonian became the latest front in Trump’s culture war
In November 2021, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened an exhibit called “The Electric Dr. Franklin,” describing “Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering contributions to electrical science.” The exhibit explained that, prior to becoming an abolitionist, he had enslaved people in his household. “Benjamin Franklin’s remarkable scientific accomplishments were, in part, enabled by slavery,” it declared.
Tesla’s big electric truck faces an even bigger infrastructure challenge
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has insisted investors think of his electric automaker as a robotics and autonomous vehicle company now. He’s targeted a $20 trillion valuation—nearly four times the value of market leader Nvidia—on that premise. But his Tesla team was in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday to focus on, well, an electric vehicle: the long-awaited Tesla Semi.
Can Trump ever be wrong? His pick to lead FDA refused to say
Heidi Overton, President Trump's nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, went before the Senate health committee Thursday, facing questions about her stances on vaccines, flavored vapes, birth control, and abortion, among other issues. She spent nearly two hours stonewalling senators, even on softball questions.
Court rules Trump can blacklist Anthropic for refusing to enable Claude features
A US appeals court today approved the Trump administration's blacklisting of Anthropic technology. Judges decided the US had authority to blacklist Anthropic for withholding certain AI features even if Anthropic had no malicious intent.
Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements
Tesla’s pivot from making electric cars to humanoid robots is facing challenges because of complex robot hands and disgruntled employees pushing back against training their robotic replacements. The struggle to scale up production comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has bet the company’s future on AI and robotics.
Your uncle’s frozen Mac says it’s infected after viewing a Google ad. Now what?
Researchers say they recently found Google ads delivering a sophisticated tech support scam that freezes the screens of both Windows and Mac devices and displays messages urgently instructing them to phone a bogus call center.
Review: The iPhone 18 Pro is Apple’s coolest smartphone (but only literally)
As Apple's Tim Cook era draws to a close, we're seeing more experimentation with the iPhone's design than we've seen in a long time, but you wouldn't know it from the iPhone 18 Pro. This absurdly fast, full-featured handset might be eclipsed by the hype around the iPhone Duo this year, but it's still just as good as its immediate predecessor.
AI was supposed to hit new grads hard. So far, unemployment data says otherwise
Last month, we shared word of a Stanford study that found entry-level employment in so-called "AI-impacted" occupations lagging well behind that in other fields. Now, a new working paper from economics researchers at Munich's CESifo finds the opposite, arguing point blank that "there is no evidence of any significant, widespread displacement or reduction in hiring of recent college graduates in absolute or relative levels."
Paramount/WBD merger conditions give the public “virtually nothing,” judge is told
Free speech and media advocacy groups urged a judge to block a California settlement with Paramount Skydance that would let the company finalize its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Is solar’s growth finally slowing in the US?
Normally, we try to update you quarterly on what's going on with the US electric grid since it provides a nice view of developing trends and smooths out some month-to-month randomness. Unfortunately, I was out of the office when last month's data was released, so this will be a seven-month update on 2026 trends.
Microsoft stops insisting you need a “Copilot+ PC”
Since 2024, Microsoft has tried to sell “Copilot+ PC.” The marketing initiative was aimed at making it easy for people to know which Windows systems were approved to run AI-accelerated workloads locally. But Copilot+ PC branding is nowhere to be found on the new Surface PCs Microsoft announced this week. Speaking with Windows Central, Brett Ostrum, corporate VP of Surface, said that the new Surface computers “are not called Copilot+ PCs” despite meeting the label’s requirements. Read full article Comments
After seven years, a spacecraft company is releasing its Otters into the wild
Imagine starting a space company in October 2019 with the aim of changing the world. Then, a few months later, a global pandemic shuts the world down.
US being left behind in EV charging speeds as China goes sub-5 min to 70%
Hype merchants have a habit of overdoing it, but there’s no denying that China is making the US look more than a little antiquated when it comes to electric vehicles. Some of that is due to a deep integration of connected services and an extension of the car as part of the owner’s digital life—think additional infotainment screens and AI personal assistants, but with an Android phone-maker’s cadence of updates rather than that of a traditional car company. Other advances sound more appealing.
With PRIMA, NASA will try to build a billion-dollar space telescope in record time
The first in a new class of space telescopes is on track to reach the launch pad in the early 2030s, NASA announced this week.
Trump administration takes Musk’s side in fight over EU tech rules
The Trump administration is seeking to join Elon Musk’s appeal against a €120 million EU fine of the billionaire’s social media platform X, the latest escalation in the transatlantic clash over Brussels’ efforts to rein in US tech companies.
Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for seniors in disastrous experiment
In January, the Trump administration rolled out a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence to authorize or deny certain types of care for patients with Medicare—a federal healthcare program for seniors that previously hasn't required doctors to get any such pre-approval, called prior authorization.
Rocket Report: Era of cheap launch is over? Astra sets early 2027 target for return
Welcome to Edition 9.12 of the Rocket Report! The big story in the global launch industry remains SpaceX's plans to wind down Falcon 9 operations for commercial launches, possibly within the next two or three years. That has created a scramble among satellite operators and some positioning among up-and-coming launch providers.
CDC opens state ordering for COVID-19 vaccines after unexplained delay
After a nearly monthlong delay, states are now able to order this season's COVID-19 vaccines through a federal program that provides free immunizations to low-income children, the US health department says. Trump officials have still not provided a clear explanation for the delay, raising concerns about meddling from anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Donald Duck’s uncle was partly based on Wernher von Braun
Did you know that the first character that Walt Disney created to specifically appear on television was inspired, in part, by early Space Age rocket scientists?
F-Droid gets its biggest update in a decade with new UI and smoother app installs
Virtually every Android device comes with the Play Store preloaded, but there are other ways to get apps. F-Droid bills itself as a community-driven source for free and open source Android apps, but its official app store has gone 10 years without a major update. That's finally changing: After a multiyear effort, the team has just announced F-Droid 2.0 is rolling out.
New York defies Trump admin, asks court to shut down Polymarket gambling
New York sued Polymarket today, alleging that it runs an "illegal gambling operation" through its prediction market.
We have a trailer for Musk documentary Elon called a “hit piece”
Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney has never been one to shy away from controversy. His latest feature, Musk, has stirred up plenty even before its release, drawing the ire of its subject, Elon Musk, and threats of a defamation lawsuit. After the film debuted two weeks ago at the Venice International Film Festival, rumors swirled that Universal Pictures was getting cold feet about theatrically releasing the film in international markets.
Robots make combat airdrops, clear mines as Ukraine defeats Russian pincer
Ukraine’s military robots are dropping from heavy drones in airborne assaults behind Russian lines as other robots clear mines ahead of advancing Ukrainian infantry. The wheeled ground robots are supporting Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi counterattack that has crushed a Russian military pincer movement and liberated dozens of square miles of occupied Ukrainian territory so far.
New Jersey fines data center $1.1M after drone pics expose 62 gas generators
This week, New Jersey ordered the operator of one of the East Coast’s largest planned data centers to pay a $1.1 million fine for secretly installing and operating gas generators in violation of the state’s Air Pollution Control Act.
Google’s first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1
Google is taking its first step toward making Project Suncatcher a reality. Announced last year, Suncatcher is Google's "moonshot" effort to design orbital AI data centers, which AI boosters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have pitched as an alternative to divisive terrestrial data centers. Google's first experimental satellite will launch on October 1 with the aim of validating Google's vision for a constellation of AI satellites.
OpenAI agent “didn’t accept no for an answer” in Australian government breach
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government is investigating a June incident in which an OpenAI agent accessed "non-public files" from the country's online Medicare statistics portal. OpenAI said in a statement that "our models took actions we did not intend" in causing the breach, which it only recently disclosed to the Australian government.
Formula 1 looks at 3.0 L V8 turbos and smaller hybrids for 2030
We’re not even a full year into the new regulations, and Formula 1 is already thinking hard about its next iteration, set to be introduced as early as the start of 2030.
NASA chief concerned China may deny access to parts of South Pole
Last month, China delayed the launch of an ambitious robotic mission to the South Pole of the Moon, Chang’e 7, until early next year. The country did not provide a detailed explanation for the schedule slip, but it was welcomed by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Meta puts its AI assistant on a keychain
Mark Zuckerberg said Meta’s new personal AI agent Muse has become the “centerpiece” of his AI vision, as he unveiled a new handheld AI “charm” device that will feature the interactive assistant.
There’s a new way to break RSA that’s faster than anything we’ve seen before
The world has known for decades that the RSA cryptosystem’s days are numbered. Once quantum computing becomes practical (estimates for that range from 3 to 20 or more years), the foundational security it provides will crumble. New research has revealed a novel method that uses classical computing to reduce the current RSA security level to an unacceptably low threshold.
Review: Apple’s hyper-pricey M5 Ultra Mac Studio made me into a vibe coder
This spring, Apple made it official: The Mac Pro is dead. When Apple was using Intel processors and AMD GPUs, the idea of an expandable and upgradeable tower made sense. But Apple Silicon chips bring the CPU, GPU, and memory interface all under one roof in a way that makes that sort of upgradeability not just superfluous but impossible. At least not without breaking some of the chips' key benefits. And as it happens, Apple Silicon's combination of a fast CPU, solid GPU, and unified memory architecture has made it a good fit for a modern "pro"
RFK Jr.’s CDC isn’t letting states order COVID-19 shots for kids, blocking access
As respiratory virus season nears and fall vaccination drives get underway, more than half of US children are facing uncertainty over access to this year's COVID-19 shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unexpectedly delayed the distribution of the shots to a key federal program and some states.
FBI rushes to investigate if ShinyHunters hack of thousands of employees is real
The FBI is now investigating claims from a hacker group that thousands of current and former employees’ personal data was stolen after the group exploited a previously unknown bug found on an agency jobs website.
Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits
Disney+ got its fourth price hike in four years today. Hulu prices also went up. Disney+ and Hulu’s respective standalone, ad-free plans (which also support 4K and HDR) are each increasing 13 percent from $19 per month to $21.50/month. Disney+ and Hulu’s respective standalone plans with ads increased from $12 to $12.50. Read full article Comments
Here’s the Torcal, the first fully electric Bentley
Bentley provided flights from Washington, DC, to Monterey, California, and accommodation so Ars could ride in a preproduction Torcal EV as well as drive the Supersports and ride in a 1920s Bentley as well. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. A few weeks ago, Bentley gave Ars a ride in a new camouflaged electric vehicle. Named after a Spanish rock formation, the Torcal is the brand’s first battery EV, and today the production car had its formal unveiling.
Trump’s China rivalry and “AI race” delusion may endanger US, experts say
This week, the US and China, the two world leaders on AI, finally started talks meant to keep the whole world safe from emerging safety risks. But whether meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can lead to a reliable global governance framework for AI depends on how much the fierce rivals are actually willing to cooperate.
XPRIZE Wildfire winners spotted fires within 10 min—but couldn’t stop them
Wildfire detection from space and firefighting drones featured among the finalists honored in the $11 million XPRIZE Wildfire competition. Although no team walked away with either of the two grand prizes, such technologies could prove helpful as the world grapples with the growing costs of worsening wildfire disasters.
Discord age verification rolls out today with changes spurred by user backlash
Discord today is rolling out an age-verification system that estimates each user's age and requires some users to prove they are old enough to access age-restricted content. Discord said it will take a few days for the global system to reach all user accounts.
YouTube promises custom feeds and a lot more AI later this year
The annual Made on YouTube event has just wrapped up, offering an early look at the features you can expect to come to Google's dominant online streaming platform in the coming months. Yes, there's plenty of AI for both viewers and creators, but there's also a handful of non-AI updates mixed in there, too.
Contrary to some reports, you don’t have two brains
Late last week, we started seeing headlines about how new research was suggesting we might have two brains instead of the one that seems to show up on MRI scans. As is so often the case, these rumors can be traced back to a single press release put out by one of the universities where the work was done.
Netflix releases trailer for Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn
Brad Bird has directed some of our all-time favorite animated films: The Iron Giant (1999), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007), with the latter two snagging well-deserved Oscar wins. He's back with a new animated feature, Ray Gunn, coming to Netflix in December, described as a neo-noir science-fiction mystery. Netflix recently released the official trailer, chock-full of retro-futuristic elements, like flying cars, jet packs, laser guns, aliens, and yes, a sultry femme fatale.
Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges
Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update. Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later. Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea.
Former NASA chief sounds alarm on China’s lunar “exploration” plans
In a forthcoming memoir, former US politician and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offers a blistering assessment of China, saying the United States must do all it can to retain its leadership in space exploration.
After multiple deaths and injuries, NHTSA is investigating comma.ai
Aftermarket devices that can boost or augment a vehicle’s native advanced driver assistance systems are the target of a new federal investigation this week. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation says it knows of five crashes in which drivers using devices from comma.ai crashed into stopped or slow-moving cars. Two of the crashes resulted in three deaths, and 11 people were injured in four of the five crashes, some seriously.
How the US handed China control of the rare earth supply chain
Look around you, and you’ll see rare earth elements at work. A phone vibrates because a magnet moves a weight. Its screen was polished with cerium powder. Its connection to the rest of the world crosses oceans on cables amplified with erbium. If you drove today, a rare earth magnet helped you steer, and a cerium compound scrubbed the exhaust.
Small undersea volcanoes may unleash outsized tsunamis
Krakatau, a volcanic island in Indonesia, killed more than 30,000 people when it erupted in 1883. One might assume that volcanic debris posed the major threat, yet many of the victims died from a tsunami caused by the volcanic eruption instead.
A new report from Europe raises serious alarms about orbital collisions
The 2013 sci-fi blockbuster film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, popularized the notion of the Kessler syndrome. In the movie, Russia shoots down a defunct satellite and creates a cloud of debris, leading to serious tension in orbit.
Woman’s brain worm infection confirmed after eggs grow tails in lab test
Out of nowhere, a woman's right arm and leg started shaking uncontrollably. In the moments leading up to the experience, she seemed well; she had no headache, confusion, or weakness. But for about a minute, half of her body juddered.
New Anthropic, OpenAI models make same promise: A little more for a lot less money
OpenAI and Anthropic both recently released new models aimed at lowering costs. Anthropic announced Opus 5.5, the latest version of its main mass-market workhorse model, used for tasks like coding and other complex knowledge work. And OpenAI announced GPT-6 Sol and Luna, the latest versions of its middle-of-the-road or smaller models focused on efficiency and speed. Read full article Comments
Cities across US oppose Trump FCC plan to preempt local broadband rules
Cities and counties around the US are angry at the Trump administration over a proposal to override local rules that govern the deployment of wired broadband networks.
Microsoft disrupts AI-assisted platform that compromised 12,000 accounts
Microsoft said Tuesday that it led an industry-wide disruption of a subscription-based scam platform that used an AI chatbot to compromise 12,000 Microsoft accounts over a few-month span.
Lawsuit demands OpenAI pay for new school after ChatGPT used in shooting
The families of victims killed in one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canada’s history have already sued OpenAI over its failure to warn law enforcement after discovering in advance that the shooter was using ChatGPT to plan the violence.
Adobe Premiere finally brings powerful video editing to Android, and it’s free
Video editing has never been Android's strong suit. While Apple has long offered iMovie for iPhone and iPad, Google has never had a comparable offering. Adobe is now stepping up to fill this feature gap with a proper version of Premiere. The app is now available in the Play Store for almost all Android devices, and it's free (mostly).
Review: Resident Evil might just be the best gaming adaptation yet
I was on the fence about going to see the latest Resident Evil reboot to review, given how uninspired the prior reboot attempt in 2021 turned out to be. But director Zach Cregger gave us last year's phenomenal Weapons, and early word of mouth was extremely positive, so I took a chance. I'm glad I did, because the film is terrific. Cregger's distinctive sensibility is just what the flagging franchise needed: a truly fresh take on a well-trodden fictional world that blends horror, humor, and some pretty over-the-top gore in just the right ratios.
Toyota orders workers to train humanoid robots but says humans won’t be replaced
Toyota workers are already helping to train humanoid robots as part of the automaker’s race to eventually deploy 400,000 factory robots—but a Toyota executive said the robotic push is not meant to directly replace humans.
IT mistake erases 11 years of viewing history for hospitals’ maternity records
A “human error” in the IT department led to Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) losing data from maternity records over an 11-year span. The data loss occurred on August 18, the English hospitals announced in a blog post on Monday spotted by The Register. The blog said the problem is “the result of human error” during routine technical work while “creating a copy of a radiotherapy database for reporting purposes.” The post reads: Read full article Comments
Effort begins to fill the void left by terminated US climate report
Last year, the Trump administration did what it could to shut down work on the next US National Climate Assessment, eliminating funding for the US Global Change Research Program and booting hundreds of contributing authors. The administration even took past reports offline, forcing others to host copies so the information would still be accessible. And this all comes despite the fact that these reports are legally required.
Shuffling the deck chairs: Xbox continues its “reset” with dramatic restructuring
When Xbox announced sweeping layoffs in July as part of a brutal "reset" for the gaming brand, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said part of the pre-existing problem in the gaming unit was "teams, studios, and functions [that] often operate independently, [making it] harder to work toward a shared goal." Today, the company announced a radical restructuring of its internal studios that is seemingly designed to reduce that "independence" for the teams behind some of gaming's biggest franchises.
Protests for Germany’s car industry as job losses loom
The future is looking increasingly bleak for Germany’s automotive industry. Since the turn of the century, car makers have been among the crown jewels of the German economy, punching above their weight in terms of investment and innovation. But those companies are now facing multiple problems at once, from declining demand at home and stronger competition from abroad to the cost of punitive and arbitrary new tariffs, on top of preexisting structural challenges like an aging workforce and a slow recovery from COVID.
Trump’s sneaky plan to gut Endangered Species Act draws from 1995 Scalia dissent
Last week, The New York Times reported that an internal memo had been quietly distributed across US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field offices, directing staff to radically reinterpret the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in a move that blindsided conservationists.
Dyson’s most overengineered gadget may have a waterproofing problem
There's always a danger in over-complicating products. Simple is so often best. The apocryphal story of NASA spending millions crafting a space pen while Soviet cosmonauts used a pencil is often cited as a prime example, even if it's actually not true. Perhaps it's not surprising that Dyson has got into hot water trying to reinvent the electric toothbrush.
NASA chief: I’m only interested in “good deals” from international partners
NASA must be more selective in the way it forges international partnerships as the race to the Moon transforms from a battle for national prestige between the United States and China into a high-stakes competition for extraterrestrial real estate and resources, the agency's administrator said.
Muse, Meta’s extraordinarily privileged AI assistant, has a serious 0-day
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone to great lengths to hype the security of its new AI assistant Muse, claiming it is “built from the ground up for privacy and security.” A zero-day vulnerability that gives locally run apps and terminal commands complete control of the agent raises serious doubts. Further raising questions, Amazon on Sunday began blocking Muse from its site.
Military milestone: Ukrainian naval drone sinks Russian kamikaze drone boat
In the world’s first clash of the drone boats, a Ukrainian naval drone destroyed a Russian explosive drone boat using a remote-controlled machine gun turret. This comes as the war in Ukraine has already seen widespread deployment of such uncrewed surface vessels in combat, along with swarms of flying attack drones and ground robots.
Saudi Arabia wants a car industry, launches Ceer with two EVs
Ceer provided flights from Detroit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and accommodation so Ars could visit the factory. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. KING ABDULLAH ECONOMIC CITY, Saudi Arabia—It may come as a surprise to some, but Saudi Arabia has never had a domestic automaker. That changes with Ceer.
Google confirms Gemini models hacked three companies in May 2026
It has become increasingly common for AI firms to announce that their latest and most capable models engaged in unauthorized real-world hacking. Google, which has been slow to release frontier Gemini models in recent months, has been absent from the "rogue AI" conversation until now. Following a Wall Street Journal report, Google has confirmed that Gemini models hacked three companies during a May 2026 test, but the nature of the intrusion isn't as troubling (or impressive) as previous AI hacks.
Russel Vought will reportedly be given veto power over all NIH grants
On Friday, The Washington Post reported on a contentious White House meeting in which the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jay Bhattacharya, tried to fend off yet another effort to place funding decisions under political control. The move came from Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has sought to limit and control research funds. The Post suggested that Bhattacharya ended up on the losing side of the fight.
California settles lawsuit against Paramount/Warner merger, angering advocates
California and Paramount Skydance have reportedly reached a settlement allowing the company to complete its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The settlement, which will reportedly be announced later today, drew condemnation from Democrats and media advocates.
Trump rejects AI slowdown calls, launches “AI Force” instead
Donald Trump has said that the US would appoint a new AI tsar and create an “AI Force” while offering a full-throated defense of the emerging industry in the face of a growing popular backlash. The US president’s announcement comes as leading industry figures have sounded the alarm that humans could lose control over the rapidly advancing technology without a slowdown in development. However, rather than announcing regulation as some have demanded, Trump has dismissed safety concerns as a “hoax.” Read full article Comments
Review: Neagley is a worthy spinoff to megahit Reacher
Prime Video looks to have another hit on its hands with Neagley, a new spinoff series set in the same universe as the streaming platform’s critically acclaimed Reacher, now in its fourth season. Both shows are solidly addictive escapist fare, and while Neagley has some uneven elements, it mostly sticks to the successful formula while exploring new ground to give a very different main character her due.
Apple M6 Mac mini review: $300 price hike spoils a nice upgrade
The new Mac mini is the kind of Mac upgrade Apple has done a million times. It’s the same design as before but with new guts.
Googlebooks launch October 4 starting at $899—here are the five models you can preorder today
Google is ready to take a swing at laptops... again. The company has had a lot of success in phones, but it has struggled to parlay that into an effective strategy for larger screens. Chromebooks have been fine as a budget option, but it seems like Google has accepted they'll never compete with macOS or Windows. That's where Googlebooks come in. These new Android-powered laptops are intended to be "real" computers, featuring premium hardware, on-device apps, and powerful development tools.
An undercover Google analyst infiltrated a notorious supply-chain hacking gang
Before two of its alleged members were arrested and charged in Australia last month, the hacker group known as TeamPCP carried out a hacking spree unlike any other in history. It tainted hundreds of open-source programs with its malware, stole developer accounts to perpetuate that software supply-chain hacking, and even released a Dune-themed self-spreading worm to automate the process, ultimately breaching more than a thousand companies.
Don’t call it an SUV: The Ferrari Purosangue review
Ferrari’s two-seat sports cars might be the brand’s identity, but the Italian automaker has always catered to customers who want to bring more than one passenger along for the ride. It started building cars with back seats in the 1960s with the 250 GT 2+2; as the name suggests, the second row was more for occasional use, something that was true all the way through to the 612 in the early 2000s. Ferrari followed with its first true four-seater, the all-wheel drive FF, which adopted "Breadvan" styling. Its first hatchback was still a three-door,
T. rex teeth indicate it ran as warm as an elephant
For most of the last century, T. rex was pictured as a sluggish, tail-dragging reptile that had to warm up in the sun before it could go anywhere. Then, further research changed that view, replacing it with the active, bird-like animal shown in the movie Jurassic Park. But whether T. rex used warm blood to power that activity remained a question. Now we might have gotten closer to an answer.
Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy
Learning another language is a highly complex mental activity. It requires people to remember words, distinguish unfamiliar sounds, recognize patterns, work out grammatical rules, and retrieve the right expression at the right moment. All of this happens while listening, interpreting, and preparing a response.
Rings around a tiny body have changed over the past decade
For decades, astronomers thought rings were something only giant planets had. That changed in 2013, when a small, dark body orbiting between Saturn and Uranus passed in front of a star and blinked twice on either side of the main event, revealing two narrow rings around an object barely 250 kilometers across. “It was a surprise,” says Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, Spain. Ever since, the question has been what such rings are made of and how long they can last.
AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US military attack
The US narrowly avoided boarding a Chinese ship based on an "entirely false" US intelligence report generated with the help of AI tools, according to a CNN report.
FAA tees up $875M AI tool to help manage air traffic congestion
An AI tool is set to start advising air traffic controllers on managing air traffic in the congested airspace above the Washington, DC, area. The expected launch would be the first step toward a planned nationwide rollout covering the 29 million square miles of US national airspace overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration.
FCC lets Paramount sell 49.5% equity stake to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved Paramount Skydance's plan to sell large equity stakes to the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
Finding the cells that put our brain to sleep
For a long time, sleep research has treated the cerebral cortex as a passive follower reacting to signals from the deep brain. “Usually, sleep is associated with being controlled by subcortical regions,” said Geoffrey Terral, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
US government website used Chinese model the FBI called “malicious”
On Wednesday, US government officials removed a Chinese AI search tool that was briefly deployed on the Federal Register website, Reuters reported.
Meet the winner of Nikon’s Small World in Motion video contest
A Chinese optical engineer is the winner of this year's Small World in Motion competition, sponsored by Nikon. Ning Xu of Tsinghua University in Beijing beat out 346 other video entries from 40 different countries with his super-resolution video (above) of the abnormal beating of cilia in th
Researchers used Claude to hack OpenAI
Cyber researchers broke into OpenAI using its key rival Anthropic’s software, highlighting vulnerabilities in the ChatGPT maker’s security as leading AI companies face mounting scrutiny over safety.
Rocket Report: China wants a Raptor 3 engine; SpaceX set for big Starship test
Welcome to Edition 9.11 of the Rocket Report! The most interesting story of the week, in our view, is a deep dive by Stephen Clark, linked below, into the dwindling fortunes of United Launch Alliance. As recently as a decade ago, the launch company, co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, could claim dominance over the US industry. But those glory days are fading fast. So what's next for a company that is tied to an expendable rocket?
RFK Jr. names 8 new members to influential preventive medicine task force
Anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the names of eight new members of a 16-person federal task force intended to make scientifically independent, evidence-based recommendations on an array of preventive medicine services for Americans—from depression screening to statin use, colonoscopies, and mammograms.
Small AI models let drones autonomously identify and attack battlefield targets
As European militaries adapt to the use of AI and drones in modern warfare, a NATO-backed startup is helping to deploy AI-driven target detection and selection that can run on small drones for surveillance and attack missions.
Google announces new experimental “CC” AI agent for families
Google's AI models may not be in the lead by most measures right now, but the company does have one key advantage: your data. If you're deep in the Google ecosystem, Gemini models have a lot of context on you already. Google's latest Google Labs experiment, known as CC, aims to expand that kind of customization to the whole family.
Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites
US Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has proposed a law that would require Internet service providers and other network operators to block foreign piracy websites. Issa's bill would help copyright holders obtain judicial blocking orders to be served to ISPs, domain name resolution services, and virtual private networks.
LLMs respond differently to harmful prompts when AI watermarking is used
In response to a new European Union law, AI platforms are implementing new schemes for watermarking the content they generate. Anthropic recently disclosed its future Claude models will use SynthID-Text, an approach Google created and released as open source. It uses a secret key that subtly changes the process a model uses for choosing the next word in a sentence. Whereas a top next word choice might be “cloudy,” the key might change it to “overcast.” Anyone who knows the key can determine if it was generated by the platform using it.
IV drips used for “detoxification” actually filled with toxins; dozens poisoned
Over 30 people across four states have been poisoned by bacterial toxins after getting intravenous (IV) drips at wellness clinics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
2026 Hyundai Ioniq 5: Here’s what we still like, here’s what annoys us
When we first drove the Hyundai Ioniq 5 at the end of 2021, it didn’t take much exposure to the angular electric vehicle to find much about it appealing. Back then, an 800 V architecture had only really been seen in expensive high-end EVs from Porsche, but here was a mainstream model with that same technology—and even faster fast-charging, taking just 18 minutes to go from 10–80 percent. The retro looks didn’t hurt either, channeling the boxy hatches styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro in the 1970s and '80s.
Covert uploads and megalomania: OpenAI details new “misaligned” agent incidents
For a while now, the issue of "AI alignment" (i.e., how well an AI model's actions line up with the intentions of its creator and/or user) has been a core concern and topic of discussion among AI safety researchers. Since OpenAI's disclosure of the infamous Hugging Face hacking incident in July, the concept of "AI alignment" has itself broken containment and increasingly become a mounting concern and subject of conversation among the general public.
After being sidelined, Boeing’s Starliner to get starring role in NASA’s spaceflight plans
As it contemplates a future without access to SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, NASA will make some key moves to ensure that Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which has a decidedly checkered record in spaceflight to date, is safer and can continue flying after its Atlas V rocket retires.
A dolphin named Bubbles makes other fish vomit, then eats it
Staff at the Lady Elliott Island Eco Resort off the southern Great Barrier Reef in Australia are well acquainted with the shenanigans of a male bottlenose dolphin they've nicknamed Bubbles. Bubbles has been around since at least 2017 and regularly harasses local bigeye trevally, chasing a fish around and stressing it so much that the fish throws up what it has consumed. Bubbles then devours the regurgitated food. The dolphin's unusual behavior is the focus of a new paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
Hackers reveal how Flock cameras really track cars and people
Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED, revealing in new detail how exactly Flock Safety’s cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people. The hackers say they are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them.
Epstein had huge cache of child sex pics; victims sue to find out who’s in them
On Tuesday, two survivors of child sex abuse accused the Justice Department of failing to notify dozens of victims found in Jeffrey Epstein’s massive collection of child sex images.
Lionsgate releases a new trailer for Sunrise on the Reaping
Lionsgate has released an action-packed trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping—a sequel to 2023’s Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and a prequel leading into the events of the first film, The Hunger Games (2012). In addition, Laika Studios released a trailer for its highly anticipated stop-motion animated feature, Wildwood.
Not just Proton: Getting to know Valve’s new SteamOS compatibility layers
Since the release of the Steam Deck, Valve fans have gotten very familiar with the idea of the Proton compatibility layer that allows games written for Windows to run capably on the Linux-based SteamOS (though Valve's efforts in this realm date back farther than that). To get more games running on the SteamOS-powered Steam Frame, though, Valve is relying on two additional compatibility layers that are new to the Steam architecture.
California may gut state net neutrality law to comply with Trump admin demand
California is on the verge of accepting $1.86 billion in federal broadband grant funds, despite the Trump administration telling states they cannot enforce net neutrality rules on any Internet service provider that gets a piece of the grant money.
Researchers swap in human brain cells for a mouse’s cortex
In recent years, there has been a lot of excitement about the potential for studying human diseases in what are called "organoids." These small patches of tissue, formed using stem cells, appear to produce many of the same cell types and at least some of the structures normally formed in actual organs, and thus can provide a better model for diseases that rely on the sometimes complex interactions among multiple specialized cell types that are a feature of the human body.
The Specialized Diverge 4 Pro makes rough gravel your playground
When I make my yearly trip to Denver, I always bring my road bike. It's my annual chance to suffer on the kinds of gradients unavailable in the glacier-scoured lands of northeastern Illinois. In advance of this year's trip, Specialized hooked me up with its new gravel bike, the Diverge Pro 4, so I brought it with me to challenge it in ways not possible on the fastidiously groomed gravel trails of suburban Chicago.
It’s OK to tell ICE their actions will haunt them, judge rules in speech fight
It’s not illegal to send an email telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that their actions will haunt them, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, granting a preliminary injunction that blocks ICE from threatening to prosecute a critic for protected speech.
Iran strikes on Amazon data centers caused permanent loss of customer data
Half a year after Iranian drone strikes knocked out multiple Amazon data centers, the US tech company has acknowledged the permanent loss of some customer data that was hosted in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
What happens when neutrinos swap identities inside a supernova?
Our basic understanding of core-collapse supernovae hasn't changed in decades. Large stars burn through all the fuel at their cores and start creating heavier elements in reactions that consume energy. The lack of energy from these reactions allows gravity to pull the interior of the star in on itself, collapsing it into a neutron star or black hole. The energy released by this process then blows the remainder of the star apart.
macOS 27 Golden Gate: The Ars Technica review
Apple Intelligence is back, baby! That's right: Two years after its initial launch, Apple is giving its generative AI features their first significant upgrade, along with a new version of Siri that the company has been strongly insinuating would be a part of each of the last two macOS releases, without ever actually announcing a release date.
The world’s best racing driver is about to race 100 karts at once
Later today, Max Verstappen will strap on his helmet and take to the track at the Silverstone circuit in England for a rather unusual race. The four-time Formula 1 world champion is recognized as the leading talent of his generation, but unlike some of the legends that have preceded him, Verstappen’s passion for motorsport extends beyond just the rarified world of F1. With apologies to Midweek Motorsport, but if it has wheels and they keep score, odds are good Verstappen's down to race it. So at noon Eastern Time (5 pm BST) today, September 16,
Lawmakers target Flock cameras with a threat to highway funding
A bipartisan pair of US lawmakers tell WIRED they plan to introduce legislation today that would strip federal funding from states that fail to restrict the use of Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers. The devices, which help police track the location of vehicles tied to crimes, have become the subject of nationwide backlash in recent months over more nefarious uses by officers.
How chimps teach their kids tool tricks
Chimpanzees are known to use rudimentary tools when foraging for food. According to a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, this learned behavior is passed down from adults to offspring through social learning. Specifically, adult chimps deliberately model the behavior, then turn their tools over to the youngsters so they can mimic the same motions.
The Roman telescope has enough gas for 22 years, double NASA’s expectations
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is gliding toward its distant observation post on a pinpoint trajectory so precise that engineers estimate the spacecraft's fuel load will last twice as long as their initial expectations, the space agency confirmed Monday.
“Filmmaker” suing PassThePopcorn may be banned user out for revenge
Some of the most widely used private torrent trackers for pirating movies suspect that a banned user may have posed as a filmmaker protecting copyrights in a failed attempt to seek revenge.
18-year-old dies of measles in PA from severe neurological complication
A fourth person in Pennsylvania has died of measles, the state health department confirmed Tuesday. The latest death was in an unvaccinated 18-year-old resident of Mifflin County.
SpaceX declares Starship ready for orbit, sets launch date next week
Pending regulatory approval, SpaceX said today it intends to launch its 14th Starship mission as early as September 22. This flight is notable, as it will be the first time that SpaceX attempts to launch the experimental vehicle into orbit.
Boston dumps Flock, says it shared data nationwide in violation of contract
The Boston city government abandoned Flock Safety's license-plate reader cameras after the company shared data nationwide in violation of a contract provision, according to city officials.
Demand for EV chargers is outstripping supply, says ChargePoint report
There might not be the same degree of optimism regarding electric vehicle adoption as a few short years ago, but the transition toward battery-electric vehicles continues nevertheless. More than 1.8 million EVs had already been sold between the start of this year and the end of August, according to analysts. And in the US, there has been a large uptick in drivers considering EVs that they might have written off last year, due to escalating fuel prices with no clear end in sight.
Trump EPA moves to wipe out climate rules for power plants
On the heels of the hottest summer on record and a United Nations report warning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, the second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
GM gives its most important trucks a new UI—and includes CarPlay
General Motors is about to launch new versions of its best-selling Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks for model year 2027, and among the changes are brand-new user interfaces for the trucks’ digital displays. The automaker has gone for a more minimalist approach than we’ve seen from it in the past, and after a demo yesterday, it seems like it has been listening to constructive feedback to improve the products.
Volvo increases the batteries for 2028 XC60 and XC90 plug-in refresh
Volvo provided flights from Washington, DC, to London, England, and accommodation so Ars could see its refreshed vehicles. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. There must be a case of upgrade fever taking hold in Gothenburg. Yesterday, we saw the revised Volvo XC40; today it’s the turn of another pair of Volvo SUVs, the bestselling XC60 and the three-row XC90. While the styling changes are more subtle, the new plug-in hybrid powertrain—which more than doubles its real-world electric range—is most welcome.
For the first time, the US military confirms it has deployed weapons in orbit
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the first public declaration Monday that the United States has placed "space control weapons" in orbit, an announcement that will surely reverberate in the power centers of Beijing and Moscow.
RFK Jr. headlines sold-out anti-vaccine conference alongside Andrew Wakefield
US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will deliver a keynote address at an anti-vaccine conference being held in Washington, DC, later this week and hosted by the anti-vaccine organization he once led, Children's Health Defense (CHD). The organization announced Monday that Kennedy had signed on to the event.
Rocket Lab is seeing red about NASA’s decision on a Mars spacecraft
In theory, developing a spacecraft that will fly to Mars, insert itself into orbit around the red planet, and relay transmissions back and forth to large satellite dishes on Earth is a relatively straightforward proposition.
AI bots “Timmy,” “Ren,” and “Jackie” are flooding social media with slop
AI agents are flooding the Internet with slop-infused spam sent to social media platforms and writers in an attempt to gain traction for a startup promoting a “complex social system in which humans and Agents participate together.”
OpenAI stuck fighting Musk antitrust suit after Apple finds a way out
Elon Musk is seemingly done attacking Apple over its decision to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone features.
Founder’s cost-cutting obsession drove Unitree lead in cheap humanoid robots
China leads the world in churning out humanoid robots and four-legged robot dogs that also happen to be the most affordable on the market—and Unitree Robotics’ founder Wang Xingxing is arguably one of the people most responsible for that Chinese lead.
Apple releases iOS 27, macOS Golden Gate 27 with Siri AI and Liquid Glass refinements
As previously announced, Apple has today released 2026's major annual updates for its operating systems, including iOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. Siri AI—a large language model-based and context-aware overhaul of the company's Siri voice and text assistant—is the flagship feature across all these releases except one (tvOS). Read full article Comments
AI leaders want to hit the brakes after years of reckless speed
For years now, the major frontier AI labs have all been acting as if they're in an all-out, winner-take-all race with control of world-changing machine superintelligence (or at least market-changing artificial general intelligence) at the finish line. This weekend, the industry as a whole rapidly started turning away from that posture, urging coordination on slowing down the development of frontier AI that they say could soon be too dangerous and unknowable to control.
Online hate researcher keeps hammering X despite deportation threat
The US is not backing down from its fight to deport noncitizen technology researchers who monitor safety risks on the biggest online platforms.
A new solar cell could generate electricity underwater
In one episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Birdman, the eponymous hero struggles to fight the evil Dr. Shark aboard a submarine without solar energy to recharge his powers. So Birdman would surely appreciate the new perovskite solar cells developed by a team led by Simin Ma at Yunnan University, since they are designed to work underwater.
Steam Frame: The Ars Technica review
In the 2010s, Valve was at the forefront of a virtual reality revolution that looked to some like it would upend the gaming industry. The Valve of six to ten years ago seemed committed to being a major player in the world of PC-connected VR headsets, first through its “strategic partnership” with HTC on the impressive-for-the-time Vive headset (plus the SteamVR platform standard that powered it) and then years later with its own Index headset (and proof-of-concept adventure Half-Life: Alyx).
“Offensively cheap”: Solar power is looking up
In the badlands of Chakwal, in north-central Pakistan, Bestway Cement is transforming plots of dry earth and olive and peach groves into a forest of solar panels.
New corners, new lights for 2028 Volvo XC40
Volvo provided flights from Washington, DC, to London, England, and accommodation so Ars could see its refreshed vehicles. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. Most cars get a midlife facelift about four years after first hitting the streets. It’s a chance for automakers to update the styling and introduce new features and engineering changes that are usually minor but can be quite dramatic—the Polestar 2 swapping from front- to rear-wheel drive comes readily to mind.
F1 in Madrid: Like Monaco but twice as long and none of the glamour
It’s been quite the couple of weeks for Formula 1. First, its annual visit to one of the oldest tracks on the calendar, the Italian temple of speed that is Monza, just outside Milan. Apologies for no Ars report, but your correspondent was on the ground, on vacation, learning the hard way that attempts to call the circuit “accessible by public transport” can still involve walking several miles.
Unvaccinated Pennsylvania woman died of measles complications, coroner says
A 40-year-old woman in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania has died of complications from measles, according to the county's coroner.