- R-rated director's cut of X-Files film restores Chris Carter's original horror vision
ars-technica· 14-ago
Chris Carter chats with Ars about the film he originally wanted to make—and why it's more relevant than ever.
- First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity
ars-technica· 14-ago
Airline-backed venture aims to develop a hybrid-electric commercial aircraft.
- Judge gives Google one week to fix "anticompetitive" app store download in Google Play
ars-technica· 14-ago
Third-party app stores are about to become more visible in Google Play.
- Ars Live recap: How can we stop publishers from killing their own games?
ars-technica· 14-ago
The Stop Killing Games movement faces an uphill battle.
- PBS station fears losing 50TB of data after being ghosted by cloud storage provider
ars-technica· 14-ago
"We don't have access to the data on the hardware/servers," Iron Mountain told Ars.
- So much solar: Digging into the list of every US power plant that went online this year
ars-technica· 15-ago
Utility-scale solar leads by a mile, followed by batteries. Fossil fuels, not so much.
- Vulnerability giving attackers full control of Macs is under active exploitation
ars-technica· 14-ago
Screen-sharing bug lets remote hackers log in without a password.
- Policy experts: Europe stuck between "rock and a hard place" on launch
ars-technica· 14-ago
It turns out that the economics of rocket reuse are pretty, pretty good.
- State judge orders Kalshi to stop offering sports bets and other wagers
ars-technica· 14-ago
Kalshi ordered to stop offering bets in Washington, must implement geofencing.
- Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case
ars-technica· 14-ago
Judge warns pro se litigants are using chatbots wrong and getting desperate.
- Building a practical path to post-quantum cryptography
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
Quantum computing has alternated between breakthrough darling and overhyped promise in technology circles. Its powerful new capabilities come with a threat to break current cryptography, but for business leaders navigating the noise, the signal should be clear: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is a manageable evolution, not a crisis. The mathematics behind today’s encrypted digital transactions may…
- Roundtables: Inside the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” Idea Shaping US Policy
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
Listen to the session or watch below The “censorship-industrial complex” is an idea that a network of government, tech, and research groups is collaborating to suppress conservative online speech. This was fodder for the right-wing information sphere for years—then it began making its way into US policy. Watch a conversation exploring how it started, where…
- How kids feel about AI, in their own words
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
When we set out to talk to kids about artificial intelligence, we thought we knew what we’d hear. We expected some to tell us they were using it to cheat a little, the way Millennials and Gen Xers opened up CliffsNotes or programmed formulas into their TI-82s, and others to share inspiring ways they were…
- What’s behind this summer’s heat, and why 2027 could be worse
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
This summer has been a scorcher for much of the Northern Hemisphere. June and July marked the hottest two-month stretch in Europe since record-keeping began. The contiguous US endured its hottest month on record in July. South Korea saw its highest-ever recorded temperature. The heat isn’t over yet, but some scientists are already looking ahead…
- The Download: kids’ thoughts on AI, and female clones of male mice
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How kids feel about AI, in their own words —Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara, the founding editors of Anyway, an independent print magazine for tweens and teens When we set out…
- Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash
mit-tech-review· 13-ago
The police-tech giant Flock is announcing today that it will change officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers, in an apparent effort to quell a growing backlash and win back contracts lost amid concerns about mass surveillance and police abuse. Several changes aim directly at a problem that has made recent headlines:…
- This scientist is helping build a missing map of childhood
mit-tech-review· 14-ago
In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, just a short walk from her office. A researcher was there to unveil the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious project that aimed to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. As details emerged, she discovered that the…
- Job titles of the future: Space travel agent
mit-tech-review· 14-ago
Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild travel dreams into reality. Over two decades as co-owner of the luxury lifestyle firm Roman & Erica, he has orchestrated everything from the construction of a client’s superyacht to vacations in the Bahamas at a location so private that guests must sign an NDA. The experiences earned him “the…
- Cloning could be used to save species—or make human “organ sacks”
mit-tech-review· 14-ago
This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice. That’s right: female animals that are genetically identical to males, except for the missing Y chromosome.…
- The Download: Flock’s new rules, cloning’s future, and children’s cells
mit-tech-review· 14-ago
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash The police-tech giant Flock is changing officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers. The move comes…
- Apple proposes to take a 15% cut of purchases made outside the App Store
techcrunch· 14-ago
Apple is asking a federal judge to allow it to charge commissions of up to 15% on purchases made through external links in iOS apps.
- Google will now allow users to remove visible watermark from its AI generations
techcrunch· 14-ago
Turning off this setting won't affect invisible benchmarks used to identify an AI generated file.
- Read-it-later app Pocket shut down — here are the best alternatives
techcrunch· 14-ago
Pocket users have until October 8, 2025, to export their saved articles and other items, including lists, archives, favorites, notes, and highlights.
- Self-driving trucks are officially testing on California highways
techcrunch· 14-ago
Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
- Talks to sell PayPal to Stripe and Advent are heating up
techcrunch· 14-ago
PayPal is still reportedly negotiating a potential sale to Stripe and private equity firm Advent, as the fintech firm's new CEO attempts to turn the company around.
- Thrive’s Joshua Kushner chides Silicon Valley VCs over AI euphoria
techcrunch· 14-ago
The AI opportunity is huge, but "it would also be a grave error in our minds to let excitement weaken our investment discipline," Kushner warns in his first-ever investment letter.
- Unforgetful is a new reminders app for people who can’t stop hitting snooze
techcrunch· 14-ago
Unforgetful, the latest app from longtime indie developer Marco Arment, is designed to make reminders harder to ignore — or accidentally dismiss.
- What we know about the alleged Iranian hacks on US water utilities
techcrunch· 14-ago
Over the last couple of weeks, hackers have targeted and broken into the systems of several water plants in the United States. Here’s what we know and don’t know about this wave of attacks allegedly carried out by the Iranian government.
- Every fusion startup that has raised over $100M
techcrunch· 15-ago
Fusion startups have raised $7.1 billion to date, with the majority of it going to a handful of companies.
- Does Mark Zuckerberg really believe AI is ‘for everyone’?
techcrunch· 14-ago
Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AI model anyone can download and run on their own hardware — a contrast to Muse Spark, the company’s more powerful model that stays locked behind its own APIs. The release landed alongside a letter from Mark Zuckerberg arguing AI should be “for everyone” rather than controlled by a handful of labs, but as Equity’s […]
- The X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to make a more horrific movie
the-verge· 14-ago
The version of The X-Files: I Want to Believe that premiered in 2008 was not exactly the movie co-writer / director Chris Carter intended to make. Carter wanted to bring agents Mulder and Scully back to the big screen with a grisly story about faith and the supernatural. But executives at 20th Century Fox felt that Carter's ideas were too dark, and he was pushed to turn the project into a PG-13 feature. Now, almost two decades after I Want to Believe's theatrical debut, Carter is back with a new director's cut of the film for Hulu that's much closer to his original vision. "We got to tell a good X-Files story," Carter said of the original … Read the full story at The Verge.
- We’re reaching peak camera with the Sony A7R VI
the-verge· 15-ago
Maximum camera. | Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge It wasn't long ago that shooting with a super high-resolution camera meant making serious sacrifices for the sake of all those megapixels. Enter the A7R VI. Sony's latest flagship high-res camera is a 66.8-megapixel spec monster. In addition to its modest bump in resolution from the last-gen A7R V, it uses a new sensor and processor that unlock nearly any kind of shooting - from sports and action to usable 8K video. It's a huge departure from years ago, when high-resolution cameras were slower, noisier, and more specialized as a result of all those megapixels. The A7R VI's fully stacked sensor and new Bionz XR2 processor allow it to shoot … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Samsung has new Galaxy headphones in the works
the-verge· 14-ago
Strings of code in Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app hint at an upcoming pair of over-ear headphones that could compete with the AirPods Max, SamMobile reports. Samsung's reportedly referring to the headphones as the "Galaxy H1," and SamMobile says they could launch sometime in 2027. That would make these the company's first pair of over-ear headphones since the Level On in 2015, which was released well before Samsung acquired Harman and a number of other audio brands. Connection status icons in the app standard show the design of over-ear, wireless Bluetooth headphones, but not necessarily exactly what these will look like in the end. Samsung … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Mark Zuckerberg has an Instagzam
the-verge· 14-ago
Instagram's wordmark is iconic. Well, was iconic. Apparently Instagram thought it looked old, so the company rolled out a new one this week. It doesn't look like the old Instagram wordmark. It doesn't even look like it spells Instagram anymore. And we cannot figure out why Instagram decided to do this. On this episode of The Vergecast, David and Nilay start by discussing the new logo, the executive urge to redesign everything all the time, and whether new is always better. After that, they get into the other big Meta release of the week: Mark Zuckerberg's many-thousand-word missive on the future of AI. There are a lot of ideas and proposals … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Xteink’s tiny e-readers are getting access to free books through Libby
the-verge· 15-ago
New plugin support for CrossPoint Reader lets Xteink’s devices access DRM-protected ebooks. One of the big tradeoffs with Xteink's pocket-friendly e-readers is a lack of easy access to ebooks. On a Kindle or Kobo you can download tens of thousands of titles through each device's respective online bookstores, but with Xteink's devices you have to source DRM-free ebooks on your own. That's about to change, as the developers of CrossPoint Reader, a free alternative firmware for the X3, X4, and X4 Pro, are introducing support for third-party plug-ins that will expand the e-readers' capabilities. One of the first from the community will give the devices access to DRM-protected ebooks borrowed through OverDrive's Libby library app, or pu … Read the full story at The Verge.
- A RAMageddon guide to back-to-school laptop shopping
the-verge· 14-ago
The MacBook Neo is an easy recommendation. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge If you’re a student looking for an affordable laptop, I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news is that computer prices are out of whack due to the ongoing RAM and storage crunch, making some a little pricier than they used to be and others wildly more expensive. The good news? Despite that, there are still many great options, including the selection we’ve tested and highlighted below. Before you go for the cheapest option you can still find, consider biting the bullet on a more powerful laptop, especially if you’re buying for a college student. Prices are likely to continue rising well into next year — especially since all the memory being made through 2027 is already allocated. You can get …
- When housing is unaffordable, this artist’s device makes pedaling harder
the-verge· 15-ago
Justin Blinder had just been laid off when he first came up with the idea for Ground Truth. It was 2020, two weeks before covid lockdown went into effect, and the Brooklyn-based artist and technologist had no idea what the future would hold. He started working for the food delivery apps, and as he was riding his bike across the city, he began noticing the stark differences between neighborhoods. "I really started to kind of become a bit more aware of how different neighborhoods, often right next to each other, could feel very economically and psychologically very far apart, even though it's just really within close proximity," he said. "And … Read the full story at The Verge.
- The surprise must-see movie of the summer
the-verge· 15-ago
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 140, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, don't forget to hydrate, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about Will Ferrell and Fabrizio Romano and Heather Cox Richardson, scrolling and scrolling through Ordinary Abundance, watching Avatar Aang (which is as good as you said it was), finally getting proficient in CapCut, obsessing over the latest scandal unearthed by PTFO, rewatching Tires now that the third season is out, trying Spark's AI tools for solving my inbox (so far… meh), revisiting … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Google’s best new camera feature is only for the Pixel 11 series
the-verge· 14-ago
Arguably the coolest new photo feature for the Pixel 11 lineup is Google's new Camera Looks, which process image data differently at the sensor level to produce photos that don't have that "smartphone" look. The result is new styles like "Digi," which mimics the style of photos taken by older digital cameras. But to use Camera Looks, at least initially, you'll need to have one of Google's Pixel 11 phones. "Our latest camera updates are only available on our latest devices," Google spokesperson Alex Moriconi tells The Verge. "We're always looking to bring experiences to more users, but have nothing to share at this time." That last sentence … Read the full story at The Verge.
- Lamborghini’s flagship Revuelto levels up with SV trim
the-verge· 14-ago
A lot of automakers talk about wanting to minimize or eliminate driver distractions so as to make the experience of driving more rewarding and safer overall. Lamborghini has a different strategy; it wants the driver to become one with their vehicle. This helps explain the storied super car maker's tagline for the new Revuelto SV: the quantum of driving. "For us, quantum of driving is the moment when you get into the car, you start driving the car, and the car and you become one piece," said Alessandro Farmeschi, product line director for the Revuelto, the Italian brand's top V12 powered model. "And you start just thinking about your drive, … Read the full story at The Verge.