International authorities and a raft of private technology companies say they have disrupted a cybercrime “assembly line” that allowed crooks to collect millions of login credentials and steal more than $47 million in ransom payments and by other fraudulent means.

The crux of the operation was the simultaneous targeting of two unrelated tools that are widely used in various online scams. The first is Amadey, a malware-as-a-service platform for compromising devices and delivering malicious payloads for ransomware and other scams. Amadey has been observed in the wild since at least 2018 and was seen last year abusing GitHub as it collected system information from infected devices and installed customized payloads. The second tool was StealC, an infostealer-as-a-service platform that collects credentials, authentication cookies, cryptocurrency wallets, browser extensions, and files whose names match customer-defined patterns.

Severing a critical link in the cybercrime chain

Amadey and StealC are separate tools that are run independently of each other. Given their widespread use, however, many customers use both in their individual cybercrime activities. The tools also, it turns out, relied on some of the same underlying infrastructure to run. Microsoft said it made this determination after analyzing the tools using AI. This insight allowed Microsoft attorneys to seek an order disrupting both at the same time.

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LOS ANGELES—Slate Auto has pulled a Disneyland. Let me explain.

At Disneyland, if a sign for a ride says the wait is 45 minutes, it's actually less than that. The idea is to set expectations low and then exceed them. Slate originally said its electric truck's entry-level battery would have 180 miles (290 km) of range, but that has expanded to 205 miles (330 km). The tow rating was originally 1,000 lbs (454 kg); now it's 2,000 lbs (907 kg), a nice jump. Finally, the load rating was 1,400 lbs (635 kg), and it's now 1,550 lbs (703 kg).

The automotive startup has exceeded expectations. Was it part of the plan all along? Was leaking the price of the base model of $24,950 last week guerrilla marketing? Since the truck's unveiling a year ago, Slate's marketing has been extremely tongue-in-cheek.

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The Walt Disney Company has agreed to pay $50 million to subscribers of YouTube TV and DirecTV’s live TV streaming services to settle a lawsuit that claimed that Disney forced these services to raise their prices.

In November 2022, four YouTube TV subscribers filed a class action complaint (PDF) against Disney in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. They accused Disney of entering “anticompetitive agreements with YouTube TV” and other companies that provide access to broadcast channels via the Internet.

The complaint argued that Disney forced over-the-top (OTT) live TV services to cost more by requiring distributors to include ESPN, which Disney owns, with their base packages.

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Most people perceive a cork in a bottle of wine as a simple plug meant to keep the liquid in and the outside world out. In the recent study published in Science Advances, a team of French scientists demonstrated the cork is way more than that. By regulating the oxygen transfer into and out of the wine bottle, it works almost as another ingredient.

“Twenty years ago, our group focused on the oxidation and aging of wine and all its parameters,” Thomas Karbowiak said. “Oxygen diffusion through cork stoppers is one of these parameters.” Karbowiak is a chemist at the University of Burgundy, France, and the senior author of the study.

The mini-bottle experiment

Oxidation is one of the key drivers of wine aging. A slow, limited ingress of oxygen helps wine mature, smoothing out harsh tannins and bringing out an aromatic complexity. But when too much oxygen gets into the bottle too quickly, it can make the wine stale, brownish in color, and unpleasant to drink. That’s because it will also react with alcohol and phenols in the same process that makes a cut apple turn brown.

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A Federal Communications Commission proposal to collect more identifying information from phone users has drawn protests from privacy-focused groups and advocates for domestic violence survivors. The plan is ostensibly designed to thwart robocallers but could make it difficult for individuals to use prepaid phones that can protect their privacy, devices that are often referred to as burner phones.

The FCC is seeking comment on the proposal to require phone companies to obtain and retain, at a minimum, "the name, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternate telephone number of any new and renewing customer before granting access to its services."

Critics say this would prevent people from using prepaid phones without revealing their identities. Technology Safety Specialist Belle Torek of the National Network to End Domestic Violence told the FCC in a filing yesterday that "many of the behaviors and privacy-protective measures the Commission appears to view as suspicious are, for survivors, well-established and often life-preserving safety practices."

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Formula E is in its final year for the current technical regulations, with a new single-seater EV set to be introduced at the start of next season, which begins in December in Saudi Arabia. The new car, known as GEN4, is a big upgrade—at times more powerful than a Formula 1 car, although heavier and with much less downforce. As speeds rise with the GEN4 car, we knew the sport would become too fast for some of its current venues.

With the release of the season 12 calendar for 2026–2027, that limitation has become clear: a 21-race lineup across 13 cities that now includes several traditional race tracks.

The Saudi double-header is scheduled for December 18 and 19 and is the only season 12 round this year. Then the series starts 2027 off with a string of Formula 1 venues in North America: Mexico on January 16, the Circuit of the Americas in Texas on February 7, and the Miami International Autodrome on February 20. The addition of COTA to Formula E's calendar makes it the seventh US location for the sport since 2015, including the American Airlines Arena in actual Miami; Long Beach, California; Brooklyn, New York; Portland, Oregon; Homestead-Miami, and the Hard Rock Stadium on the outskirts of Miami.

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Google spent the last few years locked in a legal grudge match with Epic Games, which claimed that Google's stewardship of the Play Store was anticompetitive. Now, the companies are thick as thieves, and Google is beginning to implement app store changes as agreed in its settlement with Epic. The lower developer fees and new payment options that Google promised are rolling out in select markets this month before expanding.

Until a few years ago, Google followed an Apple-like approach to app store billing, charging most developers a 30 percent commission for transactions in the Play Store. That was the only option, too. Directing users to make purchases outside the store was not allowed, and that's what got Epic in hot water in 2020. Epic added cheaper external billing to the Android and iOS versions of Fortnite, getting the game pulled from both stores and prompting a lawsuit.

Apple managed to (mostly) win its case, but Google tripped up in how it tried to control the Play Store while keeping a more open appearance. The judge in the case was set to impose some dramatic remedies in 2024, including forcing Google to distribute third-party app stores in Google Play. The settlement, which Google has noted will end its dispute with Epic globally, doesn't go that far. However, developers are about to get the promised fee reductions.

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A few days after a Tesla plowed through a Texas home and killed a grandmother, the family sued the carmaker, alleging that the Model 3’s automated assist mode was defective.

In a complaint filed this week in Harris County District Court, Jennifer Barbour, the daughter of 76-year-old Martha Avila, and Barbour's husband Justin confirmed they were seeking more than $1 million in damages following their sudden and tragic loss.

After the crash, the driver, Michael Butler, who is also a named defendant in the lawsuit, told police that the automated driver-assist feature was engaged when he lost control of the car. Cops told Ars on Monday that they’re still investigating whether the feature was in use and confirmed that Butler was not intoxicated and has been cooperating with police.

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The Army, Navy, and Air Force are once again requiring basic trainees to get vaccinated against influenza after the virus quickly swept through an Air Force base in Texas, sickening at least 222 recruits and hospitalizing four.

The outbreak flared just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abandoned a decades-long requirement for flu shots. The requirement was intended to keep armed forces healthy in their bases, which provide ideally tight conditions for a variety of pathogens, including influenza, to run rampant. Mandates stem from centuries of intertwining histories of militaries, war, and human pathogens that have firmly established the danger that infectious diseases pose to armed forces.

But in April, Hegseth claimed that flu shot requirements were "not rational" and said removing the requirement was "restoring freedom" to military members.

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This morning, Slate Auto officially announced pricing for its Slate electric truck. Ars will have some time with a prototype later today, along with—hopefully—answers to many of our remaining questions. In the meantime, we decided to play around with Slate's online configurator to see how much you might actually have to pay for one of these exciting new EVs. As expected, Slate has managed to achieve a sub-$25,000 starting price; if you ignore things like taxes or the as-yet-unknown delivery charge, the Blank Slate pickup really does start at just $24,950.

The battery pack uses lithium iron phosphate cells, with 63 kWh useable energy (65 kWh gross) and a 181 hp (135 kW), 195 lb-ft (264 Nm) electric motor driving the rear wheels. In pickup configuration, with 17-inch steel wheels, the EPA range estimate is 205 miles (330 km). DC fast charging takes 30 minutes to charge from 20 to 80 percent at up to 120 kW via a NACS port, or four to 17 hours using AC, depending on whether you use a level 2 or simple wall socket.

Bare bones

And if you really want a bare-bones pickup, here is your chance. The first variant I mocked up this morning came in at just $25,289.97—plus pending taxes and fees—and that's just because I spent a little over $300 on some decals to make the truck look like my favorite pair of sneakers.

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There are some sights in this world that no photograph can truly capture.

Think of the rolling ribbons of the aurora in the northern and southern skies, the depth and breadth of the Grand Canyon, or the sense of immersion when diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Astronauts will tell you that not even large-format cameras can truly capture the blackness of outer space or the majesty that is our planet as seen from orbit or beyond.

It's not every day that a new one of those sights debuts. But such will be the case on Friday, November 13, when the California Science Center in Los Angeles finally reveals the launch-pad-like display of the space shuttle Endeavor inside the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

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In May, the White House announced that its new app would be automatically downloaded onto the work phones of millions of government employees. The problem: Federal workers hate it and can’t get rid of it.

Employees of the US Department of Agriculture, the State Department, and the Department of Labor, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, say that they were disturbed when the app appeared on their phones. Some attempted to delete it, but to no avail.

“I deleted it as a test and it came immediately back,” says an employee from the USDA.

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The White House is drastically shortening the deadline for government agencies and organizations to adopt new quantum-resistant encryption systems that will withstand attacks that use quantum computers, as the federal government seeks to protect decades’ worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and most individuals on Earth.

The executive order, titled Securing the Nation against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks, requires computing systems for “high-value assets” and “high-impact systems” to transition to post-quantum cryptographic key establishment schemes by December 31, 2030, and to quantum-safe digital signature schemes by December 31, 2031.

Heading off a significant threat

The new deadline, which for many organizations is about five years sooner than the previous one, comes on the heels of recent research showing that the resources and cost for building a cryptographically relevant quantum computer are far less than previous consensus estimates. In response, Google, Cloudflare, and other companies recently tightened their timelines for moving off vulnerable systems to 2029.

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Over decades, researchers in the US government and programs it sponsored built up a tremendous number of climate resources, from comprehensive analyses to massive datasets to basic explainers meant to inform the public. And people within the government built the climate.gov website to make it all accessible. But if you try to navigate there today, you get redirected to the climate page of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and are greeted with the following message:

In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (“Restoring Gold Standard Science”), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (“Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities”), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program”), 15 USC § 2934 (“National Global Change Research Plan”), and 33 USC § 893a (“NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs”), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed under Climate.gov will be available at NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.

Climate.gov was essentially gone, and the team that deleted implied that it happened because climate research somehow failed to uphold what the administration was calling "gold standard science."

But the people who put together climate.gov didn't go away. While the government didn't hesitate to delete inconvenient climate information, dedicated volunteers outside the government managed to preserve copies of much of the material, which the federal government is prohibited from copyrighting. The volunteers and former climate.gov admins got together and launched climate.us. On Tuesday, the team announced that it had completed the project to restore everything lost when climate.gov shut down.

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In a supposed “nationwide first” use of drones to disarm a person, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office in California promoted a video showing how a small quadcopter drone used a dangling magnet to remove a knife from the hand of a motionless suspect.

The promotional video shared to Facebook and Instagram on June 22, 2026, uses the Mission: Impossible film franchise theme to dramatize video footage of the incident that took place earlier in the month, which involved what the video describes as a “felony suspect armed with a knife and a firearm” who “was not responding to negotiators.” The sheriff’s office is just one among hundreds of US police departments and sheriff’s offices that have deployed camera-equipped drones to assist first responders.

In a Facebook post, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office described having surrounded the suspect’s residence with a SWAT team after the “known felon and parolee-at-large was seen earlier with a firearm.” A first drone deployed to the scene located the suspect hiding in a corner of the garage, but also spotted the motionless suspect holding a knife in one outstretched arm.

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The growing use of AI contributed to Oracle laying off 21,000 workers in a year, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday.

In its annual regulatory filing for the fiscal year ending May 31, Oracle said it has 141,000 full-time employees. In its 2025 filing, Oracle said it had 162,000 employees. The reported 12.9 percent reduction followed March reports of mass layoffs at the database management software company.

"[T]he adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the filing reads.

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After a slower start than its major rivals, Toyota has been making up for it with a flurry of new electric vehicles for the North American market. Its first attempt, the bZ4x, was an also-ran, but a new battery pack, more efficient motors, and a NACS charging port transformed the face-lifted bZ into an EV I happily recommend. Then, earlier this year, it followed up with some bZ-related variants. For those who miss the vibe of a station wagon, there is the bZ Woodland, and an all-electric Highlander is nearing the showroom, too. But today's focus is the C-HR, and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it.

It's the smallest of the bunch; at 177.9 inches (4,519 mm) long it's some 6.7 inches (170 mm) shorter than the bZ. But it's still as wide and only a little more than an inch less tall. So if you're put off by the bZ's size and are looking for something diminutive—and based on reader feedback, there are many of you out there—this small SUV will probably still fail to pass muster.

It's not any cheaper than the bZ until you consider that the C-HR is only available with one choice of powertrain: a twin-motor AWD setup with a combined 338 hp (252 kW) powered by a 74.7 kWh battery pack. That same arrangement, with a 223 hp (167 kW), 198 lb-ft (268 Nm) front motor and 118 hp (88 kW), 125 lb-ft (169 Nm) rear unit, costs almost $3,000 more in a bZ than the $37,000 starting price of the C-HR.

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ABC is urging viewers to write to the Federal Communications Commission and tell it to stop trying to "control who is allowed to appear" on The View. An ABC commercial that started airing yesterday asked viewers to submit responses to the FCC's call for public comment on whether the talk show is a “bona fide news interview program.”

"The View has welcomed your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years," ABC's ad said. "Now, the FCC wants to control who is allowed on the show. Viewers, use your voice. Tell the FCC to let the viewers decide."

For decades, the FCC has classified late-night and daytime entertainment talk shows as bona fide news for the purposes of their interview segments. This makes the shows exempt from the equal-time rule, which requires equal opportunities for opposing political candidates on non-news programming.

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For decades, biologists thought that early tetrapods, ancient vertebrates that started conquering the land over 300 million years ago, developed like modern amphibians—beginning their lives as purely aquatic tadpoles and then metamorphosing into terrestrial adults. “A lot of that comes from this old ‘scala naturae’ idea that you had fish that evolved into the next stage up, which were amphibians, and then amphibians evolved into the next stage up, which were reptiles that evolved into birds and mammals,” said Jason Pardo, a research associate at the Field Museum.

We’ve never had evidence that early tetrapods had an amphibian lifestyle; we have assumed it because it made intuitive sense. “It’s easier to make the transition from water to land if you’re already making that transition as part of your life cycle,” Pardo said. But now, a new Science study that Pardo co-authored with Arjan Mann (the Field Museum's assistant curator of early tetrapods) shows our most basic assumptions about the first tetrapods that started living on land might be wrong.

Baby monsters

The researchers' study focused mainly on embolomers, an extinct group of large predators that lived roughly 300 million years ago. Embolomers looked like a cross between a crocodile and an eel, with large skulls full of sharp teeth, followed by long, eel-like bodies. It had short, stocky limbs adapted mainly for paddling in water, but also capable of powering brief, clumsy excursions on land. They are thought to be one of the first vertebrates that made a partial transition from an aquatic to a terrestrial lifestyle. These animals could reach over three meters in length, but to understand the very beginning of their life cycle, scientists focused on examining some of their centimeter-scale babies.

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In an extremely odd case, a single 79-year-old patient was granted early access to Eli Lilly's powerful, still-experimental obesity drug retatrutide through the Food and Drug Administration's "compassionate use" program—raising immediate questions if that sole patient is President Donald Trump, according to a report by Stat News.

Lilly's retatrutide is a highly anticipated next-generation obesity drug that targets GIP and glucagon hormones in addition to GLP-1. It is currently in late-stage trials to treat obesity, diabetes, sleep apnea, and other conditions. Data from a Phase 3 trial that Lilly released in May indicates that patients with obesity (but without diabetes) who took the drug for 80 weeks lost 28 percent of their weight, an amount comparable to bariatric surgery.

Millions of Americans with obesity are eager to get the drug, with options being limited so far to enrolling in a clinical trial or trying to obtain it by dodgy methods.

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The United States is one of only a handful of countries that allows companies to hold patents on plant varieties. As a result, a small number of corporations can—and do—suppress competition in the seed industry, stifle innovation, and turn taxpayer subsidies intended for farmers into corporate profits.

The US Department of Agriculture has found that two companies control more than 70 percent of US corn and soybean seed sales, and the top four cottonseed companies control nearly 94 percent of that market.

In a May 2026 court filing in a legal dispute between two US seed companies, the Department of Justice said patents on seeds are obstructing competition and research in the agriculture industry.

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One of Taika Waititi's greatest strengths as a director is his unique voice; he's able to bring a light touch to tragedy (Jojo Rabbit) and a gentle sadness to offbeat comedy (Our Flag Means Death). That makes him an excellent choice to direct Klara and the Sun, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Sony Pictures just released the first trailer, and it's giving strong Hunt for the Wilderpeople vibes—a good thing, from my perspective, since that's my favorite Waititi film.

Per the official premise:

Based on the bestselling novel from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro and written and directed by Academy Award winner Taika Waititi, Klara and the Sun introduces audiences to Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home. When Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), each immediately senses a kindred spirit in the other. Josie has a fraught relationship with her mother (Amy Adams), and they’ve suffered great loss, but Klara’s innocent wonder and unwavering loyalty begin to heal the family and bring light to Josie’s complicated world.

The cast also includes Natasha Lyonne as an artificial friend (AF) store manager; Rachel House as the housekeeper, Melania; Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy) as Josie's best friend, Rick; and Sophia Bryant-Taukiri as Josie's older sister, Sal. Steve Buscemi and Harry Greenwood also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

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Last year, we featured a lengthy interview with tech journalist/science fiction author Cory Doctorow about his book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. The prolific Doctorow is back with a provocative new book that serves as a follow-up of sorts, focusing on AI and related issues: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.

Doctorow doesn't actually enjoy talking about AI, but he's constantly being asked to comment on it. "I made the tactical error of being sick of talking about AI," Doctorow told Ars. "So I wrote a book about why I think it's a dumb thing to keep asking people to talk about, and now I have to talk about it." Reverse Centaur is Doctorow's attempt to "sort out the bullshit from the material reality."

In automation theory, per Doctorow, a "centaur" describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete. A reverse centaur "is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine," Doctorow said in a speech last December. He gave the example of an Amazon delivery driver, surrounded by AI cameras monitoring their driving, who essentially serves as a peripheral to the delivery van.

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on Tuesday to test a new reentry vehicle designed to deliver cargo anywhere in the world from low-Earth orbit.

The company developed the new saucer-shaped reentry pod, called Starfall, under a veil of secrecy. Its purpose is to support the "transport and delivery of goods through space," according to an environmental assessment published by the Federal Aviation Administration last month.

The first demonstration of the Starfall vehicle began at 6:53 am EDT (10:53 UTC) with liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At least one Starfall reentry pod rode to orbit on the Falcon 9, perhaps alongside another undisclosed payload. After circling the planet two times, the Falcon 9's upper stage was expected to release Starfall for atmospheric reentry, targeting a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 800 miles west of California.

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Dozens of new robot arms have been installed at General Motors’ flagship electric vehicle factory in Detroit—even as 1,300 workers remain out of work following what was supposed to be a temporary layoff. The latest automation push has spurred union pushback over a potentially existential issue for automakers and their workers.

General Motors installed approximately 50 robot arms at GM’s Factory Zero plant in Detroit, Michigan, according to reporting by Crain’s Detroit Business. Made by the Japanese robotics company FANUC, the robots are designed to help attach various components to vehicles during the assembly line process. But leaders at United Auto Workers (UAW), the primary US union for autoworkers, reacted with anger to the new robotic presence, given how GM has not yet called back any of the workers affected by supposedly temporary layoffs in March.

More than 1,000 union members are still “laid off indefinitely,” James Cotton, president of UAW Local 22, told The Detroit News. He said that the company could bring some of those members back to work instead of installing the 50 robots.

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NASA's infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center, the crown jewel of US spaceports, is aging and approaching its limit due to increased demand from private companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, a new report finds.

"NASA’s launch infrastructure is vital to providing the agency, other government agencies, and commercial partners access to space for their most complex and expensive missions," states the report, published by the NASA Office of Inspector General. "Nevertheless, NASA’s launch infrastructure is dated and often does not provide the capacity to meet the growing demands of the agency and its partners."

The report covers NASA's launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. However, the most noteworthy information in the report concerns the Florida spaceport, where demand from SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicles is expected to stress NASA.

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For our weary eyeballs, strained and tired from long periods locked onto screens, rest and relaxation can do wonders. But a man in Scotland came up with an eye-popping plan to try to pamper his pooped peepers.

Ophthalmologists discovered it when the man, who was in his 20s, appeared at an eye treatment center in Edinburgh. He told them he had noticed increasing floaters and flashing lights in his right eye over the previous six days. According to a BMJ Case Report, the man said he hadn't had any eye or head injuries before the vision problems began, and that his family didn't have a history of eye disorders that might explain them. Besides having mild near-sightedness and needing glasses, he usually didn't have any problems with his eyes, he said.

When the doctors—Niamh O’Connell ‍‍and Ashraf Khan—took a close look, they were surprised to find that both of his eyes were in terrible shape. In his right eye, he had multiple retinal tears, widespread retinal bruising, and a condition called retinal dialysis—a retinal break at a junction in the front of the eye—that is usually seen after a significant eye injury. In his left eye, he had more widespread bruising and six full-thickness rips in his retina.

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Polymarket paid dozens of social media users to film themselves making fake bets for a promotion that aimed to convince people they can strike it rich on the prediction market, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published on Saturday.

"In its push to draw users to its unregulated platform, Polymarket has flooded social media with videos like [George] Makihara’s, which appear genuine at first glance," the article said. "In reality, Polymarket built near-perfect copies of its website, then instructed creators to make simulated trades on those dummy sites and hide that they were being paid by Polymarket."

Makihara, a college student, posted a video in January "that showed him winning $100,000 on a wager that President Trump would publicly say the word 'McDonald's' that month." But trade data showed that no one on Polymarket won such a bet in January, according to the Journal. This was one of 145 bets that Makihara appeared to place on Polymarket between January and May, but all of those bets were fake, the article said.

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Consumer AMD CPUs will once again offer encryption protections against physical attacks after facing user backlash for silently removing the feature.

As Ars reported last week, AMD stripped the protection, known as TSME, from consumer Ryzen processors. Short for Transparent Secure Memory Encryption, TSME encrypts the entire contents stored in memory, making the data useless to adversaries performing cold boot attacks and similar intrusions requiring physical access.

Now you see it, now you don't, soon you'll see it again

About a decade ago, AMD added TSME to its high-end CPUs. Over the next few years, AMD added the protection to lower-end processors, including the consumer version of its Ryzen chips, a CPU that costs less than the Pro version. Over the years, users of these lower-end chips have gotten used to the added security, although some security experts (and plenty of novices, too) note that consumer chips are far less likely to be targeted by physical attacks. Recently and without warning or notice, the lower-end line of AMD chips suddenly dropped the protection, and it did so in a way that was impossible to detect on Windows machines and required a fair amount of technical work when using Linux. AMD last week declined to explain or acknowledge the change.

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The Steam Machine is almost here. Valve chose possibly the worst time to announce new PC gaming hardware in late 2025, just as the AI boom sent storage and RAM prices through the roof. The upheaval delayed its new Steam Machine release, but Valve has announced its TV-friendly gaming PC will go on sale June 29 with a reservation-based system and a starting price of $1,049.

The Steam Machine will come in two variations: one with 512GB of storage and a more expensive one with 2TB. They'll retail for $1,049 and $1,349, respectively, and you'll be able to bundle a Steam Controller with either for an additional $79. Buying the 2TB model also gets you a pair of exclusive faceplates with red fabric and walnut finishes. Like the Steam Deck, the machine ships with the Linux-based SteamOS.

Both versions of the Steam Machine will run on a custom six-core AMD Zen 4 CPU with a peak clock speed of 4.8GHz. The integrated AMD RDNA3 GPU will feature 28 compute units and 8GB of dedicated DDR6 VRAM soldered to the board. The system will have its own 16GB allotment of DDR5 on the board. This should provide enough oomph (with upscaling tech) to play moderately demanding PC games on your TV.

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An elderly Texas woman tragically died Friday after a man who told police he was relying on his Tesla Model 3’s automated driver-assistance mode lost control and crashed his car into her family’s home.

In a statement, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to Ars that Michael Butler said that “he was operating with an automated driving-assistance system engaged at the time of the crash.” Police are currently investigating whether the autopilot feature in any way caused the crash but confirmed that Butler was not intoxicated and is cooperating, partly by helping cops understand how Tesla’s Autopilot feature works.

“Butler failed to drive in a single lane, left the roadway, and struck the residence” at a “high rate of speed,” the sheriff’s office said.

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Just three months ago, Lucid Motors showed off a new midsize electric vehicle platform that it said would give rise to a number of new vehicles in the coming years. The Saudi-backed startup is now selling its Gravity SUV alongside the ever-improved Air sedan and plans to reach profitability with smaller and cheaper models sold in higher volumes. But things are far from rosy at Lucid; today, the automaker is laying off approximately 1,500 workers—18 percent of its workforce.

These aren't the first layoffs of the year, either; In February, Lucid let go of 12 percent of its workforce.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lucid wrote that the layoffs were "designed to advance the Company’s path toward profitability and positive cash flow generation by streamlining its organizational structure, optimizing operating expenses, and aligning production plans with anticipated demand."

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Rocket Lab quietly launched a small satellite from New Zealand on Friday in a high-flying military exercise to test the US Space Force's ability to rapidly respond to a crisis in low-Earth orbit.

The launch was scarcely announced in advance. The only public indication of an impending launch was the release of a warning for pilots and sailors to steer clear of the rocket's flight path. Rocket Lab did not provide a livestream of the launch, as it does for most of its missions. As of Monday morning, officials from Rocket Lab and the Space Force had not acknowledged the launch in any official public statements.

But the US military's catalog of space objects was updated over the weekend to reflect the launch. A new satellite, designated Victus Haze Puma, showed up in the catalog with a launch date of Friday from Rocket Lab's privately run spaceport at Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand. The Space Force cataloged the spacecraft in a polar orbit ranging between 215 miles and 286 miles (347-by-461 km), with an inclination of about 97.5 degrees from the equator.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—If you drive the 12.4-mile (20 km), 156-corner route up Pikes Peak, abiding by the posted speed limit of 25 mph (40 km/h), it will take you a good 30 minutes to reach the top. That's assuming you resist the urge to stop and gawk at the infinite vistas that surround you along the way.

On Sunday, professional racer JR Hildebrand covered that same distance in just 9.5 minutes, ignoring the scenery all the while. He did it in a 1,250 hp (932 kW) hybrid-powered Corvette ZR1X, a car that you can take home yourself for about $210,000. It set a new production car record for the hybrid on a day when EVs and combustion-powered cars fought for mountain supremacy.

2026 marked the 104th running of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, one of the most historic races on the planet. Since its inception, competitors have struggled not only to string together all those corners but to maintain speed all the way to the 14,115-foot (4,302 m) summit.

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BLUEMONT, Va.—From an overlook in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Dan Roelker gazed across the green splendor of the Shenandoah Valley. With the pleasant spring afternoon drawing toward evening, the Sun lazily crossed the sky, casting light all around.

The pleasing environs had put Roelker, who was drinking rye whiskey procured from a local distillery called Catoctin Creek, in an expansive mood to talk about one of his favorite subjects: light.

"If you can control light, you can control space," he said. "So it’s basically a race for who is collecting the most light."

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Anthropic has warned about the dangers of advanced AI far more often than rival OpenAI this year, according to FT analysis, as critics accuse the company of helping to trigger a US ban on foreign access to its newest models.

Five in every 1,000 words used by Anthropic in 2026 related to risk, regulation, or restrictions, according to FT research that analyzed official statements, social media posts, and articles written by the company or its chief, Dario Amodei. The equivalent figure for OpenAI and Sam Altman was eight times lower, at 0.6 words per 1,000.

The comparison has become politically charged after Washington last week barred foreign nationals from using Anthropic’s latest models, Mythos and Fable. Some technologists have blamed the decision on the $965 billion AI group’s repeated warnings about AI’s risk to society—particularly in relation to Mythos.

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In 2023, after years of pollution, equipment failures, and health concerns, the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Tennessee was slated to close within the decade.

The coal-fired plant had been part of a multibillion-dollar settlement in 2011 after its operator, the Tennessee Valley Authority, failed to install pollution control technology a decade earlier. Regulators cited the plant for more air-pollution violations in 2017 and 2023. TVA said it would shutter Cumberland’s units in 2026 and 2028.

Then the Trump administration replaced four of TVA’s board members, and the agency reneged on its retirement plan in February. Now, TVA has a federal pledge for $46 million to extend Cumberland’s lifespan—part of a nationwide push by President Donald Trump to keep older coal plants running.

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Widow's Bay, the delightfully eccentric new comedic horror series from Apple TV, is easily one of the best new series of the year. There's a reason everyone from Guillermo del Toro and Ben Stiller to Damon Lindelof (Lost) is raving about the show. It's an eminently binge-able, addictive series that pays tribute to all the classic horror tropes while reinventing them in surprising ways. Think Stephen King meets Parks and Recreation, with a dash of Twin Peaks—except Widow's Bay is very much its own refreshingly original beast.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is a widower and mayor of Widow's Bay, a quirky little seaside town that has a colorfully bizarre history marked by periodic tragedies. Tom is eager to elevate the town into a trendy summer tourist destination. But the arrival of New York Times travel writer Arthur Lloyd (Bashir Salahuddin), who has the clout to make Tom's aspirations for Widow's Bay come true, coincides with the onset of a mysterious fog. Local resident Wyck (Stephen Root) warns Tom that the fog is an omen that the island is "waking up," meaning more supernatural occurrences are bound to happen.

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Age verification is consuming the Internet. From social media bans in Australia to porn restrictions in half of US states, for many having to prove their age to access websites is becoming an everyday requirement. But one of the key technologies underpinning many of these age checks is about to seep into the offline world—with potentially life-changing consequences for people having their age predicted by AI.

Starting next year, the British government is planning to introduce facial age estimation—where AI scans your face and suggests how old you are—to help determine the age of asylum seekers arriving at the United Kingdom’s border. The move is believed to be the first time that a so-called facial age estimation (FAE) system has been used in this way. Many asylum seekers arriving in the UK will not have documents proving their age, and if children are incorrectly classed as adults, they can be stripped of some legal protections and placed in adult-only detention centers.

An investigation by WIRED and Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with The Independent, has obtained an internal UK government report detailing its tests of FAE technologies. It shows how the systems regularly mistake children for adults and appear to contain serious bias problems, which directly impact the largest group of migrants subject to age assessments in 2025, according to data from the Home Office. The investigation raises questions about the effectiveness of the technology and whether it should be deployed in such high-stakes scenarios.

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Welcome to Edition 8.46 of the Rocket Report! We don't mention Starship in the body of this week's report, so I'll give a brief update here. The next test flight of SpaceX's mega-rocket—Flight 13—could happen as soon as next month, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and chief operating officer, in a recent interview with CNBC. There's still a fair bit of work to do before Flight 13, so don't count on a launch next month just yet. What we do know, based on Shotwell's comments to CNBC, is the next Starship test flight will look a lot like the previous one last month, with a suborbital flight path and a splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX is holding off on an orbital flight until at least the following launch, Flight 14, after the ship was unable to complete a critical engine restart in space on the last flight.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Isar test flight scrubbed again. Isar Aerospace still commands top position among a new generation of European rocket startups, but the company’s efforts to launch a critical test flight of its Spectrum rocket continue to encounter roadblocks, Ars reports. The latest delay came Monday, when Isar scrubbed a launch attempt after "detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems," according to a social media post. "The teams are analyzing the new data to isolate the root cause." Isar is flush with cash, having raised nearly $1 billion to date, but is still lacking in the critical currency of flight experience. The Spectrum rocket has flown just once to date, on a failed launch last year that lasted less than 30 seconds.

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MAJURO, Marshall Islands—Perched on the bow of an aluminum landing craft, Anne Cohen gazed a few yards ahead of the vessel toward a yellow robot gliding across the emerald Majuro lagoon.

The unmanned surface vehicle, called Yellowfin, was quickly becoming one of the coral researcher’s most dependable guides in these Central Pacific waters.

“She’s the best dive buddy,” said Cohen, a tenured scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod. Programmed to navigate to a precise set of coordinates, the robot cut through small swells like a tiny sailboat without a mast, directing Cohen toward a destination she had traveled thousands of miles to revisit.

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WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.—Just 10 months ago, NASA asked three companies if they could do something nobody had done before. Could they build and launch a satellite to save a $500 million astronomy mission at risk of crashing back to Earth? What's more, could they do it in less than a year on a tight budget?

Katalyst Space Technologies, a startup founded in 2020, presented the most compelling solution. "They came back with a response that was technically and programmatically plausible, and then we were like, 'Yeah, let’s do it,'" said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's astrophysics division.

That was in August of last year. In September, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to build, test, and launch a small satellite to chase down Swift and latch onto it with three robotic arms. Then, Katalyst's Link servicing spacecraft will boost Swift's orbit back to a safe operating altitude, allowing it to resume scientific observations. Easier said than done.

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Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers.

The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period. Both the credentials and the screenshots are then sent to the attacker through Tor, a network protocol that provides anonymous routing by sending traffic through redundant nodes so logs can’t capture both the sending and receiving IP addresses. Crypto Clipper establishes the Tor connection by using a SOCKS5 proxy, a network protocol that sends traffic through a proxy server, which then forwards it to its final destination.

A lightweight backdoor

“The execution of this clipper is notable because it does not depend on a traditional installer or exposed IP-based C2 infrastructure,” Microsoft said Thursday. “Instead, it deploys a portable Tor client, routes traffic through a local SOCKS5 proxy, and blends data theft with remote code execution, turning a financially motivated stealer into a lightweight backdoor.”

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Independent advisors for the Food and Drug Administration on Friday voted 9–0 in support of approving Moderna's seasonal mRNA flu vaccine, which a Trump appointee at the agency initially tried to block from even being reviewed.

In an all-day meeting, members of the FDA's advisory committee—known as VRBPAC for Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—pored over data and presentations on the vaccine, which is dubbed mRNA-1010 and branded as mFlusiva. The presentations included a review from FDA scientists, which was supportive of the vaccine.

Data from a Phase 3 trial including over 40,000 adults age 50 and older found the mRNA vaccine was around 27 percent more effective against seasonal flu than a standard flu shot. A smaller Phase 3 trial, involving data from nearly 3,000 people age 65 years and older, showed the shot produces stronger immune responses than a high-dose flu vaccine, which is recommended for this age group. The safety profile of the vaccine was also generally good.

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Taiwan’s existence as a self-governing democracy may depend heavily on having enough military drones to discourage any attempted invasion by China’s military. As the Taiwanese government aims to boost domestic production of military drones and Taiwanese citizens sign up for drone flight training, Taiwanese companies are forming international partnerships to sell more drones to the US military and other overseas buyers.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense proposed a special budget that would spend $6.6 billion over six years on buying drones made in Taiwan, according to the Central News Agency that represents the national news service of Taiwan. Presented on June 18, the budget proposal would allow the government to buy more than 208,000 coastal attack drones, along with more than 1,400 coastal reconnaissance drones and 1,320 uncrewed surface vessels, between 2026 and 2031.

That would be a significant boost to the Taiwanese military arsenal that currently includes just 5,000 US-made attack drones and domestically produced drones, according to Resilience Media. During military exercises in early June, Taiwanese soldiers fired Altius-600 loitering munition drones—made by a subsidiary of the US military technology company Anduril Industries—from towed flatbed launchers to strike offshore targets, according to USNI News. In another exercise earlier this year, Taiwanese Marines used Taiwan-made drones to similarly strike targets at sea.

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Three months ago, during a flashy event at its Washington, DC, headquarters, NASA announced that it was shifting the focus of its lunar plans from an orbital space station to a Moon base on the surface.

As part of this, officials said work would be paused on the Lunar Gateway planned to orbit the Moon. Of the two elements that were furthest along, NASA also revealed that one of them—the  Power and Propulsion Element—would be repurposed to serve as a core module for a nuclear-electric propulsion demonstration in deep space.

Less was said about the fate of the other major component, the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO). This is the large pressurized module, 6.1 meters long, in which visiting astronauts would spend the majority of their time when visiting the Lunar Gateway. NASA has awarded contracts worth $1.1 billion to Northrop Grumman to design, build, and integrate the habitation module with the Power and Propulsion Element.

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Almost 20 years ago, Google pitched Android as the more open alternative to Apple's walled garden. Last year, Google announced it would begin erecting its own walls through developer verification. The company has issued an update on its plans, affirming that the verification system will begin rolling out in select countries later this year. We're also learning which app stores are participating in verification and the timeline for key features like the recently revealed "advanced flow" for bypassing verification.

Google has claimed that developer verification is a necessary change to smartphone software distribution, pointing to the increased prevalence of scams that trick Android users into installing malware apps. Google's solution requires verifying the identities of developers outside the Play Store just like it does for devs publishing on its platform. This has proven to be a contentious change for myriad reasons.

In the new blog post, Google's Matthew Forsythe confirms that the developer verification system is slated to come online on September 30 of this year. The initial deployment will be limited to countries with a high level of app scams: Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

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Apple has updated its Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds to patch a high-severity vulnerability that could be exploited by nearby hackers to eavesdrop on users.

The vulnerability, CVE-2025-20701, allowed improper authentication in the firmware running on the Bluetooth-related chips, enabling people within signal range to impersonate devices that had previously been paired with the earbuds. The researchers demonstrated this in a series of end-to-end attacks that allowed them to eavesdrop on conversations or sounds within earshot of the phone microphone.

Apple joins the patch party

“Impact: An attacker within Bluetooth range may be able to listen through the microphone of a device which is not yet paired and actively seeking pair requests,” Apple said in a Tuesday security advisory. The fix is contained in Beats Firmware Update 1B211, which is delivered automatically while headphones are paired with and within Bluetooth range of a user’s iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Users can check their firmware version by going to Settings on their device, navigating to Bluetooth, and tapping the info button next to the headphones.

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In May, the federal government announced without warning that it would take apart a network of ocean monitoring systems that it had spent over $350 million to build. No reason was given for the decision to shut down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), but suspicion immediately focused on the network's role in tracking climate change.

But the OOI also provides data that's useful for weather forecasting and fisheries management, leading to widespread opposition. Today, it appears that the opposition has won, as the government will announce that it's reversing the decision. The big remaining question is how much damage the OOI took during the intervening month.

As of now, there is no formal statement available from the federal government. However, The New York Times reports that the decision will be announced later today, and Ars received a statement from Zoe Lofgren, the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, indicating that the decision has been made.

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A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake.

The new details come from a private investor list obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated.

In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” Bloomberg reported. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.

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