diff --git "a/raw_rss_feeds/https___arstechnica_com_feed_.xml" "b/raw_rss_feeds/https___arstechnica_com_feed_.xml" --- "a/raw_rss_feeds/https___arstechnica_com_feed_.xml" +++ "b/raw_rss_feeds/https___arstechnica_com_feed_.xml" @@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ https://arstechnica.com Serving the Technologist since 1998. News, reviews, and analysis. - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 16:40:40 +0000 + Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:45:07 +0000 en-US hourly @@ -19,760 +19,749 @@ 32 - Embark on a visual voyage of art inspired by black holes - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/ - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/#comments + The science of how (and when) we decide to speak out—or self-censor + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/the-science-of-how-and-when-we-decide-to-speak-out-or-self-censor/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/the-science-of-how-and-when-we-decide-to-speak-out-or-self-censor/#comments - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 16:40:40 +0000 - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:30:04 +0000 + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/the-science-of-how-and-when-we-decide-to-speak-out-or-self-censor/ - Conjuring the Void: The Art of Black Holes]]> + - Black holes have long captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public. These exotic objects—once thought to be merely hypothetical—have also conceptually inspired countless artists all over the world. A generous sampling of such work is featured in Conjuring the Void: The Art of Black Holes.

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Author Lynn Gamwell spent ten years as director of the New York Academy of Science's Gallery of Art and Science. She has an extensive background writing about the intersection of math, art, and science. So she was a natural choice to speak at the annual conference of Harvard's interdisciplinary Black Hole Initiative a few years ago. Gamwell focused her talk on the art of black holes, and thus the seeds for what would become Conjuring the Void were sown.

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"I was just astounded at how much art there is [about black holes], and I was specifically interested in Asian art," Gamwell told Ars. "There's just something about the concept of a black hole that resonates with the Eastern tradition. So many of the themes—the science of black holes, void, nothingness, being inescapable—relate to the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism and so on."

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+ Freedom of speech is a foundational principle of healthy democracies and hence a primary target for aspiring authoritarians, who typically try to squash dissent. There is a point where the threat from authorities is sufficiently severe that a population will self-censor rather than risk punishment. Social media has complicated matters, blurring traditional boundaries between public and private speech, while new technologies such as facial recognition and moderation algorithms give authoritarians powerful new tools.

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Researchers explored the nuanced dynamics of how people balance their desire to speak out vs their fear of punishment in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The authors had previously worked together on a model of political polarization, a project that wrapped up right around the time the social media space was experiencing significant changes in the ways different platforms were handling moderation. Some adopted a decidedly hands-off approach with little to no moderation. Weibo, on the other hand, began releasing the IP addresses of people who posted objectionable commentary, essentially making them targets.

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]]> - 23 + 36 - - -Courtesy of Lucas J. RougeuxLucas J. Rougeux, <em>Light Particles against a Black Hole</em>, 2021. Charcoal and acrylic on paper. + + +Shutterstock - In the ’90s, Wing Commander: Privateer made me realize what kind of games I love - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/#comments + Lawsuit over Trump rejecting medical research grants is settled + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/feds-researchers-settle-suit-over-grants-blocked-by-now-illegal-order/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/feds-researchers-settle-suit-over-grants-blocked-by-now-illegal-order/#comments - + - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 13:35:38 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:45:34 +0000 + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/feds-researchers-settle-suit-over-grants-blocked-by-now-illegal-order/ - Privateer did have been done better, but it's still a classic.]]> + - Ever since 1993, I think I've unconsciously judged almost every game by how well it can capture how Wing Commander: Privateer made me feel.

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Steam and PlayStation (the two platforms I use the most) have been doing a year-in-review summary akin to the wildly popular Spotify Wrapped for the past few years. Based on these, I can report that my most-played games in 2025 were, from most hours down:

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  1. No Man's Sky
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  2. Civilization VII
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  3. Assassin's Creed Shadows
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  4. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered
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  5. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
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  6. The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
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  7. World of Warcraft
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  8. Meridian 59
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  9. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
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  10. Unreal Tournament
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With the exceptions of Civilization VII and Unreal Tournament, every one of those games is some kind of open-world experience that's all about immersing you in a far-flung land (or galaxy).

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+ On Monday, the ACLU announced that it and other organizations representing medical researchers had reached a settlement in their suit against the federal government over grant applications that had been rejected under a policy that has since been voided by the court. The agreement, which still has to be approved by the judge overseeing the case, would see the National Institutes of Health restart reviews of grants that had been blocked on ideological grounds. It doesn't guarantee those grants will ultimately be funded, but it does mean they will go through the standard peer review process.

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The grants had previously been rejected without review because their content was ideologically opposed by the Trump administration. That policy has since been declared arbitrary and capricious, and thus in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, a decision that was upheld by the Supreme Court.

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How'd we get here?

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Immediately after taking office, the Trump Administration identified a number of categories of research, some of them extremely vague, that it would not be supporting: climate change, DEI, pandemic preparedness, gender ideology, and more. Shortly thereafter, federal agencies started cancelling grants that they deemed to contain elements of these disfavored topics, and blocking consideration of grant applications for the same reasons. As a result, grants were cancelled that funded everything from research into antiviral drugs to the incidence of prostate cancer in African Americans.

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]]> - 105 + 38 - - -GOGThis splash image is the original box art for the game, and what appealing box art it was. + + +The Washington Post - Ars Technica’s Top 20 video games of 2025 - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/ars-technicas-top-20-video-games-of-2025/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/ars-technicas-top-20-video-games-of-2025/#comments + DOGE did not find $2T in fraud, but that doesn’t matter, Musk allies say + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/#comments - + - Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:00:09 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/ars-technicas-top-20-video-games-of-2025/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:30:01 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/doge-did-not-find-2t-in-fraud-but-that-doesnt-matter-musk-allies-say/ - + - When we put together our top 20 games of last year, we specifically called out Civilization 7, Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Grand Theft Auto 6 as big franchise games we were already looking forward to for 2025. While one of those games has been delayed into 2026, the three others made this year's list of Ars' favorite games as expected. They join a handful of other highly anticipated sequels, ranging from big-budget blockbusters to long-gestating indies, on the "expected" side of this year's list.

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But the games that really stood out for me in 2025 were the ones that seemed to come out of nowhere. Those range from hard-to-categorize roguelike puzzle games to a gonzo, punishing mountainous walking simulation, the best Geometry Wars clone in years, and a touching look at the difficulties of adolescence through the surprisingly effective lens of mini-games.

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As we look toward 2026, there are plenty of other big-budget projects that the industry is busy preparing for (the delayed Grand Theft Auto VI chief among them). If next year is anything like this year, though, we can look forward to plenty more games that no one saw coming suddenly vaulting into view as new classics.

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+ Determining how "successful" Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) truly was depends on who you ask, but it's increasingly hard to claim that DOGE made any sizable dent in federal spending, which was its primary goal.

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Just two weeks ago, Musk himself notably downplayed DOGE as only being "a little bit successful" on a podcast, marking one of the first times that Musk admitted DOGE didn't live up to its promise. Then, more recently, on Monday, Musk revived evidence-free claims he made while campaigning for Donald Trump, insisting that government fraud remained vast and unchecked, seemingly despite DOGE's efforts. On X, he estimated that "my lower bound guess for how much fraud there is nationally is [about 20 percent] of the Federal budget, which would mean $1.5 trillion per year. Probably much higher."

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Musk loudly left DOGE in May after clashing with Trump, complaining that a Trump budget bill threatened to undermine DOGE's work. These days, Musk does not appear confident that DOGE was worth the trouble of wading into government. Although he said on the December podcast that he considered DOGE to be his "best side quest" ever, the billionaire confirmed that if given the chance to go back in time, he probably would not have helmed the agency as a special government employee.

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]]> - 152 + 103 - - -Collage by Aurich Lawson + + +Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images News - Being Santa Claus is a year-round calling - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/being-santa-claus-is-a-year-round-calling/ - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/being-santa-claus-is-a-year-round-calling/#comments + NJ’s answer to flooding: it has bought out and demolished 1,200 properties + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/as-floods-become-more-severe-a-new-jersey-program-provides-a-model/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/as-floods-become-more-severe-a-new-jersey-program-provides-a-model/#comments - + - Wed, 24 Dec 2025 16:23:35 +0000 - - - - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/being-santa-claus-is-a-year-round-calling/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:00:43 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/as-floods-become-more-severe-a-new-jersey-program-provides-a-model/ - + - Tis the season when professional Santas are in peak demand, but many who choose this line of work often view it as a higher calling and maintain some aspects of the identity all year round—even those who don't fit the stereotypical popular image of Santa, according to a paper published in the Academy of Management Journal.

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Co-author Christina Hymer of the University of Tennessee got the idea for the study during the COVID pandemic, when she spent a lot of time watching Christmas movies with her toddler. One favorite was 2003's Elf, starring Will Farrell as a full-sized human raised among elves who goes to New York City to find his biological father. The film prompted her to wonder about why someone would want to be Santa Claus and what their experiences in that role would be.

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Hymer and her co-authors partnered with the leader of a "Santa school" to analyze archival surveys of 849 professional Santas, and conducted a new survey of another 382 Santas. They also did over 50 personal interviews with professional Santas. (One subject showed up in full costume for his zoom interview, with a North Pole background, and signed off with a merry "ho! ho! ho!")

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+ MANVILLE, N.J.—Richard Onderko said he will never forget the terrifying Saturday morning back in 1971 when the water rose so swiftly at his childhood home here that he and his brother had to be rescued by boat as the torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Doria swept through the neighborhood.

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It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.

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Eventually, his parents moved to Florida, selling the two-story house on North Second Avenue in 1995. But the new homeowner didn’t do so well either when storms hit, and in 2015, the property was sold one final time: to a state-run program that buys and demolishes houses in flood zones and permanently restores the property to open space.

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]]> - 78 + 43 - - -inhauscreative via Getty Images + + +Bobby BankHeavy rains cause flooding in Manville, New Jersey on April 16, 2007. - SPEED Act passes in House despite changes that threaten clean power projects - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/speed-act-passes-in-house-despite-changes-that-threaten-clean-power-projects/ - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/speed-act-passes-in-house-despite-changes-that-threaten-clean-power-projects/#comments + Stranger Things series finale trailer is here + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/stranger-things-series-finale-trailer-is-here/ + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/stranger-things-series-finale-trailer-is-here/#comments - + - Wed, 24 Dec 2025 13:30:59 +0000 - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/speed-act-passes-in-house-despite-changes-that-threaten-clean-power-projects/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 19:00:00 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/stranger-things-series-finale-trailer-is-here/ - + - The House of Representatives cleared the way for a massive overhaul of the federal environmental review process last Thursday, despite last-minute changes that led clean energy groups and moderate Democrats to pull their support.

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The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, or SPEED Act, overcame opposition from environmentalists and many Democrats who oppose the bill’s sweeping changes to a bedrock environmental law.

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The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and backed by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), passed the House Thursday in a 221-196 vote, in which 11 Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to back the reform effort. It now heads to the Senate, where it has critics and proponents on both sides of the aisle, making its prospects uncertain.

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Stranger Things fans are hyped for the premiere of the hotly anticipated series finale on New Year's Eve: they'll either be glued to their TVs or heading out to watch it in a bona fide theater. Netflix has dropped one last trailer for the finale—not that it really needs to do anything more to boost anticipation.

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(Some spoilers for Vols. 1 and 2 below but no major Vol. 2 reveals.)

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As previously reported, in Vol. 1, we found Hawkins under military occupation and Vecna targeting a new group of young children in his human form under the pseudonym “Mr. Whatsit” (a nod to A Wrinkle in Time). He kidnapped Holly Wheeler and took her to the Upside Down, where she found an ally in Max, still in a coma, but with her consciousness hiding in one of Vecna’s old memories. Dustin was struggling to process his grief over losing Eddie Munson in S4, causing a rift with Steve. The rest of the gang was devoted to stockpiling supplies and helping Eleven and Hopper track down Vecna in the Upside Down. They found Kali/Eight, Eleven’s psychic “sister” instead, being held captive in a military laboratory.

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]]> - 95 + 24 - - -Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty ImagesRep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) speaks during a news conference in the US Capitol Visitor Center on Oct. 22. + + +Netflix - TV Technica: Our favorite shows of 2025 - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/tv-technica-our-favorite-shows-of-2025/ - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/tv-technica-our-favorite-shows-of-2025/#comments + Condé Nast user database reportedly breached, Ars unaffected + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/conde-nast-user-database-reportedly-breached-ars-unaffected/ + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/conde-nast-user-database-reportedly-breached-ars-unaffected/#comments - + - Wed, 24 Dec 2025 13:00:53 +0000 - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/tv-technica-our-favorite-shows-of-2025/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:45:54 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/conde-nast-user-database-reportedly-breached-ars-unaffected/ - + - Editor’s note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed shows that some might consider spoiler-y.

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This was a pretty good year for television, with established favorites sharing space on our list with some intriguing new shows. Streaming platforms reigned supreme, with Netflix and Apple TV dominating our list with seven and five selections each. Genre-wise, we've got a bit of everything: period dramas (The Gilded Age, Outrageous), superheroes (Daredevil: Born Again), mysteries (Ludwig, Poker Face, Dept. Q), political thrillers (The Diplomats, Slow Horses), science fiction (Andor, Severance, Alien: Earth), broody fantasy (The Sandman), and even an unconventional nature documentary (Underdogs).

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As always, we’re opting for an unranked list, with the exception of our “year’s best” selection at the very end, so you might look over the variety of genres and options and possibly add surprises to your eventual watchlist. We invite you to head to the comments and add your own favorite TV shows released in 2025.

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+ Earlier this month, a hacker named Lovely claimed to have breached a Condé Nast user database and released a list of more than 2.3 million user records from our sister publication WIRED. The released materials contain demographic information (name, email, address, phone, etc.) but no passwords.

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The hacker also says that they will release an additional 40 million records for other Condé Nast properties, including our other sister publications Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and more. Of critical note to our readers, Ars Technica was not affected as we run on our own bespoke tech stack.

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The hacker said that they had urged Condé Nast to patch vulnerabilities to no avail. “Condé Nast does not care about the security of their users data,” the hacker wrote. “It took us an entire month to convince them to fix the vulnerabilities on their websites. We will leak more of their users’ data (40+ million) over the next few weeks. Enjoy!”

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]]> - 195 + 58 - - -Collage by Aurich Lawson + + +Aurich Lawson - How AI coding agents work—and what to remember if you use them - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/how-do-ai-coding-agents-work-we-look-under-the-hood/ - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/how-do-ai-coding-agents-work-we-look-under-the-hood/#comments + Looking for friends, lobsters may stumble into an ecological trap + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/looking-for-friends-lobsters-may-stumble-into-an-ecological-trap/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/looking-for-friends-lobsters-may-stumble-into-an-ecological-trap/#comments - + - Wed, 24 Dec 2025 12:00:27 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/how-do-ai-coding-agents-work-we-look-under-the-hood/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 15:00:56 +0000 + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/looking-for-friends-lobsters-may-stumble-into-an-ecological-trap/ - + - AI coding agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google can now work on software projects for hours at a time, writing complete apps, running tests, and fixing bugs with human supervision. But these tools are not magic and can complicate rather than simplify a software project. Understanding how they work under the hood can help developers know when (and if) to use them, while avoiding common pitfalls.

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We'll start with the basics: At the core of every AI coding agent is a technology called a large language model (LLM), which is a type of neural network trained on vast amounts of text data, including lots of programming code. It's a pattern-matching machine that uses a prompt to "extract" compressed statistical representations of data it saw during training and provide a plausible continuation of that pattern as an output. In this extraction, an LLM can interpolate across domains and concepts, resulting in some useful logical inferences when done well and confabulation errors when done poorly.

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These base models are then further refined through techniques like fine-tuning on curated examples and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which shape the model to follow instructions, use tools, and produce more useful outputs.

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+ Lobsters are generally notable for their large claws, which can serve as a deterrent to any predators. But there's a whole family of spiny lobsters that lack these claws. They tend to ward off predators by forming large groups that collectively can present a lot of pointy bits towards anything attempting to eat them. In fact, studies found that the lobsters can sense the presence of other species-members using molecules emitted into the water, and use that to find peers to congregate with.

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A new study, however, finds that this same signal may lure young lobsters to their doom, causing them to try to congregate with older lobsters that are too big to be eaten by nearby predators. The smaller lobsters thus fall victim to a phenomenon called an "ecological trap," which has rarely been seen to occur without human intervention.

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Lobsters vs. groupers

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The study was performed in the waters off Florida, where the seafloor is dotted by what are called "solution holes." These features are the product of lower sea levels such as those that occur during periods of expanded glaciers and ice caps. During these times, much of the area off Florida was above sea level, and water dissolved the limestone rocks unevenly. This created an irregular array of small shallow pits and crevices, many of which have been reshaped by sea life since the area was submerged again.

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]]> - 155 + 18 - - -Getty + + +d3_plus D.Naruse @ Japan - China just carried out its second reusable launch attempt in three weeks - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/china-just-carried-out-its-second-reusable-launch-attempt-in-three-weeks/ - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/china-just-carried-out-its-second-reusable-launch-attempt-in-three-weeks/#comments + The top 5 most horrifying and fascinating medical cases of 2025 + https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/the-top-5-most-horrifying-and-fascinating-medical-cases-of-2025/ + https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/the-top-5-most-horrifying-and-fascinating-medical-cases-of-2025/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 21:22:38 +0000 - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/china-just-carried-out-its-second-reusable-launch-attempt-in-three-weeks/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:00:27 +0000 + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/the-top-5-most-horrifying-and-fascinating-medical-cases-of-2025/ - + - For the second time this month, a Chinese rocket designed for reuse successfully soared into low-Earth orbit on its first flight Monday, defying the questionable odds that burden the debuts of new launch vehicles.

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The first Long March 12A rocket, roughly the same height and diameter of SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9, lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 9:00 pm EST Monday (02:00 UTC Tuesday).

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Less than 10 minutes later, rocket's methane-fueled first stage booster hurtled through the atmosphere at supersonic speed, impacting in a remote region about 200 miles downrange from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China. The booster failed to complete a braking burn to slow down for landing at a prepared location near the edge of the Gobi Desert.

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+ There were a lot of horrifying things in the news this year—a lot. But some of it was horrifying in a good way.

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Extraordinary medical cases—even the grisly and disturbing ones—offer a reprieve from the onslaught of current events and the stresses of our daily lives. With those remarkable reports, we can marvel at the workings, foibles, and resilience of the human body. They can remind us of the shared indignities from our existence in these mortal meatsacks. We can clear our minds of worry by learning about something we never even knew we should worry about—or by counting our blessings for avoiding so far. And sometimes, the reports are just grotesquely fascinating.

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Every year, there's a new lineup of such curious clinical conditions. There are always some unfortunate souls to mark medical firsts or present ultra-rare cases. There is also an endless stream of humans making poor life choices—and arriving at an emergency department with the results. This year was no different.

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]]> - 134 + 45 - - -CASCChina's first Long March 12A rocket lifts off from a commercial launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. + + +Aurich Lawson | Getty Images - Leaked Avengers: Doomsday teaser is now public - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/steve-rogers-returns-in-avengers-doomsday-teaser/ - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/steve-rogers-returns-in-avengers-doomsday-teaser/#comments + The 10 best vehicles Ars Technica drove in 2025 + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/the-10-best-vehicles-ars-technica-drove-in-2025/ + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/the-10-best-vehicles-ars-technica-drove-in-2025/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 19:45:32 +0000 - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/steve-rogers-returns-in-avengers-doomsday-teaser/ + Tue, 30 Dec 2025 13:30:40 +0000 + + + + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/the-10-best-vehicles-ars-technica-drove-in-2025/ - Avatar: Fire and Ash.]]> + -
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You've no doubt heard some version of the Robert Burns adage about the best-laid plans. Marvel Studios had an elaborate marketing plan in place to introduce four teaser trailers for Avengers: Doomsday as previews prior to screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash, with one teaser rolling out each successive week. But the first one leaked online a few days early, revealing that (as rumored) Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) will appear and will have a newborn baby, presumably with Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter.

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So maybe you've seen a bootleg version floating around the Internet, but Marvel has now released the HD version to the public. Merry Christmas! And we can look forward to three more: one focused on Thor, one on Doctor Doom, and the final one is purportedly a more traditional teaser trailer.

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As previously reported, Marvel Studios originally planned to build its Phase Six Avengers arc (The Kang Dynasty) around Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror (and associated variants), introduced in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. But then Majors was convicted of domestic violence, and Marvel fired the actor soon after. That meant the studio needed to retool its Phase Six plans, culminating in the announced return of the Russo brothers, who directed four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most successful films, which brought in more than $6 billion at the global box office.

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+ 2025 has been a tumultuous year for the car world. After years of EV optimism, revanchists are pushing back against things like clean energy and fuel economy. Automakers have responded, postponing or canceling new electric vehicles in favor of gasoline-burning ones. It hasn't been all bad, though. Despite the changing winds, EV infrastructure continues to be built out and, anecdotally at least, feels far more reliable. We got to witness a pretty epic Formula 1 season right to the wire, in addition to some great sports car and Formula E racing. And we drove a whole bunch of cars, some of which stood out from the pack.

+

Here are the 10 best things we sat behind the wheel of in 2025.

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10th: Lotus Emira V6

+A lime green Lotus Emira at a highway lookout + A Lotus Emira doesn't need to be painted this bright color to remind you that driving can be a pleasure. + Credit: + Peter Nelson + +

Let's be frank: The supposed resurgence of Lotus hasn't exactly gone to plan. When Geely bought the British Automaker in 2017, many of us hoped that the Chinese company would do for Lotus what it did for Volvo, only in Hethel instead of Gothenburg. Even before tariffs and other protectionist measures undermined the wisdom of building new Lotuses in China, the fact that most of these new cars were big, heavy EVs had already made them a hard sell. But a more traditional Lotus exists and is still built in Norfolk, England: the Lotus Emira.

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]]> - 178 + 100 - - -Marvel Studios + + +Collage by Aurich Lawson - FCC’s import ban on the best new drones starts today - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/djis-new-drones-will-not-be-available-in-the-us-as-fcc-ban-takes-effect/ - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/djis-new-drones-will-not-be-available-in-the-us-as-fcc-ban-takes-effect/#comments + US can’t deport hate speech researcher for protected speech, lawsuit says + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/us-cant-deport-hate-speech-researcher-for-protected-speech-lawsuit-says/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/us-cant-deport-hate-speech-researcher-for-protected-speech-lawsuit-says/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:29:57 +0000 + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 21:30:29 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/djis-new-drones-will-not-be-available-in-the-us-as-fcc-ban-takes-effect/ + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/us-cant-deport-hate-speech-researcher-for-protected-speech-lawsuit-says/ - + - Americans will be unable to buy the latest and greatest drones because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has banned foreign-made drones as of today.

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On Monday, the FCC added drones to its Covered List, which it says are communications equipment and services “that are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons.” The list was already populated by Kaspersky, ZTE, Huawei, and others.

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An FCC fact sheet [PDF] about the ban released on Monday says:

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+ Imran Ahmed's biggest thorn in his side used to be Elon Musk, who made the hate speech researcher one of his earliest legal foes during his Twitter takeover.

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Now, it's the Trump administration, which planned to deport Ahmed, a legal permanent resident, just before Christmas. It would then ban him from returning to the United States, where he lives with his wife and young child, both US citizens.

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After suing US officials to block any attempted arrest or deportation, Ahmed was quickly granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Day. Ahmed had successfully argued that he risked irreparable harm without the order, alleging that Trump officials continue "to abuse the immigration system to punish and punitively detain noncitizens for protected speech and silence viewpoints with which it disagrees" and confirming that his speech had been chilled.

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]]> - 194 + 181 - - -GettyA DJI Mini 5 Pro drone. + + +House of Commons - PA Images / Contributor | PA ImagesImran Ahmed, the founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), giving evidence to joint committee seeking views on how to improve the draft Online Safety Bill designed to tackle social media abuse. - OpenAI’s child exploitation reports increased sharply this year - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/openais-child-exploitation-reports-increased-sharply-this-year/ - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/openais-child-exploitation-reports-increased-sharply-this-year/#comments + Leonardo’s wood charring method predates Japanese practice + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/did-one-line-in-a-leonardo-codex-anticipate-yakisugi/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/did-one-line-in-a-leonardo-codex-anticipate-yakisugi/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 17:02:26 +0000 - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/openais-child-exploitation-reports-increased-sharply-this-year/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:30:47 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/did-one-line-in-a-leonardo-codex-anticipate-yakisugi/ - + - OpenAI sent 80 times as many child exploitation incident reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children during the first half of 2025 as it did during a similar time period in 2024, according to a recent update from the company. The NCMEC’s CyberTipline is a Congressionally authorized clearinghouse for reporting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other forms of child exploitation.

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Companies are required by law to report apparent child exploitation to the CyberTipline. When a company sends a report, NCMEC reviews it and then forwards it to the appropriate law enforcement agency for investigation.

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Statistics related to NCMEC reports can be nuanced. Increased reports can sometimes indicate changes in a platform’s automated moderation, or the criteria it uses to decide whether a report is necessary, rather than necessarily indicating an increase in nefarious activity.

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+ Yakisugi is a Japanese architectural technique  for charring the surface of wood. It has become quite popular in bioarchitecture because the carbonized layer protects the wood from water, fire, insects, and fungi, thereby prolonging the lifespan of the wood. Yakisugi techniques were first codified in written form in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it seems Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the protective benefits of charring wood surfaces more than 100 years earlier, according to a paper published in Zenodo, an open repository for EU funded research.

+

Check the notes

+

As previously reported, Leonardo produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. The notebooks contain all manner of inventions that foreshadow future technologies: flying machines, bicycles, cranes, missiles, machine guns, an “unsinkable” double-hulled ship, dredges for clearing harbors and canals, and floating footwear akin to snowshoes to enable a person to walk on water. Leonardo foresaw the possibility of constructing a telescope in his Codex Atlanticus (1490)—he wrote of “making glasses to see the moon enlarged” a century before the instrument’s invention.

+

In 2003, Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Italy’s Museo Ideale, came across some recipes for mysterious mixtures while flipping through Leonardo’s notes. Vezzosi experimented with the recipes, resulting in a mixture that would harden into a material eerily akin to Bakelite, a synthetic plastic widely used in the early 1900s. So Leonardo may well have invented the first manmade plastic.

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]]> - 32 + 65 - - -NurPhoto + + +A. Di maria et al., 2025 - “Yo what?” LimeWire re-emerges in online rush to share pulled “60 Minutes” segment - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/yo-what-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-60-minutes-segment/ - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/yo-what-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-60-minutes-segment/#comments + Researchers make “neuromorphic” artificial skin for robots + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/researchers-make-neuromorphic-artificial-skin-for-robots/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/researchers-make-neuromorphic-artificial-skin-for-robots/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:18:22 +0000 - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/yo-what-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-60-minutes-segment/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 19:00:42 +0000 + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/researchers-make-neuromorphic-artificial-skin-for-robots/ - + - CBS cannot contain the online spread of a "60 Minutes" segment that its editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, tried to block from airing.

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The episode, "Inside CECOT," featured testimonies from US deportees who were tortured or suffered physical or sexual abuse at a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism. "Welcome to hell," one former inmate was told upon arriving, the segment reported, while also highlighting a clip of Donald Trump praising CECOT and its leadership for “great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don’t play games."

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Weiss controversially pulled the segment on Monday, claiming it could not air in the US because it lacked critical voices, as no Trump officials were interviewed. She claimed that the segment "did not advance the ball" and merely echoed others' reporting, NBC News reported. Her plan was to air the segment when it was "ready," insisting that holding stories "for whatever reason" happens "every day in every newsroom."

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+ The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming from still other neurons.

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Now, researchers have used spiking circuitry to build an artificial robotic skin, adopting some of the principles of how signals from our sensory neurons are transmitted and integrated. While the system relies on a few decidedly not-neural features, it has the advantage that we have chips that can run neural networks using spiking signals, which would allow this system to integrate smoothly with some energy-efficient hardware to run AI-based control software.

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Location via spikes

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The nervous system in our skin is remarkably complex. It has specialized sensors for different sensations: heat, cold, pressure, pain, and more. In most areas of the body, these feed into the spinal column, where some preliminary processing takes place, allowing reflex reactions to be triggered without even involving the brain. But signals do make their way along specialized neurons into the brain, allowing further processing and (potentially) conscious awareness.

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]]> - 249 + 26 - - -Bari Weiss joined CBS in October. + + +Prostock-Studio - F1’s new engines are causing consternation over compression ratios - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/f1s-new-engines-are-causing-consternation-over-compression-ratios/ - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/f1s-new-engines-are-causing-consternation-over-compression-ratios/#comments + China drafts world’s strictest rules to end AI-encouraged suicide, violence + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/china-drafts-worlds-strictest-rules-to-end-ai-encouraged-suicide-violence/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/china-drafts-worlds-strictest-rules-to-end-ai-encouraged-suicide-violence/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 15:25:38 +0000 - - - - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/f1s-new-engines-are-causing-consternation-over-compression-ratios/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:30:45 +0000 + + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/china-drafts-worlds-strictest-rules-to-end-ai-encouraged-suicide-violence/ - + - There's still another couple of months before the 2026 crop of F1 cars takes to the track for the first preseason test. It's a year of big change for the sport, which is adopting new power unit rules that place much more emphasis on the electric motor's contribution. The switch to the new power units was meant to attract new manufacturers to the sport, and in that regard, it has succeeded. But controversy has erupted already as loopholes appear and teams exploit them.

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Since 2014, F1 cars have used 1,000 hp (745 kW) power units that combine a turbocharged 1.6 L V6 gasoline engine with a pair of hybrid systems. One is the MGU-H, which recovers energy from (or deploys it to) the turbocharger's turbine; the other is a 160 hp (120 kW) MGU-K that harvests and deploys energy at the rear wheels. Starting next year, the MGU-H is gone, and the less-powerful 1.6 L V6 should generate about 536 hp (400 kW). That will be complemented by a 483 hp (350 kW) MGU-K, plus a much larger battery to supply it.

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And the new rules have already attracted new OEMs to the sport. After announcing its departure at the end of 2021—sort of— Honda changed its mind and signed on to the 2026 regs, supplying Aston Martin. Audi signed up and bought the Sauber team. Red Bull decided to build its own internal combustion engines, hiring heavily from the Mercedes program, but Ford is providing Red Bull with the MGU-K and the rest of the hybrid system. And Cadillac has started an engine program, albeit one that won't take the grid until 2029.

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+ China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence.

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China's Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. If finalized, they would apply to any AI products or services publicly available in China that use text, images, audio, video, or "other means" to simulate engaging human conversation. Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, told CNBC that the "planned rules would mark the world’s first attempt to regulate AI with human or anthropomorphic characteristics" at a time when companion bot usage is rising globally.

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Growing awareness of problems

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In 2025, researchers flagged major harms of AI companions, including promotion of self-harm, violence, and terrorism. Beyond that, chatbots shared harmful misinformation, made unwanted sexual advances, encouraged substance abuse, and verbally abused users. Some psychiatrists are increasingly ready to link psychosis to chatbot use, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend, while the most popular chatbot in the world, ChatGPT, has triggered lawsuits over outputs linked to child suicide and murder-suicide.

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]]> - 145 + 119 - - -FIA + + +Mininyx Doodle | iStock / Getty Images Plus - The Splay is a subpar monitor but an exciting portable projector  - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-splay-is-a-subpar-monitor-but-an-exciting-portable-projector/ - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-splay-is-a-subpar-monitor-but-an-exciting-portable-projector/#comments + A quirky guide to myths and lore based in actual science + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/a-quirky-guide-to-myths-and-lore-based-in-actual-science/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/a-quirky-guide-to-myths-and-lore-based-in-actual-science/#comments - + - Tue, 23 Dec 2025 12:30:06 +0000 - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-splay-is-a-subpar-monitor-but-an-exciting-portable-projector/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 15:30:52 +0000 + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/a-quirky-guide-to-myths-and-lore-based-in-actual-science/ - + Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore]]> - Since I’m fascinated by new display technologies and by improving image quality, I’ve never been a fan of home projectors. Projectors lack the image quality compared to good TVs and monitors, and they’re pretty needy. Without getting into the specific requirements of different models, you generally want a darker room with a large, blank wall for a projector to look its best. That can be a lot to ask for, especially in small, densely decorated homes like mine.

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That said, a projector can be a space-efficient alternative to a big-screen TV or help you watch TV or movies outside. A projector can be versatile when paired with the right space, especially if that projector makes sure the “right space” is included in the device.

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The Splay was crowdfunded in 2021, and its maker, Arovia, describes it as the “first fully collapsible monitor and projector.” In short, it’s a portable projector with an integrated fabric shroud that can serve as a big-screen (24.5 or 34.5 inches diagonally, depending on the model) portable monitor. Or, you can take off the fabric shroud and use the Splay as an ultra-short-throw projector and cast a display that measures up to 80 inches diagonally onto a wall.

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+ Earthquakes, volcanic eruption, eclipses, meteor showers, and many other natural phenomena have always been part of life on Earth. In ancient cultures that predated science, such events were often memorialized in myths and legends. There is a growing body of research that strives to connect those ancient stories with the real natural events that inspired them. Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor has put together a fascinating short compendium of such insights with Mythopedia: A Brief Compendium of Natural History Lore, from dry quicksand and rains of frogs to burning lakes, paleoburrows, and Scandinavian "endless winters."

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Mayor's work has long straddled multiple disciplines, but one of her specialities is best described as geomythology, a term coined in 1968 by Indiana University geologist Dorothy Vitaliano, who was interested in classical legends about Atlantis and other civilizations that were lost due to natural disasters. Her interest resulted in Vitaliano's 1973 book Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins.

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Mayor herself became interested in the field when she came across Greek and Roman descriptions of fossils, and that interest expanded over the years to incorporate other examples of "folk science" in cultures around the world. Her books include The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (2009), as well as Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & the Scorpion Bombs (2022), exploring the origins of biological and chemical warfare. Her 2018 book, Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology, explored ancient myths and folklore about creating automation, artificial life, and AI, connecting them to the robots and other ingenious mechanical devices actually designed and built during that era.

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]]> - 29 + 42 - - -Scharon HardingThe Arovia Splay in monitor mode. + + +Princeton University Press - In a surprise announcement, Tory Bruno is out as CEO of United Launch Alliance - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/in-a-surprise-announcement-tory-bruno-is-out-as-ceo-of-united-launch-alliance/ - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/in-a-surprise-announcement-tory-bruno-is-out-as-ceo-of-united-launch-alliance/#comments + GPS is vulnerable to jamming—here’s how we might fix it + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/gps-is-vulnerable-to-jamming-heres-how-we-might-fix-it/ + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/gps-is-vulnerable-to-jamming-heres-how-we-might-fix-it/#comments - + - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 23:51:44 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/in-a-surprise-announcement-tory-bruno-is-out-as-ceo-of-united-launch-alliance/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 15:10:16 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/gps-is-vulnerable-to-jamming-heres-how-we-might-fix-it/ - + - Tory Bruno, a veteran engineer and aerospace industry executive, has resigned from the top job at United Launch Alliance after more than a decade competing against the growing dominance of SpaceX, the company announced Monday.

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The news of Bruno's sudden resignation was unexpected. His tenure was marked by a decline in ULA's market share as rival SpaceX competed for and won ever-larger US government launch contracts. More recently, Bruno oversaw the successful debut of ULA's Vulcan rocket, followed by struggles to ramp up the new rocket's launch cadence.

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Bruno had a 30-year career as an engineer and general manager for Lockheed Martin's ballistic missile programs before taking over as president and CEO of United Launch Alliance in August 2014. He arrived as SpaceX started making inroads with its partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket, and ULA's leading position in the US launch market looked to be in doubt.

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+ In September 2025, a Widerøe Airlines flight was trying to land in Vardø, Norway, which sits in the country’s far eastern arm, some 40 miles from the Russian coast. The cloud deck was low, and so was visibility. In such gray situations, pilots use GPS technology to help them land on a runway and not the side of a mountain.

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But on this day, GPS systems weren’t working correctly, the airwaves jammed with signals that prevented airplanes from accessing navigation information. The Widerøe flight had taken off during one of Russia’s frequent wargames, in which the country’s military simulates conflict as a preparation exercise. This one involved an imaginary war with a country. It was nicknamed Zapad-2025—translating to “West-2025”—and was happening just across the fjord from Vardø. According to European officials, GPS interference was frequent in the runup to the exercise. Russian forces, they suspected, were using GPS-signal-smashing technology, a tactic used in non-pretend conflict, too. (Russia has denied some allegations of GPS interference in the past.)

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Without that guidance from space, and with the cloudy weather, the Widerøe plane had to abort its landing and continue down the coast away from Russia, to Båtsfjord, a fishing village.

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]]> - 162 + 72 - - -NASA/Joel KowskyTory Bruno, the former president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, participates in a news conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in 2024. + + +Luis Alvarez - Call of Duty co-creator and Battlefield lead Vince Zampella dies in car crash - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/vince-zampella-developer-of-call-of-duty-and-battlefield-games-dies-at-55/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/vince-zampella-developer-of-call-of-duty-and-battlefield-games-dies-at-55/#comments + Remembering what Windows 10 did right—and how it made modern Windows more annoying + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/remembering-the-best-and-worst-about-windows-10-on-the-year-it-technically-died/ + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/remembering-the-best-and-worst-about-windows-10-on-the-year-it-technically-died/#comments - + - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:35:51 +0000 - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/vince-zampella-developer-of-call-of-duty-and-battlefield-games-dies-at-55/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:00:01 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/remembering-the-best-and-worst-about-windows-10-on-the-year-it-technically-died/ - + - Vince Zampella, a video game developer who has co-created or helmed some of the most popular franchises in the world, died in a car crash on a Los Angeles highway at 12:45 pm Pacific time on Sunday, December 21. He was 55 years old.

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According to the California Highway Patrol, Zampella was in a car on Angeles Crest Highway when the vehicle veered off the road and crashed into a concrete barrier. No other vehicles were reported to be part of the crash.

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A passenger was ejected from the vehicle, while the driver was trapped inside after the vehicle caught fire. The driver died at the scene, and the passenger died after being taken to the hospital. The report did not indicate whether Zampella was the passenger or the driver.

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+ If you've been following our coverage for the last few years, you'll already know that 2025 is the year that Windows 10 died. Technically.

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"Died," because Microsoft's formal end-of-support date came and went on October 14, as the company had been saying for years. "Technically," because it's trivial for home users to get another free year of security updates with a few minutes of effort, and schools and businesses can get an additional two years of updates on top of that, and because load-bearing system apps like Edge and Windows Defender will keep getting updates through at least 2028 regardless.

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But 2025 was undoubtedly a tipping point for the so-called "last version of Windows." StatCounter data says Windows 11 has overtaken Windows 10 as the most-used version of Windows both in the US (February 2025) and worldwide (July 2025). Its market share slid from just over 44 percent to just under 31 percent in the Steam Hardware Survey. And now that Microsoft's support for the OS has formally ended, games, apps, and drivers are already beginning the gradual process of ending or scaling back official Windows 10 support.

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]]> - 133 + 216 - - -The Game AwardsVince Zampella at The Game Awards. + + +Microsoft - Safety panel says NASA should have taken Starliner incident more seriously - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/safety-panel-says-nasa-should-have-taken-starliner-incident-more-seriously/ - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/safety-panel-says-nasa-should-have-taken-starliner-incident-more-seriously/#comments + I switched to eSIM in 2025, and I am full of regret + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/i-switched-to-esim-in-2025-and-i-am-full-of-regret/ + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/i-switched-to-esim-in-2025-and-i-am-full-of-regret/#comments - + - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 21:11:11 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/safety-panel-says-nasa-should-have-taken-starliner-incident-more-seriously/ + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 12:45:50 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/i-switched-to-esim-in-2025-and-i-am-full-of-regret/ - + - For the better part of two months last year, most of us had no idea how serious the problems were with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station. A safety advisory panel found this uncertainty also filtered through NASA's workforce.

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On its first Crew Test Flight, Boeing's Starliner delivered NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the space station in June 2024. They were the first people to fly to space on a Starliner spacecraft after more than a decade of development and setbacks. The astronauts expected to stay at the ISS for one or two weeks, but ended up remaining in orbit for nine months after NASA officials determined it was too risky to return them to Earth in the Boeing-built crew capsule. Wilmore and Williams flew back to Earth last March on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

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The Starliner capsule was beset by problems with its maneuvering thrusters and pernicious helium leaks on its 27-hour trip from the launch pad to the ISS. For a short time, Starliner commander Wilmore lost his ability to control the movements of his spacecraft as it moved in for docking at the station in June 2024. Engineers determined that some of the thrusters were overheating and eventually recovered most of their function, allowing Starliner to dock with the ISS.

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+ SIM cards, the small slips of plastic that have held your mobile subscriber information since time immemorial, are on the verge of extinction. In an effort to save space for other components, device makers are finally dropping the SIM slot, and Google is the latest to move to embedded SIMs with the Pixel 10 series. After long avoiding eSIM, I had no choice but to take the plunge when the time came to review Google's new phones. And boy, do I regret it.

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The journey to eSIM

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SIM cards have existed in some form since the '90s. Back then, they were credit card-sized chunks of plastic that occupied a lot of space inside the clunky phones of the era. They slimmed down over time, going through the miniSIM, microSIM, and finally nanoSIM eras. A modern nanoSIM is about the size of your pinky nail, but space is at a premium inside smartphones. Enter, eSIM.

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The eSIM standard was introduced in 2016, slowly gaining support as a secondary option in smartphones. Rather than holding your phone number on a removable card, an eSIM is a programmable, non-removable component soldered to the circuit board. This allows you to store multiple SIMs and swap between them in software, and no one can swipe your SIM card from the phone. They also take up half as much space compared to a removable card, which is why OEMs have begun dropping the physical slot.

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]]> - 139 + 311 - - -Photo by Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty ImagesA detailed view of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 2021. + + +Ryan WhitwamNanoSIMs are tiny, but phone makers still want to get rid of them. - World’s largest shadow library made a 300TB copy of Spotify’s most streamed songs - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/worlds-largest-shadow-library-brags-it-scraped-300tb-of-spotify-music-metadata/ - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/worlds-largest-shadow-library-brags-it-scraped-300tb-of-spotify-music-metadata/#comments + Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/big-tech-basically-took-trumps-unpredictable-trade-war-lying-down/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/big-tech-basically-took-trumps-unpredictable-trade-war-lying-down/#comments - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 19:34:22 +0000 - + Mon, 29 Dec 2025 12:00:29 +0000 + - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/worlds-largest-shadow-library-brags-it-scraped-300tb-of-spotify-music-metadata/ + + + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/big-tech-basically-took-trumps-unpredictable-trade-war-lying-down/ - + - The world's largest shadow library—which is increasingly funded by AI developers—shocked the Internet this weekend by announcing it had "backed up Spotify" and started distributing 300 terabytes of metadata and music files in bulk torrents.

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According to Anna's Archive, the data grab represents more than 99 percent of listens on Spotify, making it "the largest publicly available music metadata database with 256 million tracks." It's also "the world’s first 'preservation archive' for music which is fully open," with 86 million music files, the archive boasted.

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The music files supposedly represent about 37 percent of songs available on Spotify as of July 2025. The scraped files were prioritized by popularity, with Anna's Archive weeding out many songs that are never streamed or are of poor quality, such as AI-generated songs.

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+ As the first year of Donald Trump's chaotic trade war winds down, the tech industry is stuck scratching its head, with no practical way to anticipate what twists and turns to expect in 2026.

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Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump's unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect "a little pain" after he issued executive orders imposing 10–25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

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Costs of tariffs only got higher as the year wore on. But the tech industry has done very little to push back against them. Instead, some of the biggest companies made their own surprising moves after Trump's trade war put them in deeply uncomfortable positions.

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]]> - 137 + 254 - - -picture alliance / Contributor | picture alliance + + +Aurich Lawson | Getty Images - US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/us-government-finds-new-excuse-to-stop-construction-of-offshore-wind/ - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/us-government-finds-new-excuse-to-stop-construction-of-offshore-wind/#comments + Embark on a visual voyage of art inspired by black holes + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/#comments - + - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:29:42 +0000 - + Fri, 26 Dec 2025 16:40:40 +0000 + - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/us-government-finds-new-excuse-to-stop-construction-of-offshore-wind/ + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/embark-on-a-visual-voyage-of-art-inspired-by-black-holes/ - + Conjuring the Void: The Art of Black Holes]]> - On Monday, the US Department of the Interior announced that it was pausing the leases on all five offshore wind sites currently under construction in the US. The move comes despite the fact that these projects already have installed significant hardware in the water and on land; one of them is nearly complete. In what appears to be an attempt to avoid legal scrutiny, the Interior is blaming the decisions on a classified report from the Department of Defense.

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The second Trump administration announced its animosity toward offshore wind power literally on day one, issuing an executive order on inauguration day that called for a temporary halt to issuing permits for new projects pending a re-evaluation. Earlier this month, however, a judge vacated that executive order, noting that the government has shown no indication that it was even attempting to start the re-evaluation it said was needed.

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But a number of projects have gone through the entire permitting process, and construction has started. Before today, the administration had attempted to stop these in an erratic, halting manner. Empire Wind, an 800 MW farm being built off New York, was stopped by the Department of the Interior, which alleged that it had been rushed through permitting. That hold was lifted following lobbying and negotiations by New York and the project developer Orsted, and the Department of the Interior never revealed why it changed its mind. When the Interior Department blocked a second Orsted project, Revolution Wind offshore of southern New England, the company took the government to court and won a ruling that let it continue construction.

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+ Black holes have long captured the imagination of both scientists and the general public. These exotic objects—once thought to be merely hypothetical—have also conceptually inspired countless artists all over the world. A generous sampling of such work is featured in Conjuring the Void: The Art of Black Holes.

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Author Lynn Gamwell spent ten years as director of the New York Academy of Science's Gallery of Art and Science. She has an extensive background writing about the intersection of math, art, and science. So she was a natural choice to speak at the annual conference of Harvard's interdisciplinary Black Hole Initiative a few years ago. Gamwell focused her talk on the art of black holes, and thus the seeds for what would become Conjuring the Void were sown.

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"I was just astounded at how much art there is [about black holes], and I was specifically interested in Asian art," Gamwell told Ars. "There's just something about the concept of a black hole that resonates with the Eastern tradition. So many of the themes—the science of black holes, void, nothingness, being inescapable—relate to the philosophy of Buddhism and Taoism and so on."

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]]> - 336 + 25 - - -glegorly + + +Courtesy of Lucas J. RougeuxLucas J. Rougeux, <em>Light Particles against a Black Hole</em>, 2021. Charcoal and acrylic on paper. - Odyssey trailer brings the myth to vivid life - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/odyssey-trailer-brings-the-myth-to-vivid-life/ - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/odyssey-trailer-brings-the-myth-to-vivid-life/#comments + In the ’90s, Wing Commander: Privateer made me realize what kind of games I love + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/ + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/#comments - + - Mon, 22 Dec 2025 17:43:42 +0000 - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/odyssey-trailer-brings-the-myth-to-vivid-life/ + Fri, 26 Dec 2025 13:35:38 +0000 + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/in-the-90s-wing-commander-privateer-made-me-realize-what-kind-of-games-i-love/ - + Privateer did have been done better, but it's still a classic.]]> -
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Director Christopher Nolan won two well-deserved Oscars for 2023's Oppenheimer, and Hollywood was soon buzzing about what his next project might be. A vampire period piece, perhaps? Or maybe a reboot of 1983's Blue Thunder or British 1960s spy series The Prisoner? Instead, Nolan chose to adapt one of the greatest epic sagas in history: Homer's Odyssey. At long last, Universal has released the first official trailer for Nolan's The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon as the wandering Ithacan king. Frankly, it looks appropriately epic.

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Most of us read some version of The Odyssey in high school, so we're familiar with the story: Odysseus, legendary Greek king of Ithaca, begins the long journey home after 10 years of fighting in the Trojan War. (We actually catch a glimpse of the famous Trojan horse in the trailer.) But the journey does not go smoothly, as Odysseus and his men encounter the cyclops Polyphemus, the Sirens, and an enchantress named Circe, among other obstacles. Meanwhile, his long-suffering wife Penelope is warding off hundreds of suitors eager to usurp Odysseus' position.

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It's difficult to overestimate the tremendous influence Homer's epic has had on global culture. Nolan himself recalled seeing the Odyssey performed as a school play when he was just 5 or 6 years old. "I remember the Sirens and him being strapped to the mast and things like that," he recently told Empire. "I think it's in all of us, really. And when you start to break down the text and adapt it, you find that all of these other films—and all the films I've worked on—you know, they're all from the Odyssey. It's foundational."

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+ Ever since 1993, I think I've unconsciously judged almost every game by how well it can capture how Wing Commander: Privateer made me feel.

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Steam and PlayStation (the two platforms I use the most) have been doing a year-in-review summary akin to the wildly popular Spotify Wrapped for the past few years. Based on these, I can report that my most-played games in 2025 were, from most hours down:

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  1. No Man's Sky
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  2. Civilization VII
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  3. Assassin's Creed Shadows
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  4. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion Remastered
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  5. The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
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  6. The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind
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  7. World of Warcraft
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  8. Meridian 59
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  9. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
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  10. Unreal Tournament
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With the exceptions of Civilization VII and Unreal Tournament, every one of those games is some kind of open-world experience that's all about immersing you in a far-flung land (or galaxy).

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]]> - 164 + 156 - - -YouTube/Universal Pictures + + +GOGThis splash image is the original box art for the game, and what appealing box art it was. \ No newline at end of file