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, 12 Dec 2025 16:10:31 +0000 + Fri, 19 Dec 2025 03:29:31 +0000 en-US hourly @@ -19,751 +19,767 @@ 32 - Apple loses its appeal of a scathing contempt ruling in iOS payments case - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/epic-celebrates-the-end-of-the-apple-tax-after-appeals-court-win-in-ios-payments-case/ - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/epic-celebrates-the-end-of-the-apple-tax-after-appeals-court-win-in-ios-payments-case/#comments + These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/heres-why-nasa-and-the-space-force-are-interested-in-pizza-shaped-satellites/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/heres-why-nasa-and-the-space-force-are-interested-in-pizza-shaped-satellites/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:00:23 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/epic-celebrates-the-end-of-the-apple-tax-after-appeals-court-win-in-ios-payments-case/ + Fri, 19 Dec 2025 03:18:51 +0000 + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/heres-why-nasa-and-the-space-force-are-interested-in-pizza-shaped-satellites/ - + - Back in April, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers delivered a scathing judgment finding that Apple was in “willful violation” of her 2021 injunction intended to open up iOS App Store payments. That contempt of court finding has now been almost entirely upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a development that Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney tells Ars he hopes will “do a lot of good for developers and start to really change the App Store situation worldwide, I think.”

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The ruling, signed by a panel of three appellate court judges, affirmed that Apple’s initial attempts to charge a 27 percent fee to iOS developers using outside payment options “had a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction.” Similarly, Apple’s restrictions on how those outside links had to be designed were overly broad; the appeals court suggests that Apple can only ensure that internal and external payment options are presented in a similar fashion.

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The appeals court also agreed that Apple acted in “bad faith” by refusing to comply with the injunction, rejecting viable, compliant alternatives in internal discussions. And the appeals court was also not convinced by Apple’s process-focused arguments, saying the district court properly evaluated materials Apple argued were protected by attorney-client privilege.

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+ Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design.

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The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at 12:03 am EST (05:03 UTC). A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers).

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The launch was the starting gun for a “proof of concept” mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats. These satellites were designed by the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit federally funded research and development center. The project is jointly financed by NASA and the US Space Force, which paid for DiskSat’s development and launch, respectively.

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]]> - 8 + 10 - - -Getty ImagesA rare "total eclipse" of Apple by Epic Games, captured on camera. + + +NASAAn artist's illustration of DiskSats deploying from a rocket in low-Earth orbit. - Senator endorses discredited doctor’s book that claims chemical treats autism, cancer - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/senator-endorses-discredited-doctors-book-that-claims-chemical-treats-autism-cancer/ - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/senator-endorses-discredited-doctors-book-that-claims-chemical-treats-autism-cancer/#comments + Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian’s Wall + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/study-roman-soldiers-battled-parasites-at-hadrians-wall/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/study-roman-soldiers-battled-parasites-at-hadrians-wall/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:33:32 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/senator-endorses-discredited-doctors-book-that-claims-chemical-treats-autism-cancer/ + Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:36 +0000 + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/study-roman-soldiers-battled-parasites-at-hadrians-wall/ - + Giardia duodenalis.]]> - For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines.

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He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching.

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The book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license.

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+ It probably sucked to be a Roman soldier guarding Hadrian’s Wall circa the third century CE. W.H. Auden imagined the likely harsh conditions in his poem “Roman Wall Blues,” in which a soldier laments enduring wet wind and rain with “lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.” We can now add chronic nausea and bouts of diarrhea to his list of likely woes, thanks to parasitic infections, according to a new paper published in the journal Parasitology.

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As previously reported, archaeologists can learn a great deal by studying the remains of intestinal parasites in ancient feces. For instance, in 2022, we reported on an analysis of soil samples collected from a stone toilet found within the ruins of a swanky 7th-century BCE villa just outside Jerusalem. That analysis revealed the presence of parasitic eggs from four different species: whipworm, beef/pork tapeworm, roundworm, and pinworm. (It’s the earliest record of roundworm and pinworm in ancient Israel.)

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Later that same year, researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia analyzed the residue on an ancient Roman ceramic pot excavated at the site of a 5th-century CE Roman villa at Gerace, a rural district in Sicily. They identified the eggs of intestinal parasitic worms commonly found in feces—strong evidence that the 1,500-year-old pot in question was most likely used as a chamber pot.

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]]> - 36 + 27 - - - Scott OlsonSenator Ron Johnson (R-WI) gives a thumbs up to chlorine dioxide. + + +Vindolanda TrustThird-century baths and latrine block at Vindolanda, the Roman fort close to Hadrian’s Wall in the UK. - Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing “Giga” satellites - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/investors-commit-quarter-billion-dollars-to-startup-designing-giga-satellites/ - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/investors-commit-quarter-billion-dollars-to-startup-designing-giga-satellites/#comments + Trump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/trump-commits-to-moon-landing-by-2028-followed-by-a-lunar-outpost-two-years-later/ + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/trump-commits-to-moon-landing-by-2028-followed-by-a-lunar-outpost-two-years-later/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:23:57 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/investors-commit-quarter-billion-dollars-to-startup-designing-giga-satellites/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:05:42 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/trump-commits-to-moon-landing-by-2028-followed-by-a-lunar-outpost-two-years-later/ - + - A startup established three years ago to churn out a new class of high-power satellites has raised $250 million to ramp up production at its Southern California factory.

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The company, named K2, announced the cash infusion on Thursday. K2’s Series C fundraising round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional funding from investment firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. K2 has now raised more than $400 million since its founding in 2022 and is on track to launch its first major demonstration mission next year, officials said.

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K2 aims to take advantage of a coming abundance of heavy- and super-heavy-lift launch capacity, with SpaceX’s Starship expected to begin deploying satellites as soon as next year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launched twice this year and will fly more in 2026 while engineers develop an even larger New Glenn with additional engines and more lift capability.

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+ A couple of hours after a judge formally swore in private astronaut Jared Isaacman as the next administrator of NASA on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order outlining his space policy objectives for the next three years.

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The executive order, titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” states that the country must “pursue a space policy that will extend the reach of human discovery, secure the nation’s vital economic and security interests, unleash commercial development, and lay the foundation for a new space age.”

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White House sets priorities

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There is nothing Earth-shattering in the new executive order, as much of it builds on previously announced policies that span multiple administrations. There are some notable points in the document that clearly reflect the White House’s priorities, though, and Isaacman’s leadership of NASA.

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]]> - 10 + 137 - - -K2K2's Gravitas satellite, set for launch early next year, will test the company's Hall-effect thruster, solar arrays, and other systems. + + +NASA/Bill IngallsNASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, left, along with NASA employees, welcomes NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters Building in Washington on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. - How to break free from smart TV ads and tracking - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-guide-to-dumb-tvs/ - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-guide-to-dumb-tvs/#comments + YouTube bans two popular channels that created fake AI movie trailers + https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/youtube-bans-two-popular-channels-that-created-fake-ai-movie-trailers/ + https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/youtube-bans-two-popular-channels-that-created-fake-ai-movie-trailers/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:30:22 +0000 - + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:39:54 +0000 + + - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/the-ars-technica-guide-to-dumb-tvs/ + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/youtube-bans-two-popular-channels-that-created-fake-ai-movie-trailers/ - + - Smart TVs can feel like a dumb choice if you’re looking for privacy, reliability, and simplicity.

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Today’s TVs and streaming sticks are usually loaded up with advertisements and user tracking, making offline TVs seem very attractive. But ever since smart TV operating systems began making money, “dumb” TVs have been hard to find.

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In response, we created this non-smart TV guide that includes much more than dumb TVs. Since non-smart TVs are so rare, this guide also breaks down additional ways to watch TV and movies online and locally without dealing with smart TVs’ evolution toward software-centric features and snooping. We’ll discuss a range of options suitable for various budgets, different experience levels, and different rooms in your home.

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+ Google is generally happy to see people using generative AI tools to create content, and it’s doubly happy when they publish it on its platforms. But there are limits to everything. Two YouTube channels that attracted millions of subscribers with AI-generated movie trailers have been shuttered.

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Screen Culture and KH Studio flooded the site with fake but often believable trailers. The channels, which had a combined audience of more than 2 million subscribers, became a thorn in Google’s side in early 2025 when other YouTubers began griping about their sudden popularity in the age of AI. The channels produced videos with titles like “GTA: San Andreas (2025) Teaser Trailer” and “Malcom In The Middle Reboot (2025) First Trailer.” Of course, neither of those projects exist, but that didn’t stop them from appearing in user feeds.

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Google demonetized the channels in early 2025, forcing them to adopt language that made it clear they were not official trailers. The channels were able to monetize again, but the disclaimers were not consistently used. Indeed, many of the most popular videos from those channels in recent months included no “parody” or “concept trailer” disclosures. Now, visiting either channel’s page on YouTube produces an error reading, “This page isn’t available. Sorry about that. Try searching for something else.”

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]]> - 77 + 50 - - -Aurich Lawson | Getty Images + + +Getty Images | NurPhoto - Chatbot-powered toys rebuked for discussing sexual, dangerous topics with kids - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/chatbot-powered-toys-rebuked-for-discussing-sexual-dangerous-topics-with-kids/ - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/chatbot-powered-toys-rebuked-for-discussing-sexual-dangerous-topics-with-kids/#comments + Peacock showing ads upon launch opens the door for more disruptive streaming ads + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/peacock-showing-ads-upon-launch-opens-the-door-for-more-disruptive-streaming-ads/ + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/peacock-showing-ads-upon-launch-opens-the-door-for-more-disruptive-streaming-ads/#comments - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:15:02 +0000 - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/chatbot-powered-toys-rebuked-for-discussing-sexual-dangerous-topics-with-kids/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:18:21 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/peacock-showing-ads-upon-launch-opens-the-door-for-more-disruptive-streaming-ads/ - + - Protecting children from the dangers of the online world was always difficult, but that challenge has intensified with the advent of AI chatbots. A new report offers a glimpse into the problems associated with the new market, including the misuse of AI companies’ large language models (LLMs).

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In a blog post today, the US Public Interest Group Education Fund (PIRG) reported its findings after testing AI toys (PDF). It described AI toys as online devices with integrated microphones that let users talk to the toy, which uses a chatbot to respond.

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AI toys are currently a niche market, but they could be set to grow. More consumer companies have been eager to shoehorn AI technology into their products so they can do more, cost more, and potentially give companies user tracking and advertising data. A partnership between OpenAI and Mattel announced this year could also create a wave of AI-based toys from the maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels, as well as its competitors.

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+ Peacock subscribers will see ads immediately upon opening the streaming app or website next year. It’s a bold new strategy for attracting advertisers—something that’s been increasingly important to subscription-based streaming services—but it also risks alienating viewers

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As reported by Variety, the new type of ads will display on the profile selection page that shows when a subscriber launches Peacock. Starting next year, instead of the profile page just showing your different Peacock profiles, most of the page will be dominated by an advertorial image. The circles of NBCUniversal-owned characters selected for user profiles will be relegated to a vertical column on the screen’s left side, as you can see here.

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To avoid seeing what NBCUniversal is calling “Arrival Ads” every time you open Peacock, you need to subscribe to Peacock’s most expensive plan, which is ad-free and starts at $17 per month (Peacock’s ad-based plans start at $8/month.)

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]]> - 44 + 68 - - -AliloAlilo’s Smart AI Bunny is connected to the Internet and claims to use GPT-4o mini. + + +NBCUniversalDakota Fanning (left) and Sarah Snook (right) in a scene from the Peacock original series <em>All Her Fault</em>. - Rocket Report: Neutron’s Hungry Hippo is deemed ready, whither Orbex? - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/rocket-report-neutrons-hungry-hippo-is-deemed-ready-whither-orbex/ - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/rocket-report-neutrons-hungry-hippo-is-deemed-ready-whither-orbex/#comments + Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/reminder-donate-to-win-swag-in-our-annual-charity-drive-sweepstakes-18/ + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/reminder-donate-to-win-swag-in-our-annual-charity-drive-sweepstakes-18/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 12:00:49 +0000 - - - - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/rocket-report-neutrons-hungry-hippo-is-deemed-ready-whither-orbex/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:35:58 +0000 + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/reminder-donate-to-win-swag-in-our-annual-charity-drive-sweepstakes-18/ - + - Welcome to Edition 8.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week concerns the decision by SpaceX founder Elon Musk to take the company public, via IPO, sometime within the next 12 to 18 months. Musk confirmed this after Ars published a story on Wednesday evening. This understandably raises questions about whether a future SpaceX will be committed more to AI data centers in space or Mars settlement. However, one of the company’s founding employees, Tom Mueller, said this could benefit the company’s Mars plans. Clearly this is something we’ll be following closely.

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As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

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Avio will build solid rocket motors in Virginia. The governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, announced Wednesday that Avio USA has selected his state to produce solid rocket motors for defense and commercial space propulsion purposes. Avio USA’s investment, which will be up to $500 million, is supported by its Italian parent Avio. The company’s factory will encompass 860,000 sq. feet.

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+ If you’ve been too busy planning for Half-Life 3 to take part in this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes, don’t worry. You still have time to donate to a good cause and get a chance to win your share of over $4,000 worth of swag (no purchase necessary to win).

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In the first week or so of the drive, over 300 readers have contributed nearly $18,000 to either the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Child’s Play as part of the charity drive (Child’s Play has a roughly 55/45 donation lead at the moment). That’s still a long way from 2020’s record haul of over $58,000, but there’s plenty of time until the Charity Drive wraps up on Friday, January 2, 2026.

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That doesn’t mean you should put your donation off, though. Do yourself and the charities involved a favor and give now while you’re thinking about it.

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]]> - 31 + 2 - - -Rocket LabRocket Lab has completed qualification testing of its "Hungry Hippo" payload fairing. + + +Kyle OrlandJust some of the prizes you can win in this years Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstakes. - Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic announced as a KOTOR spiritual successor - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/star-wars-fate-of-the-old-republic-announced-as-a-kotor-spiritual-successor/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/star-wars-fate-of-the-old-republic-announced-as-a-kotor-spiritual-successor/#comments + RAM and SSD prices are still climbing—here’s our best advice for PC builders + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/for-just-a-couple-of-months-in-the-middle-of-2025-it-was-an-ok-time-to-build-a-pc/ + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/for-just-a-couple-of-months-in-the-middle-of-2025-it-was-an-ok-time-to-build-a-pc/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 02:51:40 +0000 + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:31:03 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/star-wars-fate-of-the-old-republic-announced-as-a-kotor-spiritual-successor/ + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/for-just-a-couple-of-months-in-the-middle-of-2025-it-was-an-ok-time-to-build-a-pc/ - KOTOR director Casey Hudson returns to Star Wars with new studio Arcanaut.]]> + - Over two decades after the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, a new project described as a “spiritual successor” to that seminal RPG series was announced at The Game Awards Thursday night. Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will be a collaboration between Lucasfilm Games and Arcanaut Studios, a new development house being launched by original KOTOR director Casey Hudson.

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Hudson, who will serve as director on the new game, said in an interview with StarWars.com that he has remained in contact with Lucasfilm since the KOTOR days, in the hopes of being able to collaborate in the Star Wars universe again. “It took the right conditions to get everything to line up,” he told the site.

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Calling KOTOR “one of the defining experiences of my career,” Hudson said he wants to “explore a contemporary vision” of the Star Wars universe and “deliver on the combination of player agency and immersion in Star Wars” that defined the original games. As director on the upcoming game, Hudson said he sees his role as “to gather and shape a cohesive vision that the entire team contributes to. Ensuring that everyone shares that vision and understands their part in creating it is critical to the success of a project.”

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+ The first few months of 2025 were full of graphics card reviews where we generally came away impressed with performance and completely at a loss on availability and pricing. The testing in these reviews is useful regardless, but when it came to extra buying advice, the best we could do was to compare Nvidia’s imaginary pricing to AMD’s imaginary pricing and wait for availability to improve.

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Now, as the year winds down, we’re facing price spikes for memory and storage that are unlike anything I’ve seen in two decades of pricing out PC parts. Pricing for most RAM kits has increased dramatically since this summer, driven by overwhelming demand for these parts in AI data centers. Depending on what you’re building, it’s now very possible that the memory could be the single most expensive component you buy; things are even worse now than they were the last time we compared prices a few weeks ago.

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ComponentAug. 2025 priceNov. 2025 priceDec. 2025 price
Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR-6000$49$110$189
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 500GB$45$69$102*
Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200$34$89$104
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 1TB$64$111$135*
Team T-Force Vulcan 32GB DDR5-6000$82$310$341
Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 2TB$115$154$190*
Western Digital WD Black SN7100 2TB$130$175$210
Team Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6400$190$700$800
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Some SSDs are getting to the point where they’re twice as expensive as they were this summer (for this comparison, I’ve swapped the newer WD Blue SN5100 pricing in for the SN5000, since the drive is both newer and slightly cheaper as of this writing). Some RAM kits, meanwhile, are around four times as expensive as they were in August. Yeesh.

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]]> - 51 + 58 - - -An unknown crew searches for answers on a rainy planet. + + +Andrew CunninghamThe 16GB version of AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT. It's one of the products to come out of a bad year for PC building. - Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles for you - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spent-the-past-decade-designing-1400-puzzles-for-you/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spent-the-past-decade-designing-1400-puzzles-for-you/#comments + School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn’t an error. + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/florida-schools-plan-to-vastly-expand-use-of-ai-that-mistook-clarinet-for-gun/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/florida-schools-plan-to-vastly-expand-use-of-ai-that-mistook-clarinet-for-gun/#comments - + - Fri, 12 Dec 2025 01:50:08 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/jonathan-blow-has-spent-the-past-decade-designing-1400-puzzles-for-you/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:04:35 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/florida-schools-plan-to-vastly-expand-use-of-ai-that-mistook-clarinet-for-gun/ - Order of the Sinking Star started small but became a "combinatoric explosion."]]> + - Back in 2016, after six-and-a-half years spent working on puzzle-adventure opus The Witness, Jonathan Blow says he needed a break. He tells Ars that the project he started in The Witness’ wake was meant to serve as a quick proof of concept for a new engine and programming language he was working on. “It was supposed to be a short game,” that could be finished in “like a year and a half or two years,” he said.

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Now, after nine years of development—and his fair share of outspoken, controversial statements—Blow is finally approaching the finish line on that “short game.” He said Order of the Sinking Star—which was announced Thursday via a Game Awards trailer ahead of a planned 2026 release—now encompasses around 1,400 individual puzzles that could take completionists 400 to 500 hours to fully conquer.

- - Jonathan Blow, seen here probably thinking about puzzles. - Credit: - Thekla, Inc. - -

“I don’t know why I convinced myself it was going to be a small game,” Blow told me while demonstrating a preview build to Ars last week. “But once we start things, I just want to do the good version of the thing, right? I always make it as good as it can be.”

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+ A Florida middle school was locked down last week after an AI security system called ZeroEyes mistook a clarinet for a gun, reviving criticism that AI may not be worth the high price schools pay for peace of mind.

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Human review of the AI-generated false flag did not stop police from rushing to Lawton Chiles Middle School. Cops expected to find “a man in the building, dressed in camouflage with a ‘suspected weapon pointed down the hallway, being held in the position of a shouldered rifle,'” a Washington Post review of the police report said.

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Instead, after finding no evidence of a shooter, cops double-checked with dispatchers who confirmed that a closer look at the images indicated that “the suspected rifle might have been a band instrument.” Among panicked students hiding in the band room, police eventually found the suspect, a student “dressed as a military character from the Christmas movie Red One for the school’s Christmas-themed dress-up day,” the Post reported.

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]]> - 49 + 130 - - -Thekla, Inc.One down, hundreds more to go + + +Westend61 | Westend61 - Runway claims its GWM-1 “world models” can stay coherent for minutes at a time - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/with-gwm-1-family-of-world-models-runway-shows-ambitions-beyond-hollywood/ - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/with-gwm-1-family-of-world-models-runway-shows-ambitions-beyond-hollywood/#comments + LLMs’ impact on science: Booming publications, stagnating quality + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/llms-impact-on-science-booming-publications-stagnating-quality/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/llms-impact-on-science-booming-publications-stagnating-quality/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:47:33 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/with-gwm-1-family-of-world-models-runway-shows-ambitions-beyond-hollywood/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:54:36 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/llms-impact-on-science-booming-publications-stagnating-quality/ - + - AI company Runway has announced what it calls its first world model, GWM-1. It’s a significant step in a new direction for a company that has made its name primarily on video generation, and it’s part of a wider gold rush to build new frontier of models as large language models and image and video generation move into a refinement phase, no longer an untapped frontier.

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GWM-1 is a blanket term for a trio of autoregression models, each built on top of Runway’s Gen-4.5 text-to-video generation model and then post-trained with domain-specific data for different kinds of applications. Here’s what each does.

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GWM Worlds

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GWM Worlds offers an interface for digital environment exploration with real-time user input that affects the generation of coming frames, which Runway suggests can remain consistent and coherent “across long sequences of movement.”

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+ There have been a number of high-profile cases where scientific papers have had to be retracted because they were filled with AI-generated slop—the most recent coming just two weeks ago. These instances raise serious questions about the quality of peer review in some journals—how could anyone let a figure with terms like “runctitional,” “fexcectorn,” and “frymblal” through, especially given the ‘m’ in frymblal has an extra hump? But it has not been clear whether these high-profile examples are representative. How significantly has AI use been influencing the scientific literature?

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A collaboration of researchers at Berkeley and Cornell have decided to take a look. They’ve scanned three of the largest archives of pre-publication papers and identified ones that are likely to have been produced using Large Language Models. And they found that, while researchers produce far more papers after starting to use AI and the quality of the language used went up, the publication rate of these papers has dropped.

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Searching the archives

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The researchers began by obtaining the abstracts of everything placed in three major pre-publication archives between 2018 and mid-2024. At the arXiv, this netted them 1.2 million documents; another 675,000 were found in the Social Science Research Network; and bioRxiv provided another 220,000. So, this was both a lot of material to work with and covered a lot of different fields of research. It also included documents that were submitted before Large Language Models were likely to be able to produce output that would be deemed acceptable.

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]]> - 54 + 37 - - -RunwayRunway claims GWM Worlds can simulate movement in vehicles or boats, not just on foot. + + +selimaksan - Instead of fixing WoW’s new floating house exploit, Blizzard makes it official - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/instead-of-fixing-wows-new-floating-house-exploit-blizzard-makes-it-official/ - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/instead-of-fixing-wows-new-floating-house-exploit-blizzard-makes-it-official/#comments + Neural DSP models John Mayer’s entire amp and effects rig—and it sounds great + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/neuraldsp-models-john-mayers-entire-amp-and-effects-rig-and-it-sounds-great/ + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/neuraldsp-models-john-mayers-entire-amp-and-effects-rig-and-it-sounds-great/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:03:02 +0000 - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/12/instead-of-fixing-wows-new-floating-house-exploit-blizzard-makes-it-official/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 19:27:24 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/neuraldsp-models-john-mayers-entire-amp-and-effects-rig-and-it-sounds-great/ - + - Long-time World of Warcraft players have been waiting 21 years for the new in-game housing features that Blizzard officially announced last year and which launched in early access last week. Shortly after that launch, though, players quickly discovered a way to make their houses float high above the ground by exploiting an unintended, invisible UI glitch.

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Now, Blizzard says that the overwhelming response to that accidental house hovering has been so strong that it’s pivoting to integrate it as an official part of the game.

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“We were going to fix flying houses to bring them back to terra firma, but you all made such awesome stuff, so we made it possible with the base UI instead,” WoW Principal Designer Jesse Kurlancheek posted on social media Tuesday. Lead Producer Kyle Hartline followed up on that announcement with some behind-the-scenes gossip: “Like no joke we had an ops channel about how to roll out the float fix but folks shared like 5 of the dopest houses and we all kinda immediately agreed this was way too cool to change,” he wrote.

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+ Guitarists today are spoiled for choice, and that goes doubly true for players who use computer-based amp modeling software. I’m one such player, and I don’t miss the size, weight, deafening volume, or cost of owning an amp and cabinet collection, to say nothing of all those pedals and cables. For clean to mid-gain tones alone, I already have more terrific options than I need, including Neural DSP’s Tone King and Cory Wong and Mateus Asato, Polychrome DSP’s Lumos, and Universal Audio’s new Paradise Guitar Studio. All work slightly differently, but they can each output record-ready tones that are really, really close to the (often incredibly expensive) hardware that they model, and they each give you plenty of great-sounding presets to start from.

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So do we really need one amp sim package?

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Neural DSP thinks we do, because the Finnish company just dropped a major new release yesterday called Archetype: John Mayer X. It doesn’t model Mayer’s type of gear but his actual hardware units, along with all the actual settings he uses in the studio and on stage. It even has some presets that he designed. Which is great if you want to sound like John Mayer—but what does the software offer for those of us not trying to cover Continuum?

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]]> - 30 + 44 - - -Twitter / ZorbixWhy build a real treehouse when you can build one in <em>World of Warcraft</em>? + + +Screenshot. - OpenAI releases GPT-5.2 after “code red” Google threat alert - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/openai-releases-gpt-5-2-after-code-red-google-threat-alert/ - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/openai-releases-gpt-5-2-after-code-red-google-threat-alert/#comments + NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-will-soon-find-out-if-the-perseverance-rover-can-really-persevere-on-mars/ + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-will-soon-find-out-if-the-perseverance-rover-can-really-persevere-on-mars/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 21:27:18 +0000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/openai-releases-gpt-5-2-after-code-red-google-threat-alert/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 18:12:18 +0000 + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-will-soon-find-out-if-the-perseverance-rover-can-really-persevere-on-mars/ - + - On Thursday, OpenAI released GPT-5.2, its newest family of AI models for ChatGPT, in three versions called Instant, Thinking, and Pro. The release follows CEO Sam Altman’s internal “code red” memo earlier this month, which directed company resources toward improving ChatGPT in response to competitive pressure from Google’s Gemini 3 AI model.

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“We designed 5.2 to unlock even more economic value for people,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s chief product officer, said during a press briefing with journalists on Thursday. “It’s better at creating spreadsheets, building presentations, writing code, perceiving images, understanding long context, using tools and then linking complex, multi-step projects.”

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As with previous versions of GPT-5, the three model tiers serve different purposes: Instant handles faster tasks like writing and translation; Thinking spits out simulated reasoning “thinking” text in an attempt to tackle more complex work like coding and math; and Pro spits out even more simulated reasoning text with the goal of delivering the highest-accuracy performance for difficult problems.

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+ When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars nearly five years ago, NASA officials thought the next American lander to take aim on the red planet would be taking shape by now.

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At the time, the leaders of the space agency expected this next lander could be ready for launch as soon as 2026—or more likely in 2028. Its mission would have been to retrieve Martian rock specimens collected by the Perseverance rover, then billed as the first leg of a multilaunch, multibillion-dollar Mars Sample Return campaign.

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Here we are on the verge of 2026, and there’s no sample retrieval mission nearing the launch pad. In fact, no one is building such a lander at all. NASA’s strategy for a Mars Sample Return, or MSR, mission remains undecided after the projected cost of the original plan ballooned to $11 billion. If MSR happens at all, it’s now unlikely to launch until the 2030s.

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]]> - 69 + 43 - - -Benj Edwards / OpenAI + + +NASA/JPLThe Perseverance rover looks back on its tracks on the floor of Jezero Crater in 2022. - Supergirl teaser gives us a likably imperfect Kara Zor-El - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/milly-alcock-is-out-for-revenge-in-supergirl-teaser/ - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/milly-alcock-is-out-for-revenge-in-supergirl-teaser/#comments + For the lazy techie: These are Ars staff’s last-minute holiday gift picks + https://arstechnica.com/shopping/2025/12/for-the-lazy-techie-these-are-ars-staffs-last-minute-holiday-gift-picks/ + https://arstechnica.com/shopping/2025/12/for-the-lazy-techie-these-are-ars-staffs-last-minute-holiday-gift-picks/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:25:08 +0000 - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/12/milly-alcock-is-out-for-revenge-in-supergirl-teaser/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 17:55:22 +0000 + + + + + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/shopping/2025/12/for-the-lazy-techie-these-are-ars-staffs-last-minute-holiday-gift-picks/ - + -
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Warner Bros. has been hinting all week that it was coming and finally dropped the long-awaited first extended teaser trailer for Supergirl, directed by Craig Gillespie and starring Milly Alcock in the title role.

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Plans for a Supergirl movie date all the way back to 2018, but the merger that produced Warner Bros. Discovery scuttled the original concept. James Gunn and Peter Safran came in as co-CEOs of the new DC Studios and announced plans for a “soft reboot” of the DC universe, starting with this summer’s Superman. Sasha Calle played Supergirl for a brief appearance in 2023’s The Flash, but despite having signed a multi-year contract, Gunn and Safran decided to go in a different direction for their standalone film and cast Alcock (House of the Dragon) instead.

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Gunn particularly wanted to distance this new version of Supergirl from earlier incarnations, especially how the character was portrayed by Melissa Benoist in the Arrowverse series that ran from 2015–2021. He wanted someone less earnest, more of a contrast to David Corenswet’s wholesome Superman. “This is a story-based medium; we want stories to be in theaters that are cool and different from each other,” Gunn said at a media briefing. “And this movie is not exactly just a female clone of Superman. It’s its own thing entirely. And with a character who’s equally worthy of this treatment.”

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+ The holidays have snuck up on us. How is it already that time?

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If you’re on top of things and have already bought all your Christmas gifts, I commend you. Not all of us are so conscientious. In fact, one of us is so behind on holiday prep that he is not only running late on buying gifts; he’s also behind on publishing the Ars staff gift guide he said he’d write. (Whoever could we be talking about?)

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So for my fellow last-minute scramblers, I polled Ars writers and editors for gift ideas they know will be solid because they’ve actually used them. As such, you’ll find gift options below that Ars staffers have used enough to feel good about recommending. Further, I made sure all of these are available for delivery before Christmas as of today, at least where I live.

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]]> - 69 + 43 - - -YouTube/Warner Bros + + +Aurich Lawson | Getty Images - Disney says Google AI infringes copyright “on a massive scale” - https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/disney-says-google-ai-infringes-copyright-on-a-massive-scale/ - https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/disney-says-google-ai-infringes-copyright-on-a-massive-scale/#comments + Does swearing make you stronger? Science says yes. + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/does-swearing-make-you-stronger-science-says-yes/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/does-swearing-make-you-stronger-science-says-yes/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 19:29:29 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/12/disney-says-google-ai-infringes-copyright-on-a-massive-scale/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:46:33 +0000 + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/does-swearing-make-you-stronger-science-says-yes/ - + - The Wild West of copyrighted characters in AI may be coming to an end. There has been legal wrangling over the role of copyright in the AI era, but the mother of all legal teams may now be gearing up for a fight. Disney has sent a cease and desist to Google, alleging the company’s AI tools are infringing Disney’s copyrights “on a massive scale.”

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According to the letter, Google is violating the entertainment conglomerate’s intellectual property in multiple ways. The legal notice says Google has copied a “large corpus” of Disney’s works to train its gen AI models, which is believable, as Google’s image and video models will happily produce popular Disney characters—they couldn’t do that without feeding the models lots of Disney data.

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The C&D also takes issue with Google for distributing “copies of its protected works” to consumers. So all those memes you’ve been making with Disney characters? Yeah, Disney doesn’t like that, either. The letter calls out a huge number of Disney-owned properties that can be prompted into existence in Google AI, including The Lion King, Deadpool, and Star Wars.

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+ If you’re human, you’ve probably hollered a curse word or two (or three) when barking your shin on a table edge or hitting your thumb with a hammer. Perhaps you’ve noticed that this seems to lessen your pain. There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that this is indeed the case. The technical term is the “hypoalgesic effect of swearing.” Cursing can also improve physical strength and endurance, according to a new paper published in the journal American Psychologist.

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As previously reported, co-author Richard Stephens, a psychologist at Keele, became interested in studying the potential benefits of profanity after noting his wife’s “unsavory language” while giving birth and wondered if profanity really could help alleviate pain. “Swearing is such a common response to pain. There has to be an underlying reason why we do it,” Stephens told Scientific American after publishing a 2009 study that was awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Peace Prize.

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For that study, Stephens and his colleagues asked 67 study participants (college students) to immerse their hands in a bucket of ice water. They were then instructed to either swear repeatedly using the profanity of their choice or chant a neutral word. Lo and behold, the participants said they experienced less pain when they swore and were also able to leave their hands in the bucket about 40 seconds longer than when they weren’t swearing. It has been suggested that this is a primitive reflex that serves as a form of catharsis.

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]]> - 60 + 106 - - -Aurich Lawson + + +Aurich Lawson/Getty - Ars Live: 3 former CDC leaders detail impacts of RFK Jr.’s anti-science agenda - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/ars-live-3-former-cdc-leaders-detail-impacts-of-rfk-jr-s-anti-science-agenda/ - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/ars-live-3-former-cdc-leaders-detail-impacts-of-rfk-jr-s-anti-science-agenda/#comments + Formula 1 is deploying new jargon for 2026 + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/formula-1-is-deploying-new-jargon-for-2026/ + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/formula-1-is-deploying-new-jargon-for-2026/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:33:45 +0000 - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/12/ars-live-3-former-cdc-leaders-detail-impacts-of-rfk-jr-s-anti-science-agenda/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:52:45 +0000 + + + https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/formula-1-is-deploying-new-jargon-for-2026/ - + - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in critical condition. This year, the premier public health agency had its funding brutally cut and staff gutted, its mission sabotaged, and its headquarters riddled with literal bullets. The over 500 rounds fired were meant for its scientists and public health experts, who endured only to be sidelined, ignored, and overruled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist hellbent on warping the agency to fit his anti-science agenda.

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Then, on August 27, Kennedy fired CDC Director Susan Monarez just weeks after she was confirmed by the Senate. She had refused to blindly approve vaccine recommendations from a panel of vaccine skeptics and contrarians that he had hand-selected. The agency descended into chaos, and Monarez wasn’t the only one to leave the agency that day.

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Three top leaders had reached their breaking point and coordinated their resignations upon the dramatic ouster: Drs. Demetre Daskalakis, Debra Houry, and Daniel Jernigan walked out of the agency as their colleagues rallied around them.

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+ While not quite a separate dialect, Formula 1-speak can be heavy on the jargon at times. They say “box” instead of pit, “power unit” to describe the engine and hybrid system, and that’s before we get into all the aerodynamics-related expressions like “outwash” and “dirty air.” Next year is a big technical shakeup for the sport, and it seems we’re getting some new terminology to go with it. So forget your DRS and get ready to talk about Boost mode instead.

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The F1 car of 2026 will be slightly narrower and slightly lighter than the machines that raced for the last time earlier this month. But not by a huge amount: minimum weight is decreased by 30 kg to 724 kg, the wheelbase is 200 mm shorter at 3,400 mm, and the car’s underfloor is 150 mm narrower than before.

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The front wing is 100 mm narrower and has just two elements to it, although for the first time in F1 history, this is now an active wing, which works in conjunction with the three-element active rear wing. Active rear wings have been a thing in F1 since the introduction of DRS—the drag reduction system—in 2011, but now there’s a philosophical change to how they’ll work.

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]]> - 20 + 83 - - -Getty | Elijah NouvelageFormer Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials Dan Jernigan, Deb Houry, and Demetre Daskalakis smile as employees and supporters of the CDC line up outside its global headquarters on August 28, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. The three officials were honored after resigning in the wake of CDC director Susan Monarez's ouster. + + +Formula 1A render of the 2026 F1 car. - Gazelle’s Arroyo offers a belt drive, continuous variable transmission - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/gazelles-new-arroyo-a-high-end-commute-bike/ - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/gazelles-new-arroyo-a-high-end-commute-bike/#comments + The inside story of SpaceX’s historic rocket landing that changed launch forever + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/ten-years-ago-spacex-turned-tragedy-into-triumph-with-a-historic-rocket-landing/ + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/ten-years-ago-spacex-turned-tragedy-into-triumph-with-a-historic-rocket-landing/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:26:17 +0000 - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/gazelles-new-arroyo-a-high-end-commute-bike/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:00:22 +0000 + + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/ten-years-ago-spacex-turned-tragedy-into-triumph-with-a-historic-rocket-landing/ - + - A little while back, we took a look at a large cargo bike from Urban Arrow that had some interesting features: a drive train that sported continuous variable gearing and a belt drive. But it was difficult to get a feel for what using that drivetrain was like when it was being used to shift a large and extremely heavy cargo bike. So, I jumped at the opportunity when Urban Arrow’s sister company, Gazelle, offered a chance to ride one of its new Arroyo models, which feature the same drivetrain, but this time coupled to a fairly standard commuter bike.

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Getting rid of all the weight and bulk really allowed the drive system to shine. And, as with its cargo-carrying cousin, the bike is filled with thoughtful touches and design decisions that make riding it a pleasure. But all that comes at a cost: This is a premium bike with little in the way of compromises, and it’s priced accordingly.

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High-end hardware

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The Arroyo line is meant for commuters and urban/suburban riding. It has a step-through frame, a large rack, fenders, and its riding stance is very upright. In keeping with its Dutch heritage, it’s meant to be ridden as a bicycle, rather than a bike-like scooter. There’s no throttle to let you avoid pedaling, and even when it’s set to its maximum assist rating, you’ll end up putting in a reasonable amount of effort during the ride. If you’re looking for something that lets you handle a commute in hot weather without sweating, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.

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+ On Dec. 21, 2015, SpaceX launched the Orbcomm-2 mission on an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket. That night, just days before Christmas, the company successfully landed the first stage for the first time. The story behind this remarkable achievement is nowhere more fully told than in the book Reentry, authored by Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger and published in 2024. To mark the tenth anniversary, Ars is reprinting a slightly condensed chapter from the book that tells the inside story of this landing. The chapter begins in June 2015 with a tragedy, the disintegration of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the CRS-7 cargo supply mission for NASA. It was the first time a Falcon 9 had been lost in flight.

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Seconds after the Dragon-bearing Falcon 9 rocket broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, David Giger shouted into his headset, “Dragon is alive!”

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In the decade since he joined the company straight out of graduate school, Giger had taken on management of the entire Dragon program, reporting directly to Elon Musk. He watched the CRS-7 launch from mission control in Hawthorne not with a particular role, but rather providing a leadership presence. Giger could sense the Dragon mission team, mostly younger engineers, freeze up as video showed debris from the rocket showering back to Earth. A lot of the people involved in the hairy early flights of Dragon, including the C2 mission in 2012, had moved on to other positions at SpaceX or departed.

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]]> - 53 + 75 - - -John TImmer + + +SpaceXSpaceX lands a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time in December 2015. - Fewer EVs need fewer batteries: Ford and SK On end their joint venture - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/fewer-evs-need-fewer-batteries-ford-and-sk-on-end-their-joint-venture/ - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/fewer-evs-need-fewer-batteries-ford-and-sk-on-end-their-joint-venture/#comments + NASA finally—and we really do mean it this time—has a full-time leader + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-finally-and-we-really-do-mean-it-this-time-has-a-full-time-leader/ + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-finally-and-we-really-do-mean-it-this-time-has-a-full-time-leader/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:33:52 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/12/fewer-evs-need-fewer-batteries-ford-and-sk-on-end-their-joint-venture/ + Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:19:11 +0000 + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-finally-and-we-really-do-mean-it-this-time-has-a-full-time-leader/ - + - Cast your mind back to 2021. Electric vehicles were hot stuff, buoyed by Tesla’s increasingly stratospheric valuation and a general optimism fueled by what would turn out to be the most significant climate-focused spending package in US history. For some time, automakers had been promising an all-electric future, and they started laying the groundwork to make that happen, partnering with battery suppliers and the like.

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Take Ford—that year, it announced a joint venture with SK to build a pair of battery factories, one in Kentucky, the other in Tennessee. BlueOvalSK represented an $11.4 billion investment that would create 11,000 jobs, we were told, and an annual output of 60 GWh from both plants.

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Four years later, things look very different. EV subsidies are dead, as is any inclination by the current government to hold automakers accountable for selling too many gas guzzlers. EV-heavy product plans have been thrown out, and designs for new combustion-powered cars are being dusted off and spiffed up. Fewer EVs means a lower need for batteries, and today we saw that in evidence when it emerged that Ford and SK On are ending their battery factory joint venture.

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+ Jared Isaacman, a pilot and financial tech billionaire, has commanded two groundbreaking spaceflights, including leading the first private spacewalk.

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But his most remarkable flying has occurred over the last year. And on Wednesday, he stuck the landing by earning formal Senate approval to become NASA’s 15th administrator.

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With a final tally of 67 to 30, Wednesday’s Senate confirmation came 377 days after President Trump first nominated Isaacman to serve as NASA administrator. Since that time, Isaacman had to navigate the following issues:

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]]> - 62 + 139 - - -FordThe Blue Oval City complex in Tennessee. + + +Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesJared Isaacman, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration nominee for US President Donald Trump, during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, on December 3, 2025. - No sterile neutrinos after all, say MicroBooNE physicists - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/microboone-results-rule-out-sterile-neutrinos/ - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/microboone-results-rule-out-sterile-neutrinos/#comments + Physicists 3D-printed a Christmas tree of ice + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/physicists-3d-printed-a-christmas-tree-of-ice/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/physicists-3d-printed-a-christmas-tree-of-ice/#comments - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:02:48 +0000 + Wed, 17 Dec 2025 22:46:21 +0000 - - - + + - - https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/microboone-results-rule-out-sterile-neutrinos/ + https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/12/physicists-3d-printed-a-christmas-tree-of-ice/ - + - Since the 1990s, physicists have pondered the tantalizing possibility of an exotic fourth type of neutrino, dubbed the “sterile” neutrino, that doesn’t interact with regular matter at all, apart from its fellow neutrinos, perhaps. But definitive experimental evidence for sterile neutrinos has remained elusive. Now it looks like the latest results from Fermilab’s MiniBooNE experiment have ruled out the sterile neutrino entirely, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

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How did the possibility of sterile neutrinos even become a thing? It all dates back to the so-called “solar neutrino problem.” Physicists detected the first solar neutrinos from the Sun in 1966. The only problem was that there were far fewer solar neutrinos being detected than predicted by theory, a conundrum that became known as the solar neutrino problem. In 1962, physicists discovered a second type (“flavor”) of neutrino, the muon neutrino. This was followed by the discovery of a third flavor, the tau neutrino, in 2000.

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Physicists already suspected that neutrinos might be able to switch from one flavor to another. In 2002, scientists at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (or SNO) announced that they had solved the solar neutrino problem. The missing solar (electron) neutrinos were just in disguise, having changed into a different flavor on the long journey between the Sun and the Earth. If neutrinos oscillate, then they must have a teensy bit of mass after all. That posed another knotty neutrino-related problem. There are three neutrino flavors, but none of them has a well-defined mass. Rather, different kinds of “mass states” mix together in various ways to produce electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. That’s quantum weirdness for you.

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Physicists at the University of Amsterdam came up with a really cool bit of Christmas decor: a miniature 3D-printed Christmas tree, a mere 8 centimeters tall, made of ice, without any refrigeration equipment or other freezing technology, and at minimal cost. The secret is evaporative cooling, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv.

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Evaporative cooling is a well-known phenomenon; mammals use it to regulate body temperature. You can see it in your morning cup of hot coffee: the hotter atoms rise to the top of the magnetic trap and “jump out” as steam. It also plays a role (along with shock wave dynamics and various other factors) in the formation of “wine tears.” It’s a key step in creating Bose-Einstein condensates.

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And evaporative cooling is also the main culprit behind the infamous “stall” that so frequently plagues aspiring BBQ pit masters eager to make a successful pork butt. The meat sweats as it cooks, releasing the moisture within, and that moisture evaporates and cools the meat, effectively canceling out the heat from the BBQ. That’s why a growing number of competitive pit masters wrap their meat in tinfoil after the first few hours (usually when the internal temperature hits 170° F).

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]]> - 58 + 38 - - -UC Santa BarbaraCC BY-NC-NDThe MicroBooNE neutrino detector before its installation at Fermilab + + +University of Amsterdam - Disney invests $1 billion in OpenAI, licenses 200 characters for AI video app Sora - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/disney-invests-1-billion-in-openai-licenses-200-characters-for-ai-video-app-sora/ - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/disney-invests-1-billion-in-openai-licenses-200-characters-for-ai-video-app-sora/#comments + OpenAI’s new ChatGPT image generator makes faking photos easy + https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/openais-new-chatgpt-image-generator-makes-faking-photos-easy/ + https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/openais-new-chatgpt-image-generator-makes-faking-photos-easy/#comments - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:43:30 +0000 + Wed, 17 Dec 2025 22:22:33 +0000 - - - - - - + + + + + - + - - - + - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/disney-invests-1-billion-in-openai-licenses-200-characters-for-ai-video-app-sora/ + https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/12/openais-new-chatgpt-image-generator-makes-faking-photos-easy/ - + - On Thursday, The Walt Disney Company announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a three-year licensing agreement that will allow users of OpenAI’s Sora video generator to create short clips featuring more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars characters. It’s the first major content licensing partnership between a Hollywood studio related to the most recent version of OpenAI’s AI video platform, which drew criticism from some parts of the entertainment industry when it launched in late September.

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“Technological innovation has continually shaped the evolution of entertainment, bringing with it new ways to create and share great stories with the world,” said Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in the announcement. “The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”

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The deal creates interesting bedfellows between a company that basically defined modern US copyright policy through congressional lobbying back in the 1990s and one that has argued in a submission to the UK House of Lords that useful AI models cannot be created without copyrighted material.

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+ For most of photography’s roughly 200-year history, altering a photo convincingly required either a darkroom, some Photoshop expertise, or, at minimum, a steady hand with scissors and glue. On Tuesday, OpenAI released a tool that reduces the process to typing a sentence.

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It’s not the first company to do so. While OpenAI had a conversational image-editing model in the works since GPT-4o in 2024, Google beat OpenAI to market in March with a public prototype, then refined it to a popular model called Nano Banana image model (and Nano Banana Pro). The enthusiastic response to Google’s image-editing model in the AI community got OpenAI’s attention.

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OpenAI’s new GPT Image 1.5 is an AI image synthesis model that reportedly generates images up to four times faster than its predecessor and costs about 20 percent less through the API. The model rolled out to all ChatGPT users on Tuesday and represents another step toward making photorealistic image manipulation a casual process that requires no particular visual skills.

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]]> - 104 + 101 - - -China News Service via Getty ImagesA visitor examines a sculpture at "Mickey: The True Original & Ever Curious" exhibition on July 26, 2022, in Beijing, China. + + +OpenAI / ChatGPTA GPT Image 1.5 generation created with the classic prompt, "a muscular barbarian with weapons beside a CRT television set, cinematic, 8K, studio lighting." - Oracle shares slide on $15B increase in data center spending - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/oracle-shares-slide-on-15b-increase-in-data-center-spending/ - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/oracle-shares-slide-on-15b-increase-in-data-center-spending/#comments + Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/man-sues-cops-who-jailed-him-for-37-days-for-trolling-a-charlie-kirk-vigil/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/man-sues-cops-who-jailed-him-for-37-days-for-trolling-a-charlie-kirk-vigil/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:39:21 +0000 - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/12/oracle-shares-slide-on-15b-increase-in-data-center-spending/ + Wed, 17 Dec 2025 20:56:32 +0000 + + + + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/man-sues-cops-who-jailed-him-for-37-days-for-trolling-a-charlie-kirk-vigil/ - + - Oracle stock dropped after it reported disappointing revenues on Wednesday alongside a $15 billion increase in its planned spending on data centers this year to serve artificial intelligence groups.

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Shares in Larry Ellison’s database company fell 11 percent in pre-market trading on Thursday after it reported revenues of $16.1 billion in the last quarter, up 14 percent from the previous year, but below analysts’ estimates.

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Oracle raised its forecast for capital expenditure this financial year by more than 40 percent to $50 billion. The outlay, largely directed to building data centers, climbed to $12 billion in the quarter, above expectations of $8.4 billion.

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+ Larry Bushart, a man who was jailed for 37 days for reposting a Trump meme, has now sued the cops who allegedly schemed to keep him imprisoned for as long as possible simply because they disagreed with his point of view.

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Bushart is a former cop who lost his post-retirement job after a seemingly vengeful sheriff jailed him for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil post in a Facebook group. Upset that Kirk’s death commanded more attention than other victims of gun violence, Bushart posted a string of memes, among which was an image of Trump with an actual quote saying “We have to get over it” about a 2024 school shooting.

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Perry County sheriff Nick Weems has since acknowledged that he “knew” that the meme referenced a prior school shooting. However, the entire time that Bushart was detained, Weems maintained that Bushart’s post incited “mass hysteria” from parents concerned that he was threatening violence at a local high school. Painting Bushart as indifferent to the supposed hysteria, Weems justified his arrest, as well as the $2 million bond ensuring Bushart couldn’t afford bail and remained behind bars.

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]]> - 75 + 169 - - -Mesut Dogan + + +via FIRELarry Bushart was detained for a month for reposting a meme. - NASA just lost contact with a Mars orbiter, and will soon lose another one - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-just-lost-contact-with-a-mars-orbiter-and-will-soon-lose-another-one/ - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-just-lost-contact-with-a-mars-orbiter-and-will-soon-lose-another-one/#comments + FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency” + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/fcc-deletes-independent-agency-from-website-as-carr-defends-allegiance-to-trump/ + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/fcc-deletes-independent-agency-from-website-as-carr-defends-allegiance-to-trump/#comments - + - Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:29:54 +0000 - - - - - - - - - https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/12/nasa-just-lost-contact-with-a-mars-orbiter-and-will-soon-lose-another-one/ + Wed, 17 Dec 2025 20:46:39 +0000 + + + + + https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/fcc-deletes-independent-agency-from-website-as-carr-defends-allegiance-to-trump/ - + - NASA has lost contact with one of its three spacecraft orbiting Mars, the agency announced Tuesday. Meanwhile, a second Mars orbiter is perilously close to running out of fuel, and the third mission is running well past its warranty.

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Ground teams last heard from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft on Saturday, December 6. “Telemetry from MAVEN had showed all subsystems working normally before it orbited behind the red planet,” NASA said in a short statement. “After the spacecraft emerged from behind Mars, NASA’s Deep Space Network did not observe a signal.”

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NASA said mission controllers are “investigating the anomaly to address the situation. More information will be shared once it becomes available.”

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+ Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today faced blistering criticism in a Senate hearing for his September threats to revoke ABC station licenses over comments made by Jimmy Kimmel. While Democrats provided nearly all the criticism, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Congress should act to restrict the FCC’s power to intimidate news broadcasters.

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As an immediate result of today’s hearing, the FCC removed a statement from its website that said it is an independent agency. Carr, who has embraced President Trump’s declaration that independent agencies may no longer operate independently from the White House, apparently didn’t realize that the website still called the FCC an independent agency.

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“Yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency?” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) asked. Carr answered that the FCC is not independent, prompting Luján to point to a statement on the FCC website calling the FCC “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress.”

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]]> - 65 + 81 - - -NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterMAVEN's Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph obtained this image of Mars on July 13, 2016, when the planet appeared nearly full when viewed from the highest altitudes in MAVEN's elliptical orbit. + + +Getty Images | Heather DiehlFCC Chairman Brendan Carr speaks at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee oversight hearing on December 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. \ No newline at end of file