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485 stories archived
Fears for Xbox as it puts its developers on the chopping block once again
After the billion-dollar company’s leaders sent staff a memo saying the brand had ‘over-extended’, game studios may be in the firing line Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here In March 2000, Bill Gates stood onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and, to a packed crowd, officially announced the company’s long-anticipated video game console. “We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world,” he told attenders – and that was indeed the intention of the small, dedicated team who put together the blueprints of that first machine. The Xbox landscape seems very different 25 years later. Last week, mere days after a bullish summer showcase full of Gears of War revivals and promises of a renewed focus on Xbox’s gaming strengths, new CEO, Asha Sharma, and chief content officer, Matt Booty, wrote a memo to Xbox staff inviting them to brace for “hard truths”. “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20bn on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue,” it read. Continue reading...
Podcast: The Government Wants to End Anonymity on Phones
The FCC's proposed changes to getting a phone plan; cops keep stalking with Flock; and a software update changes the AC in Amazon vans.
Native NACS ports, infotainment upgrade for MY27 Porsche Taycan
The bigger battery is standard and there are now simulated "E-Shifts."
Windows and Linux users: The deadline to update Secure Boot keys is near
What you need to know about the expiration of keys securing your machine's boot sequence.
‘A neoliberal nightmare’: my ride on the Vegas Loop – Elon Musk’s answer to traffic jams
Ten years ago, after complaining that traffic was ‘driving him nuts’, Musk’s Boring Company began building underground tunnels to ease congestion on the roads. Did he overpromise and underdeliver? It’s another blindingly bright day in Las Vegas but I’m 30ft underground and strapped in for a rocket ride to the future. Actually, it’s a Tesla ride to the future, and not a self-driving one. And it’s pretty slow – my driver tells me the speed limit down here is 30mph. It’s also pretty short: the journey is over in a matter of minutes. In fact, the Vegas Loop is a pretty underwhelming experience: a brief trundle down a white-walled tunnel only slightly larger than the vehicle itself, lined by strips of LEDs that change colour every few seconds, in an attempt to inject some Vegas glitz. I’d been hoping to ask other Loop-riders what they made of the experience, but … there aren’t any. I’m the only person here. This is not the futuristic transport solution Elon Musk originally promised. When he first announced this innovative technology in 2017, it was accompanied by sci-fi visuals showing a car pulling over from the street traffic on to an elevator platform, which then descended into a network of tunnels and whizzed along on an “electric skate” at 200km/h (124mph). “There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have … so you can alleviate any arbitrary level of urban congestion,” Musk said. A few months earlier, with characteristic edgelordly nonchalance, Musk had announced on Twitter : “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging …” Followed shortly after by: “I am actually going to do this.” He did, and he named it the Boring Company . Continue reading...
UFC 6 review: a bloody, brilliant MMA fighting game
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S; EA Vancouver/Electronic Arts Micromanaging your fighter is a little tedious, but the action is thrilling in this authentically detailed sporting simulation Becoming a professional fighter takes years of repetition, drilling techniques and training footwork until everything is instinctual. Your body needs an automatic answer for every limb, from every angle. In MMA, which encompasses every martial art, it’s even harder. EA Sports’ UFC 6 realistically captures the grind of this brutal discipline. Throw on Career Mode and you spend most of your time working on combos and techniques. It’s all about making the complex controls feel second nature, increasing the effectiveness of every strike thrown by your fighter. With simulated six-week-long training camps between bouts, you can sometimes spar 12 times before a fight that could be over in a matter of seconds. Continue reading...
Trump admin tries to block Clean Air Act lawsuit over xAI's gas turbines
NAACP lawsuit says xAI uses gas turbines without permits for Grok data center.
Year of free HPE software a “step in the correct direction” in VMware rivalry
Partner tells Ars that HPE should be giving out more free VM Essentials licenses.
Cockroaches scurry around with thousands of pieces of bacterial genomes
Transferring genes across species doesn't just happen in microbes.
Among the large new rockets Amazon was counting on, only Europe has delivered
"As for Arianespace, they have definitely stepped up."
Anthropic "pauses" token-based billing for its Claude Agent SDK
Move originally planned for Monday would have heavily increased power users' costs.
US approval of Paramount/Warner Bros. deal surprised DOJ lawyers, report says
Trump admin green-lighting $111B deal "reeks of corruption," Sen. Warren says.
Pentagon boasts of using AI to write reports mandated by Congress
Pentagon also claims 1.5 million personnel are using generative AI tools.
Android 17 starts hitting Pixel phones and watches today
Pixels will get their OTA in the coming weeks, but don't expect monumental changes.
Trump admin abandons fight against wind energy as clean energy output surges
Legal victories have dampened the Trump admin’s efforts to halt wind and solar power.
SpaceX to acquire AI coding platform Cursor for $60 billion
Separately, neither could compete. Now they hope they can.
Leaked financial docs show OpenAI is losing billions of dollars a year
Audited accounting shows growing revenues being dwarfed by R&D, other expenses.
SpaceX to buy AI coding firm Anysphere for $60bn and passes Amazon valuation
Elon Musk firm adds startup behind Cursor app to its portfolio with xAI and reaches $2.8tn market capitalisation Elon Musk’s SpaceX is buying the startup behind the AI-powered coding app Cursor for $60bn and has moved ahead of Amazon in valuation days after its stock market debut . The company has agreed to buy Anysphere, which has capitalised on AI’s success as a coding technology. Continue reading...
Mobileye is entering the US robotaxi market with standalone service
The service will leverage its Moovit platform to launch in an a US city in 2027.
Hackers Publish Knicks and Madison Square Garden Data Online
The data contains a list of "talent," including former Knicks players and coaches, and whether other celebrities are considered "Low Risk" or "High Risk." The data also contains emails between customers and MSG.
How the fight over US datacenters is scrambling this state’s politics: ‘We don’t want it’
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor, squares off with state lawmakers over the facilities powering an AI boom A controversial haunted house near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , taps into its dark history every fall to scare tens of thousands of visitors. In 1968, a local news station documented appalling conditions for disabled people in the red brick buildings on the banks of Schuylkill River. Residents were found naked and emaciated at what was then known as the Pennhurst state school and hospital . The institution shut its doors permanently in 1987 after a lawsuit over inhumane conditions. By 2010, a Halloween attraction stood in its place, and Pennhurst asylum’s previous owner suggested during its early years that he wanted to spook guests by repurposing the hospital’s surgical lights and medical cabinets to use as props. Continue reading...
The Ars Technica 2026 Reader Survey: Let your voice be heard!
Tell us how you read Ars, and what you'd like to see more (or less!) of on the front page.
Hackers Are Hijacking Entire Roblox Games Now
Whereas Roblox hackers were previously focused on stealing players' high value items, some have taken over entire Roblox games, stealing their ownership and Robux in the process.
Elon Musk’s unprecendented accumulation of wealth
IPO mints Musk as world’s first trillionaire – now SpaceX is public, it will be harder than ever not to have a stake in its future Hi and welcome to TechScape. Nick Robins-Early here, US tech and power reporter at the Guardian. I’m filling in for your usual host Blake Montgomery, who is out this week on vacation. Today, we’ll be talking about the historic SpaceX IPO and the US government’s surprise order to limit the use of Anthropic’s most advanced AI model over cybersecurity concerns. I’ll also share a dispatch from Web Summit Rio, South America’s largest tech event. SpaceX makes largest ever stock market debut, minting Musk as a trillionaire After SpaceX’s huge IPO, Americans’ financial future will be bound to AI How much money did Elon Musk make in SpaceX’s stock market debut? Continue reading...