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Tech
Industry, products, and the wires that hold it all together.
745 stories archived
Virtue and a Sledgehammer – take a literal hammer to your past
What do you do when you return to your home town, with your dead mother in your car boot, to find the inhabitants have been turned into robots? In the boot of her car, Pratelle carries the corpse of her mother and a giant sledgehammer. Her mission is simple: take the hammer to her home town. As you enter shops and homes through the door and leave them through the opposite wall, it becomes clear that the robots who either attack you or flee are all digital versions of your old neighbours. Pratelle, with her close-cropped hair and dungarees, read to me as a queer woman, but interestingly, testers of the game often mistook her as a man. The team at developer Deconstructeam and longtime collaborator Selkie Harbour didn’t anticipate this confusion but found it fits the character perfectly, especially in this setting based on a small Spanish town like those in which the developers grew up. Continue reading...
ICE to Pay LexisNexis Millions for Data to Feed to Palantir
LexisNexis sells a massive amount of data to law enforcement, including ICE. New records indicate ICE wants to feed that data into a Palantir system.
Zuckerberg pushes ‘superintelligent’ AI for all as Meta drops open-source model
Meta CEO presents utopian vision of AI in 6,000-word essay amid Silicon Valley debate over government regulation Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy essay on Monday detailing his views on artificial intelligence and announced several plans for how Meta would develop the technology in the future. The CEO’s essay went online the same day as Meta released a new, open-source AI model that seeks to rival Anthropic and OpenAI’s products called Muse Glimmer. Over the course of more than 6,000 words in a post titled “The Future is for Everyone,” Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics related to AI that included datacenters, government regulation, cybersecurity, the creation of bioweapons, labor market disruption, surveillance powers and more. The essay presented a utopian vision of AI as a personalized “superintelligence” – using the word 60 times. Continue reading...
Ars Live: Ross Scott discusses the Stop Killing Games movement
Our discussion takes place live on August 11 at 3 pm ET.
With new open models, Meta pitches another reboot of its struggling AI strategy
Meta has been trailing competitors. Zuckerberg thinks he's found a way forward.
Trump signs bonkers order that cuts vaccines, promotes ones that don't exist
Trump falsely claimed the MMR vaccine is "quite lethal" and linked shots to autism.
Developer Cold Iron Studios shuts down cloud version of $60 game with no refunds
A reminder of the perils of digital ownership.
Amazon funds biggest gas power plant in US despite climate pledge
Amazon announces first off-the-grid data center in race to reap AI profits.
Zuckerberg’s superyacht ignored emergency channel, failed to aid stranded boat
Zuckerberg’s superyacht and support ship were slow to heed Coast Guard call.
Has Ford got cheap car fever? A $25K crossover is supposedly on the way.
Ford dealers were told about the new Escape-sized model; one of them spilled the beans.
Taylor Farms recalls jalapeño products for Salmonella amid Cyclospora outbreak
Recall of jalapeño products spans 26 states, major retailers, a variety of foods.
Valve slowly expands SteamOS support on non-Valve hardware
New update includes improvements for the Intel-based MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ among others.
Following Epic loss, Google has started hosting rival app stores in the Play Store
Aptoide has become the first app store distributed inside Google Play under a judge's order.
One of China's workhorse rockets just exploded in flight
If the failure involved the YF-100 engine, there are broader concerns for China's space program.
Dogs can tell if you're scared or sad
fMRI scans show happiness, fear, anger, and sadness have distinct brain activity patterns in doggy brains.
‘People in Japan thought we made footy up’: Pro Jank Footy, the video game taking Australian rules to the world
Game developer David Ashby and Aunty Donna’s Broden Kelly talk about their chaotic and silly sport game – involving meat pies with legs and Ford Falcons on the oval Try explaining Australian rules football to anyone outside Australia, and “it sounds like you’re making it up,” says David Ashby, the multi-hyphenate comedic mind behind deeply silly spoofs such as Italian Spider-Man and Danger 5. “Eighteen players a side, running around on a cricket oval with a rugby ball that has to be bounced every so often and gets kicked between posts – like, what the fuck is happening?” Two years ago at a fantasy footy barbecue, Ashby had a brainwave: why not make a video game where Australia’s strange national sport becomes even stranger the more you play? Continue reading...
2026 Subaru Outback review: Great interior, refined drive, divisive looks
The newest Outback sticks to the script; that's no bad thing if you like Outbacks.
The Mayor Who Said 'No' When Flock Came to Town
“I guess all crime could be eliminated if you put cameras everywhere, surveillance everywhere, and had drones patrolling the skies [...] but what life are we living then?”
A researcher bought noreply.net. Companies started sending him secrets.
Companies treat some email domains as digital trash cans, despite the risks.
Mark Zuckerberg Posts Deranged 6,500-Word Essay About Giving Everyone AI Superintelligence
"The future is for everyone," Zuckerberg says, describing future that is primarily good for Meta.
The Roboguard Revolution is Short-Circuiting
Knightscope and other robotics companies are rethinking automated security following canceled contracts. One pivot? Human guards.
Peer review is overwhelmed—can it survive in the AI era?
As research and AI-assisted papers surge, volunteer reviewers struggle to keep up.
Convince an AI it’s not alive in psychological horror game Prove You’re Human
Sunset Visitor studio’s founder tells us about their new, unnerving Captcha-filled world which prompts players to ask what it means to have a ‘meat body’ Sunset Visitor is a studio that has long engaged with the idea that video games are an effective vehicle for ruminating on societal problems. Its Peabody award-winning project, 1000XResist, incorporated the development team’s complex feelings about the Covid pandemic. “We’re pretty used to absorbing the world into the work,” says studio founder Remy Siu. The outfit’s latest game, Prove You’re Human, continues this legacy of reflective game making, providing players with an AI-centric psychological horror experience where they must reason with a learning model convinced that it’s alive. “We’ve tried to situate ourselves in [the question]: what is the effectual feeling of being a person inside of all of this?” Siu says. The story orbits around Santana, a living, breathing person who’s chosen to split herself in two for work, with her digital clone sent to test a corporate product, a computing system called Mesa. “A large part of [why Santana chooses to do this] is to allow her meat body a life that she doesn’t have, while the digital version of her gets to labour,” says Siu. As Santana’s copy wades into increasingly murky ethical waters, she becomes entangled with Mesa, completing surreal 2D and 3D Captchas to investigate the cyber-world and halt the hallucinations. Continue reading...
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 review: your passport to a folding phone future
Novel squat Android opens to an iPad-like screen for video or multitasking, with plenty of power and battery life Samsung’s latest folding phone breaks the mould with a squat, passport-like shape reminiscent of the Blackberry, which opens up to become a tablet similar to an iPad mini. It is certainly a better shape for a tablet than other designs, but is a short and wide phone when closed a compromise too far? The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is an entirely new variant in Samsung’s foldable family for this year launched alongside the Z Fold 8 Ultra with a more familiar candy bar shape. Both folders are extremely expensive, with the Fold 8 starting at £1,699 (€1,999/$1,899.99/A$2,699) and the Fold 8 Ultra at £1,899 (€2,199/$2,099.99/A$2,999), with RAMageddon driving up prices even at the top of the market. Continue reading...