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EA Sports FC 27: what does the next instalment of the world’s biggest football game have in store?
The all-conquering franchise’s revamps are technically impressive, its transfers more true to life – and its new grassroots social hub is surprising fun As if the world wasn’t sufficiently football-obsessed, it’s time to prepare for the arrival of its biggest football video game. EA Sports FC 27 (the franchise that used to be Fifa – what better time to no longer be Fifa-branded?) is due to be released on 25 September. I just spent two intense days in Vancouver, where the EA FC games are made, playing FC 27 and talking to its developers. With an annual franchise such as EA FC, it helps to have something fresh to entice regular fans, and FC 27 has a whole new element, entitled the Grounds. It’s a physical hub-type area, similar to the City as seen in 2K’s recent NBA 2K basketball games, but much more pleasant to frequent, split as it is into areas inspired by British, French and Argentinian street-football culture. Continue reading...
Trump is losing his war on wind power
A court rules that a hold on all wind projects clearly violates the law.
Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles
A Flock presentation shows the company planned to use around 350,000 Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers to collect license plate data for its surveillance system.
Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment
"Most people have completely forgotten how chaotic it really was."
Trump orders new 15% tariff on key material for solar panels and microchips
Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon, an important ingredient in microchip manufacturing that is primarily produced by China. The new tariff, which will take effect on 4 December, is aimed at supporting US chip and solar panel supply chains to compete with Beijing on artificial intelligence and energy. Continue reading...
Pony Island 2 Panda Circus: gallop out of hell in this phantasmagorical follow-up to 2016’s indie hit
Daniel Mullins explains how he plans to follow up his quirky classic without losing what made it stand out in the first place Glitchy aesthetics. Literally collapsing menu boxes. The game taunting you by “possessing” your Steam friends. Technical tricks of this nature may sound gimmicky in 2026, but they felt excitingly unorthodox a decade ago, when Pony Island came out to critical acclaim. Fans of Daniel Mullins, the celebrated indie developer of Inscryption, will be forgiven for forgetting that Pony Island 2: Panda Circus is in active development. After all, it’s been almost three years since the announcement – and a full decade since it was first teased as an Easter egg in Pony Island’s ARG (Alternate Reality Game) – with only a single trailer and a bunch of tunes from the soundtrack released to the public. Continue reading...
One of science fiction’s greatest writers warned us about a AI. Does he also hold the remedy? | Alan Finkel
What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics look like? Guided by the author, I propose the three laws of AI Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that legions of AI-powered robots would dominate the physical world and that AI might not take orders from people any more. He also offered an alternative vision in which there would be agreement for a collective objective to make AI benign by imbuing it with a love of the truth and a desire for humanity to prosper, and that governments might have to enforce this objective. Governments around the world are belatedly starting to act on AI. In the US, President Trump’s administration is delaying and restricting the distribution of the most powerful frontier AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. In the European Union, AI regulations promulgated in 2024 came into effect this year . However, these actions are a long way short of requiring the kind of guardrails that would imbue AIs with a desire for humanity to prosper . Continue reading...
Organ donation group accused of trying to take living man's organs faces shutdown
The organization, Network for Hope, "strongly disagrees" with Trump admin's decision.
Explosive drone found hovering near Ukrainian cargo aircraft at German airport
Russian attack? Explosive drone targeted parked aircraft at Leipzig airport.
Elon Musk's X isn't done suing advertisers, asks court to revive boycott case
Musk continues appeal despite court loss and settlement with advertiser group.
Suno hopes to go legit with watermarks for AI-generated music
Suno plans watermarks and download limits to stop "large-scale abuse."
Anthropic will design its own hardware to power Claude
Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to scale up while reducing dependence on Nvidia.
Software Giant SAP Stops Most Travel and Hiring Because of AI’s Soaring Cost
SAP says it needs to “be disciplined in how we spend.” That includes still freezing hires and travel. Unless it's to do with AI, of course.
Large genome models used to design new viruses
The AI system makes genetically distant versions of a bacteria-killing virus.
Blue Origin narrowing in on root cause of catastrophic rocket accident
"The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines."
Safety fears as scientists make first viruses designed by AI
Researchers say breakthrough offers hope for new medicines but also raises urgent biosecurity questions Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages. Continue reading...
Parasitic zombie-ant fungus thrives in mosses, too
This may help fungi survive host scarcity and explains why infected hosts prefer the mosses as death sites.
Scientists Designed a Virtual Alien Lifeform to Hunt for Extraterrestrials
A model of a microbe cell revealed that methane-producing organisms could potentially emerge on a wide variety of exoplanets, which can inform the search for extraterrestrial life.
Trump FCC kills TV ownership cap, claiming authority over limit set by Congress
Change will let "Trump-aligned billionaires" buy more stations, advocacy group says.
Moderna's mRNA flu shot earns FDA approval after rollercoaster review
Moderna's new flu vaccine, mFLUSIVA, is approved for all adults ages 50 and up.
Cloudflare open-sources vibe-coding platform for people who aren't coders
Cloudflare built an AI agent workspace for its employees. Now it’s open source.
‘I have an ego that needs to be put in check’: ex-Gawker editor AJ Daulerio on life after addiction
After his fall from grace, media’s former enfant terrible is now sober and helping others with his addiction recovery newsletter and podcast, The Small Bow Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry anthology, then a passage from one of his daily wisdom readers (his go-to is a heavily annotated copy of Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom ); writing his Fear of the Day and gratitude list, then sharing his spiritual takeaway in a note to his three kids. After a banana and coffee, Daulerio trains Brazilian jujitsu before hitting a 9.45am meditation at Besant Lodge – a community center just below the Hollywood sign that once served as a meeting place for mid-century mystics – immediately followed by him leading a recovery meeting of his own through Zoom. Continue reading...
Nazis and Happy Feet collide in Penguin Colony, a psychological horror game set at the world’s end
Explore Antarctica as a flightless bird – and dodge some earthly monsters – in this surreal adaptation of HP Lovecraft While watching the 2006 animated film Happy Feet with his daughter, Origame Digital founder Naphtali Faulkner noticed something interesting. “[In the movie], they see the digger fall into the ocean, and it has an almost eldritch quality,” he says. Over time, and with plenty of iteration, Faulkner’s inspirations coalesced, from HP Lovecraft to the 1982 version of The Thing and the works of David Lynch. “I’m a big fan of horror that sits in your head rather than in your stomach,” says Faulkner. In Penguin Colony, players body-switch between species of flightless birds, piecing together cryptic cosmic clues as they tail a Nazi expedition to Antarctica. In the process, Origame Digital draws on Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. “I’d always wanted to do a creature that’s a manifestation of colonial thought, energy and power, and the idea of it resting and then regrowing,” says Faulkner. “I was looking through the history of Lovecraft and him being a gigantic racist , and this idea of the Nazis sort of came out,” he adds. Continue reading...
Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers
Rather than get rid of ALPR cameras entirely, many cities and towns are switching to Axon, whose cameras can be mounted to an existing streetlamp, helping them blend into their surroundings.