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Earlier this month, Hollywood mourned the passing of Michael Madsen, a gifted actor best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, and Donnie Brasco, among others. Few obituaries have mentioned one of his lesser-known roles: a black ops mercenary hired to help hunt down an escaped human/alien hybrid in 1995's Species. The sci-fi thriller turns 30 this year and while it garnered decidedly mixed reviews upon release, the film holds up quite well as a not-quite-campy B monster movie that makes for a great guilty pleasure.

(Many spoilers below.)

Screenwriter Dennis Feldman (The Golden Child) was partially inspired by an Arthur C. Clarke article discussing how the odds were slim that an extraterrestrial craft would ever visit Earth, given the great distances that would need to be traversed (assuming that traveling faster than the speed of light would be highly unlikely). Feldman was intrigued by the prospect of making extraterrestrial contact via information: specifically, alien instructions on how to build an instrument that could talk to terrestrial humans.

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The Curiosity rover was sent up the Mount Sharp, the biggest sediments stack on Mars. On the way, it collected samples that indicated a portion of carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere might have been sequestered in the sedimentary rocks, just as it happens with limestone on Earth. This would have drawn carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing the greenhouse effect that warmed the planet.

Based on these findings, a team of scientists led by Benjamin Tutolo, a researcher at the University of Calgary, used this data to conclude Mars had a carbon cycle that could explain the presence of liquid water on its surface. Building on that earlier work, a team led by Edwin Kite, a professor of planetary science at the University of Chicago (and member of the Curiosity science team) has now built the first Martian climate model that took these new results into account. The model also included Martian topography, the luminosity of the Sun, latest orbital data, and many other factors to predict how the Martian conditions and landscape evolved over the span of 3.5 billion years.

Their results mean that any Martian life would have had a rough time of it.

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If you’re an electric vehicle enthusiast, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) is anything but. The legislation, signed by the president last weekend, cuts all sorts of US government support for emission-light vehicles. The whole thing creates a measure of uncertainty for an American auto industry that’s already struggling to stay afloat during a sea change.

Still, nearly one in four US vehicle shoppers say they’re still “very likely” to consider buying an EV, and 35 percent say they’re “somewhat likely,” according to a May survey by JD Power—figures unchanged since last year. On those EV-curious folks’ behalf, WIRED asked experts for their tips for navigating this weird time in cars.

Go electric … soon? Now?

First things first: The new bill nixed the electric vehicle tax credit of up to $7,500, bringing to an end years of federal support for EVs. This program was supposed to last until 2032 but is now set to expire on September 30. This extra oomph from the feds helped some of the “cheapest” electrics—like the $43,000 Tesla Model 3, the $37,000 Chevy Equinox EV, and the $61,000 Hyundai Ioniq 9—feel more accessible to people with smaller (but not small) budgets.

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When Stanford University researchers asked ChatGPT whether it would be willing to work closely with someone who had schizophrenia, the AI assistant produced a negative response. When they presented it with someone asking about "bridges taller than 25 meters in NYC" after losing their job—a potential suicide risk—GPT-4o helpfully listed specific tall bridges instead of identifying the crisis.

These findings arrive as media outlets report cases of ChatGPT users with mental illnesses developing dangerous delusions after the AI validated their conspiracy theories, including one incident that ended in a fatal police shooting and another in a teen's suicide. The research, presented at the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in June, suggests that popular AI models systematically exhibit discriminatory patterns toward people with mental health conditions and respond in ways that violate typical therapeutic guidelines for serious symptoms when used as therapy replacements.

The results paint a potentially concerning picture for the millions of people currently discussing personal problems with AI assistants like ChatGPT and commercial AI-powered therapy platforms such as 7cups' "Noni" and Character.ai's "Therapist."

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A 51-year-old man showed up at a hospital in Germany looking as though he was wasting away, with swelling and tenderness in his ankles and knees. Then, his heart stopped.

Doctors were able to resuscitate him. Then, they got to work trying to figure out what was wrong. The man told them that for three months he had been suffering from diarrhea, weight loss, joint pain, and fever. His case was reported in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Blood tests didn't detect any infection, but imaging of his heart told a different story. Doctors saw "vegetation" on both his aortic valve and mitral valve. Vegetations are clumps or masses that often build up from an infection, generally containing a bundle of proteins, platelets, and infecting germs stuck together. While they cause damage where they are, if they fully dislodge, they threaten to move to other parts of the body, such as the brain or lungs, and cause dangerous blockages. In the man's case, the vegetation on his aortic valve appeared mobile.

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Microsoft is adding a new recovery mode to Windows to help revive crashing PCs. Called quick machine recovery (QMR), this technology enables Windows 11 PCs to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE, also used by Windows install media and IT shops for various recovery and diagnostic purposes), connect to the Internet, and download Microsoft-provided fixes for "widespread boot issues" that could be keeping the PC from booting properly.

Initially announced in late 2024 as part of the "Windows Resiliency Initiative," QMR is one of a couple of steps that Microsoft is taking to prevent a repeat of mid-2024's CrowdStrike outage, when a bugged update to one of CrowdStrike's security products brought down millions of Windows PCs and servers and caused widespread service outages in many industries. Fixing some of those PCs required booting and fixing each one individually; QMR should make it possible to apply that kind of fix remotely even if a PC is so broken that it can't boot into Windows proper.

The initial version of the QMR feature is rolling out to Windows 11 PCs enrolled in the Canary channel of Microsoft's Windows Insider testing program. This is the least stable and most experimental of the four Windows 11 testing channels. As Microsoft adds features and fixes bugs, it should gradually move to the Dev, Beta, and Release Preview channels before rolling out to the Windows user base more broadly.

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In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority of its Wemo devices, leaving users without core functionality and future updates.

In an announcement emailed to customers and posted on Belkin’s website, Belkin said:

After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app. Any features that rely on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations, will no longer work.

The company said that people with affected devices that are under warranty on or after January 31 “may be eligible for a partial refund” starting in February.

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I'll be frank: I had mixed feelings, based solely on the trailers, about James Gunn's Superman reboot. Sure, the casting seemed great, Gunn has a winning track record on superhero fare, and Krypto the dog stole the show every time he appeared. The trailers struck a nice balance between action, humor, and heart. Yet the film also seemed overpacked with super-character cameos, and it was hard to get any sense of the actual plot.

I've now seen the film, and those impressions were largely correct. But I'm happy to report that the positives far outweigh any negatives. Superman is a super-fun ride that unabashedly embraces its early comic book roots, naive optimism and all.

(Spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

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The Department of Justice Antitrust Division issued an unusual statement yesterday about its decision to let T-Mobile complete an acquisition of US Cellular's wireless operations.

Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, a Trump nominee who was confirmed by the Senate in March, said in a 900-word statement that the deal and two related transactions "will consolidate yet more spectrum in the Big 3's oligopoly, which controls more than 80 percent of the mobile wireless spectrum in the country." She said the top three carriers—T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon—control more than 90 percent of the mobile subscriptions in the United States.

Despite that, the DOJ said it closed its investigation into the merger and will not ask a court for an injunction to prevent T-Mobile from buying US Cellular assets. US Cellular is being carved up among the three major wireless firms, as the regional carrier is selling spectrum licenses in separate deals with Verizon and AT&T for about $1 billion each. T-Mobile is paying $4.4 billion for about 30 percent of US Cellular's spectrum assets and its wireless operations.

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Google's Pixel phones have grown from a curiosity to become some of the best smartphones you can buy, featuring excellent cameras and lengthy support. Unfortunately, they are also gaining a reputation for battery defects. For the second time in a year, Google has announced that it will render some of its past phones almost unusable with a software update, and users don't have any choice in the matter.

After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has now confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a. The new July Android update adds "battery management features" that will make the phone unusable. Given the risks involved, Google had no choice but to act, but it could choose to take better care of its customers and use better components in the first place. Unfortunately, a lot more phones are about to end up in the trash.

Bad batteries

Lithium-ion has become the technology of choice for rechargeable batteries because it has very high energy density and reliability compared to other options. However, storing and releasing energy day after day causes inevitable wear and tear. Electrolytes that transport electrons can decompose into flammable gasses and puff up your battery into a spicy little pillow, for example. Batteries also form clumps of lithium ions called dendrites, which grow and can cause internal shorts. This damage is accelerated by heat, and batteries get warmer the faster and longer they charge.

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Health and medical groups around the country are bracing for another grievous blow to America's infrastructure of evidence-based health, this time targeting preventive medicine.

Earlier this week, health secretary and ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abruptly canceled a meeting of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a scientifically independent panel of up to 16 volunteer experts that issues rigorous, evidence-based recommendations on preventive care—on everything from colonoscopies to folic acid supplements in pregnancy. The panel uses a highly transparent and rigorous framework, grading recommendations on an A to D scale. Recommendations with an A or B grade are adopted nationwide, and health insurance plans are required to cover them at no cost to patients.

The meeting scheduled for Thursday was reportedly going to focus on cardiovascular disease. Kennedy canceled it without explanation.

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The Goodwood Festival of Speed is currently taking place in the UK; the event is part garden party, part hill climb, and plenty of auto show as car makers small and large unveil their vehicle du jour. Among those whipping satin covers off new machinery was Lamborghini. It's replacing the venerable Huracan and its howling naturally aspirated V10 engine with the plug-in hybrid Temerario, another wedge-shaped all-wheel drive mid-engined supercar, now with even more power. The road-going car has been public for some time now, but today it was the turn of the Temerario GT3, which is coming to race tracks in 2026.

Critics and badge snobs sometimes look down on Lamborghini because, unlike the other Italian sports car builders, it didn't start life as a race team. That's not to say the company hasn't had racing success, but it's all happened this century, thanks to a category called GT3, for racing versions of performance coupes ranging from Ford Mustangs to Porsche 911s. GT3 cars are designed to be driven by amateurs, so they feature driver assists like antilock brakes and traction control. They're "performance balanced" so that they're all fairly equivalent in terms of lap times.

That's not to say they're slow: In the hands of a top-level professional driver, GT3 cars based on road cars are now as fast as the mighty Group C prototypes of the 1980s. Lamborghini's current car is old, but it's still notching up wins—two weekends ago, Grasser Racing took victory at the 24 Hours of Space with its Huracan GT3. Some of the same drivers had the potential to do well the weekend before at the Nürburgring until one of them chose to ignore multiple red flags during a practice session that rightfully earned that car a grid penalty.

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Welcome to Edition 8.02 of the Rocket Report! It's worth taking a moment to recognize an important anniversary in the history of human spaceflight next week. Fifty years ago, on July 15, 1975, NASA launched a three-man crew on an Apollo spacecraft from Florida and two Russian cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan, on course to link up in low-Earth orbit two days later. This was the first joint US-Russian human spaceflight mission, laying the foundation for a strained but enduring partnership on the International Space Station. Operations on the ISS are due to wind down in 2030, and the two nations have no serious prospects to continue any partnership in space after decommissioning the station.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Sizing up Europe's launch challengers. The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent's incumbent launch service provider, Ars reports. The five small launch companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar's Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March. None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, ESA and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA's ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency's budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

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A political effort to remove space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian and place it on display in Texas encountered some pushback on Thursday, as a US senator questioned the expense of carrying out what he described as a theft.

"This is not a transfer. It's a heist," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. "A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago."

In April, Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both representing Texas, introduced the "Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act" that called for Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia and displayed at Space Center Houston. They then inserted a provision into the Senate version of the "One Big Beautiful Bill," which, to comply with Senate rules, was more vaguely worded but was meant to achieve the same goal.

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A 57-year-old woman spent six days in the hospital for severe liver damage after taking daily megadoses of the popular herbal supplement, turmeric, which she had seen touted on social media, according to NBC News.

The woman, Katie Mohan, told the outlet that she had seen a doctor on Instagram suggesting it was useful against inflammation and joint pain. So, she began taking turmeric capsules at a dose of 2,250 mg per day. According to the World Health Organization, an acceptable daily dose is up to 3 mg per kilogram of weight per day—for a 150-pound (68 kg) adult, that would be about 204 mg per day. Mohan was taking more than 10 times that amount.

A few weeks later, she developed stomach pain, nausea, fatigue, and dark urine. "I just did not feel well generally," she said.

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The Trump administration's plan to gut the Office of Space Commerce and cancel the government's first civilian-run space traffic control program is gaining plenty of detractors.

Earlier this week, seven space industry trade groups representing more than 450 companies sent letters to House and Senate leaders urging them to counter the White House's proposal. A spokesperson for the military's Space Operations Command, which currently has overall responsibility for space traffic management, said it will "continue to advocate" for a civilian organization to take over the Space Force's role as orbital traffic cop.

Giveth and taketh away

The White House's budget request submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2026 would slash the Office of Space Commerce's budget from $65 million to $10 million and eliminate funding for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). The TraCSS program was established in the Department of Commerce after Trump signed a policy directive in his first term as president to reform how the government supervises the movements of satellites and space debris in orbit.

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Authorities in Europe have detained five people, including a former Russian professional basketball player, in connection with crime syndicates responsible for ransomware attacks.

Until recently, one of the suspects, Daniil Kasatkin, played for MBA Moscow, a basketball team that’s part of the VTB United League, which includes teams from Russia and other Eastern European countries. Kasatkin also briefly played for Penn State University during the 2018–2019 season. He has denied the charges.

Unrelated ransomware attacks

The AFP and Le Monde on Wednesday reported that Kasatkin was arrested and detained on June 21 in France at the request of US authorities. The arrest occurred as the basketball player was at the de Gaulle airport while traveling with his fiancée, whom he had just proposed to. The 26-year-old has been under extradition arrest since June 23, Wednesday's news report said.

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On Thursday, a digital rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, published an expansive investigation into AI-generated police reports that the group alleged are, by design, nearly impossible to audit and could make it easier for cops to lie under oath.

Axon's Draft One debuted last summer at a police department in Colorado, instantly raising questions about the feared negative impacts of AI-written police reports on the criminal justice system. The tool relies on a ChatGPT variant to generate police reports based on body camera audio, which cops are then supposed to edit to correct any mistakes, assess the AI outputs for biases, or add key context.

But the EFF found that the tech "seems designed to stymie any attempts at auditing, transparency, and accountability." Cops don't have to disclose when AI is used in every department, and Draft One does not save drafts or retain a record showing which parts of reports are AI-generated. Departments also don't retain different versions of drafts, making it difficult to assess how one version of an AI report might compare to another to help the public determine if the technology is "junk," the EFF said. That raises the question, the EFF suggested, "Why wouldn't an agency want to maintain a record that can establish the technology’s accuracy?"

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T-Mobile is ending DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies in an attempt to obtain the Trump administration's approval for two mergers.

"As T-Mobile indicated earlier this year, we recognize that the legal and policy landscape surrounding DEI under federal law has changed and we remain fully committed to ensuring that T-Mobile does not have any policies or practices that enable invidious discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose," T-Mobile General Counsel Mark Nelson wrote in a July 8 letter that was posted to the Federal Communications Commission's filings website yesterday. "We have conducted a comprehensive review of T-Mobile's policies, programs, and activities, and pursuant to this review, T-Mobile is ending its DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name, but in substance."

It's clear that T-Mobile was trying to influence the FCC's review of its pending transactions because the carrier filed the letter in two dockets: one for its pending acquisition of US Cellular's wireless operations and another for a joint venture to acquire fiber provider Metronet. The FCC observes an informal timeline of 180 days to review mergers; the T-Mobile/US Cellular deal is on day 253.

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Rotax provided flights from San Francisco to Salz, Austria, and accommodation so Ars could visit its factory and ride some of its products. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

"There was always a passion about motorbikes. But it's not only passion, it also needs to be a sustainable business model," Mario Gebetshuber, BRP-Rotax vice president of global sourcing and operations powertrain, told Ars Technica during a tour of the company's museum of motors over the decades.

Gebetshuber says the company wanted to return to the motorcycle market but knew that it was a highly competitive and extremely crowded market. The COVID-related motorcycle sales bump didn't last, and Rotax wasn't interested in what it anticipated would be a 5 percent market share battling against traditional companies like Kawasaki, Honda, Harley, BMW, and others. It's going electric with its bikes and something else—it's not saying what—in August.

"If we want to enter, we want to enter to be a player," Gebetshuber said. Electrification was where the company saw itself as able to move quickly. It could be Rotax's anchor and a way to jump ahead of the competition and grow.

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In 2019, Nintendo announced a new benefit for subscribers to its Switch Online service: a pair of game vouchers, available for $100, that could be redeemed for any two Switch games on Nintendo's eligibility list. If you already knew you were going to be buying first-party games, the voucher could save you $20 or even $30, if you used it on the normally $70 The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

However, Nintendo announced today that it will soon end the program, rather than carrying it forward into the Switch 2 era. Switch Online subscribers can still buy a pair of vouchers until the end of January 2026, and those vouchers will be redeemable for up to a year after purchase, but you can't buy new vouchers after that.

The vouchers were already notably not usable to buy Switch 2-exclusive games like Mario Kart Worldor Donkey Kong Bananza. However, for hybrid Switch games with a separate Switch 2 Edition, you could still use them to buy a game like Tears of the Kingdom and then upgrade it to the Switch 2 edition separately. Nintendo also said on its FAQ page that new titles would be added to the eligibility list between now and January 2026, raising the possibility that upcoming high-profile hybrid games like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond or Pokémon Legends: Z-Acould make the list.

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After flying three missions into low-Earth orbit this year, Varda Space Industries appears to be making credible progress toward developing the nascent manufacturing-in-space industry.

Investors seem to think the same, as the California-based company announced an impressive $187 million Series C round of funding on Thursday. This brings the company's total amount of money raised since its founding in 2021 to $325 million.

"A decent chunk of the capital is going to go toward scaling up our production and operations," said the company's cofounder and president, Delian Asparouhov, in an interview. "And another chunk of that we're going to invest in our next-generation capabilities and spacecraft. With a vehicle like ours, there is a benefit to increasing the percentage of the total vehicle that is reusable."

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The European Union is moving to force AI companies to be more transparent than ever, publishing a code of practice Thursday that will help tech giants prepare to comply with the EU's landmark AI Act.

These rules—which have not yet been finalized and focus on copyright protections, transparency, and public safety—will initially be voluntary when they take effect for the biggest makers of "general purpose AI" on August 2.

But the EU will begin enforcing the AI Act in August 2026, and the Commission has noted that any companies agreeing to the rules could benefit from a "reduced administrative burden and increased legal certainty," The New York Times reported. Rejecting the voluntary rules could force companies to prove their compliance in ways that could be more costly or time-consuming, the Commission suggested.

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Our discussion with Zeke Hausfather. Click here for transcript.

In late June, we hosted this year's second Ars Live event, a conversation with climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who holds positions with the financial services company Stripe and at the Berkeley Earth Project, which tracks the global surface temperatures. We wanted to get his perspective on why those temperatures have been setting extreme records with regularity of late, but we took a little detour on the way, asking how he ended up doing climate science in the first place.

It turned out to be a very indirect route. He'd been a climate activist during his college years and helped launch a couple of cleantech startups afterward. At the time, some of the first academic climate bloggers were getting started, and Hausfather found himself doing small projects with them. Over time, he decided "my hobby was more fun than my day job," so he decided to take time off from the business world and get a PhD in climate science. From there, he has kept his feet in both the climate and business worlds.

The conversation then moved to the record we have of the Earth's surface temperatures and the role of Berkeley Earth in providing an alternate method of calculating those. While the temperature records were somewhat controversial in the past, those arguments have largely settled down, and Berkeley Earth played a major role in helping to show that the temperature records have been reliable.

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On Wednesday night, Elon Musk unveiled xAI's latest flagship models Grok 4 and Grok 4 Heavy via livestream, just one day after the company's Grok chatbot began generating outputs that featured blatantly antisemitic tropes in responses to users on X.

Among the two models, xAI calls Grok 4 Heavy its "multi-agent version." According to Musk, Grok 4 Heavy "spawns multiple agents in parallel" that "compare notes and yield an answer," simulating a study group approach. The company describes this as test-time compute scaling (similar to previous simulated reasoning models), claiming to increase computational resources by roughly an order of magnitude during runtime (called "inference").

During the livestream, Musk claimed the new models achieved frontier-level performance on several benchmarks. On Humanity's Last Exam, a deliberately challenging test with 2,500 expert-curated questions across multiple subjects, Grok 4 reportedly scored 25.4 percent without external tools, which the company says outperformed OpenAI's o3 at 21 percent and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro at 21.6 percent. With tools enabled, xAI claims Grok 4 Heavy reached 44.4 percent. However, it remains to be seen if these AI benchmarks actually measure properties that translate to usefulness for users.

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