Author name: Rejus Almole

all-childhood-vaccines-in-question-after-first-meeting-of-rfk-jr.’s-vaccine-panel

All childhood vaccines in question after first meeting of RFK Jr.’s vaccine panel

A federal vaccine panel entirely hand-selected by health secretary and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gathered for its first meeting Wednesday—and immediately announced that it would re-evaluate the entire childhood vaccination schedule, as well as the one for adults.

The meeting overall was packed with anti-vaccine talking points and arguments from the new panel members, confirming public health experts’ fears that the once-revered panel is now critically corrupted and that Kennedy’s controversial picks will only work to fulfill his long-standing anti-vaccine agenda.

Controversial committee

An hour before the meeting began, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out swinging against the new panel, saying that the panel’s work is “no longer a credible process.” The organization shunned the meeting, refusing to send a liaison to the panel’s meeting, which it has done for decades.

“We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicized at the expense of children’s health,” AAP President Susan Kressly said in a video posted on social media.

The panel in question, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), has for more than 60 years provided rigorous public scientific review, discussion, and trusted recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how vaccines should be used in the US after they’ve earned approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The CDC typically adopts ACIP’s recommendations, and once that happens, insurance providers are required to cover the cost of the recommended shots.

The system is highly regarded globally. But, on June 9, Kennedy unilaterally and summarily fired all 17 esteemed ACIP members and, two days later, replaced them with eight new people. Some have clear anti-vaccine views, others have controversial and contrarian public health views, and several have little to no expertise in the fields relevant to vaccines.

Last night, it came to light that one of the eight new appointees—Michael Ross, an obstetrics and gynecology physician—had withdrawn from the committee during a financial holdings review that ACIP members are required to complete before beginning work on the panel.

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Google’s spotty Find Hub network could get better thanks to a small setup tweak

Bluetooth trackers have existed for quite a while, but Apple made them worthwhile when it enlisted every iPhone to support AirTags. The tracking was so reliable that Apple had to add anti-stalking features. And although there are just as many Android phones out there, Google’s version of mobile device tracking, known as Find Hub, has been comparatively spotty. Now, Google is about to offer users a choice that could fix Bluetooth tracking on Android.

According to a report from Android Authority, Google is preparing to add a new screen to the Android setup process. This change, integrated with Play Services version 25.24, has yet to roll out widely, but it will allow anyone setting up an Android phone to choose a more effective method of tracking that will bolster Google’s network. This is included in the Play Services changelog as, “You can now configure Find Hub when setting up your phone, allowing the device to be located remotely.”

Trackable devices like AirTags and earbuds work by broadcasting a Bluetooth LE identifier, which phones in the area can see. Our always-online smartphones then report the approximate location of that signal, and with enough reports, the owner can pinpoint the tag. Perhaps wary of the privacy implications, Google rolled out its Find Hub network (previously Find My Device) with harsh restrictions on where device finding would work.

By default, Find Hub only works in busy areas where multiple phones can contribute to narrowing down the location. That’s suboptimal if you actually want to find things. The setting to allow finding in all areas is buried several menus deep in the system settings where no one is going to see it. Currently, the settings for Find Hub are under the security menu of your phone, but the patch may vary from one device to the next. For Pixels, it’s under Security > Device finders > Find Hub > Find your offline devices. Yeah, not exactly discoverable.

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Ubuntu disables Intel GPU security mitigations, promises 20% performance boost

Ubuntu users could see up to a 20 percent boost in graphics performance on Intel-based systems under a change that will turn off security mitigations for blunting a class of attacks known as Spectre.

Spectre, you may recall, came to public notice in 2018. Spectre attacks are based on the observation that performance enhancements built into modern CPUs open a side channel that can leak secrets a CPU is processing. The performance enhancement, known as speculative execution, predicts future instructions a CPU might receive and then performs the corresponding tasks before they are even called. If the instructions never come, the CPU discards the work it performed. When the prediction is correct, the CPU has already completed the task.

By using code that forces a CPU to execute carefully selected instructions, Spectre attacks can extract confidential data that the CPU would have accessed had it carried out the ghost instructions. Over the past seven years, researchers have uncovered multiple attack variants based on the architectural flaws, which are unfixable. CPU manufacturers have responded by creating patches in both micro code and binary code that restrict speculative execution operations in certain scenarios. These restrictions, of course, usually degrade CPU performance.

When the investment costs more than the return

Over time, those mitigations have degraded graphics processing performance by as much as 20 percent, a member of the Ubuntu development team recently reported. Additionally, the team member said, Ubuntu will integrate many of the same mitigations directly into its Kernel, specifically in the Questing Quokka release scheduled for October. In consultation with their counterparts at Intel, Ubuntu security engineers have decided to disable the mitigations in the device driver for the Intel Graphics Compute Runtime.

“After discussion between Intel and Canonical’s security teams, we are in agreement that Spectre no longer needs to be mitigated for the GPU at the Compute Runtime level,” Ubuntu developer Shane McKee wrote. He continued:

At this point, Spectre has been mitigated in the kernel, and a clear warning from the Compute Runtime build serves as a notification for those running modified kernels without those patches. For these reasons, we feel that Spectre mitigations in Compute Runtime no longer offer enough security impact to justify the current performance tradeoff.

McKee went on to say that as a result, “Users can expect up to 20% performance improvement.”

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The axion may help clean up the messy business of dark matter


We haven’t found evidence of the theoretical particle, but it’s still worth investigating.

In recent years, a curious hypothetical particle called the axion, invented to address challenging problems with the strong nuclear force, has emerged as a leading candidate to explain dark matter. Although the potential for axions to explain dark matter has been around for decades, cosmologists have only recently begun to seriously search for them. Not only might they be able to resolve some issues with older hypotheses about dark matter, but they also offer a dizzying array of promising avenues for finding them.

But before digging into what the axion could be and why it’s so useful, we have to explore why the vast majority of physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists accept the evidence that dark matter exists and that it’s some new kind of particle. While it’s easy to dismiss the dark matter hypothesis as some sort of modern-day epicycle, the reality is much more complex (to be fair to epicycles, it was an excellent idea that fit the data extremely well for many centuries).

The short version is that nothing in the Universe adds up.

We have many methods available to measure the mass of large objects like galaxies and clusters. We also have various methods to assess the effects of matter in the Universe, like the details of the cosmic microwave background or the evolution of the cosmic web. There are two broad categories: methods that rely solely on estimating the amount of light-emitting matter and methods that estimate the total amount of matter, whether it’s visible or not.

For example, if you take a picture of a generic galaxy, you’ll see that most of the light-emitting matter is concentrated in the core. But when you measure the rotation rate of the galaxy and use that to estimate the total amount of matter, you get a much larger number, plus some hints that it doesn’t perfectly overlap with the light-emitting stuff. The same thing happens for clusters of galaxies—the dynamics of galaxies within a cluster suggest the presence of much more matter than what we can see, and the two types of matter don’t always align. When we use gravitational lensing to measure a cluster’s contents, we again see evidence for much more matter than is plainly visible.

The tiny variations in the cosmic microwave background tell us about the influence of both matter that interacts with light and matter that doesn’t. It clearly shows that some invisible component dominated the early Universe. When we look at the large-scale structure, invisible matter rules the day. Matter that doesn’t interact with light can form structures much more quickly than matter that gets tangled up by interacting with itself. Without invisible matter, galaxies like the Milky Way can’t form quickly enough to match observations of the early Universe.

The calculations of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, which correctly predict the abundances of hydrogen and helium in the Universe, put strict constraints on how much light-emitting matter there can be, and that number simply isn’t large enough to accommodate all these disparate results.

Across cosmic scales in time and space, the evidence just piles up: There’s more stuff out there than meets the eye, and it can’t simply be dim-but-otherwise-regular matter.

Weakness of WIMPs

Since pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin first revealed dark matter in a big way in the 1970s, the astronomical community has tried every idea it could think of to explain these observations. One tantalizing possibility is that the dark matter is the entirely wrong approach; instead, we’re misunderstanding gravity itself. But so far, half a century later, all attempts to modify gravity ultimately fail one observational test or another. In fact, the most popular modified gravity theory, known as MOND, still requires the existence of dark matter, just less of it.

As the evidence piled up for dark matter in the 1980s and ’90s, astronomers began to favor a particular explanation known as WIMPs, for weakly interacting massive particles. WIMPs weren’t just made up on the spot. They were motivated by particle physics and our attempts to create theories beyond the Standard Model. Many extensions to the Standard Model predicted the existence of WIMP-like particles that could be made in abundance in the early Universe, generating a population of heavy-ish particles that remained largely in the cosmic background.

WIMPs seemed like a good idea, as they could both explain the dark matter problem and bring us to a new understanding of fundamental physics. The idea is that we are swimming in an invisible sea of dark matter particles that almost always simply pass through us undetected. But every once in a while, a WIMP should interact via the weak nuclear force (hence the origin of its name) and give off a shower of byproducts. One problem: We needed to detect one of these rare interactions. So experiments sprang up around the world to catch an elusive dark matter candidate.

With amazing names like CRESST, SNOLAB, and XENON, these experiments have spent years searching for a WIMP to no avail. They’re not an outright failure, though; instead, with every passing year, we know more and more about what the WIMP can’t be—what mass ranges and interaction strengths are now excluded.

By now, that list of what the WIMP can’t be is rather long, and large regions within the space of possibilities are now hard-and-fast ruled out.

OK, that’s fine. I mean, it’s a huge bummer that our first best guess didn’t pan out, but nature is under no obligation to make this easy for us. Maybe the dark matter isn’t a WIMP at all.

More entities are sitting around the particle physics attic that we might be able to use to explain this deep cosmic mystery. And one of those hypothetical particles is called the axion.

Cleaning up with axions

It was the late 1970s, and physicist Frank Wilczek was shopping for laundry detergent. He found one brand standing out among the bottles: Axion. He thought that would make an excellent name for a particle.

He was right.

For decades, physicists had been troubled by a little detail of the theory used to explain the strong nuclear force, known as quantum chromodynamics. By all measurements, that force obeys charge-parity symmetry, which means if you take an interaction, flip all the charges around, and run it in a mirror, you’ll get the same result. But quantum chromodynamics doesn’t enforce that symmetry on its own.

It seemed to be a rather fine-tuned state of affairs, with the strong force unnaturally maintaining a symmetry when there was nothing in the theory to explain why.

In 1977, Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn discovered an elegant solution. By introducing a new field into the Universe, it could naturally introduce charge-parity symmetry into the equations of quantum chromodynamics. The next year, Wilczek and Gerard ‘t Hooft independently realized that this new field would imply the existence of a particle.

The axion.

Dark matter was just coming on the cosmic scene. Axions weren’t invented to solve that problem, but physicists very quickly realized that the complex physics of the early Universe could absolutely flood the cosmos with axions. What’s more, they would largely ignore regular matter and sit quietly in the background. In other words, the axion was an excellent dark matter candidate.

But axions were pushed aside as the WIMPs hypothesis gained more steam. Back-of-the-envelope calculations showed that the natural mass range of the WIMP would precisely match the abundances needed to explain the amount of dark matter in the Universe, with no other fine-tuning or adjustments required.

Never ones to let the cosmologists get in the way of a good time, the particle physics community kept up interest in the axion, finding different variations on the particle and devising clever experiments to see if the axion existed. One experiment requires nothing more than a gigantic magnet since, in an extremely strong magnetic field, axions can spontaneously convert into photons.

To date, no hard evidence for the axion has shown up. But WIMPs have proven to be elusive, so cosmologists are showing more love to the axion and identifying surprising ways that it might be found.

A sloshy Universe

Axions are tiny, even for subatomic particles. The lightest known particle is the neutrino, which weighs no more than 0.086 electron-volts (or eV). Compare that to, say, the electron, which weighs over half a million eV. The exact mass of the axion isn’t known, and there are many models and versions of the particle, but it can have a mass all the way down to a trillionth of an eV… and even lower.

In fact, axions belong to a much broader class of “ultra-light” dark matter particle candidates, which can have masses down to 10^-24 eV. This is multiple billions of times lighter than the WIMPs—and indeed most of the particles of the Standard Model.

That means axions and their friends act nothing like most of the particles of the Standard Model.

First off, it may not even be appropriate to refer to them as particles. They have such little mass that their de Broglie wavelength—the size of the quantum wave associated with every particle—can stretch into macroscopic proportions. In some cases, this wavelength can be a few meters across. In others, it’s comparable to a star or a solar system. In still others, a single axion “particle” can stretch across an entire galaxy.

In this view, the individual axion particles would be subsumed into a larger quantum wave, like an ocean of dark matter so large and vast that it doesn’t make sense to talk about its individual components.

And because axions are bosons, they can synchronize their quantum wave nature, becoming a distinct state of matter: a Bose-Einstein condensate. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, most of the particles share the same low-energy state. When this happens, the de Broglie wavelength is larger than the average separation between the particles, and the waves of the individual particles all add up together, creating, in essence, a super-particle.

This way, we may get axion “stars”—clumps of axions acting as a single particle. Some of these axion stars may be a few thousand kilometers across, wandering across interstellar space. Still others may be the size of galactic cores, which might explain an issue with the traditional WIMP picture.

The best description of dark matter in general is that it is “cold,” meaning that the individual particles do not move fast compared to the speed of light. This allows them to gravitationally interact and form the seeds of structures like galaxies and clusters. But this process is a bit too efficient. According to simulations, cold dark matter tends to form more small, sub-galactic clumps than we observe, and it tends to make the cores of galaxies much, much denser than we see.

Axions, and ultra-light dark matter in general, can provide a solution here because they would operate in two modes. At large scales, they can act like regular cold dark matter. But inside galaxies, they can condense, forming tight clumps. Critically, these clumps have uniform densities within them. This smooths out the distribution of axions within galaxies, preventing the formation of smaller clumps and ultra-dense cores.

A messy affair

Over the decades, astronomers and physicists have found an astounding variety of ways that axions might reveal their presence in the Universe. Because of their curious ability to transmute into photons in the presence of strong magnetic fields, any place that features strong fields—think neutron stars or even the solar corona—could produce extra radiation due to axions. That makes them excellent hunting grounds for the particles.

Axion stars—also sometimes known provocatively as dark stars—would be all but invisible under most circumstances. That is, until they destabilize in a cascading chain reaction of axion-to-photon conversion and blow themselves up.

Even the light from distant galaxies could betray the existence of axions. If they exist in a dense swarm surrounding a galaxy, their conversion to photons will contribute to the galaxy’s light, creating a signal that the James Webb Space Telescope can pick up.

To date, despite all these ideas, there hasn’t been a single shred of solid evidence for the existence of axions, which naturally drops them down a peg or two on the credibility scale. But that doesn’t mean that axions aren’t worth investigating further. The experiments conducted so far only place limits on what properties they might have; there’s still plenty of room for viable axion and axion-like candidates, unlike their WIMPy cousins.

There’s definitely something funny going on with the Universe. The dark matter hypothesis—that there is a large, invisible component to matter in the Universe—isn’t that great of an idea, but it’s the best one we have that fits the widest amount of available evidence. For a while, we thought we knew what the identity of that matter might be, and we spent decades (and small fortunes) in that search.

But while WIMPs were the mainstay hypothesis, that didn’t snuff out alternative paths. Dozens of researchers have investigated modified forms of gravity to equal levels of unsuccessfulness. And a small cadre has kept the axion flame alive. It’s a good thing, too, since their obscure explorations of the corners of particle physics laid the groundwork to flesh out axions into a viable competitor to WIMPs.

No, we haven’t found any axions. And we still don’t know what the dark matter is. But it’s only by pushing forward—advancing new ideas, testing them against the reality of observations, and when they fail, trying again—will we come to a new understanding. Axions may or may not be dark matter; the best we can say is that they are promising. But who wouldn’t want to live in a Universe filled with dark stars, invisible Bose-Einstein condensates, and strange new particles?

Photo of Paul Sutter

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Discovery of HMS Endeavour wreck confirmed

By 2016, RIMAP’s volunteers, operating on grants and private donations, had located 10 of the 13 wrecks, almost exactly where historical charts said they should be. And the search had gotten a boost from the 1998 discovery of a 200-year-old paper trail linking the troop transport Lord Sandwich to its former life as HMS Endeavour.

Narrowing the field

One candidate was found just 500 meters off the coast of Rhode Island (designated RI 2394), 14 meters below the surface and buried in nearly 250 years’ worth of sediment and silt. RIMAP’s team concluded in 2018 that this was likely the wreck of the Endeavour, although the researchers emphasized that they needed to accumulate more evidence to support their conclusions. That’s because only about 15 percent of the ship survived. Any parts of the hull that weren’t quickly buried by silt have long since decomposed in the water.

The ANMN felt confident enough in its own research by 2022 to hold that controversial news conference announcing the discovery, against RIMAP’s objections. But the evidence is now strong enough for RIMAP to reach the same conclusion. “In 1999 and again in 2019, RIMAP and ANMM agreed on a set of criteria that, if satisfied, would permit identification of RI 2394 as Lord Sandwich,” the authors wrote in the report’s introduction. “Based on the agreed preponderance of evidence approach, enough of these criteria have now been met… to positively identify RI 2394 as the remnants of Lord Sandwich, formerly James Cook’s HM Bark Endeavour.

The Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission and the ANMM are now collaborating to ensure that the wreck site is protected in the future.

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Philips Hue bulbs will be even more expensive in July. And it may not end there.

Philips is upping the prices of its popular and already-expensive Hue series of smart lighting products starting July 1. The company is blaming tariffs for the changes and has suggested that prices could go up even higher after the initial bump in July.

Philips started informing its customers via an email marketing message earlier this month that prices would go up and urged people to buy Hue lighting sooner rather than later.

In a statement to the Hueblog website, Philips’ parent company, Signify, explained why people in the US will pay more for Hue products soon:

Signify will increase prices on our Philips Hue portfolio in the US, effective July 1, 2025, as a direct result of tariffs. We remain committed to providing consumers with high-quality products and features that make smart lighting extraordinary.

Signify didn’t confirm how much Hue products would cost after June but noted that more changes could follow.

“Signify reserves the right to modify prices based on new or additional tariffs becoming effective in the future,” the company told Hueblog.

As noted by Hueblog, some Hue products are already more expensive in the US than in other geographies. The Hue Smart Button, which came out this month, costs $33, compared to 22 euros in Europe and $25 for its predecessor. The Hue Play wall washer is $220 in the US, compared to 200 euros in Europe. Typically, Hue’s products have “converted euro prices almost 1-to-1,” Hueblog reported.

Philips Hue bulbs will be even more expensive in July. And it may not end there. Read More »

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Media Matters sues FTC, says agency is retaliating on behalf of Elon Musk

Media Matters for America sued the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, alleging that the FTC’s ongoing investigation into the group “has violated Media Matters’ First Amendment rights by retaliating against the organization for its reporting on Elon Musk and X.”

“The investigation is the latest effort by Elon Musk and his allies in the Trump administration to retaliate against Media Matters for its reporting on X, the social media site Musk controls, and it’s another example of the Trump administration weaponizing government authorities to target political opponents,” Media Matters said in a press release. The group said it has suffered financially because of “the cascade of litigation launched by Musk and his allies.”

The FTC’s investigative demand “makes no secret of its connection to Musk’s vindictive lawsuits,” and “probes Media Matters’ finances, editorial process, newsgathering activities, and affiliations with likeminded entities that monitor extremist content and other third parties,” Media Matters said in the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

Media Matters is a nonprofit journalism organization that has been targeted by Musk and Republicans for articles such as one showing that X placed advertisements next to pro-Nazi posts. Media Matters has faced probes from the Texas and Missouri attorneys general and a lawsuit filed by X. In the case involving Texas, a federal appeals court found in May that “Media Matters is the target of a government campaign of retaliation.”

Lawsuit: FTC “snoops into newsgathering activities”

The FTC sent a civil investigative demand (CID) on May 20, “apparently seeking to revive the state government investigations that had been blocked by this Court,” Media Matters said in its lawsuit yesterday. “The CID’s first substantive demand makes clear its connection to Musk’s lawsuits, seeking ‘all documents that Media Matters either produced or received in discovery in any litigation between Media Matters and X Corp. related to advertiser boycotts since 2023.'”

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the-resume-is-dying,-and-ai-is-holding-the-smoking-gun

The résumé is dying, and AI is holding the smoking gun

Beyond volume, fraud poses an increasing threat. In January, the Justice Department announced indictments in a scheme to place North Korean nationals in remote IT roles at US companies. Research firm Gartner says that fake identity cases are growing rapidly, with the company estimating that by 2028, about 1 in 4 job applicants could be fraudulent. And as we have previously reported, security researchers have also discovered that AI systems can hide invisible text in applications, potentially allowing candidates to game screening systems using prompt injections in ways human reviewers can’t detect.

Illustration of a robot generating endless text, controlled by a scientist.

And that’s not all. Even when AI screening tools work as intended, they exhibit similar biases to human recruiters, preferring white male names on résumés—raising legal concerns about discrimination. The European Union’s AI Act already classifies hiring under its high-risk category with stringent restrictions. Although no US federal law specifically addresses AI use in hiring, general anti-discrimination laws still apply.

So perhaps résumés as a meaningful signal of candidate interest and qualification are becoming obsolete. And maybe that’s OK. When anyone can generate hundreds of tailored applications with a few prompts, the document that once demonstrated effort and genuine interest in a position has devolved into noise.

Instead, the future of hiring may require abandoning the résumé altogether in favor of methods that AI can’t easily replicate—live problem-solving sessions, portfolio reviews, or trial work periods, just to name a few ideas people sometimes consider (whether they are good ideas or not is beyond the scope of this piece). For now, employers and job seekers remain locked in an escalating technological arms race where machines screen the output of other machines, while the humans they’re meant to serve struggle to make authentic connections in an increasingly inauthentic world.

Perhaps the endgame is robots interviewing other robots for jobs performed by robots, while humans sit on the beach drinking daiquiris and playing vintage video games. Well, one can dream.

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curated-realities:-an-ai-film-festival-and-the-future-of-human-expression

Curated realities: An AI film festival and the future of human expression


We saw 10 AI films and interviewed Runway’s CEO as well as Hollywood pros.

An AI-generated frame of a person looking at an array of television screens

A still from Total Pixel Space, the Grand Prix winner at AIFF 2025.

A still from Total Pixel Space, the Grand Prix winner at AIFF 2025.

Last week, I attended a film festival dedicated to shorts made using generative AI. Dubbed AIFF 2025, it was an event precariously balancing between two different worlds.

The festival was hosted by Runway, a company that produces models and tools for generating images and videos. In panels and press briefings, a curated list of industry professionals made the case for Hollywood to embrace AI tools. In private meetings with industry professionals, I gained a strong sense that there is already a widening philosophical divide within the film and television business.

I also interviewed Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela about the tightrope he walks as he pitches his products to an industry that has deeply divided feelings about what role AI will have in its future.

To unpack all this, it makes sense to start with the films, partly because the film that was chosen as the festival’s top prize winner says a lot about the issues at hand.

A festival of oddities and profundities

Since this was the first time the festival has been open to the public, the crowd was a diverse mix: AI tech enthusiasts, working industry creatives, and folks who enjoy movies and who were curious about what they’d see—as well as quite a few people who fit into all three groups.

The scene at the entrance to the theater at AIFF 2025 in Santa Monica, California.

The films shown were all short, and most would be more at home at an art film fest than something more mainstream. Some shorts featured an animated aesthetic (including one inspired by anime) and some presented as live action. There was even a documentary of sorts. The films could be made entirely with Runway or other AI tools, or those tools could simply be a key part of a stack that also includes more traditional filmmaking methods.

Many of these shorts were quite weird. Most of us have seen by now that AI video-generation tools excel at producing surreal and distorted imagery—sometimes whether the person prompting the tool wants that or not. Several of these films leaned into that limitation, treating it as a strength.

Representing that camp was Vallée Duhamel’s Fragments of Nowhere, which visually explored the notion of multiple dimensions bleeding into one another. Cars morphed into the sides of houses, and humanoid figures, purported to be inter-dimensional travelers, moved in ways that defied anatomy. While I found this film visually compelling at times, I wasn’t seeing much in it that I hadn’t already seen from dreamcore or horror AI video TikTok creators like GLUMLOT or SinRostroz in recent years.

More compelling were shorts that used this propensity for oddity to generate imagery that was curated and thematically tied to some aspect of human experience or identity. For example, More Tears than Harm by Herinarivo Rakotomanana was a rotoscope animation-style “sensory collage of childhood memories” of growing up in Madagascar. Its specificity and consistent styling lent it a credibility that Fragments of Nowhere didn’t achieve. I also enjoyed Riccardo Fusetti’s Editorial on this front.

More Tears Than Harm, an unusual animated film at AIFF 2025.

Among the 10 films in the festival, two clearly stood above the others in my impressions—and they ended up being the Grand Prix and Gold prize winners. (The judging panel included filmmakers Gaspar Noé and Harmony Korine, Tribeca Enterprises CEO Jane Rosenthal, IMAX head of post and image capture Bruce Markoe, Lionsgate VFX SVP Brianna Domont, Nvidia developer relations lead Richard Kerris, and Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, among others).

Runner-up Jailbird was the aforementioned quasi-documentary. Directed by Andrew Salter, it was a brief piece that introduced viewers to a program in the UK that places chickens in human prisons as companion animals, to positive effect. Why make that film with AI, you might ask? Well, AI was used to achieve shots that wouldn’t otherwise be doable for a small-budget film to depict the experience from the chicken’s point of view. The crowd loved it.

Jailbird, the runner-up at AIFF 2025.

Then there was the Grand Prix winner, Jacob Adler’s Total Pixel Space, which was, among other things, a philosophical defense of the very idea of AI art. You can watch Total Pixel Space on YouTube right now, unlike some of the other films. I found it strangely moving, even as I saw its selection as the festival’s top winner with some cynicism. Of course they’d pick that one, I thought, although I agreed it was the most interesting of the lot.

Total Pixel Space, the Grand Prix winner at AIFF 2025.

Total Pixel Space

Even though it risked navel-gazing and self-congratulation in this venue, Total Pixel Space was filled with compelling imagery that matched the themes, and it touched on some genuinely interesting ideas—at times, it seemed almost profound, didactic as it was.

“How many images can possibly exist?” the film’s narrator asked. To answer that, it explains the concept of total pixel space, which actually reflects how image generation tools work:

Pixels are the building blocks of digital images—tiny tiles forming a mosaic. Each pixel is defined by numbers representing color and position. Therefore, any digital image can be represented as a sequence of numbers…

Just as we don’t need to write down every number between zero and one to prove they exist, we don’t need to generate every possible image to prove they exist. Their existence is guaranteed by the mathematics that defines them… Every frame of every possible film exists as coordinates… To deny this would be to deny the existence of numbers themselves.

The nine-minute film demonstrates that the number of possible images or films is greater than the number of atoms in the universe and argues that photographers and filmmakers may be seen as discovering images that already exist in the possibility space rather than creating something new.

Within that framework, it’s easy to argue that generative AI is just another way for artists to “discover” images.

The balancing act

“We are all—and I include myself in that group as well—obsessed with technology, and we keep chatting about models and data sets and training and capabilities,” Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said to me when we spoke the next morning. “But if you look back and take a minute, the festival was celebrating filmmakers and artists.”

I admitted that I found myself moved by Total Pixel Space‘s articulations. “The winner would never have thought of himself as a filmmaker, and he made a film that made you feel something,” Valenzuela responded. “I feel that’s very powerful. And the reason he could do it was because he had access to something that just wasn’t possible a couple of months ago.”

First-time and outsider filmmakers were the focus of AIFF 2025, but Runway works with established studios, too—and those relationships have an inherent tension.

The company has signed deals with companies like Lionsgate and AMC. In some cases, it trains on data provided by those companies; in others, it embeds within them to try to develop tools that fit how they already work. That’s not something competitors like OpenAI are doing yet, so that, combined with a head start in video generation, has allowed Runway to grow and stay competitive so far.

“We go directly into the companies, and we have teams of creatives that are working alongside them. We basically embed ourselves within the organizations that we’re working with very deeply,” Valenzuela explained. “We do versions of our film festival internally for teams as well so they can go through the process of making something and seeing the potential.”

Founded in 2018 at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts by two Chileans and one Greek co-founder, Runway has a very different story than its Silicon Valley competitors. It was one of the first to bring an actually usable video-generation tool to the masses. Runway also contributed in foundational ways to the popular Stable Diffusion model.

Though it is vastly outspent by competitors like OpenAI, it has taken a hands-on approach to working with existing industries. You won’t hear Valenzuela or other Runway leaders talking about the imminence of AGI or anything so lofty; instead, it’s all about selling the product as something that can solve existing problems in creatives’ workflows.

Still, an artist’s mindset and relationships within the industry don’t negate some fundamental conflicts. There are multiple intellectual property cases involving Runway and its peers, and though the company hasn’t admitted it, there is evidence that it trained its models on copyrighted YouTube videos, among other things.

Cristóbal Valenzuela speaking on the AIFF 2025 stage. Credit: Samuel Axon

Valenzuela suggested that studios are worried about liability, not underlying principles, though, saying:

Most of the concerns on copyright are on the output side, which is like, how do you make sure that the model doesn’t create something that already exists or infringes on something. And I think for that, we’ve made sure our models don’t and are supportive of the creative direction you want to take without being too limiting. We work with every major studio, and we offer them indemnification.

In the past, he has also defended Runway by saying that what it’s producing is not a re-creation of what has come before. He sees the tool’s generative process as distinct—legally, creatively, and ethically—from simply pulling up assets or references from a database.

“People believe AI is sort of like a system that creates and conjures things magically with no input from users,” he said. “And it’s not. You have to do that work. You still are involved, and you’re still responsible as a user in terms of how you use it.”

He seemed to share this defense of AI as a legitimate tool for artists with conviction, but given that he’s been pitching these products directly to working filmmakers, he was also clearly aware that not everyone agrees with him. There is not even a consensus among those in the industry.

An industry divided

While in LA for the event, I visited separately with two of my oldest friends. Both of them work in the film and television industry in similar disciplines. They each asked what I was in town for, and I told them I was there to cover an AI film festival.

One immediately responded with a grimace of disgust, “Oh, yikes, I’m sorry.” The other responded with bright eyes and intense interest and began telling me how he already uses AI in his day-to-day to do things like extend shots by a second or two for a better edit, and expressed frustration at his company for not adopting the tools faster.

Neither is alone in their attitudes. Hollywood is divided—and not for the first time.

There have been seismic technological changes in the film industry before. There was the transition from silent films to talkies, obviously; moviemaking transformed into an entirely different art. Numerous old jobs were lost, and numerous new jobs were created.

Later, there was the transition from film to digital projection, which may be an even tighter parallel. It was a major disruption, with some companies and careers collapsing while others rose. There were people saying, “Why do we even need this?” while others believed it was the only sane way forward. Some audiences declared the quality worse, and others said it was better. There were analysts arguing it could be stopped, while others insisted it was inevitable.

IMAX’s head of post production, Bruce Markoe, spoke briefly about that history at a press mixer before the festival. “It was a little scary,” he recalled. “It was a big, fundamental change that we were going through.”

People ultimately embraced it, though. “The motion picture and television industry has always been very technology-forward, and they’ve always used new technologies to advance the state of the art and improve the efficiencies,” Markoe said.

When asked whether he thinks the same thing will happen with generative AI tools, he said, “I think some filmmakers are going to embrace it faster than others.” He pointed to AI tools’ usefulness for pre-visualization as particularly valuable and noted some people are already using it that way, but it will take time for people to get comfortable with.

And indeed, many, many filmmakers are still loudly skeptical. “The concept of AI is great,” The Mitchells vs. the Machines director Mike Rianda said in a Wired interview. “But in the hands of a corporation, it is like a buzzsaw that will destroy us all.”

Others are interested in the technology but are concerned that it’s being brought into the industry too quickly, with insufficient planning and protections. That includes Crafty Apes Senior VFX Supervisor Luke DiTomasso. “How fast do we roll out AI technologies without really having an understanding of them?” he asked in an interview with Production Designers Collective. “There’s a potential for AI to accelerate beyond what we might be comfortable with, so I do have some trepidation and am maybe not gung-ho about all aspects of it.

Others remain skeptical that the tools will be as useful as some optimists believe. “AI never passed on anything. It loved everything it read. It wants you to win. But storytelling requires nuance—subtext, emotion, what’s left unsaid. That’s something AI simply can’t replicate,” said Alegre Rodriquez, a member of the Emerging Technology committee at the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

The mirror

Flying back from Los Angeles, I considered two key differences between this generative AI inflection point for Hollywood and the silent/talkie or film/digital transitions.

First, neither of those transitions involved an existential threat to the technology on the basis of intellectual property and copyright. Valenzuela talked about what matters to studio heads—protection from liability over the outputs. But the countless creatives who are critical of these tools also believe they should be consulted and even compensated for their work’s use in the training data for Runway’s models. In other words, it’s not just about the outputs, it’s also about the sourcing. As noted before, there are several cases underway. We don’t know where they’ll land yet.

Second, there’s a more cultural and philosophical issue at play, which Valenzuela himself touched on in our conversation.

“I think AI has become this sort of mirror where anyone can project all their fears and anxieties, but also their optimism and ideas of the future,” he told me.

You don’t have to scroll for long to come across techno-utopians declaring with no evidence that AGI is right around the corner and that it will cure cancer and save our society. You also don’t have to scroll long to encounter visceral anger at every generative AI company from people declaring the technology—which is essentially just a new methodology for programming a computer—fundamentally unethical and harmful, with apocalyptic societal and economic ramifications.

Amid all those bold declarations, this film festival put the focus on the on-the-ground reality. First-time filmmakers who might never have previously cleared Hollywood’s gatekeepers are getting screened at festivals because they can create competitive-looking work with a fraction of the crew and hours. Studios and the people who work there are saying they’re saving time, resources, and headaches in pre-viz, editing, visual effects, and other work that’s usually done under immense time and resource pressure.

“People are not paying attention to the very huge amount of positive outcomes of this technology,” Valenzuela told me, pointing to those examples.

In this online discussion ecosystem that elevates outrage above everything else, that’s likely true. Still, there is a sincere and rigorous conviction among many creatives that their work is contributing to this technology’s capabilities without credit or compensation and that the structural and legal frameworks to ensure minimal human harm in this evolving period of disruption are still inadequate. That’s why we’ve seen groups like the Writers Guild of America West support the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act and other similar legislation meant to increase transparency about how these models are trained.

The philosophical question with a legal answer

The winning film argued that “total pixel space represents both the ultimate determinism and the ultimate freedom—every possibility existing simultaneously, waiting for consciousness to give it meaning through the act of choice.”

In making this statement, the film suggested that creativity, above all else, is an act of curation. It’s a claim that nothing, truly, is original. It’s a distillation of human expression into the language of mathematics.

To many, that philosophy rings undeniably true: Every possibility already exists, and artists are just collapsing the waveform to the frame they want to reveal. To others, there is more personal truth to the romantic ideal that artwork is valued precisely because it did not exist until the artist produced it.

All this is to say that the debate about creativity and AI in Hollywood is ultimately a philosophical one. But it won’t be resolved that way.

The industry may succumb to litigation fatigue and a hollowed-out workforce—or it may instead find its way to fair deals, new opportunities for fresh voices, and transparent training sets.

For all this lofty talk about creativity and ideas, the outcome will come down to the contracts, court decisions, and compensation structures—all things that have always been at least as big a part of Hollywood as the creative work itself.

Photo of Samuel Axon

Samuel Axon is the editorial lead for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

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with-12.2-update,-civilization-vii-tries-to-win-back-traditionalists

With 1.2.2 update, Civilization VII tries to win back traditionalists

There’s also a new loading screen with more detailed information and more interactive elements, which Firaxis says is a hint at other major UI overhauls to come. That said, players have already complained that it doesn’t look very nice because the 2D leader assets that appear on it have been scaled awkwardly and look fuzzy.

The remaining changes are largely balance and systems-related. Trade convoys can now travel over land, which means treasure ships will no longer get stuck in lakes, and there are broader strategic options for tackling the economic path in the Exploration Age. There has been a significant effort to overhaul town focuses, including the addition of a couple new ones, and the much-anticipated nerf of the Hub Town focus; it now provides +1 influence per connected town instead of two, though that may still not be quite enough to make the Hub Town, well, not overpowered.

You can find a bunch of other small balance tweaks in the patch notes, including new city-state bonuses, pantheons, and religious beliefs, among other things.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly to some, you can now issue a command to pet the scout unit’s dog.

Next steps

As far as I can tell, there are still two major traditional features fans are waiting on: autoexplore for scout units and hotseat multiplayer support. Firaxis says it’s working on both, but neither made it into 1.2.2. Players have also been asking for further UI overhauls. Firaxis says those are coming, too.

When Civilization VII launched, I wrote that I quite liked it, but I also pointed out bugs and balance changes and noted that it won’t please traditionalists. For some players, the review said it might be better to wait. We did a follow-up article about a month in, interviewing the developers. But that was still during the “fix things that are on fire stage.”

More than any previous update, today’s 1.2.2 is the first one that seems like a natural jumping-on point for people who have been taking a wait-and-see approach.

It’s quite common for strategy games like this to not really fully hit their stride until weeks or even months of updates. Civilization VII‘s UI problems made it a particularly notable example of that trend, but the good news is that it’s also following the same path as the games before it that got good post-launch support: slowly, it’s becoming a game a broader range of Civ fans can enjoy.

With 1.2.2 update, Civilization VII tries to win back traditionalists Read More »

ted-cruz-can’t-get-all-republicans-to-back-his-fight-against-state-ai-laws

Ted Cruz can’t get all Republicans to back his fight against state AI laws


Cruz plan moves ahead but was reportedly watered down amid Republican opposition.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) presides over a subcommittee hearing on June 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla

A Republican proposal to penalize states that regulate artificial intelligence can move forward without requiring approval from 60 senators, the Senate parliamentarian decided on Saturday. But the moratorium on state AI laws did not have unanimous Republican support and has reportedly been watered down in an effort to push it toward passage.

In early June, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed enforcing a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by making states ineligible for broadband funding if they try to impose any limits on development of artificial intelligence. While the House previously approved a version of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” with an outright 10-year ban on state AI regulation, Cruz took a different approach because of the Senate rule that limits inclusion of “extraneous matter” in budget reconciliation legislation.

Under the Senate’s Byrd rule, a senator can object to a potentially extraneous budget provision. A motion to waive the Byrd rule requires a vote of 60 percent of the Senate.

As originally drafted, Cruz’s backdoor ban on state AI laws would have made it impossible for states to receive money from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program if they try to regulate AI. He tied the provision into the budget bill by proposing an extra $500 million for the broadband-deployment grant program and expanding its purpose to also subsidize construction and deployment of infrastructure for artificial intelligence systems.

Punchbowl News reported today that Cruz made changes in order to gain more Republican support and comply with Senate procedural rules. Cruz was quoted as saying that under his current version, states that regulate AI would only be shut out of the $500 million AI fund.

This would seem to protect states’ access to the $42 billion broadband deployment fund that will offer subsidies to ISPs that expand access to Internet service. Losing that funding would be a major blow to states that have spent the last couple of years developing plans to connect more of their residents to modern broadband. The latest Senate bill text was not available today. We contacted Cruz’s office and will update this article if we get a response.

A spokesperson for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) told Ars today that Cruz’s latest version could still prevent states from getting broadband funding. The text has “a backdoor to apply new AI requirements to the entire $42.45 billion program, not just the new $500 million,” Cantwell’s representative said.

Plan has opponents from both parties

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that several parts of the Republican budget bill are subject to the Byrd rule and its 60-vote requirement, but Cruz’s AI proposal wasn’t one of them. A press release from Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) noted that “the parliamentarian’s advice is based on whether a provision is appropriate for reconciliation and conforms to the limitations of the Byrd rule; it is not a judgement on the relative merits of a particular policy.”

Surviving the parliamentarian review doesn’t guarantee passage. A Bloomberg article said the parliamentarian’s decision is “a win for tech companies pushing to stall and override dozens of AI safety laws across the country,” but that the “provision will likely still be challenged on the Senate floor, where stripping the provision would need just a simple majority. Some Republicans in both the House and Senate have pushed back on the AI provision.”

Republicans have a 53–47 edge in the Senate. Cantwell and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) teamed up for a press conference last week in which they spoke out against the proposed moratorium on state regulation.

Cantwell said that 24 states last year started “regulating AI in some way, and they have adopted these laws that fill a gap while we are waiting for federal action. Now Congress is threatening these laws, which will leave hundreds of millions of Americans vulnerable to AI harm by abolishing those state law protections.”

Blackburn said she agreed with Cantwell that the AI regulation proposal “is not the type of thing that we put into reconciliation bills.” Blackburn added that lawmakers “are working to move forward with legislation at the federal level, but we do not need a moratorium that would prohibit our states from stepping up and protecting citizens in their state.”

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) have also criticized the idea of stopping states from regulating AI.

Cruz accused states of “strangling AI”

Cruz argued that his proposal stops states “from strangling AI deployment with EU-style regulation.” Under his first proposal, no BEAD funds were to be given to any state or territory that enforces “any law or regulation… limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce.”

The Cantwell/Blackburn press conference also included Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat; and Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican. Brown said that “Washington has a law that prohibits deep fakes being used against political candidates by mimicking their appearance and their speech,” another “that prohibits sharing fabricated sexual images without consent and provides for penalties for those who possess and distribute such images,” and a third “that prohibits the knowing distribution of forged digital likenesses that can be used to harm or defraud people.”

“All of those laws, in my reading, would be invalid if this was to pass through Congress, and each of those laws are prohibiting and protecting people here in our state,” Brown said.

Skrmetti said that if the Senate proposal becomes law “there would be arguments out there for the big tech companies that the moratorium does, in fact, preclude any enforcement of any consumer protection laws if there’s an AI component to the product that we’re looking at.”

Other Republican plans fail Byrd rule test

Senate Democrats said they are pleased that the parliamentarian ruled that several other parts of the bill are subject to the Byrd rule. “We continue to see Republicans’ blatant disregard for the rules of reconciliation when drafting this bill… Democrats plan to challenge every part of this bill that hurts working families and violates this process,” Merkley said.

Merkley’s press release said the provisions that are subject to a 60-vote threshold include one that “limits certain grant funding for ‘sanctuary cities,’ and where the Attorney General disagrees with states’ and localities’ immigration enforcement,” and another that “gives state and local officials the authority to arrest any noncitizen suspected of being in the US unlawfully.”

The Byrd rule also applies to a section that “limits the ability of federal courts to issue preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders against the federal government by requiring litigants to post a potentially enormous bond,” and another that “limits when the federal government can enter into or enforce settlement agreements that provide for payments to third parties to fully compensate victims, remedy harm, and punish and deter future violations,” Merkley’s office said.

The office of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that the provision requiring litigants to post bonds has been struck from the legislation. “This Senate Republican provision, which was even worse than the similar House-passed version, required a plaintiff seeking an emergency court order, preliminary injunction, or a temporary restraining order against the Trump Administration or the federal government to pay a costly bond up front—essentially making the justice system pay-to-play,” Schumer’s office said.

Schumer said that “if enacted, this would have been one of the most brazen power grabs we’ve seen in American history—an attempt to let a future President Trump ignore court orders with impunity, putting him above the law.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Ted Cruz can’t get all Republicans to back his fight against state AI laws Read More »

psyche-keeps-its-date-with-an-asteroid,-but-now-it’s-running-in-backup-mode

Psyche keeps its date with an asteroid, but now it’s running in backup mode

The spacecraft, built by Maxar Space Systems, will operate its electric thrusters for the equivalent of three months between now and November to keep the mission on track for arrival at asteroid Psyche in 2029.

“Through comprehensive testing and analysis, the team narrowed down the potential causes to a valve that may have malfunctioned in the primary line,” NASA said in a statement Friday. “The switch to the identical backup propellant line in late May restored full functionality to the propulsion system.”

The next waypoint on Psyche’s voyage will be a flyby of Mars in May 2026. Officials expect Psyche to keep that date, which is critical for using Mars’ gravity to slingshot the spacecraft deeper into the Solar System, eventually reaching the asteroid belt about four years from now.

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft takes a spiral path to the asteroid Psyche, as depicted in this graphic that shows the path from above the plane of the planets, labeled with key milestones of the prime mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At Psyche, the spacecraft will enter orbit and progressively move closer to the asteroid, using a suite of sensors to map its surface, measure its shape, mass, and gravity field, and determine its elemental composition. Observations through telescopes suggest Psyche is roughly 140 miles (226 kilometers) in diameter, or about the width of Massachusetts. But it’s likely not spherical in shape. Scientists describe its shape as more akin to a potato.

Potatoes come in lots of shapes, and researchers won’t know exactly what Psyche looks like until NASA’s asteroid explorer arrives in 2029. Psyche will be the first metallic, or M-type, asteroid visited by any spacecraft, and scientists are eager to study an object that’s largely made of metals—probably iron, nickel, and perhaps some rarer elements instead of rocky minerals.

With the Psyche spacecraft’s plasma thrusters back in action, these goals of NASA’s billion-dollar science mission remain achievable.

“The mission team’s dedication and systematic approach to this investigation exemplifies the best of NASA engineering,” said Bob Mase, Psyche project manager at  JPL, in a statement. “Their thorough diagnosis and recovery, using the backup system, demonstrates the value of robust spacecraft design and exceptional teamwork.”

But there’s still a lingering concern whatever problem caused the valve to malfunction in the primary fuel line might also eventually affect the same kind of valve in the backup line.

“We are doing a lot of good proactive work around that possible issue,” wrote Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Psyche’s principal investigator at Arizona State University, in a post on X.

Psyche keeps its date with an asteroid, but now it’s running in backup mode Read More »