Kris Guyer – Page 17

Microsoft’s Entra ID vulnerabilities could have been catastrophic

cloud vulnerability, microsoft, Security, security vulnerability, syndication / Kris Guyer / September 20, 2025

“Microsoft built security controls around identity like conditional access and logs, but this internal impression token mechanism bypasses them all,” says Michael Bargury, the CTO at security firm Zenity. “This is the most impactful vulnerability you can find in an identity provider, effectively allowing full compromise of any tenant of any customer.”

If the vulnerability had been discovered by, or fallen into the hands of, malicious hackers, the fallout could have been devastating.

“We don’t need to guess what the impact may have been; we saw two years ago what happened when Storm-0558 compromised a signing key that allowed them to log in as any user on any tenant,” Bargury says.

While the specific technical details are different, Microsoft revealed in July 2023 that the Chinese cyber espionage group known as Storm-0558 had stolen a cryptographic key that allowed them to generate authentication tokens and access cloud-based Outlook email systems, including those belonging to US government departments.

Conducted over the course of several months, a Microsoft postmortem on the Storm-0558 attack revealed several errors that led to the Chinese group slipping past cloud defenses. The security incident was one of a string of Microsoft issues around that time. These motivated the company to launch its “Secure Future Initiative,” which expanded protections for cloud security systems and set more aggressive goals for responding to vulnerability disclosures and issuing patches.

Mollema says that Microsoft was extremely responsive about his findings and seemed to grasp their urgency. But he emphasizes that his findings could have allowed malicious hackers to go even farther than they did in the 2023 incident.

“With the vulnerability, you could just add yourself as the highest privileged admin in the tenant, so then you have full access,” Mollema says. Any Microsoft service “that you use EntraID to sign into, whether that be Azure, whether that be SharePoint, whether that be Exchange—that could have been compromised with this.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

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In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms

budget, NASA, Science, Space / Kris Guyer / September 20, 2025

The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

Science saved, sort of

In the event of a shutdown, there has been much uncertainty about what would happen to NASA’s budget and the agency’s science missions. Earlier this summer, for example, the White House directed science mission leaders to prepare “closeout plans” for about two dozen spacecraft.

These science missions were targeted for cancellation under the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, and the development of these closeout plans indicated that, in the absence of a final budget from Congress, the White House could seek to end these (and other) programs beginning October 1.

However, two sources confirmed to Ars on Friday afternoon that interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has now directed the agency to work toward the budget level established in the House Appropriations Committee’s budget bill for the coming fiscal year. This does not support full funding for NASA’s science portfolio, but it is far more beneficial than the cuts sought by the White House.

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After a very slow start, Europe’s reusable rocket program shows signs of life

Europe, falcon 9, reusable rocket, Space, spacex, Themis / Kris Guyer / September 20, 2025

No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress.

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket’s first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

“This milestone marks the beginning of the ‘combined tests,’ during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad’s mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions,” the company said.

Finally getting going

The advancement of the Themis program represents a concrete step forward for Europe, which has had a delayed and somewhat confusing response to the rise of reusable rockets a decade ago.

After several years of development and testing, including the Grasshopper program in Texas to demonstrate vertical landing, SpaceX landed its first orbital rocket in December 2015. Weeks earlier, Blue Origin landed the much smaller New Shepard vehicle after a suborbital hop. This put the industry on notice that first stage reuse was on the horizon.

At this point, the European Space Agency had already committed to a new medium-lift rocket, the Ariane 6, and locked in a traditional design that would not incorporate any elements of reuse. Most of its funding focused on developing the Ariane 6.

However, by the middle of 2017, the space agency began to initiate programs that would eventually lead to a reusable launch vehicle. They included:

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Steam will wind down support for 32-bit Windows as that version of Windows fades

32-bit, gaming, steam, Tech, valve, Windows 10, windows 10 22h2, Windows 11 / Kris Guyer / September 19, 2025

Though the 32-bit versions of Windows were widely used from the mid-90s all the way through to the early 2010s, this change is coming so late that it should only actually affect a statistically insignificant number of Steam users. Valve already pulled Steam support for all versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 in January 2024, and 2021’s Windows 11 was the first in decades not to ship a 32-bit version. That leaves only the 32-bit version of Windows 10, which is old enough that it will stop getting security updates in either October 2025 or October 2026, depending on how you count it.

According to Steam Hardware Survey data from August, usage of the 32-bit version of Windows 10 (and any other 32-bit version of Windows) is so small that it’s lumped in with “other” on the page that tracks Windows version usage. All “other” versions of Windows combined represent roughly 0.05 percent of all Steam users. The 64-bit version of Windows 10 still runs on just over a third of all Steam-using Windows PCs, while the 64-bit version of Windows 11 accounts for just under two-thirds.

The change to the Steam client shouldn’t have any effects on game availability or compatibility. Any older 32-bit games that you can currently run in 64-bit versions of Windows will continue to work fine because, unlike modern macOS versions, new 64-bit versions of Windows still maintain compatibility with most 32-bit apps.

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Your very own humane interface: Try Jef Raskin’s ideas at home

canon cat, Features, humane interfaces, jef raskin, mame, Tech, tutorial / Kris Guyer / September 19, 2025

Use the magic of emulation to see a different kind of computer design.

Canon Cat keyboard close-up. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

In our earlier article about Macintosh project creator Jef Raskin, we looked at his quest for the humane computer, one that was efficient, consistent, useful, and above all else, respectful and adaptable to the natural frailties of humans. From Raskin’s early work on the Apple Macintosh to the Canon Cat and later his unique software implementations, you were guaranteed an interface you could sit down and interact with nearly instantly and—once you’d learned some basic keystrokes and rules—one you could be rapidly productive with.

But no modern computer implements his designs directly, even though some are based on principles he either espoused or outright pioneered. Fortunately, with a little work and the magic of emulation, you can have your very own humane interface at home and see for yourself what computing might have been had we traveled a little further down Raskin’s UI road.

You don’t need to feed a virtual Cat

Perhaps the most straightforward of Raskin’s systems to emulate is the Canon Cat. Sold by Canon as an overgrown word processor (billed as a “work processor”), it purported to be a simple editor for office work but is actually a full Motorola 68000-based computer programmable through an intentional backdoor in its own dialect of Forth. It uses a single workspace saved en masse to floppy disk that can be subdivided into multiple “documents” and jumped to quickly with key combinations, and it includes facilities for simple spreadsheets and lists.

The Cat is certainly Jef Raskin’s most famous system after the early Macintosh, and it’s most notable for its exclusive use of the keyboard for interaction—there is no mouse or pointing device of any kind. It is supported by MAME, the well-known multi-system emulator, using ROMs available from the Internet Archive.

Note that the MAME driver for the Canon Cat is presently incomplete; it doesn’t support a floppy drive or floppy disk images, and it doesn’t support the machine’s built-in serial port. Still, this is more than enough to get the flavor of how it operates, and the Internet Archive manual includes copious documentation.

There is also a MAME bug with the Cat’s beeper where if the emulated Cat makes a beep (or at least attempts to), it will freeze until it’s reset. To work around that, you need to make the Cat not beep, which requires a trip to its setup screen. On most systems, the Cat USE FRONT key is mapped to Control, and the Cat’s two famous pink LEAP keys are mapped to Alt or Option. Hold down USE FRONT and press the left brace key, which is mapped to SETUP, then release SETUP but keep USE FRONT/Control down.

The first screen appears; we want the second, so tap SETUP again with USE FRONT/Control still down. Now, with USE FRONT/Control still down, tap the space bar repeatedly to cycle through the options until it gets to the “Problem signal” option, and with USE FRONT/Control still down, tap one of the LEAP keys until it is set to “Flash” (i.e., no beep option). For style points, do the same basic operations to set the keyboard type to ASCII, which works better in MAME. When you’re all done, now you can release USE FRONT and experiment.

Getting around with the Cat requires knowing which keys do what, though once you’ve learned that, they never change. To enter text, just type. There are no cursor keys and no mouse; all motion is by leaping—that is, holding down either LEAP key and typing something to search for. Single taps of either LEAP key “creep” you forward or back by a single character.

Special control sequences are executed by holding down USE FRONT and pressing one of the keys marked with a blue function (like we did for the setup menu). The most important of these is USE FRONT-HELP (the N key), which explains errors when the Cat “beeps” (here, flashes its screen), or if you release the N key but keep USE FRONT down, you can press another key to find out what it does.

You can also break into the hidden Forth interpreter by typing Enable Forth Language, highlighting it (i.e., immediately press both LEAP keys together) and then evaluating it with USE FRONT-ANSWER (not CALC; usually Control-Backspace in MAME). You’ll get a Forth ok prompt, and the system is now yours. Remember, it’s Forth, and Forth has dragons. Reset the Cat or type re to return to the editor. With Forth on, you can also highlight Forth in your document and press USE FRONT-ANSWER to execute it and place the answer in your document.

The Internet Archive page has full documentation, and the Cat’s manual is easy to follow, but sadly, the MAME driver doesn’t yet offer you a way to save your document to disk or upload it somewhere.

A SwyftCard shows you swyftcare

Prior to the Cat’s development, however, Raskin’s backers had prevailed upon the company to release some aspects of the technology to raise cash, and as we discussed in the prior article, this initiative yielded the SwyftCard for the Apple IIe. The SwyftCard, like the later Cat, uses an editor on a single subdivided workspace as the core interface, but unlike the Cat, it was openly programmable, including in Applesoft BASIC. It also defines LEAP and USE FRONT keys (and stickers to mark them) and features an exclusively keyboard-driven interface. Being a relatively simple card and floppy disk combination, the package is not particularly difficult to reproduce, and some users have created clone cards with EPROMs and banking logic as historical re-creations.

That said, nowadays, the simplest means of experimenting with a SwyftCard is by using a software implementation developed by Eric Rangell for KansasFest 2021. This version loads the contents of the original 16K EPROM into high auxiliary RAM not used by the SwyftCard firmware and executes it from there. It is effectively a modern equivalent of the SwyftDisk, a software-only version IAI later sold for the Apple IIc that lacks additional expansion slots.

You can download Rangell’s software with ready-to-use disk images and media assets from the Internet Archive, with the user manual available separately. It should work in most Apple IIe emulators with at most minor adjustments; here, I tested it with Mariani, a macOS port of AppleWin, and Virtual ][. Make sure your emulator is configured for a IIe (enhanced is recommended) with an 80-column card and at least one floppy controller and drive in the standard slot 6. It should work with a IIc as well, but as of this writing, it does not work with the IIgs or II+. Also make sure you are running the system at Apple’s standard ~1MHz clock speed, as the software is somewhat timing-sensitive.

Booting up the SwyftCard. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

Start the emulated IIe with the disk image named SwyftCardResurrected.do. This is a standard ProDOS disk used to load the ROM’s contents into memory. At the menu, select option 1, and the SwyftCard ROM image will load from disk. When prompted, unmount the first disk image and change to the one named SwyftWare_-_SwyftCard_Tutorial.woz and then press RETURN. These disk images are based on the IIe build 1066; later versions of SwyftWare to at least 1131 are known.

The SwyftCard and SwyftDisk both came with a set of sticky labels to apply to your keys, marking the two LEAP keys (Open and Closed Apple), ESCape, LEAP AGAIN (TAB), USE FRONT (Control), and then the five functions accessed by USE FRONT: INSERT (A), SEND (D), CALC (G), DISK (L) and PRINT (N). In Mariani, Open Apple and Closed Apple map to Left and Right Option, which are LEAP BACK and LEAP FORWARD, respectively. In Virtual ][, press F5 to pass the Command key through to the emulated Apple, then use either Command as LEAP BACK and either Option as LEAP FORWARD. For regular AppleWin on a PC keyboard, use the Windows keys. All of these emulators use Control for USE FRONT.

The initial SwyftCard tutorial page. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

The tutorial begins by orienting you to the LEAP keys (i.e., the two Apple keys) and how to get around in the document. Unlike the original Swyft, the Apple II SwyftCard does not use the bitmap display and appears strictly in 80-column non-proportional text.

The bar at the top contains the page number, which starts at zero. Equals signs show explicitly entered hard page breaks using the ESCape key, which serve as “subdocuments.” Hard breaks may make pages as short as you desire, but after 54 printed lines, the editor will automatically insert a soft page break with dashes instead. Although up to 200 pages were supported, in practice, the available workspace limits you to about 15 or 20, “densely typed.”

Leaping to the next screen. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

You can jump to each of the help screens either directly by number (hold down the appropriate LEAP key and type the number, then release the keys) or by holding down the LEAP key, pressing the equals sign three times, and releasing the keys. These key combinations search forward and backward for the text you entered. Once you’ve leaped once, you can LEAP AGAIN in either direction to the next occurrence by holding down the appropriate LEAP key and pressing the TAB key.

You can of course leap to any arbitrary text in either direction as well, but you can also leap to the next or prior hard page break (subdocument) by holding down LEAP and pressing ESC, or even leap to hard line breaks with LEAP and RETURN. Raskin was explicit that the keys be released after the operation as a mental reminder that you are no longer leaping, so make sure to release all keys fully before your next leap.

You can also creep forward with the LEAP keys by single characters each time they are pressed.

The two-tone cursor. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

Swyft and the SwyftCard implemented a two-phased cursor, which the SwyftCard calls either “wide” or “narrow.” By default, the cursor is “narrow,” alternating between a solid and a partially filled block. As you type, the cursor splits into a “wide” form—any text shown in inverse, usually the last character you entered, is what is removed when you press DELETE (Mariani doesn’t seem to implement this fully, but it works in Virtual ][ and standard AppleWin), with the blinking portion after the inverse text indicating the insertion point. When you creep or leap, the cursor merges back into the “narrow” form. When narrow, DELETE deletes right as a true delete instead of a backspace.

If you press both LEAP keys together, they will select a range. If you were typing text, then what you just typed becomes selected. Since it appears in inverse, DELETE will remove it. You can also select a previous range by LEAPing to the beginning, LEAPing to the end, and pressing both together. Once deleted, you can insert it elsewhere with USE FRONT-INSERT (Control-A), and you can do so repeatedly to make multiple copies.

Programming in SwyftCard. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

If you start the SwyftCard program but leave the disk drive empty when entering the editor, you get a blank workspace. Not only can you type text into it, but you can type expressions and have the editor evaluate it, even full Applesoft BASIC programs. For example, we asked it to PRINT 355/113 by highlighting it and pressing USE FRONT-CALC (Control-G; this doesn’t currently work in Mariani either). After that, we entered an Applesoft BASIC program, ending with RUN, so that it could be executed. If you highlight this block and press USE FRONT-CALC:

The result of our SwyftCard program. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

…you get this colorful display in the Apple low-resolution graphics mode. (Notice our lines could be in any order.) Our program waits for any key and then returns to the editor. While the original Swyft offered programming in Forth, the SwyftCard uses BASIC, which most Apple II owners would have already known well.

Finally, to save your work to disk, you can insert a blank disk and press USE FRONT-DISK (Control-L). The editor will save the workspace to the disk, marking it with a unique identifier, and it keeps track of the identifiers of what’s in memory and what’s on the disk to prevent you from inadvertently overwriting another previously saved workspace with this one. You can’t save a different workspace over a previously written disk without making an explicit CALL in Applesoft BASIC to the editor to erase it. Highlighted text, however, can be transferred between disks, allowing you to cut and paste between workspaces.

Although we can’t effectively demonstrate serial communications here, USE FRONT-SEND (Control-D) sends whatever is highlighted over the serial port, and any data received on the serial port is automatically incorporated into the workspace, both at 300 baud. Eric Rangell’s YouTube demonstration shows the process in action.

Human beings deserve a Humane Environment

In the prior article, we also discussed Raskin’s software projects, including the last one he worked on before his death in 2005.

In 2002, Raskin, along with his son Aza and the rest of the development team, built a software implementation of his interface ideas called The Humane Environment. As before, it was centered on a core single-workspace editor initially called the Humane Editor and, in its earliest incarnation, was developed for the classic Mac OS.

These early builds of the Humane Editor will run under Classic on any Mac OS X-capable Power Mac or natively in Mac OS 9 and include runnable binaries, the Python and C source code, and the CodeWarrior projects necessary to build them. (Later systems should be able to run them with SheepShaver or QEMU. I recommend installing at least Mac OS 9.0.4, and preferably Mac OS 9.2.2.) They are particularly advantageous in that they are fully self-contained and don’t need a separate standalone Python interpreter. Here, we’ll be using my trusty 1.33GHz iBook G4 in Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 with Mac OS 9.2.2 in Classic.

The build we’ll demonstrate is the last one available in the SourceForge CVS, modified on September 25, 2003. An earlier version is available as a StuffIt archive in the Files section, though not all of what we’ll show here may apply to it. If you attempt to download the tree with a regular CVS client, however, you’ll find that most of the files are BinHexed to preserve their resource forks; it’s a classic Mac application, after all. You can manually correct this, but an easier way is to use a native old-school MacCVS client, which will still work with SourceForge since the connection is unencrypted and automatically fixes the resources for you. For this, we’ll use MacCVS 3.2b8, which is Carbonized and runs natively in PowerPC OS X.

Downloading THE with MacCVS. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

When starting MacCVS, it’s immaterial what you set the default preferences to because in the command sheet, we’ll enter a full command line: cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[email protected]:/cvsroot/humane co -P HumaneEditorProject

The tree will then download (this may take a minute or two).

THE folder after downloading. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

You should now have a new folder called HumaneEditorProject in the same folder as the CVS client. Go into that and find the folder named bin, which contains the main application HumaneEnvironment. Assuming you did the CVS step right, the application will have an icon of General Halftrack from the Beetle Bailey comic strip (which is to say, even a clod like General Halftrack can use this editor). Before starting it up, create a new folder called Saved States in the same folder with HumaneEnvironment, or you’ll get weird errors while using it.

Double-click HumaneEnvironment to start the application. Initially, a window will flash open and then close. If you’re running THE under Classic, as I am here (so that I can more easily take screengrabs), it may switch to another application, so switch back to it.

Starting the Humane Editor. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

In HumaneEnvironment, press Command-N for a new document. Here, we’ll create an “untitled” file in the Documents folder. Notice that in this very early version, there were still “files,” and they were still accessed through the regular Macintosh Standard File package.

Default document. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

Here is the default document (I’ve zoomed the window to take up the whole screen). Backtick characters separate documents. Our familiar two-tone cursor we saw with the Cat and SwyftCard and discussed at length in the prior article is also maintained. However, although font sizes, boldface, italic, and underlining were supported, colors (and, additionally, font sizes) were still selected by traditional Mac pulldown menus in this version.

Leaping, here with a trademark, is again front and center in THE. However, instead of dedicated keys, leaping is subsumed into THE’s internal command line termed the Humane Quasimode. The Quasimode is activated by pressing SHIFT-SPACE, keeping SHIFT down, and then pressing < or > to leap back or forward, followed by the text (case insensitive) or characters. Backticks, spaces, and line terminators (RETURN) can all be leapt to. Notice that the prompt is displayed as translucent text over the work area; no ineffective single-option modal dialogue boxes died to bring you these Death Star plans.

Similarly, tasks such as selection (the S command) are done in the Quasimode instead of pressing both leap keys together.

The Deletion Document. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

When text is deleted, either by backspacing over it or pressing DELETE with a selected region, it goes to an automatically created and maintained “DELETION DOCUMENT” from which it can be rescued. (Deleting from the deletion document just deletes.) The Undo operation does not function properly in this early build, so the easiest way to rescue accidentally deleted text is from the deletion document. It is saved with the file just like any other document in the workspace, and several of the documentation files, obviously created with THE, have deletion documents at the end.

A full list of commands accepted by the Quasimode are available by typing COMMANDS, which in turn emits them to the document. These are based on Python files, which are precompiled from .hpy sources (“Humane Python”), which you can modify and recompile (using COMPILE) on the fly. There is also a startup.py that you can alter to immediately set up your environment the way you want on launch. Like COMPILE, several commands are explicitly marked as for developers only or not working yet.

Interestingly, typical key combinations like Command-C and Command-V for copy and paste are handled here as commands.

The CALC command can turn a Python-compatible expression into text containing the result, though it is not editable again to change the underlying expression like the Cat. However, the original text of the expression goes to the deletion document so it can be recovered and edited if necessary. A possible bug in this release is that the CALC command fails to compute anything if the end-of-line delimiter was part of the selected text.

Similarly, the RUN command will take the output of a block of Python code and put it into your document in the same way. Notice the code is not removed like with the CALC command, facilitating repeated execution, and embedded Python code was expected to be indented by two fixed leading spaces so that it would stand out as executable text—passing Python code that is not indented won’t execute, and the RUN command won’t raise an error, either. Special INDENT and UNINDENT commands make the indenting process less tedious.

Subsequent builds migrated to Windows, renamed “Archy” not only after Don Marquis’ literary insect but also the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces, which, of course, is abbreviated RCHI. To date, Archy remains unfinished, and the easiest example to run is the final build 124 dated December 15, 2005, available for Windows 98 and up. The build includes its own embedded Python interpreter, libraries, and support files, and as a well-behaved 32-bit application, will run on pretty much any modern Windows PC. Here, I’m running it on Windows 11 22H2.

The Archy build 124 installer. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

The program comes as a formal installer and needs no special privileges. An uninstaller is also provided. Although it’s possible to get Python sources from the same page for other systems, the last available source tarball is build 115, which may lack every Windows-specific change to various components needed later. If you want to try running the Python code on Mac or Linux, you will need at least Python 2.3 but not Python 3.x, a compatible version of Pygame 1.6 or better, and their prerequisites.

The initial Archy window. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

To start it up, double-click the Archy executable in the installed folder, and the default document will appear. Annoyingly, Archy’s window cannot be resized or maximized, at least not on my system, so the window here is as big as you get. Archy’s default font is no longer monospace, and size and colour are fully controllable from within the editor. There are also special control characters used to display the key icons. The document separator is still entered with the backtick but is translated into its own control character.

Entering an Archy command for one of the examples. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

The default document had substantially grown since the THE era and now includes multiple example tutorials. These are accessed through Archy’s own command mode, which is entered by holding down CAPS LOCK and typing the command. Here, for the first example, we start typing EX1 and notice that there is now visual command completion available. Release CAPS LOCK, and the suggested command is used.

Archy presents Archy, with an animated keyboard and voiceover. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

Archy tutorials are actually narrated with voiceovers, plus on-screen animated typing and keyboard. There are six of them in all. They are not part of your regular document, and your workspace returns when you press a key.

Leaping in Archy. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

The awkward multi-step leap command of THE has been replaced once again with dedicated leap keys, in this case Left and Right Alt, going back to the SwyftCard and Cat. Selection is likewise done by pressing both leap keys. A key advancement here is that any text that will be selected, if you choose to select it, is highlighted beforehand in a light shade of yellow, so you no longer have to remember where your ranges were.

A list of commands in Archy. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

The COMMANDS verb gives you a list of commands (notice that Archy has acquired a concept of locked text, normally on a black background, and my attempt to type there brought me automatically to somewhere I actually could type). While THE’s available command suite was almost entirely specific to an editor application, Archy’s aspirations as a more complete all-purpose environment are evident. In particular, in addition to many of the same commands we saw on the Mac, there are now special Internet-oriented commands like EMAIL and GOOGLE.

How commands in Archy are constructed. Credit: Cameron Kaiser

Unlike THE, where you had to edit them separately, commands in Archy are actually small documents containing Python snippets embedded in the same workspace, and Archy’s API is much more complete. Here is the GOOGLE command, which takes whatever text you have selected and turns it into a Google search in your default browser. In the other commands displayed here, you can also see how the API allows you to get and delete selected text, then insert or modify it.

Creating a new command in Archy. Cameron Kaiser

Here, we’ll take the LEAP command itself (which you can change, too!), select and copy it, and then use it as a template for a new one called TEST. This one will display a message to the user and insert a fixed string into the buffer. The command is ready right away; there is no need to restart the editor. We can immediately call it—its name is already part of command completion—and run it.

There are many such subsections and subdocuments. Besides the deletion document (now just called “DELETIONS”), your email is a document, your email server settings are a document, there is a document for formal Python modules which other commands can import, and there are several help documents. Each time you exit Archy, the entire workspace with all your commands, context, and settings is saved as a text file in the Archy folder with a new version number so you can go back to an old copy if you really screw up.

Every cul-de-sac ends

Although these are functional examples and some of their ideas were used (however briefly) in later products, we’ve yet to see them make a major return to modern platforms—but you can read all about that in the main article. Meanwhile, these emulations and re-creations give you a taste of what might have been, and what it could take to make today’s increasingly locked-down computer hardware devices more humane in the process.

Sadly, I think a lot of us would argue that they’re going the wrong way.

Your very own humane interface: Try Jef Raskin’s ideas at home Read More »

Software update shoves ads onto Samsung’s pricey fridges

ads, samsung, Smart Home, Tech / Kris Guyer / September 18, 2025

A picture that the Redditor posted shows a message purportedly displayed on a Samsung fridge informing owners of the ads, reading: “To enhance our service and offer additional content to users, advertisements will be displayed on the Cover Screen for the Weather, Color, and Daily Board Themes.”

The notice shown on Samsung fridges. — A Reddit user shared this notice shown on Samsung fridges. Credit: angrycatmeowmeow/Reddit

Samsung recently downplayed the idea of using smart appliances’ screens for ads. While speaking with The Verge in April, Jeong Seung Moon, EVP and head of the R&D team for Samsung Electronics’ Digital Appliances Business, said Samsung had “no plans regarding the inclusion of advertisements on AI Home screens.”

Technically, the pilot program is running on fridges’ larger “Cover Screens,” not “AI Home Screens,” which are smaller (7 -or 9-inch) touchscreens that Samsung introduced to appliances in late 2024. But it still feels like Samsung missed numerous opportunities to manage expectations with its rollout of ads on Samsung products.

You can see the smaller AI Home Screens on these Samsung appliances. Credit: Samsung

Despite this, some may have been tipped off to Samsung’s potential shift to ads from the company’s growing obsession with putting screens on products that are usually controllable with more repairable, affordable, and simpler solutions, like buttons and dials. But there are still bound to be people upset to see their fridge updated to display commercial messaging where their family eats and cooks.

Another reason to leave appliances offline

Based on Samsung’s statement, users can prevent ads from showing on their smart fridges by having the screen show photos or art. However, that limits the ways people can use their expensive fridge.

Another option is to disconnect the fridge from the Internet. Again, though, this would eliminate some core capabilities, like its meal planner, recipes, and shopping list features.

On the other hand, some Samsung fridge owners may not even notice the update, considering that vendors have struggled to get people to connect home appliances to the Internet. Less than half of the smart appliances that LG had sold were online in 2023, for example.

Smart appliance makers that would like to access the valuable user data and ad revenue that are available when people connect their appliances to the web battle privacy concerns, indifference, and technical limitations. Samsung’s reminder to everyone about how easy it is for tech companies to turn people’s smart appliances into billboards is another deterrent.

But with expensive and large electronics purchases happening infrequently for most households, many tech companies are increasingly relying on ads for recurring revenue. It’s very unlikely that Samsung’s pilot program will be the last we hear of the sudden appearance of ads on smart home devices.

Software update shoves ads onto Samsung’s pricey fridges Read More »

FCC derided as “Federal Censorship Commission” after pushing Jimmy Kimmel off ABC

charlie kirk, fcc chairman brendan carr, jimmy kimmel, Policy / Kris Guyer / September 18, 2025

Disney does FCC chair’s bidding, suspends Kimmel show over Charlie Kirk comment.

Jimmy Kimmel at The Walt Disney Company’s 77th Emmy Awards Party on September 14, 2025 in Los Angeles Credit: Getty Images | Chad Salvador

ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show off the air yesterday, shortly after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr urged the Disney-owned company to take action against Kimmel or face consequences at the FCC over Kimmel’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Carr appeared on right-wing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast yesterday and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Carr urged Disney to suspend Kimmel and said broadcast stations that carry ABC content should refuse to carry Kimmel’s show.

After Carr’s comments and a statement by Nexstar that it would preempt Kimmel’s show on its ABC-affiliated stations, ABC confirmed in a statement that “Jimmy Kimmel Live! will be preempted indefinitely.” The decision was made by Disney CEO Robert Iger and TV division head Dana Walden, The New York Times reported. We contacted ABC today and will update this article if we get a response.

Several House Democratic leaders accused Carr of “engag[ing] in the corrupt abuse of power. He has disgraced the office he holds by bullying ABC, the employer of Jimmy Kimmel, and forcing the company to bend the knee to the Trump administration. FCC Chair Brendan Carr should resign immediately.” The top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans an investigation.

Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the Republican-majority FCC, said the Kimmel suspension is “cowardly corporate capitulation by ABC that has put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger.” She said the “FCC does not have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to police content or punish broadcasters for speech the government dislikes,” but that “billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency” are “vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”

Former President Barack Obama criticized the Trump administration’s actions on Kimmel. “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like,” Obama wrote today.

Disney has pending business before the Trump administration, as Justice Department antitrust officials are investigating its pending merger with FuboTV.

“Federal Censorship Commission”

Media advocacy group Free Press said that Carr’s “Federal Censorship Commission” reached a “new low” in its push to get Kimmel off the air.

“Donald Trump and Brendan Carr have turned the FCC into the Federal Censorship Commission, ignoring the First Amendment and replacing the rule of law with the whims of right-wing bloggers,” Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron said. “They’re abusing their power to shake down media companies with their dangerous demands for dishonest coverage and Orwellian compliance with the administration’s political agenda. This is nothing more than censorship and extortion. Worse still, the nation’s largest media companies are playing along.”

The FCC has sway over ABC and other major networks because it licenses the broadcast stations that carry the networks’ content. Although previous FCC chairs from both major parties avoided regulating TV news content, Carr has repeatedly threatened to punish stations accused of bias against Republicans.

“There’s calls for Kimmel to be fired. You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. The FCC is going to have remedies that we can look at. We may ultimately be called to be a judge on that,” Carr said.

The Kimmel controversy began Monday when he said during a monologue, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”

Tyler Robinson, the man charged with murdering Kirk, reportedly came from a conservative-leaning family. But Robinson’s mother told police that he “had become more political and had started to lean more to the left,” according to a probable cause statement filed in a Utah court.

Kimmel was planning to explain his comments during last night’s show before it got pulled, according to Deadline. “He was expected to unpack the statement on tonight’s show, highlighting that he was not saying Tyler Robinson, who allegedly shot Kirk, was ‘one of them,’ referring to Republicans, or MAGA supporters, but rather was highlighting how right-wing supporters were trying to distance themselves from the alleged shooter, who was charged with aggravated murder this week,” the article said.

Carr: “Some of the sickest conduct possible”

Carr said that Kimmel’s monologue “appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible,” and that he wants to “reinvigorate the public interest standard” that applies to licensed broadcasters.

Johnson asked Carr if Kimmel’s statement rises to the level of news distortion. As we explained in a feature article in April, Carr has repeatedly threatened to punish companies that violate the FCC news distortion policy that dates to the 1960s. The FCC technically has no rule or regulation against news distortion, which is why it is called a policy and not a rule. The FCC apparently hasn’t made a finding of news distortion since 1993.

In response to Johnson’s news distortion question, Carr said, “the FCC could be called upon to be an ultimate judge in that. But at this point it appears to be clear that you can make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact… this is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney.”

Revoking licenses difficult legally

Any FCC attempt to revoke licenses based on news distortion allegations could be challenged in court. Moreover, as we’ve written, revoking a license in the middle of a license term is so difficult legally that it has been described as effectively impossible. The FCC can go after a license when it’s up for renewal, but there are no TV station licenses up for renewal until 2028.

Despite those factors weighing in favor of broadcast stations, Carr can influence the decisions of major media companies with threats alone. “Broadcasters are entirely different than people who use other forms of communication,” Carr said on Johnson’s podcast. “They have a license granted by us at the FCC and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”

Trump’s various demands for license revocations have omitted the fact that it is broadcast stations, not networks, that hold FCC licenses. Carr is aware of the distinction and made a point of saying that broadcast stations could lose their licenses if they continue to carry Kimmel’s show:

There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters and, frankly, I think it’s past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on [NBC owner] Comcast and Disney and say, ‘listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, the licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.’ Disney needs to see some change here, but the individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this garbage isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities. This status quo is obviously not acceptable where we are.”

Carr also said the FCC is investigating Disney’s DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) practices “for potentially violating the FCC’s equal employment opportunity rules. We’ve issued Disney a letter of inquiry on that, we’ve received some documents from them.” Carr has made ending DEI practices a condition for getting mergers approved.

Trump hails “great news,” wants other hosts fired

Trump posted on social media that Kimmel being taken off the air is great for America and urged NBC to cancel late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Trump wrote. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

Last year, Trump obtained a $15 million settlement with ABC over false statements made on air by George Stephanopoulos. More recently, he struck a $16 million settlement with CBS owner Paramount over his claim that 60 Minutes deceptively manipulated a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 60 Minutes claim was widely described as frivolous, but Paramount settled with Trump at a time when it was seeking FCC permission to complete an $8 billion merger with Skydance. Carr’s FCC subsequently approved the merger and imposed a condition requiring a CBS ombudsman, which Carr described as a “bias monitor.” After his victory over CBS, Trump called on the FCC to revoke ABC and NBC licenses.

Late-night host Stephen Colbert called the settlement with Trump “a big fat bribe.” CBS subsequently announced it would cancel Colbert’s show when the season ends in May 2026.

Kimmel urged people to stop “angry finger-pointing”

The Nexstar statement on Kimmel said the host’s comments “are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse… Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.” Nexstar is trying to complete a $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, and needs the FCC to relax its ownership-cap rule.

Conservative broadcaster Sinclair issued a statement praising Carr’s remarks and urging the FCC to “take immediate regulatory action to address control held over local broadcasters by the big national networks.” Even if ABC reinstates Kimmel, Sinclair said it will not air the show on its stations “until formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability.”

Sinclair urged Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and “make a meaningful personal donation” to the Kirk Family and the Kirk group Turning Point USA. “Sinclair’s ABC stations will air a special in remembrance of Charlie Kirk this Friday, during Jimmy Kimmel Live’s timeslot,” the statement said. “The special will also air across all Sinclair stations this weekend. In addition, Sinclair is offering the special to all ABC affiliates across the country.”

SAG-AFTRA called Kimmel’s suspension “the type of suppression and retaliation that endangers everyone’s freedoms,” and said that “Democracy thrives when diverse points of view are expressed.” A Writers Guild of America statement said, “If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution… Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth. As for our employers, our words have made you rich. Silencing us impoverishes the whole world.”

In a social media post on the day of Kirk’s death, Kimmel expressed sadness about the killing and urged people to avoid angry finger-pointing. “Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human?” Kimmel wrote. “On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

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.

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Some dogs can classify their toys by function

animal behavior, animal cognition, Biology, Dogs, Science / Kris Guyer / September 18, 2025

Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It’s a cognitively advanced ability known as “label extension,” and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that “cup” can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function,” she said. “So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group’s experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It’s called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with “smarter” dog breeds prioritizing an object’s appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs’ information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Another aspect of the study involved measuring the length of a dog’s head, which prior research has shown is correlated with visual acuity. The shorter a dog’s head, the more similar their visual acuity is to human vision. That’s because there is a higher concentration of retinal ganglion cells in the center of their field of vision, making vision sharper and giving such dogs binocular depth vision. The testing showed that dogs with better visual acuity, and who also scored higher on the series of cognitive tests, also exhibited less spatial bias. This suggests that canine spatial bias is not simply a sensory matter but is also influenced by how they think. “Smarter” dogs have less spatial bias.

Some dogs can classify their toys by function Read More »

Meta’s $799 Ray-Ban Display is the company’s first big step from VR to AR

ar, augmented reality, Meta, Tech, virtual reality, vr, Zuckerberg / Kris Guyer / September 18, 2025

Zuckerberg also showed how the neural interface can be used to compose messages (on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, or via a connected phone’s messaging apps) by following your mimed “handwriting” across a flat surface. Though this feature reportedly won’t be available at launch, Zuckerberg said he had gotten up to “about 30 words per minute” in this silent input mode.

The most impressive part of Zuckerberg’s on-stage demo that will be available at launch was probably a “live caption” feature that automatically types out the words your partner is saying in real time. The feature reportedly filters out background noise to focus on captioning just the person you’re looking at, too.

A Meta video demos how live captioning works on the Ray-Ban Display (though the field-of-view on the actual glasses is likely much more limited). Credit: Meta

Beyond those “gee whiz” kinds of features, the Meta Ray-Ban Display can basically mirror a small subset of your smartphone’s apps on its floating display. Being able to get turn-by-turn directions or see recipe steps on the glasses without having to glance down at a phone feels like genuinely useful new interaction modes. Using the glasses display as a viewfinder to line up a photo or video (using the built-in 12 megapixel, 3x zoom camera) also seems like an improvement over previous display-free smartglasses.

But accessing basic apps like weather, reminders, calendar, and emails on your tiny glasses display strikes us as probably less convenient than just glancing at your phone. And hosting video calls via the glasses by necessity forces your partner to see what you’re seeing via the outward-facing camera, rather than seeing your actual face.

Meta also showed off some pie-in-the-sky video about how future “Agentic AI” integration would be able to automatically make suggestions and note follow-up tasks based on what you see and hear while wearing the glasses. For now, though, the device represents what Zuckerberg called “the next chapter in the exciting story of the future of computing,” which should serve to take focus away from the failed VR-based metaverse that was the company’s last “future of computing.”

Meta’s $799 Ray-Ban Display is the company’s first big step from VR to AR Read More »

Report: Apple inches closer to releasing an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro

Apple, MacBook Pro, Tech / Kris Guyer / September 17, 2025

At multiple points over many years, Apple executives have taken great pains to point out that they think touchscreen Macs are a silly idea. But it remains one of those persistent Mac rumors that crops up over and over again every couple of years, from sources that are reliable enough that they shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

Today’s contribution comes from supply chain analyst Ming Chi-Kuo, who usually has some insight into what Apple is testing and manufacturing. Kuo says that touchscreen MacBook Pros are “expected to enter mass production by late 2026,” and that the devices will also shift to using OLED display panels instead of the Mini LED panels on current-generation MacBook Pros.

Kuo says that Apple’s interest in touchscreen Macs comes from “long-term observation of iPad user behavior.” Apple’s tablet hardware launches in the last few years have also included keyboard and touchpad accessories, and this year’s iPadOS 26 update in particular has helped to blur the line between the touch-first iPad and the keyboard-and-pointer-first Mac. In other words, Apple has already acknowledged that both kinds of input can be useful when combined in the same device; taking that same jump on the Mac feels like a natural continuation of work Apple is already doing.

Touchscreens became much more common on Windows PCs starting in 2012 when Windows 8 was released, itself a response to Apple’s introduction of the iPad a couple of years before. Microsoft backed off on almost all of Windows 8’s design decisions in the following years after the dramatic UI shift proved unpopular with traditional mouse-and-keyboard users, but touchscreen PCs like Microsoft’s Surface lineup have persisted even as the software has changed.

Report: Apple inches closer to releasing an OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro Read More »

iOS 26 review: A practical, yet playful, update

Apple, Features, iOS, ios 26, IPhone, Reviews, Software, Tech / Kris Guyer / September 17, 2025

More than just Liquid Glass

Spotlighting the most helpful new features of iOS 26.

The new Clear icons look in iOS 26 can make it hard to identify apps, since they’re all the same color. Credit: Scharon Harding

iOS 26 became publicly available this week, ushering in a new OS naming system and the software’s most overhauled look since 2013. It may take time to get used to the new “Liquid Glass” look, but it’s easier to appreciate the pared-down controls.

Beyond a glassy, bubbly new design, the update’s flashiest new features also include new Apple Intelligence AI integration that varies in usefulness, from fluffy new Genmoji abilities to a nifty live translation feature for Phones, Messages, and FaceTime.

New tech is often bogged down with AI-based features that prove to be overhyped, unreliable, or just not that useful. iOS 26 brings a little of each, so in this review, we’ll home in on the iOS updates that will benefit both mainstream and power users the most.

Table of Contents

Let’s start with Liquid Glass

If we’re talking about changes that you’re going to use a lot, we should start with the new Liquid Glass software design that Apple is applying across all of its operating systems. iOS hasn’t had this much of a makeover since iOS 7. However, where iOS 7 applied a flatter, minimalist effect to windows and icons and their edges, iOS 26 adds a (sometimes frosted) glassy look and a mildly fluid movement to actions such as pulling down menus or long-pressing controls. All the while, windows look like they’re reflecting the content underneath them. When you pull Safari’s menu atop a webpage, for example, blurred colors from the webpage’s images and text are visible on empty parts of the menu.

Liquid Glass is now part of most of Apple’s consumer devices, including Macs and Apple TVs, but the dynamic visuals and motion are especially pronounced as you use your fingers to poke, slide, and swipe across your iPhone’s screen.

For instance, when you use a tinted color theme or the new clear theme for Home Screen icons, colors from the Home Screen’s background look like they’re refracting from under the translucent icons. It’s especially noticeable when you slide to different Home Screen pages. And in Safari, the address bar shrinks down and becomes more translucent as you scroll to read an article.

Because the theme is incorporated throughout the entire OS, the Liquid Glass effect can be cheesy at times. It feels forced in areas such as Settings, where text that just scrolled past looks slightly blurred at the top of the screen.

Liquid Glass makes the top of the Settings menu look blurred. Credit: Scharon Harding

Other times, the effect feels fitting, like when pulling the Control Center down and its icons appear to stretch down to the bottom of the screen and then quickly bounce into their standard size as you release your finger. Another place Liquid Glass flows nicely is in Photos. As you browse your pictures, colors subtly pop through the translucent controls at the bottom of the screen.

This is a matter of appearance, so you may have your own take on whether Liquid Glass looks tasteful or not. But overall, it’s the type of redesign that’s distinct enough to be a fun change, yet mild enough that you can grow accustomed to it if you’re not immediately impressed.

Liquid Glass simplifies navigation (mostly)

There’s more to Liquid Glass than translucency. Part of the redesign is simplifying navigation in some apps by displaying fewer controls.

Opening Photos is now cleaner at launch, bringing you to all of your photos instead of the Collections section, like iOS 18 does. At the bottom are translucent tabs for Library and Collections, plus a Search icon. Once you start browsing, the Library and Collections tabs condense into a single icon, and Years, Months, and All tabs appear, maintaining a translucence that helps keep your focus on your pictures.

You can still bring up more advanced options (such as Flash, Live, Timer) with one tap. And at the top of the camera’s field of view are smaller toggles for night mode and flash. But for when you want to take a quick photo, iOS 26 makes it easier to focus on the necessities while keeping the extraneous within short reach.

Similarly, the initial controls displayed at the bottom of the screen when you open Camera are pared down from six different photo- and video-shooting modes to the two that really matter: Photo and Video.

iOS 26 camera app — If you long-press Photo, options for the Time-Lapse, Slow-Mo, Cinematic, Portrait, Spatial, and Pano modes appear. Credit: Scharon Harding

iOS 26 takes the same approach with Video mode by focusing on the essentials (zoom, resolution, frame rate, and flash) at launch.New layout options for navigating Safari, however, slowed me down. In a new Compact view, the address bar lives at the bottom of the screen without a dedicated toolbar, giving the web page more screen space. But this setup makes accessing common tasks, like opening a new or old tab, viewing bookmarks, or sharing a link, tedious because they’re hidden behind a menu button.

If you tend to have multiple browser tabs open, you’ll want to stick with the classic layout, now called Top (where the address bar is at the top of the screen and the toolbar is at the bottom) or the Bottom layout (where the address bar and toolbar are at the bottom of the screen).

On the more practical side of Safari updates is a new ability to turn any webpage into a web app, making favorite and important URLs accessible quickly and via a dedicated Home Screen icon. This has been an iOS feature for a long time, but until now the pages always opened in Safari. Users can still do this if they like, but by default these sites now open as their own distinct apps, with dedicated icons in the app switcher. Web apps open full-screen, but in my experience, back and forward buttons only come up if you go to a new website. Sliding left and right replaces dedicated back and forward controls, but sliding isn’t as reliable as just tapping a button.

Viewing Ars Technica as a web app. Credit: Scharon Harding

iOS 26 remembers that iPhones are telephones

With so much focus on smartphone chips, screens, software, and AI lately, it can be easy to forget that these devices are telephones. iOS 26 doesn’t overlook the core purpose of iPhones, though. Instead, the new operating system adds a lot to the process of making and receiving phone calls, video calls, and text messages, starting with the look of the Phone app.

Continuing the streamlined Liquid Glass redesign, the Phone app on iOS 26 consolidates the bottom controls from Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail, to Calls (where voicemails also live), Contacts, and Keypad, plus Search.

I’d rather have a Voicemails section at the bottom of the screen than Search, though. The Voicemails section is still accessible by opening a menu at the top-right of the screen, but it’s less prominent, and getting to it requires more screen taps than before.

On Phone’s opening screen, you’ll see the names or numbers of missed calls and voicemails in red. But voicemails also have a blue dot next to the red phone number or name (along with text summarizing or transcribing the voicemail underneath if those settings are active). This setup caused me to overlook missed calls initially. Missed calls with voicemails looked more urgent because of the blue dot. For me, at first glance, it appeared as if the blue dots represented unviewed missed calls and that red numbers/names without a blue dot were missed calls that I had already viewed. It’s taking me time to adjust, but there’s logic behind having all missed phone activity in one place.

Fighting spam calls and messages

For someone like me, whose phone number seems to have made it to every marketer and scammers’ contact lists, it’s empowering to have iOS 26’s screening features help reduce time spent dealing with spam.

The phone can be set to automatically ask callers with unsaved numbers to state their name. As this happens, iOS displays the caller’s response on-screen, so you can decide if you want to answer or not. If you’re not around when the phone rings, you can view the transcript later and then mark the caller as known, if desired. This has been my preferred method of screening calls and reduces the likelihood of missing a call I want to answer.

There are also options for silencing calls and voicemails from unknown numbers and having them only show in a section of the app that’s separate from the Calls tab (and accessible via the aforementioned Phone menu).

iOS 26's new Phone menu — A new Phone menu helps sort important calls from calls that are likely spam. Credit: Scharon Harding

You could also have iOS direct calls that your cell phone carrier identifies as spam to voicemail and only show the missed calls in the Phone menu’s dedicated Spam list. I found that, while the spam blocker is fairly reliable, silencing calls from unsaved numbers resulted in me missing unexpected calls from, say, an interview source or my bank. And looking through my spam and unknown callers lists sounds like extra work that I’m unlikely to do regularly.

Messages

iOS 26 applies the same approach to Messages. You can now have texts from unknown senders and spam messages automatically placed into folders that are separate from your other texts. It’s helpful for avoiding junk messages, but it can be confusing if you’re waiting for something like a two-factor authentication text, for example.

Elsewhere in Messages is a small but effective change to browsing photos, links, and documents previously exchanged via text. Upon tapping the name of a person in a conversation in Messages, you’ll now see tabs for viewing that conversation’s settings (such as the recipient’s number and a toggle for sending read receipts), as well as separate tabs for photos and links. Previously, this was all under one tab, so if you wanted to find a previously sent link, you had to scroll through the conversation’s settings and photos. Now, you can get to links with a couple of quick taps. Additionally, with iOS 26 you can finally set up custom iMessage backgrounds, including premade ones and ones that you can make from your own photos or by using generative AI. It’s not an essential update but is an easy way to personalize your iPhone by brightening up texts.

Hold Assist

Another time saver is Hold Assist. It makes calling customer service slightly more tolerable by allowing you to hang up during long wait times and have your iPhone ring when someone’s ready to talk to you. It’s a feature that some customer service departments have offered for years already, but it’s handy to always have it available.

You have to be quick to respond, though. One time I answered the phone after using Hold Assist, and the caller informed me that they had said “hello” a few times already. This is despite the fact that iOS is supposed to let the agent know that you’ll be on the phone shortly. If I had waited a couple more seconds to pick up the phone, it’s likely that the customer service rep would have hung up.

Live translations

One of the most novel features that iOS 26 brings to iPhone communication is real-time translations for Spanish, Mandarin, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese. After downloading the necessary language libraries, iOS can translate one of those languages to another in real time when you’re talking on the phone or FaceTime or texting.

The feature worked best in texts, where the software doesn’t have to deal with varying accents, people speaking fast or over one another, stuttering, or background noise. Translated texts and phone calls always show the original text written in the sender’s native language, so you can double-check translations or see things that translations can miss, like acronyms, abbreviations, and slang.

iOS 26 Translating some basic Spanish. — Translating some basic Spanish. Credit: Scharon Harding

During calls or FaceTime, Live Translation sometimes struggled to keep up while it tried to manage the nuances and varying speeds of how different people speak, as well as laughs and other interjections.

However, it’s still remarkable that the iPhone can help remove language barriers without any additional hardware, apps, or fees. It will be even better if Apple can improve reliability and add more languages.

Spatial images on the Home and Lock Screen

The new spatial images feature is definitely on the fluffier side of this iOS update, but it is also a practical way to spice up your Lock Screen, Home Screen, and the Home Screen’s Photos widget.

Basically, it applies a 3D effect to any photo in your library, which is visible as you move your phone around in your hand. Apple says that to do this, iOS 26 uses the same generative AI models that the Apple Vision Pro uses and creates a per-pixel depth map that makes parts of the image appear to pop out as you move the phone within six degrees of freedom.

The 3D effect is more powerful on some images than others, depending on the picture’s composition. It worked well on a photo of my dog sitting in front of some plants and behind a leaf of another plant. I set the display time so that it appears tucked behind her fur, and when I move the phone around, the dog and the leaf in front of her appear to move around, while the background plants stay still.

But in images with few items and sparser backgrounds, the spatial effect looks unnatural. And oftentimes, the spatial effect can be quite subtle.

Still, for those who like personalizing their iPhone with Home and Lock Screen customization, spatial scenes are a simple and harmless way to liven things up. And, if you like the effect enough, a new spatial mode in the Camera app allows you to create new spatial photos.

A note on Apple Intelligence notification summaries

As we’ve already covered in our macOS 26 Tahoe review, Apple Intelligence-based notification summaries haven’t improved much since their 2024 debut in iOS 18 and macOS 15 Sequoia. After problems with showing inaccurate summaries of news notifications, Apple updated the feature to warn users that the summaries may be inaccurate. But it’s still hit or miss when it comes to how easy it is to decipher the summaries.

I did have occasional success with notification summaries in iOS 26. For instance, I understood a summary of a voicemail that said, “Payment may have appeared twice; refunds have been processed.” Because I had already received a similar message via email (a store had accidentally charged me twice for a purchase and then refunded me), I knew I didn’t need to open that voicemail.

Vague summaries sometimes tipped me off as to whether a notification was important. A summary reading “Townhall meeting was hosted; call [real phone number] to discuss issues” was enough for me to know that I had a voicemail about a meeting that I never expressed interest in. It wasn’t the most informative summary, but in this case, I didn’t need a lot of information.

However, most of the time, it was still easier to just open the notification than try to decipher what Apple Intelligence was trying to tell me. Summaries aren’t really helpful and don’t save time if you can’t fully trust their accuracy or depth.

Playful, yet practical

With iOS 26, iPhones get a playful new design that’s noticeable and effective but not so drastically different that it will offend or distract those who are happy with the way iOS 18 works. It’s exciting to experience one of iOS’s biggest redesigns, but what really stands out are the thoughtful tweaks that bring practical improvements to core features, like making and receiving phone calls and taking pictures.

Some additions and changes are superfluous, but the update generally succeeds at improving functionality without introducing jarring changes that isolate users or force them to relearn how to use their phone.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll like the Liquid Glass design, but other updates should make it simpler to do some of the most important tasks with iPhones, and it should be a welcome improvement for long-time users.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

commercial resupply services, Commercial space, falcon 9, international space station, launch, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, thales alenia space / Kris Guyer / September 16, 2025

What happens when you use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship? A record-setting resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The first flight of Northrop’s upgraded Cygnus spacecraft, called Cygnus XL, is on its way to the international research lab after launching Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

A bigger keg

The Cygnus XL spacecraft looks a lot like Northrop’s previous missions to the station. It has a service module manufactured at the company’s factory in Northern Virginia. This segment of the spacecraft provides power, propulsion, and other necessities to keep Cygnus operating in orbit.

The most prominent features of the Cygnus cargo freighter are its circular, fan-like solar arrays and an aluminum cylinder called the pressurized cargo module that bears some resemblance to a keg of beer. This is the element that distinguishes the Cygnus XL from earlier versions of the Cygnus supply ship.

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

“The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft,” Tintner said. “It’s got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had. Obviously, more may sound like better, but it’s really critical because we can deliver significantly more science, as well as we’re able to deliver a lot more cargo per launch, really trying to drive down the cost per kilogram to NASA.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ascends to orbit Sunday after launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Cargo modules for Northrop’s Cygnus spacecraft are built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, employing a similar design to the one Thales used for several of the space station’s permanent modules. Officials moved forward with the first Cygnus XL mission after the preceding cargo module was damaged during shipment from Italy to the United States earlier this year.

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Author name: Kris Guyer