Kris Guyer – Page 8

Judge gives Musk bad news, says Trump hasn’t intervened to block SEC lawsuit

elon musk, Policy, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter, X / Kris Guyer / February 4, 2026

Now, Musk may be running out of arguments after Sooknanan shot down his First Amendment claims and other claims nitpicking the statute as unconstitutionally vague.

Whether Musk can defeat the SEC lawsuit without Trump’s intervention remains to be seen as the lawsuit advances. In her opinion, the judge found that the government’s interest in requiring disclosures to ensure fair markets outweighed Musk’s fears that disclosures compelled speech revealing his “thoughts” and “strategy.” Accepting Musk’s arguments would be an “odd” choice to break “new ground,” she suggested, as it could foreseeably impact a wide range of laws.

“Many laws require regulated parties to state or explain their purposes, plans, or intentions,” Sooknanan wrote, noting courts have long upheld those laws. Additionally, it seemed to be “common sense” for the SEC to compel disclosures “alerting the investing public to potential changes in control,” she said.

“The Court does not doubt that Mr. Musk would prefer to avoid having to disclose information that might raise stock prices while he makes a play for corporate control,” Sooknanan wrote. But there was no violation of the First Amendment, she said, as Congress struck the appropriate balance when it wrote the statute requiring disclosures.

Musk may be able to develop his arguments on selective enforcement as a possible path to victory. But Sooknanan noted that “despite having very able counsel,” his case right now seems weak.

In her opinion, Sooknanan also denied as premature Musk’s motions to strike from potential remedies the SEC requests for disgorgement and injunctive relief.

Likely troubling Musk, instead of balking at the potential fines, the judge suggested that “the SEC’s request to disgorge $150 million” appeared reasonable. That amount, while larger than past cases flagged by Musk, “corresponds to the Complaint’s allegation” that Musk’s violation of SEC requirements “allowed him to net that amount,” Sooknanan wrote.

“A straightforward application of the law reveals that none” of Musk’s arguments “warrant dismissal of this lawsuit,” Sooknanan said.

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Trump admin is “destroying medical research,” Senate report finds

Bhattacharya, health, NIH / Kris Guyer / February 4, 2026

Senators also pressed the director on the future of the NIH, noting that it has been hamstrung by the ongoing chaos, putting upcoming grant funding at risk, too. Of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, Bhattacharya testified, “I think it’s 15″ that are without a director. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), meanwhile, noted that more than half of the institutes are on track to lose all their voting advisory committee members by the end of the year—and grants cannot be approved without sign-off from these committees. Bhattacharya responded that they’re working on it.

Weasely answers on vaccines

In the course of the hearing, senators also tried to assess Bhattacharya’s loyalty to Kennedy’s dangerous anti-vaccine ideology, which includes the false and thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.

Sanders asked Bhattacharya directly: “Do vaccines cause autism? Yes/no?”

“I do not believe that the measles vaccine causes autism,” Bhattacharya responded.

“No, uh-uh,” Sanders quickly interjected. “I didn’t ask [about] measles. Do vaccines cause autism?”

“I have not seen a study that suggests any single vaccine causes autism,” Bhattacharya responded.

But this, too, is an evasive answer. Note that he said “any single vaccine,” leaving open the possibility that he believes vaccines collectively or in some combination could cause autism. The measles vaccine, for instance, is given in combination with immunizations against mumps, rubella, and sometimes varicella (chickenpox).

It would also be false to suggest vaccines in combination are linked to autism; numerous studies have found no link between autism and vaccination generally. Still, this is a false idea that Kennedy and the like-minded anti-vaccine advocates he has installed into critical federal vaccine advisory roles are now pursuing.

Later in the hearing, Bhattacharya also indicated that when he said “I have not seen a study,” he was suggesting that it was because such studies have not been done—which is also false; routine childhood vaccines have been extensively studied for safety and efficacy.

“I’ve seen so many studies on measles vaccines and autism that established that there is no link,” [to autism], he said in an exchange with Hassan on the subject. “The other vaccines are less well studied.”

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User blowback convinces Adobe to keep supporting 30-year-old 2D animation app

adobe, Software, Tech / Kris Guyer / February 4, 2026

30 years of animation

Animate debuted in 1996 as FutureWave Software’s FutureSplash Animator. After a 1997 acquisition by Macromedia, FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia Flash. In 2005, Adobe bought Macromedia and renamed Macromedia Flash to Adobe Flash Professional. In 2015, the software became Adobe Animate CC. In its nearly 30 years of use, Animate has been used in numerous popular animated films and shows, including Star Trek: Lower Decks. Still, Adobe said on Monday that “new platforms and paradigms have emerged that better serve the needs of the user.”

Based on the response to Monday’s announcement, not everyone agrees that Animate is obsolete. Adobe’s announcement has also drawn increased scrutiny because of the company’s growing focus on AI-based tools, which have led to higher subscription fees.

“Shutting down Animate and cutting off users from decades worth of work, while simultaneously focusing on anti-artist AI technology, is incredibly disrespectful to your users. Make the software open-source if you’re not going to do the work yourself,” a user on Adobe’s forum going by “FFFlay” wrote in response to Monday’s announcement.

Although Adobe has shown an ability to respond to customer frustration and will allow people to use Animate for the foreseeable future, people who depend on the software, including for animation and education, are concerned about relying on a program that Adobe almost discontinued.

In a post today, an Adobe community member going by the username rayek.elfin wrote, “The damage is done in my opinion. The news of Adobe discontinuing Animate went viral and probably created so much anxiety and uncertainty that studios and indie animators are already looking to replace Animate in their pipelines.”

When asked how Adobe will try to rebuild trust among users, Chambers said, “Trust doesn’t come beforehand, it comes after (and has to be earned). We say what we will do, and if we consistently do it, we gain trust. We are at the ‘we say what we will do’ part for a lot of people.”

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Court orders restart of all US offshore wind construction

department of the interior, green, injunction, lawsuit, offshore wind, Policy, renewable energy, Science, trump administration, wind power / Kris Guyer / February 2, 2026

Based on reporting elsewhere, some of the judges viewed the classified report that was used to justify the order to halt construction, but they didn’t find it persuasive. In one case, the judge noted that the government wasn’t acting as if the security risks were real. The threat supposedly comes from the operation of the wind turbines, but the Department of the Interior’s order blocked construction while allowing any completed hardware to operate.

“If the government’s concern is the operation of these facilities, allowing the ongoing operation of the 44 turbines while prohibiting the repair of the existing turbines and the completion of the 18 additional turbines is irrational,” Judge Brian E. Murphy said. That once again raises the possibility that the order halting construction will ultimately be held to be arbitrary and capricious.

For now, however, the courts are largely offering the wind projects relief because the ruling was issued without any warning or communication from the government and would clearly inflict substantial harm on the companies building them. The injunction blocks the government’s hold on construction until a final ruling is issued. The government can still appeal the decision before that point, but the consistency among these rulings suggests it will likely fail.

Several of these projects are near completion and are likely to be done before any government appeal can be heard.

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A century of hair samples proves leaded gas ban worked

chemistry, geochemistry, leaded gasoline, Science / Kris Guyer / February 2, 2026

Science also produced a hero in this saga: Caltech geochemist Clair Patterson. Along with George Tilton, Patterson developed a lead-dating method and used it to calculate the age of the Earth (4.55 billion years), based on analysis of the Canton Diablo meteorite. And he soon became a leading advocate for banning leaded gasoline and the “leaded solder” used in canned foods. This put Patterson at odds with some powerful industry lobbies, for which he paid a professional price.

But his many experimental findings on the extent of lead contamination and its toxic effects ultimately led to the rapid phase-out of lead in all standard automotive gasolines. Prior to the EPA’s actions in the 1970s, most gasolines contained about 2 grams of lead per gallon, which quickly adds up to nearly 2 pounds of lead released via automotive exhaust into the environment, per person, every year.

The proof is in our hair

The U.S. Mining and Smelting Co. plant in Midvale, Utah, 1906. — The US Mining and Smelting Co. plant in Midvale, Utah, 1906. Credit: Utah Historical Society

Lead can linger in the air for several days, contaminating one’s lungs, accumulating in living tissue, and being absorbed by one’s hair. Cerling had previously developed techniques to determine where animals lived and their diet by analyzing hair and teeth. Those methods proved ideal for analyzing hair samples from Utah residents who had previously participated in an earlier study that sampled their blood.

The subjects supplied hair samples both from today and when they were very young; some were even able to provide hair preserved in family scrapbooks that had belonged to their ancestors. The Utah population is well-suited for such a study because the cities of Midvale and Murray were home to a vibrant smelting industry through most of the 20th century; most other smelters in the region closed down in the 1970s when the EPA cracked down on using lead in consumer products.

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Ongoing RAM crisis prompts Raspberry Pi’s second price hike in two months

Raspberry Pi, raspberry pi 4, raspberry pi 5, Tech / Kris Guyer / February 2, 2026

The ongoing AI-fueled shortages of memory and storage chips has hit RAM kits and SSDs for PC builders the fastest and hardest, meaning it’s likely that, for other products that use these chips, we’ll be seeing price hikes for the entire rest of the year, if not for longer.

The latest price hike news comes courtesy of Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton, who announced today that the company would be raising prices on most of its single-board computers for the second time in two months.

Prices are going up for all Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 boards with 2GB of more of LPDDR4 RAM, including the Compute Module 4 and 5 and the Raspberry Pi 500 computer-inside-a-keyboard. The 2GB boards’ pricing will go up by $10, 4GB boards will go up by $15, 8GB boards will go up by $30, and 16GB boards will increase by a whopping $60.

These increases stack on top of across-the-board $5 to $15 price hikes implemented for most Pi 4 and 5 models in December, and a handful of more contained price hikes for select models in early October. The 16GB version of the Pi 5 will now cost a whopping $205. The 8GB versions of the Pi 4 and 5 will run you $125 and $135, respectively, the only other boards to climb above $100.

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A cup of coffee for depression treatment has better results than microdosing

depression, health, LSD, Mental Health, microdosing, syndication / Kris Guyer / January 31, 2026

The effect of microdosing have been overstated, at least when it comes to depression.

About a decade ago, many media outlets—including WIRED—zeroed in on a weird trend at the intersection of mental health, drug science, and Silicon Valley biohacking: microdosing, or the practice of taking a small amount of a psychedelic drug seeking not full-blown hallucinatory revels but gentler, more stable effects. Typically using psilocybin mushrooms or LSD, the archetypal microdoser sought less melting walls and open-eye kaleidoscopic visuals than boosts in mood and energy, like a gentle spring breeze blowing through the mind.

Anecdotal reports pitched microdosing as a kind of psychedelic Swiss Army knife, providing everything from increased focus to a spiked libido and (perhaps most promisingly) lowered reported levels of depression. It was a miracle for many. Others remained wary. Could 5 percent of a dose of acid really do all that? A new, wide-ranging study by an Australian biopharma company suggests that microdosing’s benefits may indeed be drastically overstated—at least when it comes to addressing symptoms of clinical depression.

A Phase 2B trial of 89 adult patients conducted by Melbourne-based MindBio Therapeutics, investigating the effects of microdosing LSD in the treatment of major depressive disorder, found that the psychedelic was actually outperformed by a placebo. Across an eight-week period, symptoms were gauged using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), a widely recognized tool for the clinical evaluation of depression.

The study has not yet been published. But MindBio’s CEO Justin Hanka recently released the top-line results on his LinkedIn, eager to show that his company was “in front of the curve in microdosing research.” He called it “the most vigorous placebo controlled trial ever performed in microdosing.” It found that patients dosed with a small amount of LSD (ranging from 4 to 20μg, or micrograms, well below the threshold of a mind-blowing hallucinogenic dose) showed observable upticks in feelings of well-being, but worse MADRS scores, compared to patients given a placebo in the form of a caffeine pill. (Because patients in psychedelic trials typically expect some kind of mind-altering effect, studies are often blinded using so-called “active placebos,” like caffeine or methylphenidate, which have their own observable psychoactive properties.)

This means, essentially, that a medium-strength cup of coffee may prove more beneficial in treating major depressive disorder than a tiny dose of acid. Good news for habitual caffeine users, perhaps, but less so for researchers (and biopharma startups) counting on the efficacy of psychedelic microdosing.

“It’s probably a nail in the coffin of using microdosing to treat clinical depression,” Hanka says. “It probably improves the way depressed people feel—just not enough to be clinically significant or statistically meaningful.”

However despairing, these results conform with the suspicions of some more skeptical researchers, who have long believed that the benefits of microdosing are less the result of a teeny-tiny psychedelic catalyst, and more attributable to the so-called “placebo effect.”

In 2020, Jay A. Olson, then a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, conducted an experiment. He gave 33 participants a placebo, telling them it was actually a dose of a psilocybin-like drug. They were led to believe there was no placebo group. Other researchers who were in on the bit acted out the effects of the drug, in a room treated with trippy lighting and other visual stimulants, in an attempt to curate the “optimized expectation” of a psychedelic experience.

The resulting paper, titled “Tripping on Nothing,” found that a majority of participants had reported feeling the effects of the drug—despite there being no real drug whatsoever. “The main conclusion we had is that the placebo effect can be stronger than expected in psychedelic studies,” Olson, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, tells WIRED. “Placebo effects were stronger than what you would get from microdosing.”

More than a stick in the eye to the microdosing faithful, Olson maintains that the study’s key findings had more to do with the actual role, and power, of the placebo effect. “The public has a lot of misconceptions about the placebo effect,” he says. “There’s this assumption that placebo effects are extremely weak, or that they’re not real.”

Olson goes on to say that placebo effects in psychedelic trials can be further juiced by the hype around the drugs themselves. Patients may enter a trial expecting a certain experience, and their mind is able to conjure a version of that experience, in turn. In Olson’s study, it wasn’t a matter of microdosing effects not being real, but that those effects may be caused by environment, or patient expectation. As he puts it: “It can be true at the same time that microdosing can have positive effects on people, and that those effects are perhaps almost entirely placebo.”

This itself raises a sticky question about MindBio’s study. How could a placebo group, who thinks they’re taking LSD, perform better than an active control group, members of which both think they’re taking LSD and are actually taking it? The answer comes from the design of the study itself.

Using what’s called a “double-dummy” design, MindBio’s researchers informed patients that they’d either be receiving LSD, a caffeine pill, or a dose of methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin or Concerta. (No patients were actually administered the methylphenidate.) This means that patient expectation was lowered, as they could ascribe any perceived effects to either the LSD or either of the active placebos. Patients taking LSD microdoses may well have believed they were merely on a stimulant. All patients followed an adaptation of the “Fadiman protocol,” a popular microdosing programme that sees patients taking a small dose of the given drug once every three days.

Jim Fadiman, the veteran psychedelic researcher after whom the protocol is named, rejects MindBio’s conclusions, and trial design, out of hand. Because, Fadiman believes, patients were given the active caffeine placebo, their reported benefits may well be attributable not to a pure placebo effect, but to the actual psychoactive properties of that drug.

“Double-dummy is a remarkably apt term,” Fadiman, 86, sneers. “What I know is that if you take enough caffeine, you will not be depressed!”

Fadiman points to MindBio’s earlier, Phase 2A study, recently published in the journal Neuropharmacology, which drew markedly different conclusions. It was a non-blinded, so-called “open label” study, meaning patients knew definitely that they were being microdosed with LSD. This study found that MADRS scores decreased by 59.5 percent, with effects lasting as long as six months. It also found improvements in stress, rumination, anxiety, and patient quality of life. Fadiman says that this reportage is more consistent with his own research on microdosing. “Their prior study did wonderfully with LSD,” Fadiman says. “I have collected literally hundreds of real world reports over the years that validate those findings.”

MindBio’s Hanka stands by the science. “We are bewildered at the significant difference between the open label Phase 2A trial results and the Phase 2B trial results,” he says. “But that is the nature of good science—a properly controlled trial will get a proper result. Our Phase 2B trial was of the highest standard, a triple-blind, double-dummy, active placebo controlled trial. I haven’t seen another psychedelic trial that has gone to these lengths to control and blind a trial.”

Despite these findings, some microdosing true believers don’t seem especially shaken. In 2017, writer Ayelet Waldman (best known as the author of the Mommy-Track Mysteries series of novels that follow the adventures of stay-at-home-mom-cum-sleuth Juliet Applebaum) published A Really Good Day, a diaristic account of her own self-experiments using microdosing to treat an intractable mood disorder. She tells WIRED she’s not especially bothered by the implication that her positive shifts in mood may have merely been placebo. “In my book I took very seriously the possibility that what I was experiencing was the mother of all placebo effects,” Waldman says. “I wrote about this a number of times in various chapters and decided in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I felt better.”

Perhaps that’s true enough. If the effects are measurable, and repeatable, then it should hardly matter if they’re attributable to a sub-perceptual dose of lysergic acid, or to the (perhaps equally profound) mysteries of the placebo. Still, one cannot help but wonder why anyone looking to use LSD to aid severe clinical depression would bother assuming the legal risk of procuring and consuming a drug still classified under Schedule I by the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Certainly, for his part, Justin Hanka seems content to pivot MindBio’s research into a new field. His next project is “Booze A.I.”: a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to scan the human voice for relevant biomarkers that determine blood alcohol concentration. He’s leaving microdosing in the rearview. “I put millions of dollars into this myself,” he says. “Had I known six years ago what I know about psychedelics, I probably wouldn’t have ventured into the microdosing field.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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Inside Nvidia’s 10-year effort to make the Shield TV the most updated Android device ever

android, Android TV, Features, NVIDIA, Set-top boxes, Tech / Kris Guyer / January 31, 2026

“Selfishly a little bit, we built Shield for ourselves.”

The Shield TV has that classic Nvidia aesthetic. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

It took Android devicemakers a very long time to commit to long-term update support. Samsung and Google have only recently decided to offer seven years of updates for their flagship Android devices, but a decade ago, you were lucky to get more than one or two updates on even the most expensive Android phones and tablets. How is it, then, that an Android-powered set-top box from 2015 is still going strong?

Nvidia released the first Shield Android TV in 2015, and according to the company’s senior VP of hardware engineering, Andrew Bell, supporting these devices has been a labor of love. And the team at Nvidia still loves the Shield. Bell assures us that Nvidia has never given up, even when it looked like support for the Shield was waning, and it doesn’t plan to stop any time soon.

The soul of Shield

Gaming has been central to Nvidia since its start, and that focus gave rise to the Shield. “Pretty much everybody who worked at Nvidia in the early days really wanted to make a game console,” said Bell, who has worked at the company for 25 years.

However, Nvidia didn’t have what it needed back then. Before gaming, crypto, and AI turned it into the multi-trillion-dollar powerhouse it is today, Nvidia had a startup mentality and the budget to match. When Shield devices began percolating in the company’s labs, it was seen as an important way to gain experience with “full-stack” systems and all the complications that arise when managing them.

“To build a game console was pretty complicated because, of course, you have to have a GPU, which we know how to make,” Bell explained. “But in addition to that, you need a CPU, an OS, games, and you need a UI.”

Through acquisitions and partnerships, the pieces of Nvidia’s fabled game console slowly fell into place. The purchase of PortalPlayer in 2007 brought the CPU technology that would become the Tegra Arm chips, and the company’s surging success in GPUs gave it the partnerships it needed to get games. But the UI was still missing—that didn’t change until Google expanded Android to the TV in 2014. The company’s first Android mobile efforts were already out there in the form of the Shield Portable and Shield Tablet, but the TV-connected box is what Nvidia really wanted.

“Selfishly, a little bit, we built Shield for ourselves,” Bell told Ars Technica. “We actually wanted a really good TV streamer that was high-quality and high-performance, and not necessarily in the Apple ecosystem. We built some prototypes, and we got so excited about it. [CEO Jensen Huang] was like, ‘Why don’t we bring it out and sell it to people?’”

The first Shield box in 2015 had a heavy gaming focus, with a raft of both local and cloud-based (GeForce Now) games. The base model included only a game controller, with the remote control sold separately. According to Bell, Nvidia eventually recognized that the gaming angle wasn’t as popular as it had hoped. The 2017 and 2019 Shield refreshes were more focused on the streaming experience.

“Eventually, we kind of said, ‘Maybe the soul is that it’s a streamer for gamers,’” said Bell. “We understand gamers from GeForce, and we understand they care about quality and performance. A lot of these third-party devices like tablets, they’re going cheap. Set-top boxes, they’re going cheap. But we were the only company that was like, ‘Let’s go after people who really want a premium experience.’”

Shield controller — Nvidia used to sell Shield-branded game controllers. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

And premium it is, offering audio and video support far beyond what you find in other TV boxes, even years after release. The Shield TV started at $200 in 2015, and that’s still what you’ll pay for the Pro model to this day. However, Bell notes that passion was the driving force behind bringing the Shield TV to market. The team didn’t know if it would make money, and indeed, the company lost money on every unit sold during the original production run. The 2017 and 2019 refreshes were about addressing that while also emphasizing the Shield’s streaming media chops.

A passion for product support

Update support for Internet-connected devices is vital—whether they’re phones, tablets, set-top boxes, or something else. When updates cease, gadgets fall out of sync with platform features, leading to new bugs (which will never be fixed) and security holes that can affect safety and functionality. The support guarantee attached to a device is basically its expiration date.

“We were all frustrated as buyers of phones and tablets that you buy a device, you get one or two updates, and that’s it!” said Bell. “Early on when we were building Shield TV, we decided we were going to make it for a long time. Jensen and I had a discussion, and it was, ‘How long do we want to support this thing?’ And Jensen said, ‘For as long as we shall live.’”

In 2025, Nvidia wrapped up its tenth year of supporting the Shield platform. Even those original 2015 boxes are still being maintained with bug fixes and the occasional new feature. They’ve gone all the way from Android 5.0 to Android 11 in that time. No Android device—not a single phone, tablet, watch, or streaming box—has gotten anywhere close to this level of support.

The best example of Nvidia’s passion for support is, believe it or not, a two-year gap in updates.

Across the dozens of Shield TV updates, there have been a few times when fans feared Nvidia was done with the box. Most notably, there were no public updates for the Shield TV in 2023 or 2024, but over-the-air updates resumed in 2025.

“On the outside, it looked like we went quiet, but it’s actually one of our bigger development efforts,” explained Bell.

The origins of that effort, surprisingly, stretch back years to the launch of the Nintendo Switch. The Shield runs Nvidia’s custom Tegra X1 Arm chip, the same processor Nintendo chose to power the original Switch in 2017. Soon after release, modders discovered a chip flaw that could bypass Nintendo’s security measures, enabling homebrew (and piracy). An updated Tegra X1 chip (also used in the 2019 Shield refresh) fixed that for Nintendo, but Nvidia’s 2015 and 2017 Shield boxes ran the same exploitable version.

Initially, Nvidia was able to roll out periodic patches to protect against the vulnerability, but by 2023, the Shield needed something more. Around that time, owners of 2015 and 2017 Shield boxes had noticed that DRM-protected 4K content often failed to play—that was thanks to the same bug that affected the Switch years earlier.

With a newer, non-vulnerable product on the market, many companies might have just accepted that the older product would lose functionality, but Nvidia’s passion for Shield remained. Bell consulted Huang, whom he calls Shield customer No. 1, about the meaning of his “as long as we shall live” pledge, and the team was approved to spend whatever time was needed to fix the vulnerability on the first two generations of Shield TV.

According to Bell, it took about 18 months to get there, requiring the creation of an entirely new security stack. He explains that Android updates aren’t actually that much work compared to DRM security, and some of its partners weren’t that keen on re-certifying older products. The Shield team fought for it because they felt, as they had throughout the product’s run, that they’d made a promise to customers who expected the box to have certain features.

In February 2025, Nvidia released Shield Patch 9.2, the first wide release in two years. The changelog included an unassuming line reading, “Added security enhancement for 4K DRM playback.” That was the Tegra X1 bug finally being laid to rest on the 2015 and 2017 Shield boxes.

The refreshed Tegra X1+ in the 2019 Shield TV spared it from those DRM issues, and Nvidia still hasn’t stopped working on that chip. The Tegra X1 was blazing fast in 2015, and it’s still quite capable compared to your average smart TV today. The chip has actually outlasted several of the components needed to manufacture it. For example, when the Tegra chip’s memory was phased out, the team immediately began work on qualifying a new memory supplier. To this day, Nvidia is still iterating on the Tegra X1 platform, supporting the Shield’s continued updates.

“If operations calls me and says they just ran out of this component, I’ve got engineers on it tonight looking for a new component,” Bell said.

The future of Shield

Nvidia has put its money where its mouth is by supporting all versions of the Shield for so long. But it’s been over six years since we’ve seen new hardware. Surely the Shield has to be running out of steam, right?

Not so, says Bell. Nvidia still manufactures the 2019 Shield because people are still buying it. In fact, the sales volume has remained basically unchanged for the past 10 years. The Shield Pro is a spendy step-top box at $200, so Nvidia has experimented with pricing and promotion with little effect. The 2019 non-Pro Shield was one such effort. The base model was originally priced at $99, but the MSRP eventually landed at $150.

“No matter how much we dropped the price or how much we market or don’t market it, the same number of people come out of the woodwork every week to buy Shield,” Bell explained.

That kind of consistency isn’t lost on Nvidia. Bell says the company has no plans to stop production or updates for the Shield “any time soon.” It’s also still possible that Nvidia could release new Shield TV hardware in the future. Nvidia’s Shield devices came about as a result of engineers tinkering with new concepts in a lab setting, but most of those experiments never see the light of day. For example, Bell notes that the team produced several updated versions of the Shield Tablet and Shield Portable (some of which you can find floating around on eBay) that never got a retail release, and they continue to work on Shield TV.

“We’re always playing in the labs, trying to discover new things,” said Bell. “We’ve played with new concepts for Shield and we’ll continue to play, and if we find something we’re super-excited about, we’ll probably make a go of it.”

But what would that look like? Video technology has advanced since 2019, leaving the Shield unable to take full advantage of some newer formats. First up would be support for VP9 Profile 2 hardware decoding, which enables HDR video on YouTube. Bell says a refreshed Shield would also prioritize formats like AV1 and the HDR 10+ standard, as well as support for newer Dolby Vision profiles for people with backed-up media.

And then there’s the enormous, easy-to-press-by-accident Netflix button on the remote. While adding new video technologies would be job one, fixing the Netflix button is No. 2 for a theoretical new Shield. According to Bell, Nvidia doesn’t receive any money from Netflix for the giant button on its remote. It’s actually there as a requirement of Netflix’s certification program, which was “very strong” in 2019. In a refresh, he thinks Nvidia could get away with a smaller “N” button. We can only hope.

But does Bell think he’ll get a chance to build that new Shield TV, shrunken Netflix button and all? He stopped short of predicting the future, but there’s definitely interest.

“We talk about it all the time—I’d love to,” he said.

Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.

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Here’s why Blue Origin just ended its suborbital space tourism program

blue origin, new glenn, new shepard, Space / Kris Guyer / January 30, 2026

Blue Origin has “paused” its New Shepard program for the next two years, a move that likely signals a permanent end to the suborbital space tourism initiative.

The small rocket and capsule have been flying since April 2015 and have combined to make 38 launches, all but one of which were successful, and 36 landings. In its existence, the New Shepard program flew 98 people to space, however briefly, and launched more than 200 scientific and research payloads into the microgravity environment.

So why is Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos more than a quarter of a century ago, ending the company’s longest-running program?

“We will redirect our people and resources toward further acceleration of our human lunar capabilities inclusive of New Glenn,” wrote the company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, in an internal email on Friday afternoon. “We have an extraordinary opportunity to be a part of our nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.”

Move was a surprise

The cancellation came, generally, as a surprise to Blue Origin employees. The company flew its most recent mission eight days ago, launching six people into space. Moreover, the company has four new boosters in various stages of development as well as two new capsules under construction. Blue Origin has been selling human flights for more than a year and is still commanding a per-seat price of approximately $1 million based on recent sales. It was talking about expansion to new spaceports in September.

Still, there have always been questions about the program’s viability. In November 2023, Ars published an article asking how long Bezos would continue to subsidize the New Shepard program, which at the time was “hemorrhaging” money. Sources indicate the program has gotten closer to breaking even, but it remains a drain on Blue Origin’s efforts.

More than 500 people spend part or all of their time working on New Shepard, but it also draws on other resources within the company. Although it is a small fraction of the company’s overall workforce, it is nonetheless a distraction from the company’s long-term ambitions to build settlements in space where millions of people will live, work, and help move industrial activity off Earth and into orbit.

Here’s why Blue Origin just ended its suborbital space tourism program Read More »

FCC aims to ensure “only living and lawful Americans” get Lifeline benefits

Anna Gomez, brendan carr, California, FCC, Gavin Newsom, Lifeline, Policy / Kris Guyer / January 30, 2026

Carr fires back at California

Carr wrote in his response to Newsom that the FCC Inspector General report “specifically identified the tens of thousands of people that were enrolled AFTER THEY HAD ALREADY DIED.” The Inspector General report wasn’t quite so certain that the number is in the tens of thousands, however.

The report said that “at least 16,774 (and potentially as many as 39,362) deceased individuals were first enrolled and claimed by a provider after they died.” The Inspector General’s office could not determine “whether the remaining 22,588 deceased subscribers were first claimed before or after their deaths as the opt-out states do not report enrollment date information.”

Carr also wrote in his response to Newsom that “payments to providers for people that died or may have died before enrollment went on for over 50 months in cases and for several months on average.” The Inspector General report did say that “providers sought reimbursement for subscribers enrolled after their deaths for 1 to 54 months, with an average of 3.4 months,” but didn’t specify which state or states hit the 54-month mark.

Carr has continued addressing the topic throughout the week. “For the record, my position is that the government should not be spending your money to provide phone and Internet service to dead people. Governor Newsom is taking the opposite position, apparently,” he wrote yesterday.

When asked if the FCC will penalize California, Carr said at yesterday’s press conference yesterday that “we are looking at California and we’re going to make sure that we hold bad actors accountable, and we’re going to look at all the remedies that are on the table.”

Gomez: FCC plan shuts out eligible subscribers

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s one Democrat, said that Carr’s proposed rulemaking “goes well beyond” what’s needed to protect the integrity of Lifeline. “By proposing to use the same cruel and punitive eligibility standards recently imposed for Medicaid coverage, the Commission risks excluding large numbers of eligible households, including seniors, people with disabilities, rural residents, and Tribal communities, from a proven lifeline that millions rely on to stay connected to work, school, health care, and emergency services,” she said.

FCC aims to ensure “only living and lawful Americans” get Lifeline benefits Read More »

How far does $5,000 go when you want an electric car?

Cars, used ev prices / Kris Guyer / January 30, 2026

How about turning over an old Leaf instead?

The first-generation Nissan Leaf was the best-selling early EV, so it’s no surprise that it’s the most common EV you’ll find under our budget. The car didn’t have that much range to begin with, with a battery capacity of just 24 kWh at launch. And Nissan’s decision not to liquid-cool the battery pack means this EV battery will degrade more significantly over time than virtually any other modern EV. Essentially, the first- and second-generation Leafs are responsible for the general distrust of EV battery longevity.

Used Leafs can be had for less than $2,000, but below a certain point, they become economical to strip for spares, particularly the battery packs, which can have a second life as static storage. But what if you don’t want a Leaf?

Well, there’s the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which will always hold a spot in my heart because it was the first car I tested for Ars Technica. I’ll always remember how quickly its skinny front tires were overwhelmed into understeer on a highway interchange. Its one-box pod-on-wheels design still looks different from almost anything else on an American road, and it’s very compact for city life. But its battery pack was just 16 kWh when new, and it’s certainly less than that now, so it helps if you live in a compact city.

Other choices lean more toward compliance cars, like the Chevrolet Spark EV or a Fiat 500e. A few Volkswagen e-Golfs and electric Ford Focuses might show up in this price range, too, and I’m seeing a couple of Kia Soul EVs and even a pair of very cheap BMW i3s just within budget. And I do like the i3.

However, something to consider is how wide to cast one’s net. Sites like Autotrader will happily let me search for cars across the entire country, but could I drive an i3 home to DC from Florida or Texas? An e-Golf from California? At this price point, charging will be level 2 at best, and stops would need to be more frequent than the “every 50 miles” we were shooting for under the Biden-era NEVI plan. While buying a bunch of very cheap EVs far away and seeing who gets closest to home would undoubtedly make for an entertaining video series, in the real world, a long-distance purchase probably needs to factor in the cost of shipping the car.

How far does $5,000 go when you want an electric car? Read More »

Having that high-deductible health plan might kill you, literally

cancer, deductivels, health, health insurance, survival / Kris Guyer / January 29, 2026

Having a health insurance plan with a high deductible could not only cost you—it could also kill you.

A new study in JAMA Network Open found that people who faced those high out-of-pocket costs as well as a cancer diagnosis had worse overall survival and cancer-specific survival than those with more standard health plans.

The findings, while perhaps not surprising, are a stark reminder of the fraught decisions Americans face as the price of health care only continues to rise, and more people try to offset costs by accepting insurance plans with higher deductibles—that is, higher out-of-pocket costs they have to pay before their health insurance provider starts paying its share.

The issue is particularly critical right now for people who have insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Prices for those plans have skyrocketed this year after Congress failed to extend critical tax credits. Without those credits, monthly premiums for ACA plans have, on average, more than doubled. Early data on ACA enrollments for 2026 not only suggests that fewer people are signing up for the plans, but also that those who are enrolling are often choosing bronze plans, which are high-deductible plans.

In the study, researchers considered plans to be “high-deductible health plans” (HDHPs) if their deductibles were at least $1,200 to $1,350 for individuals or $2,400 to $2,700 for families between 2011 and 2018 (with the cutoffs increasing within the ranges during that time). For context, the average individual deductible for an ACA bronze plan in 2026 is about $7,500, according to KFF.

Risky plans

Based on previous data, such high out-of-pocket costs are known to lead people to delay or decrease health care—they may skip doctor visits, put off diagnostics, and avoid treatments. But for the new study, researchers led by Justin Barnes at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, wanted to know, more directly, if the plans were linked to lower survival— specifically for cancer patients, who obviously need more care than others.

Having that high-deductible health plan might kill you, literally Read More »

Author name: Kris Guyer