Author name: Tim Belzer

microsoft-tries-to-head-off-the-“novel-security-risks”-of-windows-11-ai-agents

Microsoft tries to head off the “novel security risks” of Windows 11 AI agents

AI, copilot, microsoft, Tech, Windows 11, windows 11 25h2 / /

Microsoft has been adding AI features to Windows 11 for years, but things have recently entered a new phase, with both generative and so-called “agentic” AI features working their way deeper into the bedrock of the operating system. A new build of Windows 11 released to Windows Insider Program testers yesterday includes a new “experimental agentic features” toggle in the Settings to support a feature called Copilot Actions, and Microsoft has published a detailed support article detailing more about just how those “experimental agentic features” will work.

If you’re not familiar, “agentic” is a buzzword that Microsoft has used repeatedly to describe its future ambitions for Windows 11—in plainer language, these agents are meant to accomplish assigned tasks in the background, allowing the user’s attention to be turned elsewhere. Microsoft says it wants agents to be capable of “everyday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,” and that Copilot Actions should give you “an active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.”

But like other kinds of AI, these agents can be prone to error and confabulations and will often proceed as if they know what they’re doing even when they don’t. They also present, in Microsoft’s own words, “novel security risks,” mostly related to what can happen if an attacker is able to give instructions to one of these agents. As a result, Microsoft’s implementation walks a tightrope between giving these agents access to your files and cordoning them off from the rest of the system.

Possible risks and attempted fixes

For now, these “experimental agentic features” are optional, only available in early test builds of Windows 11, and off by default. Credit: Microsoft

For example, AI agents running on a PC will be given their own user accounts separate from your personal account, ensuring that they don’t have permission to change everything on the system and giving them their own “desktop” to work with that won’t interfere with what you’re working with on your screen. Users need to approve requests for their data, and “all actions of an agent are observable and distinguishable from those taken by a user.” Microsoft also says agents need to be able to produce logs of their activities and “should provide a means to supervise their activities,” including showing users a list of actions they’ll take to accomplish a multi-step task.

Microsoft tries to head off the “novel security risks” of Windows 11 AI agents Read More »

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The Analogue 3D is the modern N64 fans have been waiting for

analogue, Emulation, fpga, gaming, HDTV, n64, Nintendo, openFPGA, Upgrade / /

Excellent design and display filters, but the lack of OpenFPGA support rankles.

Your Super Mario 64 cartridge has a new home. Credit: Kyle Orland

Your Super Mario 64 cartridge has a new home. Credit: Kyle Orland

If you’ve ever tried to hook an old Nintendo 64 up to a modern HDTV, you know the results can be less than ideal. Assuming your original hardware still works and your flatscreen even has the requisite R/F and/or composite inputs to allow for the connection, the N64’s output will probably look like a blurry mess on a flatscreen that wasn’t designed with those old video signals as a priority.

The Analogue 3D solves this very specific problem very well, with a powerful FPGA core that accurately replicates a Nintendo 64 and well-made display filters that do a good job of approximating that cathode-ray tube glow you remember from decades ago. But the lack of easy expandability limits the appeal of this $250 device to all but the most die-hard fans of original N64 hardware.

A beauty to behold

As a piece of physical design, the Analogue 3D is a work of art. The gentle curves of its sleek black shell evoke the original N64 design without copying it, coming in at a slightly smaller footprint and height. Plus, there’s no ugly power brick.

3D COMPUTER GRAPHICS SYSTEM. Kyle Orland

This is a solidly built device, with a nice grippy underside and springy, elegant power and reset buttons. The shell has a lot of small, thoughtful touches, too, like a front power indicator that doubles as a Bluetooth sync button and lights on each controller port to indicate when a wireless controller is connected to that slot (the Hall Effect joysticks on 8bitdo’s wireless “64” controller are a joy compared to the crunchy mechanical sticks on your old N64 controller).

The one downside to this design is that the hardware can get slightly hot after running for a while, and it emits some noticeable fan noise when stressed. The welcome screen when you first boot the system recommends you give the vents adequate space to breathe, so be careful if you plan to place it directly on the carpet or something.

I saw the TV glow

The Analogue 3D’s custom 3DOS software automatically detects the game cartridge you’ve placed into its top-loading slot and displays basic info like player count, developer/publisher, and release date on-screen (you can also load your own custom cartridge images onto an included SD card). The system maintains this info in a scrollable list of every cartridge you’ve ever inserted, allowing for a quick way to browse through your library without the need to dig out your actual cartridges. You do have to plug in the cartridges to actually play the games, though, which limits the usefulness of the on-screen library more than a little bit.

Before you launch a game, you can also configure the Display Mode between five preset options (these can also be swapped during gameplay using controller hotkeys for an on-screen menu). Of these, you’ll generally want to stay away from the “Clean” option, which upscales the N64’s 320×240 image by simply blowing up each individual pixel to fit the display. The result is an incredibly blocky image with lots of jagged edges and blobs of color that refuse to blend well with nearby elements. It’s a look that’s especially unsuited to the low-resolution textures on most N64 games, which exploited the gentle blur of a CRT to create some vivid effects.

Switching over to the “Scanlines” display option helps a bit in rounding out those jagged N64 polygons, but things really start to look better if you activate one of the system’s three different CRT emulation modes. With these, 3DOS does its best to recreate the look of an electron beam actually scanning across the phosphors on an old tube TV. These filters do an admirable job of softening the hard edges of polygons and sprites while subtly and accurately blending the colors on those low-res textures.

A scene from Starfox 64, upscaled with the Analogue 3D’s “Clean” filter (direct capture). Nintendo / Analogue

The Analogue 3D has three tube TV emulation modes, each representing consumer CRTs and the kind of Pro/Broadcast Video Monitors you’d usually only find in TV station control rooms. You can go into the menus for each mode and tinker with settings like “beam convergence” and “edge hardness,” and you can toggle N64 hardware effects like anti-aliasing and de-blurring (you can also stretch the 4:3 image to fill a 16:9 display if you’re a specific kind of monster).

In general, though, I didn’t see much upside in this kind of settings tinkering. Using the system’s default “CRT” settings created a visual experience that was surprisingly authentic to the actual CRT sitting in my home office. The only thing really missing is an option to simulate the curve of a classic CRT; the hard square edges of the Analogue 3D output are a bit lacking on that score. But that’s a minor complaint for a filter that does such a good job mimicking an old TV on new display technology.

Paper Mario with the Analogue 3D’s “Clean” filter (direct capture). Nintendo / Analogue

Open and shut

Like previous Analogue hardware, the Analogue 3D uses FPGA to accurately recreate the inner workings of an N64 at the level of individual logic gates. This time, the Analogue 3D’s Altera Cyclone FPGA sports a whopping 220,000 logic elements. That’s a big step up from the two FPGAs on 2021’s Analogue Pocket, which have just 49,000 and 15,000, respectively.

That powerful FPGA allows for perfectly accurate and lag-free N64 emulation in all of our tests with original cartridges (Analogue’s Christopher Taber warns us that “flash carts and unofficial 3rd party products can be a bit of a wild card”). But players hoping to emulate other gaming systems with that powerful hardware may run into some problems. That’s because the Analogue 3D doesn’t support the OpenFPGA standard that Analogue itself rolled out in 2022 as “the future of video game preservation.”

That standard has allowed a vibrant community of OpenFPGA developers to create dozens of free “cores” that can recreate everything from classic arcade games to 16-bit consoles with amazing fidelity. Currently, though, those cores will only work on the Analogue Pocket and not subsequent hardware like the Analogue 3D or 2023’s Analogue Duo.

That’s a shame because the OpenFPGA community would certainly be happy to get their hands on the new, larger FPGA in the Analogue 3D to build out core support for even more classic gaming consoles. And we’re sure Analogue 3D owners would be happy to use their purchase to play existing OpenFPGA cores on the big screen, complete with 3DOS’ great display options.

The beginning of Goldeneye as seen through Analogue’s CRT filter (photo of the HDTV screen).

“If we wanted to offer Analogue 3D with OpenFPGA (which is not the purpose or focus of the product), it would require not only a second FPGA, but an even more powerful base FPGA, therefore increasing the price to a price that doesn’t suit our goals,” Analogue founder Christopher Taber told Ars when the system was first announced back in 2023.

It seems likely that hackers and tinkerers will be able to expand the Analogue 3D’s emulation capabilities in the future. As it stands, though, it’s hard to recommend the hardware when options like Android-based, emulation-focused handhelds, Raspberry Pi-based emulation consoles, and even (more expensive) MiSTer FPGA boxes offer able support for much more than just N64 games.

If you’re looking for a simple, plug-and-play way to use your original N64 cartridges and accessories on a modern display, the Analogue 3D offers pretty much everything you could hope for. If you want a single device that can handle more, though, you should look elsewhere.

Photo of Kyle Orland

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

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Trump admin axed 383 active clinical trials, dumping over 74K participants

clinical trials, grants, health, JAMA, NIH / /

“A betrayal”

Jena and colleagues examined the greater context, comparing the number of cancelled trials in each treatment category to the total number of all funded trials in those categories. For instance, while cancer trials made up 30 percent of the 383 cancelled trials, the 118 cancelled cancer trials accounted for only 2.7 percent of the total 4,424 cancer trials funded in the study period. The cancelled infectious disease trials, on the other hand, accounted for over 14 percent of all infectious disease trials funded (675). The categories most disproportionately affected were infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

The researchers also looked at the purpose of the cancelled trials—for instance, for treatment of a disease, prevention, supportive care, or diagnostics. Of the 383, 140 were for treatments and 123 were for prevention.

The authors note that they weren’t able to determine the stated reasons for the cancellations (if any) or compare this year’s trial cancellations to trends from previous years, which could offer more context to the cuts. There simply isn’t the same comprehensive data on clinical trial cancellations for past years, the authors said, noting “termination of federal grant funding was rare prior to 2025.”

In the accompanying editor’s note, Teva Brender and Cary Gross blasted the revealed cancellations. To cancel trials already underway is to “squander participants’ and investigators’ valuable time, effort, and resources,” they write, since there have already been “substantive sunk costs.” It also “stifles scientific discovery and innovation.”

But “there is a more direct and sobering impact of premature and scientifically unjustifiable trial terminations: the violation of foundational ethical principles of human participant research,” they write. “First and foremost, it is betrayal of the fundamental principles of informed consent for research.” And “participants who have been exposed to an intervention in the context of a trial may be harmed by its premature withdrawal or inadequate follow-up and monitoring for adverse effects.”

Over 74,000 trial participants entrusted researchers with “their health and hope,” but even if the trial funding is restored—as it may be for some—it would “at best mitigate the harms.”

Trump admin axed 383 active clinical trials, dumping over 74K participants Read More »

the-evolution-of-rationality:-how-chimps-process-conflicting-evidence

The evolution of rationality: How chimps process conflicting evidence

Behavioral science, beliefs, Biology, chimps, evolution, Science / /

In the first step, the chimps got the auditory evidence, the same rattling sound coming from the first container. Then, they received indirect visual evidence: a trail of peanuts leading to the second container. At this point, the chimpanzees picked the first container, presumably because they viewed the auditory evidence as stronger. But then the team would remove a rock from the first container. The piece of rock suggested that it was not food that was making the rattling sound. “At this point, a rational agent should conclude, ‘The evidence I followed is now defeated and I should go for the other option,’” Engelmann told Ars. “And that’s exactly what the chimpanzees did.”

The team had 20 chimpanzees participating in all five experiments, and they followed the evidence significantly above chance level—in about 80 percent of the cases. “At the individual level, about 18 out of 20 chimpanzees followed this expected pattern,” Engelmann claims.

He views this study as one of the first steps to learn how rationality evolved and when the first sparks of rational thought appeared in nature. “We’re doing a lot of research to answer exactly this question,” Engelmann says.

The team thinks rationality is not an on/off switch; instead, different animals have different levels of rationality. “The first two experiments demonstrate a rudimentary form of rationality,” Engelmann says. “But experiments four and five are quite difficult and show a more advanced form of reflective rationality I expect only chimps and maybe bonobos to have.”

In his view, though, humans are still at least one level above the chimps. “Many people say reflective rationality is the final stage, but I think you can go even further. What humans have is something I would call social rationality,” Engelmann claims. “We can discuss and comment on each other’s thinking and in that process make each other even more rational.”

Sometimes, at least in humans, social interactions can also increase our irrationality instead. But chimps don’t seem to have this problem. Engelmann’s team is currently running a study focused on whether the choices chimps make are influenced by the choices of their fellow chimps. “The chimps only followed the other chimp’s decision when the other chimp had better evidence,” Engelmann says. “In this sense, chimps seem to be more rational than humans.”

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.aeb7565

The evolution of rationality: How chimps process conflicting evidence Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blue Origin’s stunning success; vive le Baguette One!

rocket report, Space / /

“If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket takes flight on Thursday afternoon. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.19 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was a monumental day in launch history with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket not just taking off successfully, but with the first stage masterfully returning to the surface of the ocean, hovering near the Jacklyn drone ship, and then making a landing in the center of the barge. It was fantastic to watch and cements our new reality of reusable rockets. The future of space access is very bright indeed.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Private Chinese rocket fails. Galactic Energy’s solid-fuel Ceres-1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Sunday, carrying three satellites toward low-Earth orbit. The rocket’s first three stages performed well, according to media reports, but its fourth and final stage shut down too early, leading to the loss of all three payloads, Space.com reports.

Sincerely sorry … Those payloads were two satellites for China’s Jilin-1 commercial Earth-observation constellation, as well as a craft developed by Zhongbei University. “We offer our sincerest apologies to the mission’s customer and to everyone who supports Galactic Energy,” the Beijing-based company said in a statement. The Ceres-1 can lift 400 kg of payload to low-Earth orbit and debuted in November 2020. It flew successfully nine times in a row before suffering a failure in September 2023. The Ceres-1 bounced back from that problem, notching 11 consecutive successes before Sunday night’s setback.

Avio makes deals with major US contractors. Italian aerospace propulsion firm Avio announced agreements with US defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin this week, granting each preferred access to solid rocket motors from its planned US manufacturing plant, Space News reports. The new facility is expected to be operational by early 2028, although Avio has not yet disclosed its location.

Surging global demand for missiles … Solid rocket motors are critical components that power many of the missiles and tactical weapons systems that both contractors produce, and both firms face rapidly increasing demand driven by ongoing conflicts globally. Avio said it plans to invest approximately $460 million to increase its manufacturing capacity, with most of that capital earmarked for the new US manufacturing facility.

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Spectrum rocket starts to take shape. German launch services provider Isar Aerospace said this week that the stages for the second flight of its Spectrum rocket have arrived at its launch facility in Norway, European Spaceflight reports. While brief, the update stated that the company is “gearing up for pre-flight testing.” The update did not include an expected launch date.

A fairly rapid turnaround … The arrival of new flight hardware follows the inaugural flight of the Spectrum rocket on March 30. Less than 30 seconds after liftoff, the rocket’s flight termination system was triggered, and the vehicle splashed down in the Norwegian Sea just meters from the launch pad, exploding on impact. Following an investigation, the company identified an unintended opening of the vent valve, together with a loss of attitude control at the start of the rocket’s roll maneuver, as the cause of the failure.

Nova Scotia launch may take place this month. The first rocket launch to reach the edge of space from Canada since 1998 could happen as soon as November 18 from Spaceport Nova Scotia, spaceQ reports. The launch will be conducted by T-Minus Engineering, which is seeking to test its suborbital Barracuda hypersonic test platform. The Barracuda rocket, according to the company, “is a single-stage, solid-fuel suborbital vehicle that stands approximately 4 meters tall. Barracuda can carry payloads of up to 40 kilograms to altitudes reaching 120 kilometers.”

Seeking to go higher from Nova Scotia … The only other launch to date from Spaceport Nova Scotia was a university launch by York University in July 2023, which reached an altitude of 13.4 km. The last rocket to launch from Canada and reach space was a Magellan Aerospace Black Brant IXB suborbital research rocket with scientific payloads from the University of Calgary. The ACTIVE mission, financed by the Canadian Space Agency, was launched from the Churchill Rocket Research Range, Manitoba, on April 28, 1998. It reached an apogee of 315.6 km.

Here comes the Baguette One. German space logistics company ATMOS Space Cargo has signed a memorandum of understanding with French launch services provider HyPrSpace to carry out a demonstration mission aboard its Baguette One rocket, European Spaceflight reports. Is this the best name for a rocket ever? Probably.

Raking in the dough … Founded in 2019, HyPrSpace is developing a suborbital demonstration rocket called Baguette One, slated for launch in 2026. The rocket will serve as a technology demonstrator to validate the company’s hybrid rocket engine for its OB1 (Orbital Baguette One) rocket. The mission will be launched from a DGA Essais de Missiles (DGA Missile Testing) site in the south of France.

Neutron debut slips into 2026. During an earnings call on Monday, Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck announced that the company’s medium-lift launch vehicle, Neutron, would not launch this year, Ars reports. Although Rocket Lab had been holding onto the possibility of launching Neutron this year publicly, it has been clear for months that a slip into 2026 was inevitable. The new timeline has the company bringing Neutron to Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the first quarter of next year. The first launch is scheduled to occur “thereafter,” according to the company’s plans.

Following the Rocket Lab plan … Beck said Rocket Lab would not be rushed by an arbitrary deadline. “We’ve seen what happens when others rush to the pad with an unproven product, and we just refused to do that,” he said, referring to other commercial launch companies that have not had success with their first launches. “Our aim is to make it to orbit on the first try. You won’t see us using some qualifier about us just clearing the pad, and claiming success and whatnot, and that means that we don’t want to learn something during Neutron’s first flight that could be learned on the ground during the testing phase.”

Relativity and SES expand launch agreement. The California-based launch company and Luxembourg satellite company announced Wednesday an “extended multi-year, multi-launch services agreement” using Relativity’s Terran R rocket. The companies said they are partnering for multiple launches aboard Terran R, a medium-to-heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle, that will bring the selected SES satellites to their final orbital position.

No contracts just yet … The expanded agreement includes previously unannounced SES launches. With this new agreement, Relativity’s Terran R aims to provide SES with high performance, reliability, and affordable access to space. Terran R’s first launch is planned for late 2026 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is important to note that launch agreements are not necessarily launch contracts. However, it is a good sign for Relativity that customers are showing some confidence in the large new rocket still in development.

Indian demo mission scheduled for January 2026. The Indian space agency, ISRO, now plans to launch an uncrewed demonstration mission named Gaganyaan-1 in January 2026, News 9 reports. The mission, carrying a half-humanoid robot, will test the performance of a crewed spacecraft and service module in low-Earth orbit. It is a critical stepping stone toward the country’s first human spaceflight in 2027.

Making progress … “We are currently working on our Gaganyaan program, to take our citizens to space and bring them back safely, and lot of activities are going on,” V Narayanan, chairman of ISRO, said. “In fact, I want to tell, 8,000 tests are completed till today, almost 97 percent of tests are successful, except small setbacks, which we have fully understood. We are going to have three uncrewed missions, followed by the first crewed mission targeted in 2027.”

Blue Origin ready to help accelerate Artemis. Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, Ars reports. “We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, told Ars. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”

Modifying existing hardware … This year, it has become increasingly apparent that, should NASA stick to its present plans for the Artemis III lunar landing mission, China is on course to beat the United States back to the Moon with humans. In recognition of this, about three weeks ago, NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy said the space agency was reopening the competition for a human lander. Blue Origin has begun work on a faster architecture, involving multiple versions of its Mk. 1 cargo lander as well as a modified version of this vehicle, tentatively called Mk 1.5.

How to launch to Mars when the window is closed. The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems like trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat. That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay and possible cancellation after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year, Ars reports. The Mars-bound mission had been due to launch on a New Glenn rocket before the close of the last Mars window, in the fall of 2024. But the rocket was not ready.

So what happens now that the rocket is ready? … “ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, from the University of California, Berkeley and the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

Next three launches

November 14: Atlas V | Viasat-3 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 04 UTC

November 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-85 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 01 UTC

November 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-89 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 03: 01 UTC

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin’s stunning success; vive le Baguette One! Read More »

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US may owe $1 trillion in refunds if SCOTUS cancels Trump tariffs

Donald Trump, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs / /

Tech industry primed for big refunds if SCOTUS rules against Trump tariffs.

If Donald Trump loses his Supreme Court fight over tariffs, the US may be forced to return “tens of billions of dollars to companies that have paid import fees this year, plus interest,” The Atlantic reported. And the longer the verdict is delayed, the higher the refunds could go, possibly even hitting $1 trillion.

For tech companies both large and small, the stakes are particularly high. A Trump defeat would not just mean clawing back any duties paid on imports to the US that companies otherwise can use to invest in their competitiveness. But, more critically in the long term, it would also end tariff shocks that, as economics lecturer Matthew Allen emphasized in a report for The Conversation, risked harming “innovation itself” by destabilizing global partnerships and diverse supply chains in “tech-intensive, IP-led sectors like semiconductors and software.”

Currently, the Supreme Court is weighing two cases that argue that the US president does not have unilateral authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Defending his regime of so-called “reciprocal tariffs,” Trump argued these taxes were necessary to correct the “emergency” of enduring trade imbalances that he alleged have unfairly enriched other countries while bringing the US “to the brink of catastrophic decline.”

Not everyone thinks Trump will lose. But after oral arguments last week, prediction markets dropped Trump’s odds of winning from 50 to 25 percent, Forbes reported, due to Supreme Court justices appearing skeptical.

Dozens of economists agreed: Trump’s tariffs are “odd”

Justices may have been swayed by dozens of leading economists who weighed in. In one friend of the court brief, more than 40 economists, public policy researchers, and former government officials argued that Trump’s got it all wrong when he claims that “sustained trade deficits” have “fostered dependency on foreign rivals and gutted American manufacturing.”

Far from being “unusual and extraordinary,” they argued that trade deficits are “rather ordinary and commonplace.” And rather than being a sign of US weakness, the deficits instead indicate that the US has a “foreign investment surplus,” as other countries clearly consider the US “a superior investment.”

Look no further than the tech sector for a prominent example, they suggested, noting that “the United States has the dominant technology sector in the world and, as a result, has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades.” Citing a quip from Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow—“I have a chronic deficit with my barber, who doesn’t buy a darned thing from me”—economists argued that trade deficits are never inherently problematic.

“It is odd to economists, to say the least, for the United States government to attempt to rebalance trade on a country-by-country basis,” economists wrote, as Trump seems to do with his trade deals imposing reciprocal tariffs as high as 145 percent.

SCOTUS urged to end “perfect storm of uncertainty”

Trump has been on a mission to use tariffs to force more manufacturing back into the US. He has claimed that the court undoing his trade deals would be an “economic disaster” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.” And the longer it takes for the verdict to come out, the more damage the verdict could do, his administration warned, as the US continues to collect tariffs and Trump continues to strike deals that hinge on reciprocal tariffs being in play.

However, in another friend-of-court brief, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and the Chamber of Commerce (CoC) argued that the outcome is worse for US businesses if the court defers to Trump.

“The current administration’s use of IEEPA to impose virtually unbounded tariffs is not only unprecedented but is causing irreparable harm” to each group’s members by “increasing their costs, undermining their ability to plan for the future, and in some cases, threatening their very existence,” their filing said.

“The tariffs are particularly damaging to American manufacturing,” they argued, complaining that “American manufacturers face higher prices for raw materials than their foreign competitors, destroying any comparative advantage the tariffs were allegedly meant to create.”

Further, businesses face decreased exports of their products, as well as retaliatory tariffs from any countries striking back at Trump—which “affect $223 billion of US exports and are expected to eliminate an additional 141,000 jobs,” CTA and CoC estimated.

Innovation “thrives on collaboration, trust and scale,” Allen, the economics lecturer, noted, joining critics warning that Trump risked hobbling not just US tech dominance by holding onto seemingly misguided protectionist beliefs but also the European Union’s and the United Kingdom’s.

Meanwhile, the CTA and CoC argued that Trump has other ways to impose tariffs that have been authorized by Congress and do not carry the same risks of destabilizing key US industries, such as the tech sector. Under Section 122, which many critics argued is the authority Trump should be using to impose the reciprocal tariffs, Trump would be limited to a 15 percent tariff for no more than 150 days, trade scholars noted in yet another brief SCOTUS reviewed.

“But the President’s claimed IEEPA authority contains no such limits” CTA and CoC noted. “At whim, he has increased, decreased, suspended, or reimposed tariffs, generating the perfect storm of uncertainty.”

US may end up owing $1 trillion in refunds

Economists urged SCOTUS to intervene and stop Trump’s attempt to seize authority to impose boundless reciprocal tariffs—arguing the economic impact “is predicted to be far greater than in two programs” SCOTUS previously struck, including the Biden administration’s $50 billion plan for student loan forgiveness.

In September, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned justices that “the amount to be refunded could be between $750 billion and $1 trillion if the court waits until next summer before issuing a ruling that says the tariffs have to be repaid,” CNBC reported.

During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy,” CNBC reported.

However, some business owners—who joined the We Pay Tariffs coalition weighing in on the SCOTUS case—told CNBC that they think it could be relatively straightforward, since customs forms contain line items detailing which tariffs were paid. Businesses could be paid in lump sums or even future credits, they suggested.

Rick Muskat, CEO of family-run shoe company DeerStags, told CNBC that his company paid more than $1 million in tariffs so far, but “it should be simple for importers to apply for refunds based on this tariff itemization.” If the IRS can issue repayments for tax overpayments, US Customs should have “no problem” either, he suggested—especially since the agency automatically refunded US importers with no issue during a 2018 conflict, CNBC reported.

If there aren’t automatic refunds, though, things could get sticky. Filing paperwork required to challenge various tariffs may become “time-consuming and difficult” for some businesses, particularly those dealing with large shipments where only some products may have been taxed.

There’s also the issue that some countries’ tariffs—like China’s—changed “multiple times,” Joyce Adetutu, a partner at the law firm Vinson & Elkins, told CNBC. “It is going to take quite a bit of time untangling all of that, and it will be an administrative burden,” Adetutu said.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

US may owe $1 trillion in refunds if SCOTUS cancels Trump tariffs Read More »

the-twin-probes-just-launched-toward-mars-have-an-easter-egg-on-board

The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

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The mission aims to aid our understanding of Mars’ climate history and what was behind the loss of its conditions that once supported liquid water, potential oceans, and possibly life on the surface.

Plaques and partner patches

In addition to the kiwi-adorned plates, Rocket Lab also installed two more plaques on the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft.

“There are also two name plates (one in blue and one in gold) on each spacecraft listing Rocket Lab team members who’ve contributed to the mission, making it possible to get to Mars,” said McLaurin.

Mounted on the solar panels, the plaques use shading to also display the Latin initials (NSHO) of the Rocket Lab motto and form the company’s logo. Despite their diminutive size, each plate appears to include more than 200 names, including founder, president, and CEO Peter Beck.

Montage of photos and graphics illustrating the blue and gold metal plates attached a spacecraft

Additional plates in blue and gold display the names of the Rocket Lab team members behind the ESCAPADE spacecraft. Credit: UCB-SSL via collectSPACE.com

UC Berkeley adopted its colors in 1873. According to the school’s website, “blue for the California sky and ocean and for the Yale graduates who helped establish the university, gold for the ‘Golden State.’”

ESCAPADE also has its own set of colors, or rather, colorful patches.

The main mission logo depicts the twin spacecraft in orbit around Mars with the names of the primary partners listed along its border, including UCB-SSL (University of California, Berkeley-Space Science Laboratory); RL (Rocket Lab); ERAU (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which designed and built the langmuir probe, one of the mission’s science instruments); AdvSp (Advanced Space, which oversaw mission design and trajectory optimization); and NASA-GSFC (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center).

Rocket Lab also designed an insignia, which renders the two spacecraft in blue and gold, as well as shows their trajectory in the same colors and includes the company’s motto.

Lastly, Blue Origin’s New Glenn-2 (NG-2) patch features the launch vehicle and the two ESCAPADE satellites, using hues of orange to represent Mars.

Graphic montage of mission patches

Three mission patches represent the Mars ESCAPADE mission and its partners. Credit: NASA/Rocket Lab/Blue Origin/collectSPACE.com

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As shutdown ends, dubious CDC panel gets back to dismantling vaccine schedule

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Nevertheless, Kennedy’s ACIP members planned to push the first dose back a month. A vote was prepared to recommend not giving a birth dose unless there was “individual based decision-making.” While at first the panel seemed poised to vote in favor of the change, the plan collapsed with basic questioning.

Voting ACIP member Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist, noted: “I’m unclear if we’ve been presented with any safety or data comparing before one month to after one month,” he said. They had not.

“And,” Hibbeln continued, “I’m wondering why one month was selected as our time point and if there are data to help to inform us if there’s greater risk of adverse effects before one month or after one month at all.”

There is no data suggesting that such a move would be more or less safe.

The discussion quickly spiraled from there with an eventual vote of 11-1 to table voting on the vaccine recommendation. According to the Federal Register notice, ACIP will try to take up the topic again. They could revive the vote or attack some other aspect of vaccine recommendations.

Pediatricians fight back

Health experts have blasted Kennedy’s lineup and their attacks on childhood vaccines, including the hepatitis B vaccination schedule. The current schedule “remains the best protection against serious health problems like liver disease and cancer,” the American Academy of Pediatrics emphasized to Ars.

With ACIP’s standing tarnished under Kennedy, AAP has put forth its own evidence-based vaccine schedule for pediatricians to trust. They’ve also been a prominent opponent among medical organizations to Kennedy’s efforts. For instance, in a revised federal lawsuit, the AAP along with other medical organizations is seeking to overturn all decisions made by Kennedy’s ACIP and replace the entire panel with actual experts.

Kennedy’s appointees “lack the credentials and experience required of their role,” and all their votes should be declared “null and void,” the organization said.

AAP President Susan Kressly said that pediatricians are already seeing the effects of having an anti-vaccine activist as the US health secretary, namely “fear, decreased vaccine confidence, and barriers for families to access vaccines.”

“The nation’s children are already paying the price in avoidable illnesses and hospitalizations,” Kressly said. “We urge federal leaders to restore the science-based deliberative process that has made the United States a global leader in public health. Urgent action is needed.”

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What’s it like to compete in the longest US off-road rally with no GPS?

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I’ve been involved with the Rebelle Rally since its inception in 2016, either as a competitor or live show host, and over the past 10 years, I’ve seen it evolve from a scrappy rally with big dreams to the world-class event that it is today.

In a nutshell, the Rebelle Rally is the longest competitive off-road rally in the United States, covering over 2,000 kilometers, and it just happens to be for women. Over eight days, teams of two must plot coordinates on a map, figure out their route, and find multiple checkpoints—both marked and unmarked—with no GPS, cell phones, or chase crews. It is not a race for speed but rather a rally for navigational accuracy over some of the toughest terrain California and Nevada have to offer. There are two classes: 4×4 with vehicles like the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco and X-Cross for cars like the Honda Passport and BMW X5. Heavy modifications aren’t needed, and many teams compete for the coveted Bone Stock award.

For this 10th anniversary, I got back behind the wheel of a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Wilderness as a driver, with Kendra Miller as my navigator, to defend my multiple podium finishes and stage wins and get reacquainted with the technology, or lack thereof, that makes this multi-day competition so special.

Emme Hall (R), driver, and Kendra Miller (L), navigator, before the start of the 2025 Rebelle Rally. Ernesto Araiza

High-tech rally

In the morning, as Kendra uses a scale ruler to plot 20-plus coordinates on the map of the day, a laborious task that requires intense concentration, I have time to marvel at base camp a bit. We climb out of our snuggy sleeping bags and tents in the pitch black of 5 am, but the main tent is brighter than ever thanks to Renewable Innovations and its mobile microgrid.

This system combines a solar and a hydrogen fuel cell system for up to 750 kWh of power. In the early morning, the multiple batteries in both systems power the bright lights that the navigators need to see their maps, and the Starlink units send the commentary show to YouTube and Facebook Live. Competitors and staff can take a hot shower, the kitchen fries up the morning’s tater tots—seriously, they are the best—and the day’s drivers’ meeting gets started on the PA system. We’re 100 miles from nowhere, and it feels like home.

What’s it like to compete in the longest US off-road rally with no GPS? Read More »

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Are you ready for a $1,000 Steam Machine? Some analysts think you should be.

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If you ask random gamers what price they think Valve will charge for its newly announced Steam Machine hardware, you’ll get a wide range of guesses. But if you ask the analysts who follow the game industry for a living the same question… well, you’ll actually get the same wide range of (somewhat better-informed) guesses.

At the high end of those guesses are analysts like F-Squared‘s Michael Futter, who expects a starting price of $799 to $899 for the entry-level 512GB Steam Machine and a whopping $1,000 to $1,100 for the 2TB version. With internal specs that Futter says “will rival a PS5 and maybe even hit PS5 Pro performance,” we can expect a “hefty price tag” from Valve’s new console-like effort. At the same time, since Valve is “positioning this as a dedicated, powerful gaming PC… I suspect that the price will be below a similarly capable traditional desktop,” Futter said.

DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole similarly expects the Steam Machine to start at a price “around $800” and go up to “around $1,000” for the 2TB model. Cole said he expects Valve will seek “very low margins” or even break-even pricing on the hardware itself, which he said would probably lead to pricing “below a gaming PC but slightly above a high-end console.”

A loss leader?

At the other end of the spectrum, Superdata Research founder and SuperJoost newsletter author Joost Van Dreunen predicted the entry-level Steam Machine could come in as low as $549, rising to $749 for the 2TB version (plus an additional $50 for bundles including a Steam Controller).

To Van Dreunen, Valve’s unique position as a private company with a loyal fan base means it can “price its hardware to hit its own strategic sweet spot rather than mirror the competition.” And in this case, he said, that could mean taking a “modest” loss on the hardware as a way to get more gamers invested in SteamOS.

Getting people to buy more games on SteamOS could be worth a lot more to Valve than any Steam Machine hardware profits.

Credit: Valve

Getting people to buy more games on SteamOS could be worth a lot more to Valve than any Steam Machine hardware profits. Credit: Valve

“Just like Sony and Microsoft, the real money isn’t in the box, it’s in the ecosystem you enter once you buy it,” Van Dreunen said. “To me the question isn’t whether Valve can afford to eat margin. It’s whether they want the SteamOS footprint to grow fast enough to justify it. … Strategically, this is about expanding the platform, not squeezing the hardware.”

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OpenAI walks a tricky tightrope with GPT-5.1’s eight new personalities

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On Wednesday, OpenAI released GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking, two updated versions of its flagship AI models now available in ChatGPT. The company is wrapping the models in the language of anthropomorphism, claiming that they’re warmer, more conversational, and better at following instructions.

The release follows complaints earlier this year that its previous models were excessively cheerful and sycophantic, along with an opposing controversy among users over how OpenAI modified the default GPT-5 output style after several suicide lawsuits.

The company now faces intense scrutiny from lawyers and regulators that could threaten its future operations. In that kind of environment, it’s difficult to just release a new AI model, throw out a few stats, and move on like the company could even a year ago. But here are the basics: The new GPT-5.1 Instant model will serve as ChatGPT’s faster default option for most tasks, while GPT-5.1 Thinking is a simulated reasoning model that attempts to handle more complex problem-solving tasks.

OpenAI claims that both models perform better on technical benchmarks such as math and coding evaluations (including AIME 2025 and Codeforces) than GPT-5, which was released in August.

Improved benchmarks may win over some users, but the biggest change with GPT-5.1 is in its presentation. OpenAI says it heard from users that they wanted AI models to simulate different communication styles depending on the task, so the company is offering eight preset options, including Professional, Friendly, Candid, Quirky, Efficient, Cynical, and Nerdy, alongside a Default setting.

These presets alter the instructions fed into each prompt to simulate different personality styles, but the underlying model capabilities remain the same across all settings.

An illustration showing GPT-5.1's eight personality styles in ChatGPT.

An illustration showing GPT-5.1’s eight personality styles in ChatGPT. Credit: OpenAI

In addition, the company trained GPT-5.1 Instant to use “adaptive reasoning,” meaning that the model decides when to spend more computational time processing a prompt before generating output.

The company plans to roll out the models gradually over the next few days, starting with paid subscribers before expanding to free users. OpenAI plans to bring both GPT-5.1 Instant and GPT-5.1 Thinking to its API later this week. GPT-5.1 Instant will appear as gpt-5.1-chat-latest, and GPT-5.1 Thinking will be released as GPT-5.1 in the API, both with adaptive reasoning enabled. The older GPT-5 models will remain available in ChatGPT under the legacy models dropdown for paid subscribers for three months.

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An explosion 92 million miles away just grounded Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket

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A series of eruptions from the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections, sparked dazzling auroral light shows Tuesday night. The eruptions sent a blast of material from the Sun, including charged particles with a strong localized magnetic field, toward the Earth at more than 1 million mph, or more than 500 kilometers per second.

A solar ultraviolet imager on one of NOAA’s GOES weather satellites captured this view of a coronal mass ejection from the Sun early Tuesday. Credit: NOAA

Satellites detected the most recent strong coronal mass ejection, accompanied by a bright solar flare, early Tuesday. It was expected to arrive at Earth on Wednesday.

“We’ve already had two of three anticipated coronal mass ejections arrive here at Earth,” said Shawn Dahl, a forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The first two waves “packed quite a punch,” Dahl said, and were “profoundly stronger than we anticipated.”

The storm sparked northern lights that were visible as far south as Texas, Florida, and Mexico on Tuesday night. Another round of northern lights might be visible Wednesday night.

The storm arriving Wednesday was the “most energetic” of all the recent coronal mass ejections, Dahl said. It’s also traveling at higher speed, fast enough to cover the 92 million-mile gulf between the Sun and the Earth in less than two days. Forecasters predict a G4 level, or severe, geomagnetic storm Wednesday into Thursday, with a slight chance of a rarer extreme G5 storm, something that has only happened once in the last two decades.

The Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky over Monroe, Wisconsin, on November 11, 2025, during one of the strongest solar storms in decades. Credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The sudden arrival of a rush of charged particles from the Sun can create disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field, affecting power grids, degrading GPS navigation signals, and disrupting radio communications. A G4 geomagnetic storm can trigger “possible widespread voltage control problems” in terrestrial electrical networks, according to NOAA, along with potential surface charging problems on satellites flying above the protective layers of the atmosphere.

It’s not easy to predict the precise impacts of a geomagnetic storm until it arrives on Earth’s doorstep. Several satellites positioned a million miles from Earth in the direction of the Sun carry sensors to detect the speed of the solar wind, its charge, and the direction of its magnetic field. This information helps forecasters know what to expect.

“These types of storms can be very variable,” Dahl said.

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