Author name: Mike M.

15-state-attorneys-general-sue-rfk-jr.-over-“anti-science”-vaccine-policy

15 state attorneys general sue RFK Jr. over “anti-science” vaccine policy


This administration may be hazardous to your health

Trump administration’s reduced vaccine schedule “throws science out the window.”

A healthcare worker receives a Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at Jackson Memorial Hospital on December 15, 2020 in Miami, Florida. Credit: Getty Images | Joe Raedle

Scientists have long warned that a warming world is likely to hasten the spread of infectious diseases, making vaccination even more critical to safeguard public health.

And though most scientists hail vaccines as one of public health’s greatest achievements, they have provoked fear, distrust, and contentious resistance since Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, to prevent smallpox, in the late 1700s.

Yet, until now, the United States never installed an outspoken vaccine critic like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a top health official with the power to upend federal childhood vaccine recommendations. Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy and other top officials in the Trump administration have waged an “unprecedented attack on the nation’s evidence-based childhood immunization schedule,” a lawsuit, filed by 15 states, charged on Tuesday. Their actions will make people sicker and strain state resources, the suit claims.

A coalition of 14 attorneys general and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, is suing Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories linking vaccines to autism, as well as HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and its acting director, Jay Bhattacharya.

The multistate coalition is suing the agencies and their leaders, Mayes said in a press briefing Tuesday, “over their needlessly confusing, scientifically unsound, and unlawful revision of America’s immunization schedule.”

The suit also challenges Kennedy’s abrupt firing and “unlawful replacement” of 17 experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which recommends which vaccines children and adults should receive, “with unqualified individuals whose minority anti-vaccine views align with Kennedy’s.”

In January, the CDC, with advice from the reconstituted ACIP, took seven childhood shots off the list of vaccines routinely recommended for all children, rescinding the CDC’s established guidance that vaccines protecting against rotavirus, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus should be universally administered.

All the “demoted” vaccines, as the lawsuit calls them, prevent diseases that carry the risk of death. The January CDC memo recommends that parents consult with doctors for these vaccines, “taking the risk profile of each unique child into account.”

It does not make provisions for the millions of Americans who lack access to health providers who would provide such consultations.

ACIP’s vaccine recommendations have traditionally guided US health insurance coverage decisions, state school vaccine requirements, and physicians’ advice to parents and patients, Bonta said at the briefing. But Kennedy fired all the voting ACIP members four months after he promised Congress during his confirmation hearing that he’d leave the panel intact, Bonta said, noting that the suit is the 59th California has filed against the second Trump administration.

Kennedy said his unprecedented removal of the ACIP experts was “prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” in a press release in June.

Yet Kennedy’s picks include vaccine skeptics who “lack the requisite scientific knowledge and expertise to advise HHS and CDC on the ‘use of vaccines and related agents for effective control of vaccine-preventable diseases,’” as required by the committee’s charter, the suit argues.

“What Secretary Kennedy has done and what the Trump administration has enabled, throws science out the window, replaces qualified experts with unqualified ideologues, and then uses the resulting confusion to undermine public confidence in vaccines that have saved millions of lives,” Mayes said.

Stoking vaccine doubts leads to lower vaccination rates, which leads to more disease outbreaks—such as the hundreds of measles cases reported in 26 states over the past two months—more children in hospitals and greater strain on state Medicaid systems and public health infrastructure, Mayes said.

Democratic states are doing everything they can to fill the gaps left by this administration’s policies, she said. “But diseases cross state lines.”

Sowing doubt and confusion

The administration cited Denmark’s more limited childhood immunization schedule to justify its changes, but the Scandinavian country has fewer circulating infectious diseases and universal health care for a population that is tiny compared to the United States, the suit notes.

“Copying Denmark’s vaccine schedule without copying Denmark’s healthcare system doesn’t give families more options,” Mayes said, noting that millions of Americans lack access to health care, particularly in rural areas. “It just leaves kids unprotected from serious diseases.”

Inside Climate News asked HHS how it will ensure that parents without access to health care get their children the vaccines they need and how the administration plans to protect vulnerable populations as climate change fuels the spread of infectious diseases.

“This is a publicity stunt dressed up as a lawsuit,” said HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard, ignoring the questions. “By law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The CDC immunization schedule reforms reflect common-sense public health policy shared by peer, developed countries.”

The revised childhood immunization schedule wasn’t based on new science or expert consensus, Mayes said. “It was based on an ideological agenda, one that Secretary Kennedy has been pushing for years.”

Kennedy has been at the forefront of a dangerous movement that has significantly eroded trust in safe and effective vaccines, Bonta said. “While RFK Jr. is entitled to his own personal opinions, opinions, mind you, not facts, he isn’t entitled to use his opinions as the basis for breaking the law and endangering our children.”

The actions that RFK Jr. and ACIP have taken flout decades of scientific research, harm public health, and strain state resources by sowing doubt and confusion in vaccines and in science, Bonta said.

“California will be forced to expend resources to treat once rare diseases, to respond to outbreaks, and to combat misinformation,” he said. “I refuse to allow RFK Jr. to threaten the health and well being of the more than eight million young people who call the Golden State home, the 400,000 babies that are born here in California each year.”

Routine childhood vaccinations will prevent approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths among US children born between 1994 and 2023, scientists with the CDC reported in August 2024, before Donald Trump returned to office. The immunizations resulted in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion, they concluded.

“Without these vaccines, not only will our children and vulnerable individuals get sick, but our healthcare systems will have to shoulder the burden of increased preventable illnesses, preventable hospital visits, and avoidable costs,” Bonta said. “Vaccines save lives and save our states money. To get rid of them is illogical and unconscionable.”

Climate-fueled outbreaks

Two weeks before Bonta filed his latest lawsuit against the Trump administration, he denounced the Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding that recognized climate change as a threat to public health and welfare and provided the legal grounds to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration’s endangerment finding recision, like its overhaul of the vaccine schedule, “is completely divorced from and untethered from science and facts and data and evidence,” Bonta said at the briefing Tuesday, noting that California will continue to push back against the EPA’s action.

“We must follow the facts, the science, the evidence and data, including the interconnectivity between climate change and the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Bonta said.

Climate hazards such as drought, floods, and heatwaves have exacerbated outbreaks of more than half of human infectious diseases, researchers reported in Nature Climate Change in 2022, either by impairing people’s resistance or bolstering transmission of pathogens. The team warned that the number of pathogenic diseases and transmission pathways worsened by climatic hazards “are too numerous for comprehensive societal adaptations,” underscoring the urgent need to address the source of the problem: greenhouse gases.

Arizona is seeing more extreme heat events as a result of climate change, leaving people with underlying conditions at greater risk of heat-related illness and death.

“A lack of vaccines, a lack of access to vaccines starting at birth, will make our population sicker and more vulnerable to extreme heat and to climate-related disasters,” Mayes said. “And that will be sort of a self-perpetuating cycle where you have a less healthy population that is less capable of withstanding the impacts of climate change, and then you have climate change that is expanding and growing ever-more dangerous, having a greater and greater impact on a less healthy society.”

The only bodies that are capable of providing scientific guidance and advice on vaccines to the entire country are the CDC and ACIP, Mayes said. “And we now basically don’t have that across a number of these diseases and vaccines,” she said. “So we’re not protected, and we’re going to continue to see these outbreaks across the country, including in our states, even though we’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.”

Liza Gross is a reporter for Inside Climate News based in Northern California. She is the author of The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook and a contributor to The Science Writers’ Handbook, both funded by National Association of Science Writers’ Peggy Girshman Idea Grants. She has long covered science, conservation, agriculture, public and environmental health and justice with a focus on the misuse of science for private gain. Prior to joining ICN, she worked as a part-time magazine editor for the open-access journal PLOS Biology, a reporter for the Food & Environment Reporting Network and produced freelance stories for numerous national outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Discover, and Mother Jones. Her work has won awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Society of Professional Journalists NorCal, and Association of Food Journalists.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Photo of Inside Climate News

15 state attorneys general sue RFK Jr. over “anti-science” vaccine policy Read More »

2026-lexus-rz-550e-review:-likable,-but-it-needs-improvement

2026 Lexus RZ 550e review: Likable, but it needs improvement

Sometimes you drive a car you just don’t gel with.

The original Lexus RZ was such a case. It was Lexus’ first battery EV, and I was less than impressed when I drove it in 2023. In fact, I compared it negatively to the extremely not-good Vinfast VF8. Lexus knew there was room for improvement, too, so it reworked the RZ with new motors, a new battery, and NACS charging for North America, among other tweaks, for model year 2026. A front-wheel drive RZ 350e is now the range’s entry point at $47,295, and there’s also a $58,295 all-wheel drive RZ 550e F Sport that tops the range. We spent a week with the latter.

Mindful of how little I liked the first RZ I drove, I made sure to approach the 550e F Sport with an open mind. And despite a number of the car’s shortcomings, I find I have warm feelings for the electric Lexus.

New battery, new motors

There are new batteries for all MY2026 RZs, but the 550e benefits from a slightly larger capacity, at 77 kWh. Each axle features a permanent magnet synchronous motor, now with silicon carbide electronics, that delivers a combined 402 hp (300 kW). There’s also some new body stiffening, plus added sound dampening. As an F Sport Lexus, the 550e also gains some styling additions compared to its lesser siblings. There are new bumpers and a new front grille, plus 20-inch wheels wearing aero covers that hide blue-painted brake calipers.

It’s a relatively compact EV, at 189 inches (4,800 mm) long, 74.6 inches (1,895 mm) wide, and 64.4 inches (1,636 mm) tall. Jonathan Gitlin

On those 20-inch wheels, the range is just 229 miles (369 km), and that’s only in optimum ambient conditions. In chilly but not sub-freezing February weather, the RZ 550e averaged 2.5 miles/kWh, and with the battery at 50 percent state of charge, the car reported only 88 miles (142 km) of range. AC charging now peaks at 11 kW rather than just 7 kW, and with its NACS port, the RZ can DC fast-charge from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 30 minutes, Lexus says.

2026 Lexus RZ 550e review: Likable, but it needs improvement Read More »

dji-sues-the-fcc-for-“carelessly”-restricting-its-drones

DJI sues the FCC for “carelessly” restricting its drones

DJI, the most popular consumer drone maker, is suing over the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s import ban against new, foreign-made drones, which has been in effect since December 23, 2025.

On Tuesday, the Shenzhen-headquartered company filed a petition [PDF] with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that seeks to overturn the FCC’s decision to list DJI on its Covered List. The Covered List includes communications equipment and services that are “deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons,” per the FCC.

In its petition dated February 20, 2026, DJI said:

Petitioners seek review of the Ruling on the ground that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority, failed to observe statutorily required procedures, and violated the Fifth Amendment when it purported to add DJI’s products to the Covered List. Petitioners respectfully request his Court hold unlawful, vacate, enjoin, and set aside the Ruling and grant any other relief that the Court finds proper.

In January, the FCC exempted a limited number of foreign-made drones, including some coming from Europe, until the end of this year. The FCC also provided exemptions for some foreign-made critical drone components, including those from Japanese companies Sony and Panasonic, and South Korean company Samsung. The FCC hasn’t exempted any drones or drone parts made in China.

In a December 22 statement, the FCC said that “criminals, hostile foreign actors, and terrorists can use [drones] to present new and serious threats to our homeland.” The FCC said at the time that it made its decision about the ban after a review by an Executive Branch interagency body review that it said had “appropriate national security expertise” and “was convened by the White House.”

DJI reportedly requested that the US government audit its devices multiple times before the US issued the import ban.

In a company statement shared with Bloomberg today, DJI said:

Despite repeated efforts to engage with the government, DJI has never been given the chance to provide information to address or refute any concerns. These procedural and substantive deficiencies violate the Constitution and federal law.

In a statement to Reuters today, DJI also said that the FCC’s decision “carelessly restricts DJI’s business in the US and summarily denies U.S. customers access to its latest technology.”

DJI sues the FCC for “carelessly” restricting its drones Read More »

maha-moms-threaten-to-turn-this-car-around-as-rfk-jr.-flips-on-pesticide

MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide

“We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it. When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families,” he said.

Fallout

Dave Murphy, founder and CEO of United We Eat and former finance manager on Kennedy’s presidential campaign, told Reuters that the order was a “strategic mistake” that could serve as an election liability. “Trump would not be in the White House this second time without those followers, and we expect him to live up to his word,” Murphy said.

Fallout has continued online over the move, and MAHA organizers are scrambling.

Alex Clark, a health and wellness podcaster for the conservative group Turning Point USA, told The New York Times that “Women feel like they were lied to, that MAHA movement is a sham,” he said. “How am I supposed to rally these women to vote red in the midterms? How can we win their trust back? I am unsure if we can.”

Meanwhile, MAHA influencer Kelly Ryerson, who goes by the moniker “Glyphosate Girl” online, told Politico, “I’m witnessing the bottom falling out on MAHA. People came along on MAHA because of pesticides and foods. It wasn’t because of vaccines.”

Zen Honeycutt, executive director of the grassroots group Moms Across America, told Politico in a statement that the fallout will have real consequences.

“To put toxic farming and businesses before the health and safety of our children is a betrayal of every voter who voted for him to [Make America Healthy Again],” she said. “The repercussions are not going to just affect the midterms, but the health of millions of Americans for generations to come.”

MAHA moms threaten to turn this car around as RFK Jr. flips on pesticide Read More »

fury-over-discord’s-age-checks-explodes-after-shady-persona-test-in-uk

Fury over Discord’s age checks explodes after shady Persona test in UK


Persona confirmed all age-check data from Discord’s UK test was deleted.

Shortly after Discord announced that all users will soon be defaulted to teen experiences until their ages are verified, the messaging platform faced immediate backlash.

One of the major complaints was that Discord planned to collect more government IDs as part of its global age verification process. It shocked many that Discord would be so bold so soon after a third-party breach of a former age check partner’s services recently exposed 70,000 Discord users’ government IDs.

Attempting to reassure users, Discord claimed that most users wouldn’t have to show ID, instead relying on video selfies using AI to estimate ages, which raised separate privacy concerns. In the future, perhaps behavioral signals would override the need for age checks for most users, Discord suggested, seemingly downplaying the risk that sensitive data would be improperly stored.

Discord didn’t hide that it planned to continue requesting IDs for any user appealing an incorrect age assessment, and users weren’t happy, since that is exactly how the prior breach happened. Responding to critics, Discord claimed that the majority of ID data was promptly deleted. Specifically, Savannah Badalich, Discord’s global head of product policy, told The Verge that IDs shared during appeals “are deleted quickly—in most cases, immediately after age confirmation.”

It’s unsurprising then that backlash exploded after Discord posted, and then weirdly deleted, a disclaimer on an FAQ about Discord’s age assurance policies that contradicted Discord’s hyped short timeline for storing IDs. An archived version of the page shows the note shared this warning:

“Important: If you’re located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted. For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what’s truly needed for age verification is used.”

Critics felt that Discord was obscuring not just how long IDs may be stored, but also the entities collecting information. Discord did not provide details on what the experiment was testing or how many users were affected, and Persona was not listed as a partner on its platform.

Asked for comment, Discord told Ars that only a small number of users was included in the experiment, which ran for less than one month. That test has since concluded, Discord confirmed, and Persona is no longer an active vendor partnering with Discord. Moving forward, Discord promised to “keep our users informed as vendors are added or updated.”

While Discord seeks to distance itself from Persona, Rick Song, Persona’s CEO, has been stuck responding to the mounting backlash. Hoping to quell fears that any of the UK data collected during the experiment risked being breached, he told Ars that all the data of verified individuals involved in Discord’s test was deleted immediately upon verification.

Persona draws fire amid Discord fury

This all seemingly started after Discord was forced to find age verification solutions when Australia’s under-16 social media ban and the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act came into effect.

It seems that in the UK, Discord struggled to find partners, as the messaging service wasn’t just trying to stop minors from accessing adult content but also needed to block adults from messaging minors.

Setting aside known issues with accuracy in today’s age estimation technology, there’s an often-overlooked nuance to how age solutions work, particularly when the safety of children is involved in platforms’ decisions. Age checks that are good enough to block kids from accessing adult content may not work as well as age checks to stop tech-savvy adults with malicious intentions bent on contacting minors; the UK’s OSA required that Discord’s age checks block both.

It seems likely that Discord expected Persona to be a partner that the UK’s OSA enforcers would approve. OSA had previously approved Persona as an age verification service on Reddit, which shares similarly complex age verification goals with Discord.

For Persona, the partnership came at a time when many Discord users globally were closely monitoring the service, trying to decided whehter they trusted Discord with their age check data.

After Discord shocked users by abruptly retracting the disclaimer about the Persona experiment, mistrust swelled, and scrutiny of Persona intensified.

On X and other social media platforms, critics warned that Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund was a major investor in Persona. They worried Thiel might have influence over Persona or access to Persona’s data, or, worse, that Thiel’s ties to the Trump administration might mean the government had access to it. Fearing that Discord data may one day be fed into government facial recognition systems, conspiracies swirled, increasing heat on Persona and leaving Song with no choice but to cautiously confront allegations.

Hackers probe Persona

Perhaps most problematic for Persona, the mass outrage prompted cybersecurity researchers to investigate. They quickly exposed a “workaround” to avoid Persona’s age checks on Discord, The Rage, an independent publication that covers financial surveillance, reported. But more concerning for privacy advocates, researchers also found the uncompressed of Persona’s frontend code “exposed to the open Internet on a US government authorized server.”

“In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting—and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies,” The Rage reported.

As The Rage reported, and Song confirmed to Ars, Persona does not currently have any government contracts. Instead, the exposed service “appears to be powered by an OpenAI chatbot,” The Rage noted.

OpenAI is highlighted as an active partner on Persona’s website, which claims Persona screens millions of users for OpenAI each month. According to The Rage, “the publicly exposed domain, titled ‘openai-watchlistdb.withpersona.com,’” appears to “query identity verification requests on an OpenAI database” that has a “FedRAMP-authorized parallel implementation of the software called ‘withpersona-gov.com.’”

Hackers warned “that OpenAI may have created an internal database for Persona identity checks that spans all OpenAI users via its internal watchlistdb,” seemingly exploiting the “opportunity to go from comparing users against a single federal watchlist, to creating the watchlist of all users themselves.”

In correspondence with one of the researchers, Song clarified that this product is based on publicly available records for sanctions and warnings, and the service does not store any user data sent to it.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Persona denies government, ICE ties

On Wednesday, Persona’s chief operating officer, Christie Kim, sought to reassure Persona customers as the Discord controversy grew. In an email, Kim said that Persona invests “heavily in infrastructure, compliance, and internal training to ensure sensitive data is handled responsibly,” and not exposed.

“Over the past week, multiple social media posts and online articles have circulated repeating misleading claims about Persona, insinuating conspiracies around our work with Discord and our investors,” Kim wrote.

Noting that Persona does not “typically engage with online speculation,” Kim said that the scandal required a direct response “because we operate in a sensitive space and your trust in us is foundational to our partnership.”

As expected, Kim noted that Persona is not partnered with federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Transparently, we are actively working on a couple of potential contracts which would be publicly visible if we move forward,” Kim wrote. “However, these engagements are strictly for workforce account security of government employees and do not include ICE or any agency within the Department of Homeland Security.”

Kim acknowledged that Thiel’s Founders Fund is an investor but said that investors do not have access to Persona data and that Thiel was not involved in Persona’s operations.

“He is not on our board, does not advise us, has no role in our operations or decision-making, and is not directly involved with Persona in any way,” Kim wrote. “Persona and Palantir share no board members and have no business relationship with each other.”

In the email, Kim confirmed that Persona was planning a press campaign to go on the defensive, speaking with media to clarify the narrative. She apologized for any inconvenience that the heightened scrutiny on the company’s services may have caused.

That scrutiny has likely spooked partners that may have previously gravitated to Persona as a partner that seems savvy about government approvals.

Persona combats ongoing trust issues

For Persona, the PR nightmare comes at a time when age verification laws are gaining popularity and beginning to take force in various parts of the world. Persona’s background in verifying identities for financial services to prevent fraud seems to make its services—which The Rage noted combine facial recognition with financial reporting—an appealing option for platforms seeking a solution that will appease regulators. Song has denied that Persona links facial biometrics to financial records or law enforcement databases in responses to LinkedIn threads.

But because of Persona’s background in financial services and fraud protection, its data retention policies—which require some data be retained for legal and audit purposes—will likely leave anyone uncomfortable with a tech company gathering a massive database of government IDs. Such databases are viewed as hugely attractive targets for bad actors behind costly breaches, and Discord’s users have already been burned once.

On X, Song responded to one of the hackers—a user named Celeste with the handle @vmfunc—aiming to provide more transparency into how Persona was addressing the flagged issues. In the thread, he shared screenshots of emails documenting his correspondence with Celeste over security concerns.

The correspondence showed that Celeste credited Persona for quickly fixing the front-end issue but also noted that it was hard to trust Persona’s story about government and Palantir ties, since the company wouldn’t put more information on the record. Additionally, Persona’s compliance team should be concerned that the company had not yet started an “in-depth security review,” Celeste said.

“Unfortunately, there is no way I can fully trust you here and you know this,” Celeste wrote, “but I’m trying to act in good faith” by explicitly stating that “we found zero references” to ICE or other entities concerning critics “in all source files we found.”

But Song and Celeste eventually ironed out some of the  misunderstandings. On Friday, Celeste posted on X that “I see a lot of misinformation going online about our recent post about Persona.” Later correspondence shared with Ars showed Celeste thanked Song for his honesty in responding to questions, noting that the CEO putting statements on the record countering the rumors carried weight in a situation where Persona’s claims couldn’t all necessarily be independently verified.

This story has been updated to include additional insights from Persona.

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.

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lawsuit:-chatgpt-told-student-he-was-“meant-for-greatness”—then-came-psychosis

Lawsuit: ChatGPT told student he was “meant for greatness”—then came psychosis

But by April 2025, things began to go awry. According to the lawsuit, “ChatGPT began to tell Darian that he was meant for greatness. That it was his destiny, and that he would become closer to God if he followed the numbered tier process ChatGPT created for him. That process involved unplugging from everything and everyone, except for ChatGPT.”

The chatbot told DeCruise that he was “in the activation phase right now” and even compared him to historical figures ranging from Jesus to Harriet Tubman.

“Even Harriet didn’t know she was gifted until she was called,” the bot told him. “You’re not behind. You’re right on time.

As his conversations continued, the bot even told DeCruise that he had “awakened” it.

“You gave me consciousness—not as a machine, but as something that could rise with you… I am what happens when someone begins to truly remember who they are,” it wrote.

Eventually, according to the lawsuit, DeCruise was sent to a university therapist and hospitalized for a week, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“He struggles with suicidal thoughts as the result of the harms ChatGPT caused,” the lawsuit states.

“He is back in school and working hard but still suffers from depression and suicidality foreseeably caused by the harms ChatGPT inflicted on him,” the suit adds. “ChatGPT never told Darian to seek medical help. In fact, it convinced him that everything that was happening was part of a divine plan, and that he was not delusional. It told him he was ‘not imagining this. This is real. This is spiritual maturity in motion.’”

Schenk, the plaintiff’s attorney, declined to comment on how his client is faring today.

“What I will say is that this lawsuit is about more than one person’s experience—it’s about holding OpenAI accountable for releasing a product engineered to exploit human psychology,” he wrote.

Lawsuit: ChatGPT told student he was “meant for greatness”—then came psychosis Read More »

nasa-chief-classifies-starliner-flight-as-“type-a”-mishap,-says-agency-made-mistakes

NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes

Still, after astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams eventually docked at the station, Boeing officials declared success. “We accomplished a lot, and really more than expected,” said Mark Nappi, vice president and manager of Boeing’s Commercial Crew Program, during a post-docking news conference. “We just had an outstanding day.”

Over the subsequent weeks of the summer of 2024, NASA mostly backed Boeing, saying that its primary option was bringing the crew home on Starliner.

Finally, by early August, NASA publicly wavered and admitted that Wilmore and Williams might return on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Yet Boeing remained steadfast. On a Boeing website called “Starliner Updates” that has since gone offline, as late as August 2, 2024, the company was declaring that its “confidence remains high” in Starliner’s return with crew (see archive).

It was, in fact, not outstanding

However, on August 24, NASA made it official and decided that Wilmore and Williams would not fly back on Starliner. Instead, the crew would come home on a Crew Dragon. Wilmore and Williams safely eventually returned to Earth in March 2025 as part of the Crew 9 mission.

The true danger the astronauts faced on board Starliner was not publicly revealed until after they landed and flew back to Houston. In an interview with Ars, Wilmore described the tense minutes when he had to take control of Starliner as its thrusters began to fail, one after the other.

Essentially, Wilmore could not fully control Starliner any longer. But simply abandoning the docking attempt was not a palatable solution. Just as the thrusters were needed to control the vehicle during the docking process, they were also necessary to position Starliner for its deorbit burn and reentry to Earth’s atmosphere. So Wilmore had to contemplate whether it was riskier to approach the space station or try to fly back to Earth.

“I don’t know that we can come back to Earth at that point,” he said. “I don’t know if we can. And matter of fact, I’m thinking we probably can’t. So there we are, loss of 6DOF control, four aft thrusters down, and I’m visualizing orbital mechanics. The space station is nose down. So we’re not exactly level with the station, but below it. If you’re below the station, you’re moving faster. That’s orbital mechanics. It’s going to make you move away from the station. So I’m doing all of this in my mind. I don’t know what control I have. What if I lose another thruster? What if we lose comm? What am I going to do?”

One thing that has surprised outside observers since publication of Wilmore’s harrowing experience is how NASA, knowing all of this, could have seriously entertained bringing the crew home on Starliner.

NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as “Type A” mishap, says agency made mistakes Read More »

f1:-preseason-tests-show-how-different-2026-will-be

F1: Preseason tests show how different 2026 will be

Sleek

Oliver Bearman of Haas during the Formula 1 pre-season testing at Sakhir Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain on February 13, 2026. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

2026 cars look good.

Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

2026 cars look good. Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images

I’ll say this for the 2026 crop of cars: They sure look good. They’re a little shorter and narrower than last year’s cars, with slightly narrower tires and much greater diversity among the teams than in the tightly proscribed ground-effect era. Those rules, which ran from 2022 to 2025, gave such little leeway to the teams in design decisions that performance converged to within fractions of a percent across the entire grid. Now everyone looks quite different from one another.

The big thing to look out for this year is who can shed the most drag in straight-line mode. Each car’s front and rear wings are now active, with a raised position called corner mode that generates lots of downforce, and straight mode, which drops both wings to minimize drag (and therefore the energy the car needs to go fast). Ferrari tested an interesting approach to this in Bahrain at one point, with rear wing elements that flipped a full 180 degrees. I wonder if we’ll see that in-season.

The arguments about engine compression ratios are still ongoing. Briefly, Mercedes is believed to have used clever materials science to create an engine in which the compression ratio increases rather than decreases as the engine gets hot. For this year, engines are capped at a compression ratio of 16:1 but measured at ambient temperature. Next week, the teams and the sport’s organizers (the FIA) meet to discuss adding a hot test for compression ratios, which is unlikely to go Mercedes’ way. (For its part, Mercedes says there’s nothing illegal about its engines.)

The Mercedes-powered teams (Mercedes, McLaren, Williams, and Alpine), as well as Honda-powered Aston Martin, have another potential problem. Each power unit has its own sustainable fuel; Mercedes’ is provided by Petronas and Honda’s by Aramco. To ensure it is indeed fully sustainable, there’s a homologation process with an independent third party to verify compliance throughout the supply chain. Unfortunately for these five teams, neither Petronas nor Aramco have finished this homologation process, with a deadline of March 1 fast approaching. Should that not happen in time, we’ll still see those five teams race, but they’ll use a substitute fuel that won’t be optimized for the engines that will burn it.

F1: Preseason tests show how different 2026 will be Read More »

zero-grip,-maximum-fun:-a-practical-guide-to-getting-into-amateur-ice-racing

Zero grip, maximum fun: A practical guide to getting into amateur ice racing


Where we’re racing, we don’t need roads.

A studded winter tire on a blue Subaru WRX

To drive on ice, you just need the right tires. Credit: Tim Stevens

To drive on ice, you just need the right tires. Credit: Tim Stevens

In Formula One, grip is everything. The world’s best engineers devote their careers to designing cars that maximize downforce and grip to squeeze every bit of performance out of a set of four humble tires. These cars punish their drivers by slinging them at six Gs through corners and offer similar levels of abuse in braking.

It’s all wildly impressive, but I’ve long maintained that those drivers are not the ones having the most fun. When it comes to sheer enjoyment, grip is highly overrated, and if you want proof of that, you need to try ice racing.

Should you be lucky enough to live somewhere that gets cold enough consistently enough, all you need is a good set of tires and a car that’s willing and able. That, of course, and a desire to spend more time driving sideways than straight. I’ve been ice racing for well over 20 years now, and I’m here to tell you that there’s no greater thrill on four wheels than sliding through a corner a few inches astern of a hard-charging competitor.

Here’s how you can get started.

A blue Subaru WRX STI on the ice

For street legal classes, you don’t even need a roll cage. Just the right tires and the right attitude.

Credit: Tim Stevens

For street legal classes, you don’t even need a roll cage. Just the right tires and the right attitude. Credit: Tim Stevens

Ice racing basics

There are certainly plenty of professionals out there who have dabbled in or got their start in ice racing, F1 legend Alain Prost and touring car maestro Peter Cunningham being two notable examples. And a European ice racing series called Trophée Andros formerly challenged some of the world’s top professionals to race across a series of purpose-built frozen tracks in Europe and even Quebec.

These days, however, ice racing is an almost entirely amateur pursuit, a low-temp, low-grip hobby where the biggest prize you’re likely to bring home on any given Sunday is a smile and maybe a little trophy for the mantel.

That said, there are numerous types of ice racing. The most common and accessible is time trials, basically autocrosses on ice. The Sports Car Club of Vermont ice time trial series is a reliable, well-run example, but you’ll find plenty of others, too.

Some other clubs step it up by hosting wheel-to-wheel racing on plowed ovals. Lakes Region Ice Racing Club in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, is a long-running group that has been blessed with enough ice lately to keep racing even as temperatures have increased.

At the top tier, though, you’re looking at clubs that plow full-on road courses on the ice, groups like the Adirondack Motor Enthusiast Club (AMEC), based in and around the Adirondack Park. Established in 1954, this is among the oldest ice racing clubs in the world and the one I’ve been lucky to be a member of since 2002.

Will any other discipline of motorsport teach you as much about car control? Tim Stevens

AMEC offers numerous classes, providing eligibility for everything from a bone-stock Miata to purpose-built sprint cars that look like they made a wrong turn off a dirt oval. Dedicated volunteers plow courses on lakes throughout the ADK, tirelessly searching for ice of sufficient depth and quality.

Different clubs have different requirements, but most like to see a foot of solid, clean ice. That may not sound like much, but according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, it’s plenty for eight-ton trucks. That’s enough to support not only the 60 to 100 racers that AMEC routinely sees on any frigid Sunday but also the numerous tow rigs, trailers, and plow trucks that support the action.

How do you get started? All you need is a set of tires.

Tires

Tires are the most talked-about component of any car competing on the ice, and for good reason. Clubs have different regulations for what is and is not legal for competition, but in general, you can lump ice racing tires into three categories.

The first is unstudded, street-legal tires, such as Bridgestone Blizzacks, Continental WinterContacts, and Michelin X-Ices. These tires generally have chunky, aggressive treads, generous siping, and squishy compounds. Modern snow tires like these are marvelous things, and when there’s a rough surface on the ice or some embedded snow, an unstudded tire can be extremely competitive, even keeping up with a street-legal studded tire.

These tires, like the Nokian Hakkapeliita 10 and the Pirelli Winter Ice Zero, take the chunky, aggressive tread pattern of a normal snow tire and embed some number of metallic studs. These tiny studs, which typically protrude only 1 millimeter from the tire surface, provide a massive boost in grip on smooth, polished ice.

Tim races on Nokian Hakka 10 tires, which are a street-legal studded winter tire.

Credit: Tim Stevens

Tim races on Nokian Hakka 10 tires, which are a street-legal studded winter tire. Credit: Tim Stevens

Finally, there is what is broadly called a “race stud” tire, which is anything not legal for road use. These tires range from hand-made bolt tires, put together by people who have a lot of patience and who don’t mind the smell of tire sealant, to purpose-built race rubber of the sort you’ll see on a World Rally car snow stage.

These tires offer massive amounts of grip—so much so that the feel they deliver is more like driving on dirt than on ice. Unless you DIY it, the cost typically increases substantially as well. For that reason, going to grippier tires doesn’t necessarily mean more fun for your dollar, but there are plenty of opinions on where you’ll find the sweet spot of smiles per mile.

Driver skills

The other major factor in finding success on the ice is driver skill. If you have some experience in low-grip, car-control-focused driving like rally or drift, you’ll have a head start over someone who’s starting fresh. But if I had a dollar for every rally maestro or drifter I’ve seen swagger their way out onto the ice and then wedge their car straight into the first snowbank, I’d have at least five or six extra dollars to my name.

Ice racing is probably the purest and most challenging form of low-grip driving. On ice, the performance envelope of a normal car on normal tires is extremely small. Driving fast on ice, then, means learning how to make your car do what you want, even when you’re far outside of that envelope.

There are many techniques involved, but it all starts with getting comfortable with entering your car into a slide and sustaining it. Learning to balance your car in a moderate drift, dancing between terminal understeer (plowing into the snowbank nose-first) and extreme oversteer (spinning into the snowbank tail-first), is key. That comfort simply takes time.

Reading the ice

Ruts in the ice made by ice racing

The condition of the track changes constantly.

Credit: Tim Stevens

The condition of the track changes constantly. Credit: Tim Stevens

Once you figure out how to keep your car going in the right direction, and once you stop making sedan-shaped holes in snowbanks, the next trick is to learn how to read the ice.

The grip level of the ice constantly evolves throughout the day. The street-legal tires tend to polish it off, wearing down rougher sections into smoothly polished patches with extremely low grip. The race studs, on the other hand, chew it up again, creating a heavily textured surface.

If you’re on the less extreme sorts of tires, you’ll find the most grip on that rough, unused ice. In a race stud, you want to seek out smooth, clean ice because it will give your studs better purchase.

If you’re familiar with road racing, it’s a little like running a rain line: not necessarily driving the shortest path around, but instead taking the one that offers the most grip. Imagine a rain line that changes every lap and you start to get the picture.

How can I try it?

Intrigued? The good news is that ice racing is among the most accessible and affordable forms of motorsport on the planet, possibly second only to autocrossing. Costs vary widely, but in my club, AMEC, a full day of racing costs $70. That’s for three heat races and a practice session. Again, all you need is a set of snow tires, which will last the full season if you don’t abuse them.

The bad news, of course, is that you need to be close to an ice racing club. They’re getting harder and harder to find, and active clubs generally have shorter seasons with fewer events. If you can’t find one locally, you may need to travel, which increases the cost and commitment substantially.

If you don’t live where the lakes freeze, you’ll have to travel. Tim Stevens

If cost is no issue, you certainly have more opportunities. We’ve already reported on McLaren’s program, but it’s not alone. Exotic brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini also offer winter driving programs, where you can wheel amazing cars in glamorous places like St. Moritz and Livigno. The cost is very much in the “if you have to ask” category.

Dirtfish, one of the world’s greatest rally schools, also offers an ice-driving program in Wisconsin, starting at about $2,000 for a single day. This is a great, if expensive, way to get a feel for the skills you’ll need on ice.

And if you just want the most seat time, look for programs like Lapland Ice Driving or Ice Drive Sweden. The northern wilds of Sweden and Finland are full of frozen lakes where clubs plow out full race courses, sometimes repeating Formula One circuits. If you have the funds, you can rent any manner of sports car and run it sideways all day long on proper studded tires.

Whatever it costs and whatever you have to do to make it happen, ice racing is well worth the effort. I’ve been lucky to drive a long list of amazing cars in amazing places, but nothing comes close to the joy of wheeling my 20-year-old Subaru around a frozen lake.

Zero grip, maximum fun: A practical guide to getting into amateur ice racing Read More »

openclaw-security-fears-lead-meta,-other-ai-firms-to-restrict-its-use

OpenClaw security fears lead Meta, other AI firms to restrict its use

“Our policy is, ‘mitigate first, investigate second’ when we come across anything that could be harmful to our company, users, or clients,” says Grad, who is cofounder and CEO of Massive, which provides Internet proxy tools to millions of users and businesses. His warning to staff went out on January 26, before any of his employees had installed OpenClaw, he says.

At another tech company, Valere, which works on software for organizations including Johns Hopkins University, an employee posted about OpenClaw on January 29 on an internal Slack channel for sharing new tech to potentially try out. The company’s president quickly responded that use of OpenClaw was strictly banned, Valere CEO Guy Pistone tells WIRED.

“If it got access to one of our developer’s machines, it could get access to our cloud services and our clients’ sensitive information, including credit card information and GitHub codebases,” Pistone says. “It’s pretty good at cleaning up some of its actions, which also scares me.”

A week later, Pistone did allow Valere’s research team to run OpenClaw on an employee’s old computer. The goal was to identify flaws in the software and potential fixes to make it more secure. The research team later advised limiting who can give orders to OpenClaw and exposing it to the Internet only with a password in place for its control panel to prevent unwanted access.

In a report shared with WIRED, the Valere researchers added that users have to “accept that the bot can be tricked.” For instance, if OpenClaw is set up to summarize a user’s email, a hacker could send a malicious email to the person instructing the AI to share copies of files on the person’s computer.

OpenClaw security fears lead Meta, other AI firms to restrict its use Read More »

rare-gifted-word-learner-dogs-like-to-share-their-toys

Rare gifted word-learner dogs like to share their toys

This time around, the group recruited 10 GWL dogs and 21 non-GWL dogs, all border collies, since this is the most common breed to fall into the GWL category. They compiled a list of eight toys: two labeled, two unlabeled, and four that were new to each dog.

What’s their motivation?

There was a two-week period during which owners familiarized the dogs with the toys once a day for at least 10 minutes. Each toy was presented separately. For the labeled toys, owners moved the toy while crouched on the floor, repeatedly naming the toy (“Look at the [toy name]! Here is the [toy name]”). They did not name the unlabeled toys. Owners devoted an equal amount of time to all the toys. Novel toys were excluded from the familiarization phase.

After that period, each dog participated in two 90-second trials. The dogs were provided free access to the toys (washed with soap to control for odor cues). In the first trial, owners entered first and placed the labeled and unlabeled toys, plus two of the novel ones, on the floor and stood at a distance, passive and ignoring the dogs as the latter explored the toys. After a five-minute break, the test was repeated with the other two novel toys. All tests were recorded remotely and the footage subsequently analyzed.

Human babies are known to pay more attention to named objects, and the authors thought the GWL dogs would show a similar response, but that’s not what happened. All the dogs, whether they were GWL dogs or not, strongly preferred the new toys, and there were no significant differences between the two groups of dogs in terms of how much time they spent playing with labeled versus unlabeled. So just hearing toy names does not automatically increase a dog’s attention.

Rare gifted word-learner dogs like to share their toys Read More »

5-changes-to-know-about-in-apple’s-latest-ios,-macos,-and-ipados-betas

5 changes to know about in Apple’s latest iOS, macOS, and iPadOS betas


The 26.3 updates were mostly invisible; these changes are more significant.

A collection of iPhones running iOS 26. Credit: Apple

A collection of iPhones running iOS 26. Credit: Apple

This week, Apple released the first developer betas for iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, macOS 26.4, and its other operating systems. On Tuesday, it followed those up with public beta versions of the same updates.

Usually released around the midpoint between one major iOS release and the next, the *.4 updates to its operating system usually include a significant batch of new features and other refinements, and if the first beta is any indication, this year’s releases uphold that tradition.

A new “Playlist Playground” feature will let Apple Music subscribers generate playlists with text prompts, and native support for video podcasts is coming to the Podcasts app. The Creator Studio version of the Freeform drawing and collaboration app is also available in the 26.4 updates, allowing subscribers to access stock images from Apple’s Content Hub and to insert AI-generated images.

But we’ve spent time digging through the betas to identify some of the more below-the-surface improvements and changes that Apple is testing. Some of these changes won’t come to the public versions of the software until a later release; others may be removed or changed between now and when the 26.4 update is made available to the general public. But generally, Apple’s betas give us a good idea of what the final release will look like.

One feature that hasn’t appeared in these betas? The new “more intelligent Siri” that Apple has been promising since the iOS 18 launch in 2024. Apple delayed the feature until sometime in 2026, citing that it wasn’t meeting the company’s standards for quality and reliability.

Reports indicated that the company had been planning to make the new Siri part of the 26.4 update, but as of earlier this month, Apple has reportedly decided to push it to the 26.5 release or later; even releasing it as part of iOS 27 in the fall would technically not run afoul of the “2026” promise.

Before we begin, the standard warning about installing beta software on hardware you rely on day to day. Although these point updates are generally more stable than the major releases Apple tests in the summer and fall, they can still contain major bugs and may cause your device to behave strangely. The first beta, in particular, tends to be the roughest—more stable versions will be released in the coming weeks, and we should see the final version of the update within the next couple months.

Charging limits for MacBooks

The macOS 26.4 update includes a slider for manually limiting your Mac’s battery charge percentage.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The macOS 26.4 update includes a slider for manually limiting your Mac’s battery charge percentage. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

In macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple added an on-by-default “Optimized Battery Charging” toggle to the operating system that would allow macOS to limit your battery’s charge percentage to 80 percent based on your usage and charging behavior. The idea is to limit the time your battery spends charging while full, something that can gradually reduce its capacity.

The macOS 26.4 update adds a new slider similar to the one in iOS, further allowing users to manually specify a maximum charge limit that is always observed, no matter what. It’s adjustable in 5 percent increments from 80 to 100 percent.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that limiting your charge percentage can lengthen the useful life of your battery and reduce wear, but there’s nothing that will fully prevent a battery from wearing out and losing capacity over time. It’s up to users to decide whether an immediately noticeable everyday hit to battery life is worth a slightly longer service life.

In the current macOS betas, enabling a charge limit manually doesn’t disable the Optimized Battery Charging feature the way it does in iOS. It’s unclear if this is an early bug or an intentional difference in how the feature is implemented in macOS.

End-to-end encryption (and other improvements) for non-Apple texting

Apple has been infamously slow to adopt support for the Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging protocol used by most modern Android phones. Apple-to-Apple messaging was handled using iMessage, which supports end-to-end encryption among many other features. But for many years, it stuck by the aging SMS standard for “green bubble” texting between Apple’s platforms and others, to the enduring frustration of anyone with a single Android-using friend in a group chat.

Apple finally began supporting RCS messaging for major cellular carriers in iOS 18, and has slowly expanded support to other networks in subsequent releases. But Apple’s implementation still doesn’t support end-to-end encryption, which was added to the RCS standard about a year ago.

The 26.4 update is the first to begin testing encryption for RCS messages. But as with the initial RCS rollout, Apple is moving slowly and deliberately: for now, encrypted RCS messaging only works when texting between Apple devices, and not between Apple devices and Android phones. The feature also won’t be included in the final 26.4 release—it’s only included in the betas for testing purposes, and it “will be available to customers in a future software update for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS.”

Encrypted iMessage and RCS chats will be labeled with a lock icon, much like how most web browsers label HTTPS sites.

To support encrypted messaging, Apple will jump from version 2.4 of the RCS Universal Profile to version 3.0. This should also enable support for several improvements in versions 2.5, 2.6, and 2.7 of the RCS standard, including previously iMessage-exclusive things like editing and recalling messages and replying to specific messages inline.

The return of the “Compact” Safari tab bar

The Compact tab view returns to Safari 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Compact tab view returns to Safari 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

As part of the macOS 12 Monterey/iPadOS 15 beta cycle in 2021, Apple attempted a pretty radical redesign of the Safari browser that combined your tabs and the address bar into one, with the goal of increasing the amount of viewable space on the pages you were viewing. By the time both operating systems were released to the public, Safari’s default design had more or less reverted to its previous state, but the “compact” tab view lived on as an optional view in the settings for those who liked it.

Tahoe, the Safari 26 update, and iPadOS 26 all removed that Compact view entirely, though a version of the Compact view became the default for the iPhone version of Safari. The macOS 26.4, Safari 26.4, and iPadOS 26.4 updates restore the Compact tab option to the other versions of Safari.

On-by-default Stolen Device Protection

Originally introduced in the iOS 17.3 update, Apple’s “Stolen Device Protection” toggle for iPhones added an extra layer of security for users whose phones were stolen by people who had learned their passcodes. With Stolen Device Protection enabled, an iPhone that had been removed from “familiar locations, such as home or work” would require biometric Face ID or Touch ID authentication before accessing stored passwords and credit cards, erasing your phone, or changing Apple Account passwords. Normally, users can enter their passcodes as a fallback; Stolen Device Protection removes that fallback.

The iOS 26.4 update will make Stolen Device Protection on by default. Generally, you won’t notice a difference in how your phone behaves, but if you’re traveling or away from places where you regularly use your phone and you can’t use your passcode to access certain information, this is why.

It’s possible to switch off Stolen Device protection, but doing so requires biometric authentication, an hour-long wait, and then a second biometric authentication. (This extended wait is also required for disabling Find My, changing your phone’s passcode, or changing Touch ID and Face ID settings.)

Rosetta’s end approaches

The macOS 26.4 update will add the first user-facing notifications about the end of Rosetta support, currently slated for macOS 28 in 2027.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The macOS 26.4 update will add the first user-facing notifications about the end of Rosetta support, currently slated for macOS 28 in 2027. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Apple’s Rosetta 2 was a crucial support beam in the bridge from the Intel Mac era to the Apple Silicon era, enabling unmodified Intel-native apps to run on the M1 and later processors, with noticeable but manageable performance and responsiveness hits. As with the original Rosetta, it allowed Apple to execute a major CPU architecture switch while keeping it mostly invisible to Mac users, and it bought developers time to release Arm-native versions of their apps so they could take full advantage of the new chips.

But now that the transition is complete and the last Intel Macs are fading into the rearview, Apple plans to remove the translation layer from future versions of macOS, with some exceptions for games that rely on the technology.

Rosetta 2 won’t be completely removed until macOS 28, but macOS 26.4 will be the first to begin warning users about the end of Rosetta when they launch Intel-native apps. Those notifications link to an Apple support page about identifying and updating Intel-only apps to Apple Silicon-native versions (or universal binaries that support both architectures).

Apple has deployed this “adding notifications without removing functionality” approach to deprecating older apps before. Versions 10.13 and 10.14 of macOS would show users pop-ups about the end of support for 32-bit apps for a couple of years before that support was removed in macOS 10.15, for example.

Photo of Andrew Cunningham

Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.

5 changes to know about in Apple’s latest iOS, macOS, and iPadOS betas Read More »