Backblaze went public in November 2021 and raised $100 million. Morpheus noted that since then, “Backblaze has reported losses every quarter, its outstanding share count has grown by 80 percent, and its share price has declined by 71 percent.”
Following Morpheus’ report, Investing reported on Thursday that Backblaze shares fell 8.3 percent.
Beyond the financial implications for stockholders, Morpheus’ report has sparked some concern for the primarily small businesses and individuals relying on Backblaze for data backup. Today, for example, How-To Geek reported that “Backblaze backups might be in trouble,” in reference to Morpheus’ report. The publication said that if Morpheus’ reporting was accurate, Backblaze doesn’t appear to be heading toward profitability. In its Q4 2024 earnings report [PDF], Backblaze reported a net loss of $48.5 million. In 2023, it reported a net loss of $59.7 million.
Ars Technica reached out to Backblaze about its response to concerns about the company’s financials resulting in lost backups. Patrick Thomas, Backblaze’s VP of marketing, called Morpheus’ claims “baseless.” He added:
The report is inaccurate and misleading, based largely on litigation of the same nature, and a clear attempt by short sellers to manipulate our stock price for financial gain.
Thomas also claimed that “independent, third-party reviews” have already found that there have been “no wrongdoing or issues” with Backblaze’s public financial results.
“Our storage cloud continues to deliver reliable, high-performance services that Backblaze customers rely on, and we remain fully focused on driving innovation and creating long-term value for our customers, employees, and investors,” Thomas said.
Backblaze will announce its Q1 2025 results on May 7. Regardless of what lies ahead for the company’s finances and litigation, commitment to the 3-2-1 backup rule remains prudent.
Legal challenges will likely immediately follow law’s passage, experts said.
Everyone expects that the Take It Down Act—which requires platforms to remove both real and artificial intelligence-generated non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) within 48 hours of victims’ reports—will likely pass a vote in the House of Representatives tonight.
After that, it goes to Donald Trump’s desk, where the president has confirmed that he will promptly sign it into law, joining first lady Melania Trump in strongly campaigning for its swift passing. Victims-turned-advocates, many of them children, similarly pushed lawmakers to take urgent action to protect a growing number of victims from the increasing risks of being repeatedly targeted in fake sexualized images or revenge porn that experts say can quickly spread widely online.
Digital privacy experts tried to raise some concerns, warning that the law seemed overly broad and could trigger widespread censorship online. Given such a short window to comply, platforms will likely remove some content that may not be NCII, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned. And even more troublingly, the law does not explicitly exempt encrypted messages, which could potentially encourage platforms to one day break encryption due to the liability threat. Also, it seemed likely that the removal process could be abused by people who hope platforms will automatically remove any reported content, especially after Trump admitted that he would use the law to censor his enemies.
None of that feedback mattered, the EFF’s assistant director of federal affairs, Maddie Daly, told Ars. Lawmakers accepted no amendments in their rush to get the bill to Trump’s desk. There was “immense pressure,” Daly said, “to quickly pass this bill without full consideration.” Because of the rush, Daly suggested that the Take It Down Act still has “gaping flaws.”
While the tech law is expected to achieve the rare feat of getting through Congress at what experts told Ars was a record pace, both supporters and critics also expect that the law will just as promptly be challenged in courts.
Supporters have suggested that any litigation exposing flaws could result in amendments. They’re simultaneously bracing for that backlash, while preparing for the win ahead of the vote tonight and hoping that the law can survive any subsequent legal attacks mostly intact.
Experts disagree on encryption threats
In a press conference hosted by the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation, Slade Bond—who serves as chair of public policy for the law firm Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, LLP—advocated for the law passing, warning, “we should not let caution be the enemy of progress.”
Bond joined other supporters in suggesting that apparent threats to encryption or online speech are “far-fetched.”
On his side was Encode’s vice president of public policy, Adam Billen, who pushed back on the claim that companies might break encryption due to the law’s vague text.
Billen predicted that “most encrypted content” wouldn’t be threatened with takedowns—supposedly including private or direct messages—because he argued that the law explicitly covers content that is published (and, importantly, not just distributed) on services that provide a “forum for specifically user generated content.”
“In our mind, encryption simply just is not a question under this bill, and we have explicitly opposed other legislation that would explicitly break encryption,” Billen said.
That may be one way of reading the law, but Daly told Ars that the EFF’s lawyers had a different take.
“We just don’t agree with that reading,” she said. “As drafted, what will likely pass the floor tonight is absolutely a threat to encryption. There are exemptions for email services, but direct messages, cloud storage, these are not exempted.”
Instead, she suggested that lawmakers jammed the law through without weighing amendments that might have explicitly shielded encryption or prevented politicized censorship.
At the supporters’ press conference, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu suggested that, for lawmakers facing a public vote, opposing the bill became “totally untenable” because “there’s such obvious harm” and “such a visceral problem with fake porn, particularly of minors.”
Supporter calls privacy fears “hypothetical”
Stefan Turkheimer, vice president of public policy for the anti-sexual abuse organization RAINN, agreed with Wu that the growing problem required immediate regulatory action. While various reports have indicated for the past year that the amount of AI-generated NCII is rising, Turkheimer suggested that all statistics are severely undercounting and outdated as he noted that RAINN’s hotline reports are “doubling” monthly for this kind of abuse.
Coming up for a final vote amid an uptick in abuse reports, the Take It Down Act seeks to address harms that most people find “patently offensive,” Turkheimer said, suggesting it was the kind of bill that “can only get killed in the dark.”
However, Turkheimer was the only supporter at the press conference who indicated that texting may be part of the problem that the law could potentially address, perhaps justifying critics’ concerns. He thinks deterring victims’ harm is more important than weighing critics’ fears of censorship or other privacy risks.
“This is a real harm that a lot of people are experiencing, that every single time that they get a text message or they go on the Internet, they may see themselves in a non-consensual image,” Turkheimer said. “That is the real problem, and we’re balancing” that against “sort of a hypothetical problem on the other end, which is that some people’s speech might be affected.”
Remedying text-based abuse could become a privacy problem, an EFF blog suggested, since communications providers “may be served with notices they simply cannot comply with, given the fact that these providers cannot view the contents of messages on their platforms. Platforms may respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content—turning private conversations into surveilled spaces.”
That’s why Daly told Ars that the EFF “is very concerned about the effects of Take It Down,” viewing it as a “massive privacy violation.”
“Congress should protect victims of NCII, but we don’t think that Take It Down is the way to do this or that it will actually protect victims,” Daly said.
Further, the potential for politicians to weaponize the takedown system to censor criticism should not be ignored, the EFF warned in another blog. “There are no penalties whatsoever to dissuade a requester from simply insisting that content is NCII,” the blog noted, urging Congress to instead “focus on enforcing and improving the many existing civil and criminal laws that address NCII, rather than opting for a broad takedown regime.”
“Non-consensual intimate imagery is a serious problem that deserves serious consideration, not a hastily drafted, overbroad bill that sweeps in legal, protected speech,” the EFF said.
That call largely fell on deaf ears. Once the law passes, the EFF will continue recommending encrypted services as a reliable means to protect user privacy, Daly said, but remains concerned about the unintended consequences of the law’s vague encryption language.
Although Bond said that precedent is on supporters’ side—arguing “the Supreme Court has been abundantly clear for decades that the First Amendment is not a shield for the type of content that the Take It Down Act is designed to address,” like sharing child sexual abuse materials or engaging in sextortion—Daly said that the EFF remains optimistic that courts will intervene to prevent critics’ worst fears.
“We expect to see challenges to this,” Daly said. “I don’t think this will pass muster.”
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.
A lawyer representing MyPillow and its CEO Mike Lindell in a defamation case admitted using artificial intelligence in a brief that has nearly 30 defective citations, including misquotes and citations to fictional cases, a federal judge said.
“[T]he Court identified nearly thirty defective citations in the Opposition. These defects include but are not limited to misquotes of cited cases; misrepresentations of principles of law associated with cited cases, including discussions of legal principles that simply do not appear within such decisions; misstatements regarding whether case law originated from a binding authority such as the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit; misattributions of case law to this District; and most egregiously, citation of cases that do not exist,” US District Judge Nina Wang wrote in an order to show cause Wednesday.
Wang ordered attorneys Christopher Kachouroff and Jennifer DeMaster to show cause as to why the court should not sanction the defendants, law firm, and individual attorneys. Kachouroff and DeMaster also have to explain why they should not be referred to disciplinary proceedings for violations of the rules of professional conduct.
Kachouroff and DeMaster, who are defending Lindell against a lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer, both signed the February 25 brief with the defective citations. Kachouroff, representing defendants as lead counsel, admitted using AI to write the brief at an April 21 hearing, the judge wrote. The case is in the US District Court for the District of Colorado.
“Time and time again, when Mr. Kachouroff was asked for an explanation of why citations to legal authorities were inaccurate, he declined to offer any explanation, or suggested that it was a ‘draft pleading,'” Wang wrote. “Not until this Court asked Mr. Kachouroff directly whether the Opposition was the product of generative artificial intelligence did Mr. Kachouroff admit that he did, in fact, use generative artificial intelligence.”
Owners can buy kits to add accessories and features to the Slate Truck.
Slate Auto is a new American EV startup. Credit: Slate Auto
Slate Auto is a new American EV startup. Credit: Slate Auto
In one of the strangest launches we’ve seen in a while, Slate Auto, the reportedly Jeff Bezos-backed electric vehicle startup, unveiled its first EV, the Slate Truck. Notably, the vehicle is capable of a claimed 150 miles (241 km) of range at a starting price of less than $20,000, assuming federal clean vehicle tax credits continue to exist.
Slate caused a lot of social media froth when it parked a pair of styling concepts (not functional vehicles) in Venice, California, advertising bizarre fake businesses. Today, the company unveiled the vehicle to the press at an event near the Long Beach Airport.
You wanted a bare-bones EV? Here it is.
The Blank Slate, as the company calls it, is “all about accessible personalization” and includes a “flat-pack accessory SUV Kit” that turns the truck from a pickup into a five-seat SUV and another that turns it into an “open air” truck. The aim, according to a spokesperson for Slate Auto, is to make the new vehicle repairable and customizable while adhering to safety and crash standards.
If you’ve ever said you’d buy a bare-bones truck with no infotainment and manual windows if only they’d build one, it’s time to get out your wallet. Credit: Slate Auto
The truck will come with a choice of two battery packs: a 57.2 kWh battery pack with rear-wheel drive and a target range of 150 miles and an 84.3 kWh battery pack with a target of 240 miles (386 km). The truck has a NACS charging port and will charge to 80 percent in under 30 minutes, peaking at 120 kW, we’re told. The wheels are modest 17-inch steelies, and the truck is no speed demon—zero to 60 mph (0–97 km/h) will take 8 seconds thanks to the 201 hp (150 kW), 195 lb-ft (264 Nm) motor, and it tops out at 90 mph (145 km/h).
Because the truck will be built in just a single configuration from the factory, Slate Auto will offer body wraps instead of different paint colors. Rather than relying on a built-in infotainment system, you’ll use your phone plugged into a USB outlet or a dedicated tablet inside the cabin for your entertainment and navigation needs. The Slate Truck will also aim for a 5-star crash rating, according to a company spokesperson, and will feature active emergency braking, forward collision warning, and as many as eight airbags.
It sounds good on paper (and it looks good in person), but the spec sheet is littered with things that give us pause from a production and safety standpoint. They present hurdles the startup will have to surmount before these trucks start landing in people’s driveways.
Legally, there has to be some way to show a backup camera feed in here, but you could do that in the rearview mirror. Credit: Slate Auto
For example, the truck has manual crank windows, steel wheels, HVAC knobs, and an optional do-it-yourself “flat-pack accessory SUV kit.” All of these low-tech features are quite cool, and they’re available on other vehicles like the Bronco and the Jeep, but there are a number of supplier, tariff, and safety hurdles they present for an upstart company. There is plenty of Kool-Aid for the automotive press to get drunk on—and if this truck becomes a real thing, we’ll be fully on board—but we have a lot of questions.
Can Slate really build an EV that cheap?
First, there’s the price. The myth of the sub-$25,000 electric vehicle has been around for more than 10 years now, thanks to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s perpetual promise of an affordable EV.
That vehicle may never exist due to the cost of the current battery and manufacturing technology that we use to make modern EVs. While much of that cost is tied up in the battery, prices have improved as components have come down in price. That combination has led companies like Rivian and Scout to promise SUVs that could start at around $40,000, which is much more attainable for the average buyer. But $40,000 is still wide of that $25,000 marker.
There’s also the issue of federal incentives. Without the full clean vehicle tax credit, the new Slate Truck will actually cost at least $27,500 before tax, title, and so on. Bezos’ team seems to be betting that Trump won’t get rid of the incentives, despite abundant signals that he intends to do just that. “Whether or not the incentive goes away, our truck will be a high-value, desirable vehicle,” a spokesperson for Slate Auto told Ars.
Then there are the retro and basic components Slate Auto says it will use for the truck, many of which are made in China and are thus subject to the Trump tariffs. Even though the company says it will manufacture the vehicles in the US, that doesn’t mean that the components (battery, motors, steel wheels, window cranks, and HVAC knobs) will be made stateside. If the tariffs stick, that sub $30,000 vehicle will become measurably more expensive.
For example, the last automaker to use manual crank windows was Jeep in the JL Wrangler, and as of 2025, the company no longer offers them as an option. Ford also recently phased out hand-wound windows from its Super Duty trucks. That’s because electric switches are cheaper and readily available from suppliers—who are mostly located in China—and because automakers that offer manual and powered windows had to have two different door assembly lines to accommodate the different tech. That made building both options more expensive. Power windows are also somewhat safer for families with younger children in the backseat, as parents can lock the roll-down feature.
It’s an ambitious idea, and we hope it works. Credit: Slate Auto
Slate Auto’s spokesperson declined to talk about partners or suppliers but did say the company will manufacture its new truck in a “reindustrialized” factory in the Midwest. A quick look at the plethora of job listings at SlateAuto on LinkedIn shows that that factory will be in Troy, Michigan, where there are around 40 jobs listed, including body closure engineers (for the flat-pack kit), prototype engineers, seating buyers/engineers, controls and automation engineers, a head of powertrain and propulsion, wheels and suspension engineers, plant managers, and more. Those are all very pivotal, high-level positions that Slate will need to fill immediately to bring this vehicle to market on the timeline it has set.
Slate Auto also hasn’t said how it will ensure that these DIY vehicle add-ons will be certified to be safe on the road without the company taking on the liability. It will likely work the way Jeep and Bronco handle their accessories, but both Stellantis and Ford have robust service networks they can count on, with dealerships around the country able to help owners who get into a pickle trying to install accessories. Slate doesn’t have that, at least at the moment. Slate’s SUV kit, for example, will include a roll cage, rear seat, and airbags. It will be interesting to see how the company ensures the airbags are installed safely—if it allows DIY-ers to do it.
Will young people actually want it?
Finally, there’s the biggest question: Will younger generations actually plunk down $20,000 or more to own a Slate vehicle that won’t go into production until the fourth quarter of 2026—more than a year and a half out—especially in the face of the economic upheaval and global uncertainty that has taken hold under the second Trump administration?
Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid have all been at the mercy of their suppliers, sinking deadlines and making prices rise. How will Slate Auto avoid that trap? Credit: Slate Auto
Data shows that while some young people have started to opt for devices like dumbphones and may prefer the novelty of no tech, they may also prefer to rent a car or rideshare instead of owning a vehicle. Given Slate Auto’s Bezos backing, I’d imagine that the company would be willing to, say, rent out a Slate Truck for a weekend and charge you a subscription fee for its use. It’s also conceivable that these could become fleet vehicles for Amazon and other companies.
Slate Auto says it will sell directly to consumers (which will anger dealers) and offer a nationwide service network. A spokesperson at Slate Auto declined to give more details about how that might all work but said the company will have more to announce about partners who will enable service and installation in the future.
Even with all the unanswered questions, it’s good to see a company making a real effort to build a truly affordable electric vehicle with funky retro styling. There are a number of things Slate Auto will have to address moving forward, but if the company can deliver a consumer vehicle under that magic $25,000 marker, we’ll be roundly impressed.
Similarly, it’s possible to calculate the impact of emissions within a limited number of years. For example, Callahan and Mankin note that internal oil company research suggested that climate change would be a problem back around 1980, and calculated the impact of emissions that occurred after people knew they were an issue. So, the approach is extremely flexible.
From there, the researchers could use empirical information that links elevated temperatures to economic damage. “Recent peer-reviewed work has used econometrics to infer causal relationships between climate hazards and outcomes such as income loss, reduced agricultural yields, increased human mortality, and depressed economic growth,” Callahan and Mankin write. These metrics can be used to estimate the cost of things like flooding, crop losses, and other economic damages. Alternately, the researchers could analyze the impact on individual climate events where the financial costs have been calculated separately.
Massive damages
To implement their method, the researchers perform lots of individual models, collectively providing the most probable costs and the likely range around them. First, they translate each company’s emissions into the impact on the global mean surface temperature. That gets translated to an impact on extreme temperatures, producing an estimate of what the days with the five most extreme temperatures would look like. That, in turn, is translated to economic damages associated with extreme heat.
Callahan and Mankin use Chevron as an example. By 2020, Chevron’s emissions were responsible for 0.025° C of the warming that year. If you perform a similar analysis for the ears between 1991 and 2020, the researchers come up with a range of damages that runs from a low of about $800 billion all the way up to $3.6 trillion. Most of the damage affected nations in the tropics.
Carrying on through the five companies that have led to the most carbon emissions, they calculate that Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, and Exxon Mobile have all produced damages of about $2 trillion. BP brings up the rear, with “just” $1.45 trillion in damage. For the full list of 111 carbon majors, Callahan and Mankin place the total damages at roughly $28 trillion.
On Monday, the State Bar of California revealed that it used AI to develop a portion of multiple-choice questions on its February 2025 bar exam, causing outrage among law school faculty and test takers. The admission comes after weeks of complaints about technical problems and irregularities during the exam administration, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The State Bar disclosed that its psychometrician (a person or organization skilled in administrating psychological tests), ACS Ventures, created 23 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions with AI assistance. Another 48 questions came from a first-year law student exam, while Kaplan Exam Services developed the remaining 100 questions.
The State Bar defended its practices, telling the LA Times that all questions underwent review by content validation panels and subject matter experts before the exam. “The ACS questions were developed with the assistance of AI and subsequently reviewed by content validation panels and a subject matter expert in advance of the exam,” wrote State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson in a press release.
According to the LA Times, the revelation has drawn strong criticism from several legal education experts. “The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined,” said Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. “I’m almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable.”
Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, called it “a staggering admission.” She pointed out that the same company that drafted AI-generated questions also evaluated and approved them for use on the exam.
State bar defends AI-assisted questions amid criticism
Alex Chan, chair of the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners, noted that the California Supreme Court had urged the State Bar to explore “new technologies, such as artificial intelligence” to improve testing reliability and cost-effectiveness.
Jenna Ortega is back in the titular role for S2 of the Netflix series, Wednesday.
It’s been a long, long wait, but we’re finally getting a second season of the Netflix supernatural horror comedy, Wednesday. The streaming giant dropped the first teaser and several first-look images to whet our appetites for what promises to be an excellent follow-up to the delightful first season.
(Spoilers for S1 below.)
As previously reported, director Tim Burton famously turned down the opportunity to direct the 1991 feature film The Addams Family, inspired by characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams for The New Yorker in 1938. Wednesday showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar—best known for Smallville—expected Burton to turn them down as well when they made their pitch. He signed up for the project instead.
This was an older, edgier, and even darker Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) than the dour young girl Christina Ricci made famous in the 1990s. Aloof, sardonic, and resolutely independent, she was very much the problem child, even by Addams standards, having been expelled from eight schools in five years. Hence her enrollment at Nevermore Academy, a haven for so-called “outcasts” and the alma mater of her parents.
Wednesday struggled to fit in at first, clashing with her cheery werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers) and the school queen bee, a siren named Bianca (Joy Sunday). Then she began investigating a string of brutal murders, leading her to resolve some long-standing family issues and delve into the school’s dark history. It all added up to a winning formula—basically a very good eight-hour Burton movie with a spooky murder mystery at its core.
While Google’s sandbox project is looking more directionless today, it is not completely ending the initiative. The team still plans to deploy promised improvements in Chrome’s Incognito Mode, which has been re-architected to preserve user privacy after numerous complaints. Incognito Mode blocks all third-party cookies, and later this year, it will gain IP protection, which masks a user’s IP address to protect against cross-site tracking.
What is Topics?
Chavez admits that this change will mean Google’s Privacy Sandbox APIs will have a “different role to play” in the market. That’s a kind way to put it. Google will continue developing these tools and will work with industry partners to find a path forward in the coming months. The company still hopes to see adoption of the Privacy Sandbox increase, but the industry is unlikely to give up on cookies voluntarily.
While Google focuses on how ad privacy has improved since it began working on the Privacy Sandbox, the changes in Google’s legal exposure are probably more relevant. Since launching the program, Google has lost three antitrust cases, two of which are relevant here: the search case currently in the remedy phase and the newly decided ad tech case. As the government begins arguing that Chrome gives Google too much power, it would be a bad look to force a realignment of the advertising industry using the dominance of Chrome.
In some ways, this is a loss—tracking cookies are undeniably terrible, and Google’s proposed alternative is better for privacy, at least on paper. However, universal adoption of the Privacy Sandbox could also give Google more power than it already has, and the supposed privacy advantages may never have fully materialized as Google continues to seek higher revenue.
Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson have spent decades of their lives with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s Wheel of Time books, and they previously brought that knowledge to bear as they recapped each first season episode and second season episode of Amazon’s WoT TV series. Now we’re back in the saddle for season 3—along with insights, jokes, and the occasional wild theory.
These recaps won’t cover every element of every episode, but they will contain major spoilers for the show and the book series. We’ll do our best to not spoil major future events from the books, but there’s always the danger that something might slip out. If you want to stay completely unspoiled and haven’t read the books, these recaps aren’t for you.
New episodes of The Wheel of Time season three will be posted for Amazon Prime subscribers every Thursday. This write-up covers the season three finale, “He Who Comes With the Dawn,” which was released on April 17.
Lee: Wow. That was… a lot.
One of the recurring themes of our recaps across seasons has been, “Well, I guess we’re going to have to give up on seeing $SEMI_MAJOR_BOOK_SETTING_OR_EVENT on screen because of budget or time or narrative reasons,” and we’ve had to let go of a lot of stuff. But this episode kicks off with a flashback showing Elaida walking out of a certain twisted redstone doorframe, looking smug and fingering a bracelet. Sharp-eyed viewers might have spotted this doorway in the background of the season premiere, when the Black Ajah loots the Tower’s ter’angreal storeroom, and now in true Chekov’s Gun fashion, the doorway comes ’round again—and not just this one, because like many things in the Wheel of Time, the doorways come in a binary set.
We surely owe show-watchers a very quick recap of the Finn—and I believe we glossed over a scene in an earlier episode where the boys are actually playing the snakes-and-foxes game that these horrifying fae-folk are based on—but before we do that, let’s take a breath and look at what else we’ve got in the episode. Closure! (Well, some.) Balefire! Blocks breaking! Rand pulling a Paul Atreides and making it rain on Dune! I mean, uh, in the Three-Fold Land! And many other things!
According to the book, this Cat-in-the-Hat-looking mfer’s clothes are made of human flesh. Creepy.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
According to the book, this Cat-in-the-Hat-looking mfer’s clothes are made of human flesh. Creepy. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: I found this episode less than satisfying after last week’s specifically because of that grab-bag approach. There is some exciting, significant, season finale-style stuff happening here, but it’s also one of those piece-moving episodes with scene after scene of setup, setup, setup without a ton of room for payoff. Setup for a fourth season that, as of this writing, we still don’t know whether we’re getting!
So a number of things just feel rushed, most significantly Rand’s hard turn on Lanfear after a cursory attempt to coax her back to the side of the Light, and the existence of balefire as a concept. I actually love how the show visualizes it—it’s essentially a giant death laser that melts you out of the Pattern so thoroughly that it doesn’t just kill you, it also erases the last few seconds of your existence, represented here as a little shadow of a person that rewinds a bit before dissipating. The books use balefire extensively as a get-out-of-jail-free card for certain major character deaths, so it really feels like something that needs a little more preamble than it gets here.
Lee: Definitely hear you on the Rand and Lanfear stuff—though I think I was so excited by the things I cared about that I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to the things I didn’t. And Rand & Moiraine & Lanfear are kind of at the bottom of my list of things I’m paying attention to as we slide into the finish—yeah, the Car’a’carn is Car’a’carning and Lanfear is Lanfear’ing.
Balefire looks a little Ghostbusters-y, but I definitely wouldn’t want to get hit with any.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Balefire looks a little Ghostbusters-y, but I definitely wouldn’t want to get hit with any. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: It’s hard to know where to start with the rest of it! There are some recreations of book events that happen roughly where they’re “supposed” to in the story. There are recreations of book events that have been pulled way forward to save some time. There are things that emphatically don’t happen in the books, also done at least partly in the interests of time. And there’s at least one thing that felt designed specifically to fake out book-readers.
What to dig into first?
Lee: The fake-out! Let’s jump in there. The books make a big deal about Rand needing a teacher for him to get good at channeling, and it can’t be a female Aes Sedai (as the oft-repeated bit about “a bird cannot teach a fish to swim” makes clear). It seemed like it might be poor neglected Logain (remember him?), but now the show makes it clear that the man on the spot is instead going to be Sammael—and then Moghedien comes along and puts all of Sammael’s insides on the outside. Soooooo… I guess Sammael is off the board.
Sammael (center) appears to be about as dead as Siuan. So much for that plotline.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Sammael (center) appears to be about as dead as Siuan. So much for that plotline. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: Yup! We still have one Forsaken missing, by my count—there are eight in total in the show’s world, and we’ve seen five and had two more referenced by name. So the big open question is whether the eighth is the Forsaken who does end up in the Rand-teacher role in the books. I feel like the show wouldn’t have spent so much time setting up “Rand needs a teacher” without then bothering to follow up on it in some way, but this episode wants to tease people who are asking that question rather than answering it. Fair enough!
Sammael’s early death (pulled forward from book seven) has its own story reverberations. In the books he’s one of a few Forsaken who set themselves up as heads of state, and Rand has to run around individually defeating them and bringing all of these separate kingdoms together in time for the Last Battle (this is less exciting than it sounds, because it takes forever and requires endless patience for navigating the politics of each region).
It seems, increasingly, that we may just be skipping over a bunch of that stuff. That was already implied by the downplaying of Cairhienin politicking that we got on screen in season two, and I tend to see “putting all of Sammael’s blood on the outside” as another possible nod in that direction. As ever with this show, “knowing how it goes in the books” only gives us a limited amount of insight into what the show is going to do.
Lee: I’m liking it. I consider Rand’s world-unifying to be one of the core components of The Slog that we discussed last week, and I think anything that greases the skids on that entire plotline is unequivocally a good thing—that’s also about where I start skipping entire chapters if the word “Elayne” appears in them (trust me on this, show-watchers who might become book-readers: Elayne spends thousands of pages playing the most boring version of the Game of Thrones imaginable, and we suffer through every single interminable import/export discussion with her).
Speaking of Game of Thrones—at least in the sense of killing off characters and potentially shortening The Slog—Siuan’s dead! And probably not in a “can be fixed” kind of way, since we very clearly see her head separated from her body, and Moiraine gasps out confirmation. This one kind of shook me, since Siuan has a big major role to play in a certain big major thing that happens several books hence—but the more I think about it, the more this feels like the same kind of narrative belt-tightening that brought us Loial’s death last episode. Because up until that certain big major thing happens, Siuan spends a lot of her post-Amyrlin time as a scullery maid and underpants-washer. I think we can transplant that certain big major thing onto one of a half-dozen other characters and lose nothing. At least…I think. What about you?
Siuan (center) has passed on. She is no more. She has ceased to be.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Siuan (center) has passed on. She is no more. She has ceased to be. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, not nothing, exactly. Every book character we have lost on the show has done stuff that I liked in the books that is now probably not going to happen. Complaining about The Slog aside, people like these books in part because they successfully build a super-dense world inhabited by a million named characters who all have Moments. Post-Amyrlin Siuan’s journey is about humility, finding happiness, and showing that the literal One Power is not the only kind of power there is to wield; it’s not always thrilling, but I won’t say it’s of zero narrative value.
And even when discussing The Slog, part of the reason it was so infuriating is because you and I were reading these as they were coming out. If you wait three years for a book, and then it comes out and nothing happens: that’s maddening! It is also not a problem that exists for modern readers or re-readers, now that the books have been done and dusted for over a decade. My assessment of Knife of Dreams, the series’ 11th book and the last one written entirely by Jordan, went way up on my last re-read because I was able to experience it without also having to experience the bookless years before and after. (It also made me newly sad that Jordan wasn’t able to conclude the story himself, as someone who finds the Sanderson-assisted books a bit clunky and utilitarian.)
All of that being said! I agree that from this point forward in the story, Siuan is not a load-bearing character in the way that Rand or Egwene or the others are. You do also get the sense that the show wants to surprise book-readers with something big every now and again. This particular death achieves that and also cuts down on what the show has left to adapt. I get why they did it! But I also sympathize with people who will miss her.
Now that she’s Amyrlin, Elaida (center) gets to wear the biggest hat of all.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Now that she’s Amyrlin, Elaida (center) gets to wear the biggest hat of all. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Lee: Let’s pivot, because I can’t wait to discuss Mat’s journey into Finn-land—one of the most important things that happens to his character in the books. I was pretty convinced that we simply weren’t going to get any of this in the show—that the Aelfinn and Eelfinn would be too outside what Amazon is willing to pay for. And yet, there are our two twisted redstone doorways. They’re repositioned somewhat from their book locations, but in a believable fashion. We have no idea what Elaida might have been doing in the doorway in the bowels of the White Tower—presumably she visited the snake-like Aelfinn (and the subtitles confirm this), which leaves Mat visiting the fox-like Eelfin.
The show has been dropping hints about this all season, from flashing us a shot of the first doorway in episode one, to actually showing the “snakes and foxes” tabletop game being played, and finally, here we are—while hunting for the control necklace in the Panarch’s palace in Tanchico, Mat steps through the doorway and… gets three wishes from a horrifying BDSM furry?
Break it down for us, Andrew. What the hell are we looking at?
Andrew: When you enter through these doors, the Finn give you stuff! The Aelfinn give you knowledge, by answering three questions. And the Eelfinn give you Things, both tangible and intangible, by granting three wishes. Exactly what these people are, where they live, why they have this arrangement with anyone who enters through the doorways: even in a series obsessed with overexplaining things, these are “don’t worry about it, that’s just how it is” questions. What you need to know is that the Aelfinns’ answers are often cryptic and open to interpretation, and the Eelfinns’ wish-granting is hyper-literal and comes with, uh, strings attached, as Mat quickly discovers.
Mat getting his things from the Eelfinn is essentially the moment he becomes the Mat he is for the rest of the story, like Perrin’s wolf powers or Egwene’s dream-walking or Rand’s channeling. So it’s pivotal! What did you think of how the show handled it?
Set Sjöstrand as Rand’s Shaido rival Couladin (center), giving off real Great Value Brand Khal Drogo energy here.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Set Sjöstrand as Rand’s Shaido rival Couladin (center), giving off real Great Value Brand Khal Drogo energy here. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Lee: I thought it was pretty fantastic! We get to see Mat’s foxhead medallion—granted in response to his screaming about how sick he is of being “bollocked about by every bloody magic force on this bloody planet.” But more importantly—possibly the most important thing of all to a certain class of book reader!—is that we also finally get to see the weapon that will define Mat both in combat and out for the entire rest of the series. That’s right, kids, it’s an actual-for-real Ashandarei—and Mat’s hanging from it, just like in the books! Well, sort of. Sort of somewhat similarly to the books!
Mat is being aligned and equipped very well now to head toward his destiny. In fact, after this much of a build-up, the most Wheel of Time-esque thing to happen now would be for him to be completely absent from season four. Ell-oh-ell.
A bargain made, a price is paid. It’s a little hard to make out, but you can clearly see Mat’s (center) Ashandarei stabbed into the top of the doorframe—just follow the rope.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
A bargain made, a price is paid. It’s a little hard to make out, but you can clearly see Mat’s (center) Ashandarei stabbed into the top of the doorframe—just follow the rope. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: The Tanchico plotline is also kind of wrapped up here in abrupt fashion. In essence, our heroes fail. Not only do Moghedien and Liandrin manage to escape with all the parts of the collar they need to corral and control the Dragon Reborn, but they also agree to team up so they can beat the other Big Bads and become the biggest bads of all. I cannot see this ending well for either of them, but Kate Fleetwood’s Liandrin is such an unhinged presence on this show that I’m glad she’s sticking around.
Our heroes don’t walk away entirely empty-handed, I suppose. Thom tells Elayne that they actually know each other and tells her that “Lord Gaebril” is actually a Forsaken and a usurper whom she hasn’t actually known her whole life. And Nynaeve gets pitched into the sea, where a near-death experience dissolves the block that is keeping her from channeling freely (the show doesn’t say this overtly, but this is only lightly altered from a similar sequence that happens in book seven or eight, I think).
Nynaeve (center) doing her best Charlton Heston impression.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Nynaeve (center) doing her best Charlton Heston impression. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Lee: Right, I believe Nynaeve’s block gets busted in book seven—I remember because when I started reading the series, that was the latest available book and the event stuck out. I very much like bringing it forward, too. In the books, keeping the block around makes sense narratively and serves a solid set of purposes; in the show, it was starting to feel less like a legitimate plot device and more like a bad storytelling crutch. It has served its purpose, and it’s time to get rid of it and get on with things.
(Though it is kind of funny to note that Liandrin was the one trying to help Nynaeve break the block in the show a couple of seasons ago. Looks like Liandrin finally found a method that works! The results, though, will not be what she expects.)
The foxhead medallion—one of the three items that come to define Matrim Cauthon (center).
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
The foxhead medallion—one of the three items that come to define Matrim Cauthon (center). Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: The show has set us all up to converge in Tear in season four, essentially going backwards in the story and doing parts of book three; my guess would be that, if it’s still identifiable as an adaptation of any particular Wheel of Time book, we see parts of books five and maybe six mixed in there, too. But all of that is contingent on the show getting another season, and for the first time going into a WoT finale, we aren’t actually sure if that’s happening, right?
Lee: Ugh, yeah, still no word on the next season, which sucks, because this one was so damn good. We wrap in the desert, where Rand has darkened the skies (enough to be seen all over the world!) and brought rain. Everyone looks on portentously. The Stone of Tear and the sword within it (Callandor! It’s the sword in the stone!) beckon. We just need the all-swallowing monster that is Amazon to spare some pocket change to make it happen.
Rand (center-right) summons the rains.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Rand (center-right) summons the rains. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Andrew: I’ve been worried about this renewal. Dramas like this just don’t get as many seasons as they would have in eras of TV gone by, and we’re several years past the end of streaming TV’s blank check era (unless you’re Apple TV+, I guess). This season has earned a lot of praise from more people than us—it’s got a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than either of the previous seasons, and higher than the second season of Rings of Power.
But it also doesn’t seem like Wheel of Time has become the breakout crossover smash-hit success that Jeff Bezos had in mind when he demanded his own Game of Thrones all those years ago. It’s expensive, and shows get more expensive the longer they run, as the people in front of and behind the camera negotiate raises and contract renewals.
I would love to see this get a fourth season. The third season had enough great stuff in it that I would be legitimately sad to see it canceled now, which is more attached than I was to the show at the end of its first or second seasons. How ’bout you?
“And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, no more Dune jokes.
Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
“And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, no more Dune jokes. Credit: Prime/Amazon MGM Studios
Lee: I’ve said it a bunch, and I’ll say it again: This has been the season where the show found itself. I have every confidence that the next few seasons—if they’re allowed to exist—are going to kick ass.
But this is 2025, the year all dreams die. Perhaps this show, too, is a dream—one from which we are fated to wake sooner, rather than later.
I suppose we’ll know shortly. Until then, dear readers, may you always find water and shade, and may the hand of the Creator shelter you all. And also perhaps knock some sense into Bezos.
Popular NAS-maker Synology has confirmed and slightly clarified a policy that appeared on its German website earlier this week: Its “Plus” tier of devices, starting with the 2025 series, will require Synology-branded hard drives for full compatibility, at least at first.
“Synology-branded drives will be needed for use in the newly announced Plus series, with plans to update the Product Compatibility List as additional drives can be thoroughly vetted in Synology systems,” a Synology representative told Ars by email. “Extensive internal testing has shown that drives that follow a rigorous validation process when paired with Synology systems are at less risk of drive failure and ongoing compatibility issues.”
Without a Synology-branded or approved drive in a device that requires it, NAS devices could fail to create storage pools and lose volume-wide deduplication and lifespan analysis, Synology’s German press release stated. Similar drive restrictions are already in place for XS Plus and rack-mounted Synology models, though work-arounds exist.
Synology also says it will later add a “carefully curated drive compatibility framework” for third-party drives and that users can submit drives for testing and documentation. “Drives that meet Synology’s stringent standards may be validated for use, offering flexibility while maintaining system integrity.”
A Falcon 9 core has now launched as many times as there are Merlins on a Falcon Heavy.
NS-31 Astronaut Katy Perry celebrates a successful mission to space. Credit: Blue Origin
Welcome to Edition 7.40 of the Rocket Report! One of the biggest spaceflight questions in my mind right now is when Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will fly again. The company has been saying “late spring.” Today, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they were told June. Several officials have suggested to Ars that the next launch will, in reality, occur no earlier than October. So when will we see New Glenn again?
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.
Phantom Space delays Daytona launch, again. In a story that accepts what Phantom Space Founder Jim Cantrell says at face value, Payload Space reports that the company is “an up-and-coming launch provider and satellite manufacturer” and has “steadily built a three-pronged business model to take on the industry’s powerhouses.” It’s a surprisingly laudatory story for a company that has yet to accomplish much in space yet.
Putting the brakes on Daytona … What caught my eye is the section on the Daytona rocket, a small-lift vehicle the company is developing. “The company expects to begin flying Daytona late next year or early 2027, and already has a Daytona II and III in the works,” the publication reports. Why is this notable? Because in an article published less than two years ago, Cantrell said Phantom was hoping to launch an orbital test flight in 2024. In other words, the rocket is further from launch today than it was in 2023. I guess we’ll see what happens. (submitted by BH)
It appears the Minotaur IV rocket still exists. A Northrop Grumman Minotaur IV rocket successfully launched multiple classified payloads for the US National Reconnaissance Office on Wednesday, marking a return to Vandenberg Space Force Base for the solid-fueled launch vehicle after more than a decade, Space News reports. The mission, designated NROL-174, lifted off at 3: 33 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 8 at Vandenberg, California. The launch was successful.
Back on the California Coast … The Minotaur IV is a four-stage vehicle derived in part from decommissioned Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. The first three stages are government-furnished Peacekeeper solid rocket motors, while the upper stage is a commercial Orion solid motor built by Northrop Grumman. NROL-174 follows previous NRO missions flown on Minotaur rockets—NROL-129 in 2020 and NROL-111 in 2021—both launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
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French launch firm gets some funding runway. The French government has awarded Latitude funding to support the construction of its new rocket factory in Reims, which is expected to open in 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Latitude first announced plans to develop a larger rocket factory in late 2023, when it expanded its original site from 1,500 to 3,000 square meters. The new facility is expected to span approximately 25,000 square meters and will support a production capacity of up to 50 Zephyr rockets per year.
Working toward a launch next year … The Zephyr rocket is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. It could make its debut in 2026 if all goes well. Latitude did not disclose the exact amount of funding it received for the construction of its new factory. However, it is known that while part of the funding will be awarded as a straight grant, a portion will take the form of a recoverable loan. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
RFA gets a new CEO. German launch vehicle startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has replaced its chief executive as it works toward a second chance for its first launch, Space News reports. Last Friday, RFA announced that Stefan Tweraser, who had been chief executive since October 2021, had been replaced by Indulis Kalnins.
Working toward a second launch attempt … The announcement did not give a reason for the change, but it suggested that the company was seeking someone with expertise in the aerospace industry to lead the company. Kalnins is on the aerospace faculty of a German university, Hochschule Bremen, and has been managing director of OHB Cosmos, which focused on launch services. RFA is working toward a second attempt at a first flight for RFA ONE later this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Blue Origin launches all-female mission. Blue Origin’s 11th human flight—and first with an all-female flight team—blasted off from West Texas’ Launch Site One Monday morning on a flight that lasted about 10 minutes, Travel + Leisure reports. Katy Perry and Gayle King were joined by aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist and scientist Amanda Nguyễn, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez.
I kissed a Kármán line … “This experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you, how much love you have to give, and how loved you are, until the day you launch,” Perry said in her post-flight interview on the Blue Origin livestream, calling the experience “second only to being a mom” and rating it “10 out of 10.”
Bahamas to SpaceX: Let’s press pause. The Bahamas government said on Tuesday it is suspending all SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landings in the country, pending a full post-launch investigation of the latest Starship mishap, Reuters reports. “No further clearances will be granted until a full environmental assessment is reviewed,” Bahamian Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said.
Falling from the sky … The Bahamian government said in February, after SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 first stage landing in the country, that it had approved 19 more throughout 2025, subject to regulatory approval. The Bahamas’ post-launch investigation comes after a SpaceX Starship spacecraft exploded in space last month, minutes after lifting off from Texas. Following the incident, the Bahamas said debris from the spacecraft fell into its airspace.
NASA will fly on Soyuz for a while longer. NASA and Roscosmos have extended a seat barter agreement for flights to the International Space Station into 2027 that will feature longer Soyuz missions to the station, Space News reports. Under the no-exchange-of-funds barter agreement, NASA astronauts fly on Soyuz spacecraft and Roscosmos cosmonauts fly on commercial crew vehicles to ensure that there is at least one American and one Russian on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be grounded for an extended period. “NASA and Roscosmos have amended the integrated crew agreement to allow for a second set of integrated crew missions in 2025, one set of integrated crew missions in 2026, and a SpaceX Dragon flight in 2027,” an agency spokesperson said.
Flying fewer times per year. One change with the agreement is the cadence of Soyuz missions. While Roscosmos had been flying Soyuz missions to the ISS every six months, missions starting with Soyuz MS-27 this April will spend eight months at the station. Neither NASA nor Roscosmos offered a reason for the change, which means that Roscosmos will fly one fewer Soyuz mission over a two-year period: three instead of four. I presume that this is a cost-saving measure. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Falcon 9 sets reuse record. SpaceX notched another new rocket reuse record with its midnight Starlink flight on Sunday night from Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. The Falcon 9 rocket booster with the tail number 1067 launched for a record-setting 27th time, further cementing its position as the flight leader among SpaceX’s fleet.
Approaching 500 launches … It supported the launch of 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites heading into low Earth orbit. The 27th outing for B1067 comes nearly four years after it launched its first mission, CRS-22 on June 3, 2021. Its three most recent missions were all in support of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. The Starlink 6-73 mission was also the 460th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to date. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
The real story behind the Space Shuttle legislation. Last week, two US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston. After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? Ars spoke with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here.
Bill is not going anywhere … The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton. The legislation is, in DC parlance, a “messaging bill.” Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn’s campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston. Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told about the legislation before it was filed.
Next three launches
April 18: Long March 4B | Unknown payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 22: 55 UTC
April 19: Falcon 9 | NROL-145 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 41 UTC
April 21: Falcon 9 | CRS-32 | Cape Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 08: 15 UTC
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.
On Monday, a developer using the popular AI-powered code editor Cursor noticed something strange: Switching between machines instantly logged them out, breaking a common workflow for programmers who use multiple devices. When the user contacted Cursor support, an agent named “Sam” told them it was expected behavior under a new policy. But no such policy existed, and Sam was a bot. The AI model made the policy up, sparking a wave of complaints and cancellation threats documented on Hacker News and Reddit.
This marks the latest instance of AI confabulations (also called “hallucinations”) causing potential business damage. Confabulations are a type of “creative gap-filling” response where AI models invent plausible-sounding but false information. Instead of admitting uncertainty, AI models often prioritize creating plausible, confident responses, even when that means manufacturing information from scratch.
For companies deploying these systems in customer-facing roles without human oversight, the consequences can be immediate and costly: frustrated customers, damaged trust, and, in Cursor’s case, potentially canceled subscriptions.
How it unfolded
The incident began when a Reddit user named BrokenToasterOven noticed that while swapping between a desktop, laptop, and a remote dev box, Cursor sessions were unexpectedly terminated.
“Logging into Cursor on one machine immediately invalidates the session on any other machine,” BrokenToasterOven wrote in a message that was later deleted by r/cursor moderators. “This is a significant UX regression.”
Confused and frustrated, the user wrote an email to Cursor support and quickly received a reply from Sam: “Cursor is designed to work with one device per subscription as a core security feature,” read the email reply. The response sounded definitive and official, and the user did not suspect that Sam was not human.
After the initial Reddit post, users took the post as official confirmation of an actual policy change—one that broke habits essential to many programmers’ daily routines. “Multi-device workflows are table stakes for devs,” wrote one user.
Shortly afterward, several users publicly announced their subscription cancellations on Reddit, citing the non-existent policy as their reason. “I literally just cancelled my sub,” wrote the original Reddit poster, adding that their workplace was now “purging it completely.” Others joined in: “Yep, I’m canceling as well, this is asinine.” Soon after, moderators locked the Reddit thread and removed the original post.
