Features

Sleeping pills stop the brain’s system for cleaning out waste

Biology, brain, Features, neurobiology, nREM sleep, Science, sleeping pills / Mike M. / January 20, 2025

Cleanup on aisle cerebellum

A specialized system sends pulses of pressure through the fluids in our brain.

Our bodies rely on their lymphatic system to drain excessive fluids and remove waste from tissues, feeding those back into the blood stream. It’s a complex yet efficient cleaning mechanism that works in every organ except the brain. “When cells are active, they produce waste metabolites, and this also happens in the brain. Since there are no lymphatic vessels in the brain, the question was what was it that cleaned the brain,” Natalie Hauglund, a neuroscientist at Oxford University who led a recent study on the brain-clearing mechanism, told Ars.

Earlier studies done mostly on mice discovered that the brain had a system that flushed its tissues with cerebrospinal fluid, which carried away waste products in a process called glymphatic clearance. “Scientists noticed that this only happened during sleep, but it was unknown what it was about sleep that initiated this cleaning process,” Hauglund explains.

Her study found the glymphatic clearance was mediated by a hormone called norepinephrine and happened almost exclusively during the NREM sleep phase. But it only worked when sleep was natural. Anesthesia and sleeping pills shut this process down nearly completely.

Taking it slowly

The glymphatic system in the brain was discovered back in 2013 by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish neuroscientist and a coauthor of Hauglund’s paper. Since then, there have been numerous studies aimed at figuring out how it worked, but most of them had one problem: they were done on anesthetized mice.

“What makes anesthesia useful is that you can have a very controlled setting,” Hauglund says.

Most brain imaging techniques require a subject, an animal or a human, to be still. In mouse experiments, that meant immobilizing their heads so the research team could get clear scans. “But anesthesia also shuts down some of the mechanisms in the brain,” Hauglund argues.

So, her team designed a study to see how the brain-clearing mechanism works in mice that could move freely in their cages and sleep naturally whenever they felt like it. “It turned out that with the glymphatic system, we didn’t really see the full picture when we used anesthesia,” Hauglund says.

Looking into the brain of a mouse that runs around and wiggles during sleep, though, wasn’t easy. The team pulled it off by using a technique called flow fiber photometry which works by imaging fluids tagged with fluorescent markers using a probe implanted in the brain. So, the mice got the optical fibers implanted in their brains. Once that was done, the team put fluorescent tags in the mice’s blood, cerebrospinal fluid, and on the norepinephrine hormone. “Fluorescent molecules in the cerebrospinal fluid had one wavelength, blood had another wavelength, and norepinephrine had yet another wavelength,” Hauglund says.

This way, her team could get a fairly precise idea about the brain fluid dynamics when mice were awake and asleep. And it turned out that the glymphatic system basically turned brain tissues into a slowly moving pump.

Pumping up

“Norepinephrine is released from a small area of the brain in the brain stem,” Hauglund says. “It is mainly known as a response to stressful situations. For example, in fight or flight scenarios, you see norepinephrine levels increasing.” Its main effect is causing blood vessels to contract. Still, in more recent research, people found out that during sleep, norepinephrine is released in slow waves that roll over the brain roughly once a minute. This oscillatory norepinephrine release proved crucial to the operation of the glymphatic system.

“When we used the flow fiber photometry method to look into the brains of mice, we saw these slow waves of norepinephrine, but we also saw how it works in synchrony with fluctuation in the blood volume,” Hauglund says.

Every time the norepinephrine level went up, it caused the contraction of the blood vessels in the brain, and the blood volume went down. At the same time, the contraction increased the volume of the perivascular spaces around the blood vessels, which were immediately filled with the cerebrospinal fluid.

When the norepinephrine level went down, the process worked in reverse: the blood vessels dilated, letting the blood in and pushing the cerebrospinal fluid out. “What we found was that norepinephrine worked a little bit like a conductor of an orchestra and makes the blood and cerebrospinal fluid move in synchrony in these slow waves,” Hauglund says.

And because the study was designed to monitor this process in freely moving, undisturbed mice, the team learned exactly when all this was going on. When mice were awake, the norepinephrine levels were much higher but relatively steady. The team observed the opposite during the REM sleep phase, where the norepinephrine levels were consistently low. The oscillatory behavior was present exclusively during the NREM sleep phase.

So, the team wanted to check how the glymphatic clearance would work when they gave the mice zolpidem, a sleeping drug that had been proven to increase NREM sleep time. In theory, zolpidem should have boosted brain-clearing. But it turned it off instead.

Non-sleeping pills

“When we looked at the mice after giving them zolpidem, we saw they all fell asleep very quickly. That was expected—we take zolpidem because it makes it easier for us to sleep,” Hauglund says. “But then we saw those slow fluctuations in norepinephrine, blood volume, and cerebrospinal fluid almost completely stopped.”

No fluctuations meant the glymphatic system didn’t remove any waste. This was a serious issue, because one of the cellular waste products it is supposed to remove is amyloid beta, found in the brains of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Hauglund speculates it could be possible zolpidem induces a state very similar to sleep but at the same time it shuts down important processes that happen during sleep. While heavy zolpidem use has been associated with increased risk of the Alzheimer disease, it is not clear if this increased risk was there because the drug was inhibiting oscillatory norepinephrine release in the brain. To better understand this, Hauglund wants to get a closer look into how the glymphatic system works in humans.

“We know we have the same wave-like fluid dynamics in the brain, so this could also drive the brain clearance in humans,” Haugland told Ars. “Still, it’s very hard to look at norepinephrine in the human brain because we need an invasive technique to get to the tissue.”

But she said norepinephrine levels in people can be estimated based on indirect clues. One of them is pupil dilation and contraction, which work in in synchrony with the norepinephrine levels. Another other clue may lay in microarousals—very brief, imperceivable awakenings which, Hauglund thinks, can be correlated with the brain clearing mechanism. “I am currently interested in this phenomenon […]. Right now we have no idea why microarousals are there or what function they have” Hauglund says.

But the last step she has on her roadmap is making better sleeping pills. “We need sleeping drugs that don’t have this inhibitory effect on the norepinephrine waves. If we can have a sleeping pill that helps people sleep without disrupting their sleep at the same time it will be very important,” Hauglund concludes.

Cell, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.11.027

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

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Fire destroys Starship on its seventh test flight, raining debris from space

Commercial space, FAA, Features, launch, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship / Tim Belzer / January 18, 2025

This launch debuted a more advanced, slightly taller version of Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, with larger propellant tanks, a new avionics system, and redesigned feed lines flowing methane and liquid oxygen propellants to the ship’s six Raptor engines. SpaceX officials did not say whether any of these changes might have caused the problem on Thursday’s launch.

SpaceX officials have repeatedly and carefully set expectations for each Starship test flight. They routinely refer to the rocket as experimental, and the primary focus of the rocket’s early demo missions is to gather data on the performance of the vehicle. What works, and what doesn’t work?

Still, the outcome of Thursday’s test flight is a clear disappointment for SpaceX. This was the seventh test flight of SpaceX’s enormous rocket and the first time Starship failed to complete its launch sequence since the second flight in November 2023. Until now, SpaceX has made steady progress, and each Starship flight has achieved more milestones than the one before.

On the first flight in April 2023, the rocket lost control a little more than two minutes after liftoff, and the ground-shaking power of the booster’s 33 engines shattered the concrete foundation beneath the launch pad. Seven months later, on Flight 2, the rocket made it eight minutes before failing. On that mission, Starship failed at roughly the same point of its ascent, just before the cutoff of the vehicle’s six methane-fueled Raptor engines.

Back then, a handful of photos and images from the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico showed debris in the sky after Starship activated its self-destruct mechanism due to an onboard fire caused by a dump of liquid oxygen propellant. But that flight occurred in the morning, with bright sunlight along the ship’s flight path.

This time, the ship disintegrated and reentered the atmosphere at dusk, with impeccable lighting conditions accentuating the debris cloud’s appearance. These twilight conditions likely contributed to the plethora of videos posted to social media on Thursday.

Starship and Super Heavy head downrange from SpaceX’s launch site near Brownsville, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The third Starship test flight last March saw the spacecraft reach its planned trajectory and fly halfway around the world before succumbing to the scorching heat of atmospheric reentry. In June, the fourth test flight ended with controlled splashdowns of the rocket’s Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico and of Starship in the Indian Ocean.

In October, SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster with mechanical arms at the launch pad for the first time, proving out the company’s audacious approach to recovering and reusing the rocket. On this fifth test flight, SpaceX modified the ship’s heat shield to better handle the hot temperatures of reentry, and the vehicle again made it to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Most recently, Flight 6 on November 19 demonstrated the ship’s ability to reignite its Raptor engines in space for the first time and again concluded with a bullseye splashdown. But SpaceX aborted an attempt to again catch the booster back at Starbase due to a problem with sensors on the launch pad’s tower.

With Flight 7, SpaceX hoped to test more changes to the heat shield protecting Starship from reentry temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius). Musk has identified the heat shield as one of the most difficult challenges still facing the program. In order for SpaceX to reach its ambition for the ship to become rapidly reusable, with minimal or no refurbishment between flights, the heat shield must be resilient and durable.

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The 8 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2025

CES, CES 2025, corsair, dell, Features, lg, Monitors, samsung, Tech / Tim Belzer / January 12, 2025

Monitors worth monitoring

Here are upcoming computer screens with features that weren’t around last year.

Yes, that’s two monitors in a suitcase.

Plenty of computer monitors made debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, but many of the updates at this year’s event were pretty minor. Many could have easily been a part of 2024’s show.

But some brought new and interesting features to the table for 2025—in this article, we’ll tell you all about them.

LG’s 6K monitor

Pixel addicts are always right at home at CES, and the most interesting high-resolution computer monitor to come out of this year’s show is the LG UltraFine 6K Monitor (model 32U990A).

People seeking more than 3840×2160 resolution have limited options, and they’re all rather expensive (looking at you, Apple Pro Display XDR). LG’s 6K monitor means there’s another option for professionals needing extra pixels for things like developing, engineering, and creative work. And LG’s 6144×3456, 32-inch display has extra oomph thanks to something no other 6K monitor has: Thunderbolt 5.

This is the only image LG provided for the monitor. Credit: LG

LG hasn’t confirmed the refresh rate of its 6K monitor, so we don’t know how much bandwidth it needs. But it’s possible that pairing the UltraFine with a Thunderbolt 5 PC could trigger Bandwidth Boost, a Thunderbolt 5 feature that automatically increases bandwidth from 80Gbps to 120Gbps. For comparison, Thunderbolt 4 maxes out at 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 5 also requires 140 W power delivery and maxes out at 240 W. That’s a notable bump from Thunderbolt 4’s 100–140 W.

Considering that Apple’s only 6K monitor has Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 5 is a differentiator. With this capability, the LG UltraFine is ironically better equipped in this regard for use with the new MacBook Pros and Mac Mini (which all have Thunderbolt 5) compared to Apple’s own monitors. LG may be aware of this, as the 32U990A’s aesthetic could be considered very Apple-like.

Inside the 32U990A’s silver chassis is a Nano IPS panel. In recent years, LG has advertised its Nano IPS panels as having “nanometer-sized particles” applied to their LED backlight to absorb “excess, unnecessary light wavelengths” for “richer color expression.” LG’s 6K monitor claims to cover 98 percent of DCI-P3 and 99.5 percent of Adobe RGB. IPS Black monitors, meanwhile, have higher contrast ratios (up to 3,000:1) than standard IPS panels. However, LG has released Nano IPS monitors with 2,000:1 contrast, the same contrast ratio as Dell’s 6K, IPS Black monitor.

LG hasn’t shared other details, like price or a release date. But the monitor may cost more than Dell’s Thunderbolt 4-equipped monitor, which is currently $2,480.

Brelyon’s multi-depth monitor

Brelyon Ultra Reality Extend. — Someone from CNET using the Ultra Reality Extend. Credit: CNET/YouTube

Brelyon is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and was founded by scientists and executives from MIT, IMAX, UCF, and DARPA. It’s been selling display technology for commercial and defense applications since 2022. At CES, the company unveiled the Ultra Reality Extend, describing it as an “immersive display line that renders virtual images in multiple depths.”

“As the first commercial multi-focal monitor, the Extend model offers multi-depth programmability for information overlay, allowing users to see images from 0.7 m to as far as 2.5 m of depth virtually rendered behind the monitor; organizing various data streams at different depth layers, or triggering focal cues to induce an ultra immersive experience akin to looking out through a window,” Brelyon’s announcement said.

Brelyon says the monitor runs 4K at 60 Hz with 1 bit of monocular depth for an 8K effect. The monitor includes “OLED-based curved 2D virtual images, with the largest stretching to 122 inches and extending 2.5 meters deep, viewable through a 30-inch frame,” according to the firm’s announcement. The closer you sit, the greater the field of view you get.

The Extend leverages “new GPU capabilities to process light and video signals inside our display platforms,” Brelyon CEO Barmak Heshmat said in a statement this week. He added: “We are thinking beyond headsets and glasses, where we can leverage GPU capabilities to do real-time driving of higher-bandwidth display interfaces.”

Brelyon says this was captured from the Extend, with its camera lens focus changing from 70 cm to 2,500 cm. Credit: Brelyon

Advancements in AI-based video processing, as well as other software advancements and hardware improvements, purportedly enable the Extend to upscale lower-dimension streams to multiple, higher-dimension ones. Brelyon describes its product as a “generative display system” that uses AI computation and optics to assign different depth values to content in real time for rendering images and information overlays.

The idea of a virtual monitor that surpasses the field of view of typical desktop monitors while allowing users to see the real world isn’t new. Tech firms (including many at CES) usually try to accomplish this through AR glasses. But head-mounted displays still struggle with problems like heat, weight, computing resources, battery, and aesthetics.

Brelyon’s monitor seemingly demoed well at CES. Sam Rutherford, a senior writer at Engadget, watched a clip from the Marvel’s Spider-Man video game on the Extend and said that “trees and light poles whipping past in my face felt so real I started to flinch subconsciously.” He added that the monitor separated “different layers of the content to make snow in the foreground look blurry as it whipped across the screen, while characters in the distance” still looked sharp.

The monitor costs $5,000 to $8,000 depending on how you’ll use it and whether you have other business with Brelyon, per Engadget, and CES is one of the few places where people could actually see the display in action.

Samsung’s 3D monitor

Samsung Odyssey 3D — Samsung’s depiction of the 3D effect of its 3D PC monitor. Credit: Samsung

It’s 2025, and tech companies are still trying to convince people to bring a 3D display into their homes. This week, Samsung took its first swing since 2009 at 3D screens with the Odyssey 3D monitor.

In lieu of 3D glasses. the Odyssey 3D achieves its 3D effect with a lenticular lens “attached to the front of the panel and its front stereo camera,” Samsung says, as well eye tracking and view mapping. Differing from other recent 3D monitors, the Odyssey 3D claims to be able to make 2D content look three-dimensional even if that content doesn’t officially support 3D.

You can find more information in our initial coverage of Samsung’s Odyssey 3D, but don’t bet on finding 3D monitors in many people’s homes soon. The technology for quality 3D displays that work without glasses has been around for years but still has never taken off.

Dell’s OLED productivity monitor

With improvements in burn-in, availability, and brightness, finding OLED monitors today is much easier than it was two years ago. But a lot of the OLED monitors released recently target gamers with features like high refresh rates, ultrawide panels, and RGB. These features are unneeded or unwanted by non-gamers but contribute to OLED monitors’ already high pricing. Numerous smaller OLED monitors were announced at CES, with 27-inch, 4K models being a popular addition. Most of them are still high-refresh gaming monitors, though.

The Dell 32-inch QD-OLED, on the other hand, targets “play, school, and work,” Dell’s announcement says. And its naming (based on a new naming convention Dell announced this week that kills XPS and other longstanding branding) signals that this is a mid-tier monitor from Dell’s entry-level lineup.

The monitor’s specs, which include a 120 Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium, and USB-C power delivery at up to 90 W, make it a good fit for pairing with many mainstream laptops.

Dell also says this is the first QD-OLED with spatial audio, which uses head tracking to alter audio coming from the monitor’s five 5 W speakers. This is a feature we’ve seen before, but not on an OLED monitor.

For professionals and/or Mac users that prefer the sleek looks, reputation, higher power delivery and I/O hubs associated with Dell’s popular UltraSharp line, Dell made two more notable announcements at CES: an UltraSharp 32 4K Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U3225QE) coming out in February 25 for $950 and an UltraSharp 27 4K Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U2725QE) coming out that same day for $700.

The suitcase monitors

Before we get into the Base Case, please note that this product has no release date because its creators plan to go to market via crowdfunding. Base Case says it will launch its Indiegogo campaign next month, but even then, we don’t know if the project will be funded, if any final product will work as advertised, or if customers will receive orders in a timely fashion. Still, this is one of the most unusual monitors at CES, and it’s worth discussing.

The Base Case is shaped like a 24x14x16.5-inch rolling suitcase, but when you open it up, you’ll find two 24-inch monitors for connecting to a laptop. Each screen reportedly has a 1920×1080 resolution, a 75 Hz refresh rate, and a max brightness claim of 350 nits. Base Case is also advertising PC and Mac support (through DisplayLink), as well as HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, Thunderbolt, and Ethernet ports. Telescoping legs allow the case to rise 10 inches so the display can sit closer to eye level.

Ultimately, the Base Case would see owners lug around a 20-pound product for the ability to quickly create a dual-monitor setup equipped with a healthy amount of I/O. Tom’s Guide demoed a prototype at CES and reported that the monitors took “seconds to set up.”

In case you’re worried that the Base Case prioritizes displays over storage, note that its makers plan on adding a front pocket to the suitcase that can fit a laptop. The pocket wasn’t on the prototype Tom’s Guide saw, though.

Again, this is far from a finalized product, but Base Case has alluded to a $2,400 starting price. For comparison to other briefcase-locked displays—and yes, doing this is possible—LG’s StanbyME Go (27LX5QKNA) tablet in a briefcase currently has a $1,200 MSRP.

Corsair’s PC-mountable touchscreen

If the Base Case is on the heftier side of portable monitors, Corsair’s Xeneon Edge is certainly on the minute side. The 14.5-inch LCD touchscreen isn’t meant to be a primary display, though. Corsair built it as a secondary screen for providing quick information, like the song your computer is playing, the weather, the time, and calendar events. You could also use the 2560×720 pixels to display system information, like component usage and temperatures.

Corsair says its iCue software will be able to provide system information on the Xeneon, but because the Xeneon Edge works like a regular monitor, you could (and likely would prefer to) use your own methods. Still, the Xeneon Edge stands out from other small, touchscreen PC monitors with its clean UI that can succinctly communicate a lot of information on the tiny display at once.

Specs-wise, this is a 60 Hz IPS panel with 5-point capacitive touch. Corsair says the monitor can hit 350 nits of brightness.

You can connect the Xeneon Edge to a computer via USB-C (DisplayPort Alt mode) or HDMI. There are also screw holes, so PC builders could install it via a 360 mm radiator mounting point inside their PC case.

Alternatively, Corsair recommends attaching the touchscreen to the outside of a PC case through the monitor’s 14 integrated magnets. Corsair said in a blog post that the “magnets are underneath the plastic casing so the metal surface you stick it to won’t get scratched.” Or, in traditional portable monitor style, the Xeneon Edge could also just sit on a desk with its included stand.

Corsair Xeneon Edge — Corsair demos different ways the screen could attach to a case. Credit: TechPowerUp/YouTube

Corsair plans to release the Xeneon Edge in Q2. Expected pricing is “around $249,” Tom’s Hardware reported.

MSI’s side panel display panel

Why attach a monitor to your PC case when you can turn your PC case into a monitor instead?

MSI says that the touchscreen embedded into this year’s MEG Vision X AI 2nd gaming desktop’s side panel can work like a regular computer monitor. Similar to Corsair’s monitor, the MSI’s display has a corresponding app that can show system information and other customizations, which you can toggle with controls on the front of the case, PCMag reported.

MSI used an IPS panel with 1920×1080 resolution for the display, which also has an integrated mic and speaker. MSI says “electric vehicle control centers” inspired the design. We’ve seen similar PC cases, like iBuyPower’s more translucent side panel display and the touchscreen on Hyte’s pentagonal PC case, before. But MSI is bringing the design to a more mainstream form factor by including it in a prebuilt desktop, potentially opening the door for future touchscreen-equipped desktops.

Considering the various locations people place their desktops and the different angles at which they may try to look at this screen, I’m curious about the monitor’s viewing angles and brightness. IPS seems like a good choice since it tends to have strong image quality when viewed from different angles. A video PC Mag shot from the show floor shows images on the monitor appearing visible and lively:

Hands on with MSI’s MEG Vision X AI Desktop: Now, your PC tower’s a monitor, too.

World’s fastest monitor

There’s a competitive air at CES that lends to tech brands trying to one-up each other on spec sheets. Some of the most heated competition concerns monitor refresh rates; for years, we’ve been meeting the new world’s fastest monitor at CES. This year is no different.

The brand behind the monitor is Koorui, a three-year-old Chinese firm whose website currently lists monitors and keyboards. Koorui hasn’t confirmed when it will make its 750 Hz display available, where it will sell it, or what it will cost. That should bring some skepticism about this product actually arriving for purchase in the US. However, Koorui did bring the display to the CES show floor.

The speedy display had a refresh rate test running at CES, and according to several videos we’ve seen from attendees, the monitor appeared to consistently hit the 750 Hz mark.

World’s first 750Hz monitor???

For those keeping track, high-end gaming monitors—namely ones targeting professional gamers—hit 360 Hz in 2020. Koorui’s announcement means max monitor speeds have increased 108.3 percent in four years.

One CES attendee noticed, however, that the monitor wasn’t showing any gameplay. This could be due to the graphical and computing prowess needed to demonstrate the benefits of a 750 Hz monitor. A system capable of 750 frames per second would give people a chance to see if they could detect improved motion resolution but would also be very expensive. It’s also possible that the monitor Koorui had on display wasn’t ready for that level of scrutiny yet.

Like many eSports monitors, the Koorui is 24.5 inches, with a resolution of 1920×1080. Perhaps more interesting than Koorui taking the lead in the perennial race for higher refresh rates is the TN monitor’s claimed color capabilities. TN monitors aren’t as popular as they were years ago, but OEMs still employ them sometimes for speed.

They tend to be less colorful than IPS and VA monitors, though. Most offer sRGB color gamuts instead of covering the larger DCI-P3 color space. Asus’ 540 Hz ROG Swift Pro PG248QP, for example, is a TN monitor claiming 125 percent sRGB coverage. Koorui’s monitor claims to cover 95 percent of DCI-P3, due to the use of a quantum dot film. Again, there’s a lot that prospective shoppers should confirm about this monitor if it becomes available.

For those seeking the fastest monitors with more concrete release plans, several companies announced 600 Hz monitors coming out this year. Acer, for example, has a 600 Hz Nitro XV240 F6 (also a TN monitor) that it plans to release in North America this quarter at a starting price of $600.

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

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How I program with LLMs

AI, best practices, Development, Features, llm, Programming, Tech / Tim Belzer / January 8, 2025

The second issue is we can do better. I am happy we now live in a time when programmers write their own tests, but we do not hold ourselves to the same standards with tests as we do with production code. That is a reasonable trade-off; there are only so many hours in the day. But what LLMs lack in arithmetical prowess, they make up for in enthusiasm.

Let’s ask for an even better test.

In the tests, implement the simplest, most readable version of the standard code for quartiles over a fixed set of known values in a slice. Then pass the test cases through the standard code and the reservoir sampler and confirm they are within an epsilon of each other. Structure the comparison code such that it can be used in a fuzz test, too.

This got us some new test code:

// referenceQuartiles calculates the exact quartiles for a slice of float64 values    // using linear interpolation, matching the behavior expected from the sampler.    func referenceQuartiles(data []float64) (q1, median, q3 float64)  …     // compareQuartiles checks if two sets of quartiles are within epsilon of each other.    // Returns true if they match within the tolerance, false otherwise.    func compareQuartiles(q1a, meda, q3a, q1b, medb, q3b, epsilon float64) bool  …     // checkQuartiles is a test helper that compares sampler output against the reference    // implementation and reports any differences.    func checkQuartiles(t *testing.T, data []float64, epsilon float64)        t.Helper()             // Get reference values       wantQ1, wantMed, wantQ3 := referenceQuartiles(data)             // Get sampler values using a large reservoir for accuracy       qs := NewQuartileSampler(1000)       for _, v := range data            qs.Add(v)              gotQ1, gotMed, gotQ3 := qs.Quartiles()             if !compareQuartiles(gotQ1, gotMed, gotQ3, wantQ1, wantMed, wantQ3, epsilon)            t.Errorf("Quartiles mismatch:ngot  (q1=%v, med=%v, q3=%v)nwant (q1=%v, med=%v, q3=%v)nepsilon=%v",               gotQ1, gotMed, gotQ3, wantQ1, wantMed, wantQ3, epsilon)

The original test from above has been reworked to use checkQuartiles, and we have something new:

func FuzzQuartileSampler(f *testing.F)        // Add some seed corpus       f.Add([]float641, 2, 3, 4, 5)             f.Fuzz(func(t *testing.T, data []float64)            // Use a larger epsilon for fuzzing since we might get more extreme values           checkQuartiles(t, data, 0.2)       )

This is fun because it’s wrong. My running gopls tool immediately says:

fuzzing arguments can only have the following types:      string, bool, float32, float64,      int, int8, int16, int32, int64,      uint, uint8, uint16, uint32, uint64,      []byte

Pasting that error back into the LLM gets it to regenerate the fuzz test such that it is built around a func(t *testing.T, data []byte) function that uses math.Float64frombits to extract floats from the data slice. Interactions like this point us toward automating the feedback from tools; all it needed was the obvious error message to make solid progress toward something useful. I was not needed.

Doing a quick survey of the last few weeks of my LLM chat history shows (which, as I mentioned earlier, is not a proper quantitative analysis by any measure) that more than 80 percent of the time there is a tooling error, the LLM can make useful progress without me adding any insight. About half the time, it can completely resolve the issue without me saying anything of note. I am just acting as the messenger.

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Passkey technology is elegant, but it’s most definitely not usable security

Biz & IT, Features, login, passkeys, passwords, phishing, Security, signin / Tim Belzer / December 30, 2024

NOT (QUITE) READY FOR PRIMETIME

Just in time for holiday tech-support sessions, here’s what to know about passkeys.

It’s that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems they’re having behind the device screens all around them. One of the most vexing and most common problems is logging into accounts in a way that’s both secure and reliable.

Using the same password everywhere is easy, but in an age of mass data breaches and precision-orchestrated phishing attacks, it’s also highly unadvisable. Then again, creating hundreds of unique passwords, storing them securely, and keeping them out of the hands of phishers and database hackers is hard enough for experts, let alone Uncle Charlie, who got his first smartphone only a few years ago. No wonder this problem never goes away.

Passkeys—the much-talked-about password alternative to passwords that have been widely available for almost two years—was supposed to fix all that. When I wrote about passkeys two years ago, I was a big believer. I remain convinced that passkeys mount the steepest hurdle yet for phishers, SIM swappers, database plunderers, and other adversaries trying to hijack accounts. How and why is that?

Elegant, yes, but usable?

The FIDO2 specification and the overlapping WebAuthn predecessor that underpin passkeys are nothing short of pure elegance. Unfortunately, as support has become ubiquitous in browsers, operating systems, password managers, and other third-party offerings, the ease and simplicity envisioned have been undone—so much so that they can’t be considered usable security, a term I define as a security measure that’s as easy, or only incrementally harder, to use as less-secure alternatives.

“There are barriers at each turn that guide you through a developer’s idea of how you should use them,” William Brown, a software engineer specializing in authentication, wrote in an online interview. “None of them are deal-breaking, but they add up.”

Passkeys are now supported on hundreds of sites and roughly a dozen operating systems and browsers. The diverse ecosystem demonstrates the industry-wide support for passkeys, but it has also fostered a jumble of competing workflows, appearances, and capabilities that can vary greatly depending on the particular site, OS, and browser (or browser agents such as native iOS or Android apps). Rather than help users understand the dizzying number of options and choose the right one, each implementation strong-arms the user into choosing the vendor’s preferred choice.

The experience of logging into PayPal with a passkey on Windows will be different from logging into the same site on iOS or even logging into it with Edge on Android. And forget about trying to use a passkey to log into PayPal on Firefox. The payment site doesn’t support that browser on any OS.

Another example is when I create a passkey for my LinkedIn account on Firefox. Because I use a wide assortment of browsers on platforms, I have chosen to sync the passkey using my 1Password password manager. In theory, that choice allows me to automatically use this passkey anywhere I have access to my 1Password account, something that isn’t possible otherwise. But it’s not as simple as all that.

When I look at the passkey in LinkedIn settings, it shows as being created for Firefox on Mac OS X 10, even though it works on all the browsers and OSes I’m using.

Screenshot showing passkey is created for Firefox on Mac OS X 10.

Why is LinkedIn indicating otherwise? The answer is that there’s no way for LinkedIn to interoperate flexibly with the browsers and OSes and vice versa. Per the FIDO2 and WebAuthn specs, LinkedIn knows only the browser and OS I used when creating the credential. 1Password, meanwhile, has no way to coordinate with LinkedIn to ensure I’m presented with consistent information that will help me keep track of this. Suddenly, using passkeys is more confusing than it needs to be for there to be utility to ordinary users.

Things get more complicated still when I want to log into LinkedIn on Firefox for Android, and am presented with the following dialog box.

Screenshot showing a dialog box with the text: “You’re using on-device encryption. Unlock your passwords to sign in.”

At this point, I don’t know if it’s Google or Firefox that’s presenting me with this non-intuitive response. I just want to open LinkedIn using the passkey that’s being synced by 1Password to all my devices. Somehow, the mysterious entity responsible for this message (it’s Google in this case) has hijacked the process in an attempt to convince me to use its platform.

Also, consider the experience on WebAuthn.io, a site that demonstrates how the standard works under different scenarios. When a user wants to enroll a physical security key to log in on macOS, they receive a dialog that steers them toward using a passkey instead and to sync it through iCloud.

Dialog box showing macOS passkeys message.

The user just wants to enroll a security key in the form of a USB dongle or smartphone and can be used when logging in on any device. But instead, macOS preempts this task with directions for creating a passkey that will be synced through iCloud. What’s the user to do? Maybe click on the “other options” in small text at the very bottom? Let’s try and see.

The dialog box that appears after clicking “other options.”

Wait, why is it still offering the option for the passkey to be synced in iCloud, and how does that qualify as “other options”? And why is the most prominent suggestion that the user “continue with Touch ID”? It isn’t until selectng “security key” that the user will see that option they wanted all along—to store the credential on a security key. Only after this step—now three clicks in—does the light on a USB security key begin blinking, and the key is finally ready to be enrolled.

Dialog box finally allows the creation of a passkey on a security key.

The dueling dialogs in this example are by no means unique to macOS.

Too many cooks in the kitchen

“Most try to funnel you into a vendor’s sync passkey option, and don’t make it clear how you can use other things,” Brown noted. “Chrome, Apple, Windows, all try to force you to use their synced passkeys by default, and you have to click through prompts to use alternatives.”

Bruce Davie, another software engineer with expertise in authentication, agreed, writing in an October post that the current implementation of passkeys “seems to have failed the ‘make it easy for users’ test, which in my view is the whole point of passkeys.”

In April, Son Nguyen Kim, the product lead for the free Proton Pass password manager, penned a post titled Big Tech passkey implementations are a trap. In it, he complained that passkey implementations to date lock users into the platform they created the credential on.

“If you use Google Chrome as your browser on a Mac, it uses the Apple Keychain feature to store your passkeys,” he wrote. “This means you can’t sync your passkeys to your Chrome profile on other devices.” In an email last month, Kim said users can now override this option and choose to store their passkeys in Chrome. Even then, however, “passkeys created on Chrome on Mac don’t sync to Chrome in iPhone, so the user can’t use it seamlessly on Chrome on their iPhone.”

Other posts reciting similar complaints are here and here.

In short, there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and each one thinks they know the proper way to make pie.

I have put these and other criticisms to the test over the past four months. I have used them on a true heterogeneous environment that includes a MacBook Air, a Lenovo X1 ThinkPad, an iPhone, and a Pixel running Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, and on the phones, a large number of apps, including those for LinkedIn, PayPal, eBay, Kayak, Gmail, Amazon, and Uber. My objective has been to understand how well passkey-based authentication works over the long term, particularly for cross-platform users.

I fully agree that syncing across different platforms is much harder than it should be. So is the messaging provided during the passkey enrollment phase. The dialogs users see are dictated arbitrarily by whatever OS or browser has control at the moment. There’s no way for previously made configuration choices to be communicated to tailor dialog boxes and workflow.

Another shortcoming: There’s no programming interface for Apple, Google, and Microsoft platforms to directly pass credentials from one to the other. The FIDO2 standard has devised a clever method in an attempt to bridge this gap. It typically involves joining two devices over a secure BLE connection and using a QR code so the already-authenticated device can vouch for the trustworthiness of the other. This process is easy for some people in some cases, but it can quickly become quirky and prone to failure, particularly when fussy devices can’t connect over BLE.

In many cases, however, critics overstate the severity of these sorts of problems. These are definitely things that unnecessarily confuse and complicate the use of passkeys. But often, they’re one-time events that can be overcome by creating multiple passkeys and bootstrapping them for each device. From then on, these unphishable, unstealable credentials live on both devices, in much the way some users allow credentials for their Gmail or Apple ID to be stored in two or more browsers or password managers for convenience.

More helpful still is using a cross-platform password manager to store and sync passkeys. I have been using 1Password to do just that for a month with no problems to report. Most other name-brand password managers would likely perform as well. In keeping with the FIDO2 spec, these credentials are end-to-end encrypted.

Halfway house for password managers

With my 1Password account running on my devices, I had no trouble using a passkey to log into any enrolled site on a device running any browser. The flow was fast and intuitive. In most cases, both iOS and Android had no problem passing the key from 1Password to an app for Uber, Amazon, Gmail, or another site. Signing into phone apps is one of the bigger hassles for me. Passkeys made this process much easier, and it did so while also allowing me the added security of MFA.

This reliance on a password manager, however, largely undermines a key value proposition of passkeys, which has been to provide an entirely new paradigm for authenticating ourselves. Using 1Password to sync a password is almost identical to syncing a passkey, so why bother? Worse still, the majority of people still don’t use password managers. I’m a big believer in password managers for the security they offer. Making them a condition for using a passkey would be a travesty.

I’m not the first person to voice this criticism. David Heinemeier Hansson said much the same thing in September.

“The problem with passkeys is that they’re essentially a halfway house to a password manager, but tied to a specific platform in ways that aren’t obvious to a user at all, and liable to easily leave them unable to access … their accounts,” wrote the Danish software engineer and programmer, who created Ruby on Rails and is the CTO of web-based software development firm 37signals. “Much the same way that two-factor authentication can do, but worse, since you’re not even aware of it.”

He continued:

Let’s take a simple example. You have an iPhone and a Windows computer. Chrome on Windows stores your passkeys in Windows Hello, so if you sign up for a service on Windows, and you then want to access it on iPhone, you’re going to be stuck (unless you’re so forward thinking as to add a second passkey, somehow, from the iPhone will on the Windows computer!). The passkey lives on the wrong device, if you’re away from the computer and want to login, and it’s not at all obvious to most users how they might fix that.

Even in the best case scenario, where you’re using an iPhone and a Mac that are synced with Keychain Access via iCloud, you’re still going to be stuck, if you need to access a service on a friend’s computer in a pinch. Or if you’re not using Keychain Access at all. There are plenty of pitfalls all over the flow. And the solutions, like scanning a QR code with a separate device, are cumbersome and alien to most users.

If you’re going to teach someone how to deal with all of this, and all the potential pitfalls that might lock them out of your service, you almost might as well teach them how to use a cross-platform password manager like 1Password.

Undermining security promises

The security benefits of passkeys at the moment are also undermined by an undeniable truth. Of the hundreds of sites supporting passkeys, there isn’t one I know of that allows users to ditch their password completely. The password is still mandatory. And with the exception of Google’s Advanced Protection Program, I know of no sites that won’t allow logins to fall back on passwords, often without any additional factor. Even then, all but Google APP accounts can be accessed using a recovery code.

This fallback on phishable, stealable credentials undoes some of the key selling points of passkeys. As soon as passkey adoption poses a meaningful hurdle in account takeovers, threat actors will devise hacks and social engineering attacks that exploit this shortcoming. Then we’re right back where we were before.

Christiaan Brandt, co-chair of the FIDO2 technical working group and an identity and security product manager at Google, said in an online interview that most users aren’t ready for true passwordless authentication.

“We have to meet users where they are,” he wrote. “When we tested messaging for passkeys, users balked at ‘replace your password with passkeys,’ but felt much more comfortable with more softened language like “you can now use a passkey to log in to your account too.’ Over time, we most definitely plan to wean users off phishable authentication factors, but we anticipate this journey to take multiple years. We really can only do it once users are so comfortable with passkeys that the fallback to passwords is (almost) never needed.”

A design choice further negating the security benefits of passkeys: Amazon, PayPal, Uber, and no small number of other sites supporting passkeys continue to rely on SMS texts for authentication even after passkeys are enrolled.

SMS-based MFA is among the weakest form of this protection. Not only can the texts be phished, but they’re also notoriously vulnerable to SIM swaps, in which an adversary gains control of a target’s phone number. As long as these less-secure fallbacks exist, passkeys aren’t much more than security theater.

I still think passkeys make sense in many cases. I’ll say more about that later. First, for a bit more context, readers should know:

Passkeys are defined in the WebAuthn spec as a “discoverable credential,” historically known as a “resident key.” The credential is in the form of a private-public key pair, which is created on the security key, which can be in the form of a FIDO-approved secure enclave embedded into a USB dongle, smartphone, or computer. The key pair is unique to each user account. The user creates the key pair after proving their identity to the website using an existing authentication method, typically a password. The private key never leaves the security key.

Going forward, when the user logs in, the site sends a security challenge to the user. The user then uses the locally stored private key to cryptographically sign the challenge and sends it to the website. The website then uses the public key it stores to verify the response is signed with the private key. With that, the user is logged in.

Under the FIDO2 spec, the passkey can never leave the security key, except as an encrypted blob of bits when the passkey is being synced from one device to another. The secret key can be unlocked only when the user authenticates to the physical key using a PIN, password, or most commonly a fingerprint or face scan. In the event the user authenticates with a biometric, it never leaves the security key, just as they never leave Android and iOS phones and computers running macOS or Windows.

Passkeys can be stored and synced using the same mechanisms millions of people already use for passwords—a password manager such as Bitwarden, Apple iCloud, Google Password Manager, or Microsoft’s cloud. Just like passwords, passkeys available in these managers are end-to-end encrypted using tried and true cryptographic algorithms.

The advent of this new paradigm was supposed to solve multiple problems at once—make authenticating ourselves online easier, eliminate the hassle of remembering passwords, and all but eradicate the most common forms of account takeovers.

When not encumbered by the problems mentioned earlier, this design provides multifactor authentication in a single stroke. The user logs in using something they have—the physical key, which must be near the device logging in. They must also use something they know—the PIN or password—or something they are—their face or fingerprint—to complete the credential transfer. The cryptographic secret never leaves the enclave embedded into the physical key.

What to tell Uncle Charlie?

In enterprise environments, passkeys can be a no-brainer alternative to passwords and authenticators. And even for Uncle Charlie—who has a single iPhone and Mac, and logs into only a handful of sites—passkeys may provide a simpler, less phishable path forward. Using a password manager to log into Gmail with a passkey ensures he’s protected by MFA. Using the password alone does not.

The takeaway from all of this—particularly for those recruited to provide technical support this week but also anyone trying to decide if it’s time to up their own authentication game: If a password manager isn’t already a part of the routine, see if it’s viable to add one now. Password managers make it practical to use a virtually unlimited number of long, randomly generated passwords that are unique to each site.

For some, particularly people with diminished capacity or less comfort being online, this step alone will be enough. Everyone else should also, whenever possible, opt into MFA, ideally using security keys or, if that’s not available, an authenticator app. I’m partial to 1Password as a password manager, Authy as an authenticator, and security keys from Yubico or Titan. There are plenty of other suitable alternatives.

I still think passkeys provide the greatest promise yet for filling the many security pitfalls of passwords and lowering the difficulty of remembering and storing them. For now, however, the hassles of using passkeys, coupled with their diminished security created by the presence of fallbacks, means no one should feel like a technophobe or laggard for sticking with their passwords. For now, passwords and key- or authenticator-based MFA remain essential.

With any luck, passkeys will someday be ready for the masses, but that day is not (yet) here.

Dan Goodin is Senior Security Editor at Ars Technica, where he oversees coverage of malware, computer espionage, botnets, hardware hacking, encryption, and passwords. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening, cooking, and following the independent music scene. Dan is based in San Francisco. Follow him at here on Mastodon and here on Bluesky. Contact him on Signal at DanArs.82.

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Tech worker movements grow as threats of RTO, AI loom

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Features, Policy, remote work, return-to-office, rto, rto mandates / Paul Patrick / December 28, 2024

Advocates say tech workers movements got too big to ignore in 2024.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

It feels like tech workers have caught very few breaks over the past several years, between ongoing mass layoffs, stagnating wages amid inflation, AI supposedly coming for jobs, and unpopular orders to return to office that, for many, threaten to disrupt work-life balance.

But in 2024, a potentially critical mass of tech workers seemed to reach a breaking point. As labor rights groups advocating for tech workers told Ars, these workers are banding together in sustained strong numbers and are either winning or appear tantalizingly close to winning better worker conditions at major tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

In February, the industry-wide Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) noted that “the tech workers movement is far more expansive and impactful” than even labor rights advocates realized, noting that unionized tech workers have gone beyond early stories about Googlers marching in the streets and now “make the headlines on a daily basis.”

Ike McCreery, a TWC volunteer and ex-Googler who helped found the Alphabet Workers Union, told Ars that although “it’s hard to gauge numerically” how much movements have grown, “our sense is definitely that the momentum continues to build.”

“It’s been an exciting year,” McCreery told Ars, while expressing particular enthusiasm that even “highly compensated tech workers are really seeing themselves more as workers” in these fights—which TWC “has been pushing for a long time.”

In 2024, TWC broadened efforts to help workers organize industry-wide, helping everyone from gig workers to project managers build both union and non-union efforts to push for change in the workplace.

Such widespread organizing “would have been unthinkable only five years ago,” TWC noted in February, and it’s clear from some of 2024’s biggest wins that some movements are making gains that could further propel that momentum in 2025.

Workers could also gain the upper hand if unpopular policies increase what one November study called “brain drain.” That’s a trend where tech companies adopting potentially alienating workplace tactics risk losing top talent at a time when key industries like AI and cybersecurity are facing severe talent shortages.

Advocates told Ars that unpopular policies have always fueled workers movements, and RTO and AI are just the latest adding fuel to the fire. As many workers prepare to head back to offices in 2025 where worker surveillance is only expected to intensify, they told Ars why they expect to see workers’ momentum continue at some of the world’s biggest tech firms.

Tech worker movements growing

In August, Apple ratified a labor contract at America’s first unionized Apple Store—agreeing to a modest increase in wages, about 10 percent over three years. While small, that win came just a few weeks before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determined that Amazon was a joint employer of unionized contract-based delivery drivers. And Google lost a similar fight last January when the NLRB ruled it must bargain with a union representing YouTube Music contract workers, Reuters reported.

For many workers, joining these movements helped raise wages. In September, facing mounting pressure, Amazon raised warehouse worker wages—investing $2.2 billion, its “biggest investment yet,” to broadly raise base salaries for workers. And more recently, Amazon was hit with a strike during the busy holiday season, as warehouse workers hoped to further hobble the company during a clutch financial quarter to force more bargaining. (Last year, Amazon posted record-breaking $170 billion holiday quarter revenues and has said the current strike won’t hurt revenues.)

Even typically union-friendly Microsoft drew worker backlash and criticism in 2024 following layoffs of 650 video game workers in September.

These mass layoffs are driving some workers to join movements. A senior director for organizing with Communications Workers of America (CWA), Tom Smith, told Ars that shortly after the 600-member Tech Guild—”the largest single certified group of tech workers” to organize at the New York Times—reached a tentative deal to increase wages “up to 8.25 percent over the length of the contract,” about “460 software engineers at a video game company owned by Microsoft successfully unionized.”

Smith told Ars that while workers for years have pushed for better conditions, “these large units of tech workers achieving formal recognition, building lasting organization, and winning contracts” at “a more mass scale” are maturing, following in the footsteps of unionizing Googlers and today influencing a broader swath of tech industry workers nationwide. From CWA’s viewpoint, workers in the video game industry seem best positioned to seek major wins next, Smith suggested, likely starting with Microsoft-owned companies and eventually affecting indie game companies.

CWA, TWC, and Tech Workers Union 1010 (a group run by tech workers that’s part of the Office and Professional Employees International Union) all now serve as dedicated groups supporting workers movements long-term, and that stability has helped these movements mature, McCreery told Ars. Each group plans to continue meeting workers where they are to support and help expand organizing in 2025.

Cost of RTOs may be significant, researchers warn

While layoffs likely remain the most extreme threat to tech workers broadly, a return-to-office (RTO) mandate can be just as jarring for remote tech workers who are either unable to comply or else unwilling to give up the better work-life balance that comes with no commute. Advocates told Ars that RTO policies have pushed workers to join movements, while limited research suggests that companies risk losing top talents by implementing RTO policies.

In perhaps the biggest example from 2024, when Amazon announced that it was requiring workers in-office five days a week next year, a poll on the anonymous platform where workers discuss employers, Blind, found an overwhelming majority of more than 2,000 Amazon employees were “dissatisfied.”

“My morale for this job is gone…” one worker said on Blind.

Workers criticized the “non-data-driven logic” of the RTO mandate, prompting an Amazon executive to remind them that they could take their talents elsewhere if they didn’t like it. Many confirmed that’s exactly what they planned to do. (Amazon later announced it would be delaying RTO for many office workers after belatedly realizing there was a lack of office space.)

Other companies mandating RTO faced similar backlash from workers, who continued to question the logic driving the decision. One February study showed that RTO mandates don’t make companies any more valuable but do make workers more miserable. And last month, Brian Elliott, an executive advisor who wrote a book about the benefits of flexible teams, noted that only one in three executives thinks RTO had “even a slight positive impact on productivity.”

But not every company drew a hard line the way that Amazon did. For example, Dell gave workers a choice to remain remote and accept they can never be eligible for promotions, or mark themselves as hybrid. Workers who refused the RTO said they valued their free time and admitted to looking for other job opportunities.

Very few studies have been done analyzing the true costs and benefits of RTO, a November academic study titled “Return to Office and Brain Drain” said, and so far companies aren’t necessarily backing the limited findings. The researchers behind that study noted that “the only existing study” measuring how RTO impacts employee turnover showed this year that senior employees left for other companies after Microsoft’s RTO mandate, but Microsoft disputed that finding.

Seeking to build on this research, the November study tracked “over 3 million tech and finance workers’ employment histories reported on LinkedIn” and analyzed “the effect of S&P 500 firms’ return-to-office (RTO) mandates on employee turnover and hiring.”

Choosing to only analyze the firms requiring five days in office, the final sample covered 54 RTO firms, including big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. From that sample, researchers concluded that average employee turnover increased by 14 percent after RTO mandates at bigger firms. And since big firms typically have lower turnover, the increase in turnover is likely larger at smaller firms, the study’s authors concluded.

The study also supported the conclusion that “employees with the highest skill level are more likely to leave” and found that “RTO firms take significantly longer time to fill their job vacancies after RTO mandates.”

“Together, our evidence suggests that RTO mandates are costly to firms and have serious negative effects on the workforce,” the study concluded, echoing some remote workers’ complaints about the seemingly non-data-driven logic of RTO, while urging that further research is needed.

“These turnovers could potentially have short-term and long-term effects on operation, innovation, employee morale, and organizational culture,” the study concluded.

A co-author of the “brain drain” study, Mark Ma, told Ars that by contrast, Glassdoor going fully remote at least anecdotally seemed to “significantly” increase the number and quality of applications—possibly also improving retention by offering the remote flexibility that many top talents today require.

Ma said that next his team hopes to track where people who leave firms over RTO policies go next.

“Do they become self-employed, or do they go to a competitor, or do they fund their own firm?” Ma speculated, hoping to trace these patterns more definitively over the next several years.

Additionally, Ma plans to investigate individual firms’ RTO impacts, as well as impacts on niche classes of workers with highly sought-after skills—such as in areas like AI, machine learning, or cybersecurity—to see if it’s easier for them to find other jobs. In the long-term, Ma also wants to monitor for potentially less-foreseeable outcomes, such as RTO mandates possibly increasing firms’ number of challengers in their industry.

Will RTO mandates continue in 2025?

Many tech workers may be wondering if there will be a spike in return-to-office mandates in 2025, especially since one of the most politically influential figures in tech, Elon Musk, recently reiterated that he thinks remote work is “poison.”

Musk, of course, banned remote work at Tesla, as well as when he took over Twitter. And as co-lead of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk reportedly plans to ban remote work for government employees, as well. If other tech firms are influenced by Musk’s moves and join executives who seem to be mandating RTO based on intuition, it’s possible that more tech workers could be forced to return to office or else seek other employment.

But Ma told Ars that he doesn’t expect to see “a big spike in the number of firms announcing return to office mandates” in 2025.

His team only found eight major firms in tech and finance that issued five-day return-to-office mandates in 2024, which was the same number of firms flagged in 2023, suggesting no major increase in RTOs from year to year. Ma told Ars that while big firms like Amazon ordering employees to return to the office made headlines, many firms seem to be continuing to embrace hybrid models, sometimes allowing employees to choose when or if they come into the office.

That seeming preference for hybrid work models seems to align with “future of work” surveys outlining workplace trends and employee preferences that the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) conducted for years but has seemingly since discontinued. In 2021, CTA reported that “89 percent of tech executives say flexible work arrangements are the most important employee benefit and 65 percent say they’ll hire more employees to work remotely.” The next year, which apparently was the last time CTA published the survey, the CTA suggested hybrid models could help attract talents in a competitive market hit with “an unprecedented demand for workers with high-tech skills.”

The CTA did not respond to Ars’ requests to comment on whether it expects hybrid work arrangements to remain preferred over five-day return-to-office policies next year.

CWA’s Smith told Ars that workers movements are growing partly because “folks are engaged in this big fight around surveillance and workplace control,” as well as anything “having to do with to what extent will people return to offices and what does that look like if and when people do return to offices?”

Without data backing RTO mandates, Ma’s study suggests that firms will struggle to retain highly skilled workers at a time when tech innovation remains a top priority for the US. As workers appear increasingly put off by policies—like RTO or AI-driven workplace monitoring or efficiency efforts threatening to replace workers with AI—Smith’s experience seems to show that disgruntled workers could find themselves drawn to unions that could help them claw back control over work-life balance. And the cost of the ensuing shuffle to some of the largest tech firms in the world could be “significant,” Ma’s study warned.

TWC’s McCreery told Ars that on top of unpopular RTO policies driving workers to join movements, workers have also become more active in protesting unpopular politics, frustrated to see their talents apparently used to further controversial conflicts and military efforts globally. Some workers think workplace organizing could be more powerful than voting to oppose political actions their companies take.

“The workplace really remains an important site of power for a lot of people where maybe they don’t feel like they can enact their values just by voting or in other ways,” McCreery said.

While unpopular policies “have always been a reason workers have joined unions and joined movements,” McCreery said that “the development of more of these unpopular policies” like RTO and AI-enhanced surveillance “really targeted” at workers has increased “the political consciousness and the sense” that tech workers are “just like any other workers.”

Layoffs at companies like Microsoft and Amazon during periods when revenue is increasing in the double-digits also unify workers, advocates told Ars. Forbes noted Microsoft laid off 1,000 workers “just five days before reporting a 17.6 percent increase in revenue to $62 billion,” while Amazon’s 1,000-worker layoffs followed a 14 percent rise in revenue to $170 billion. And demand for AI led to the highest profit margins Amazon’s seen for its cloud business in a decade, CNBC reported in October.

CWA’s Smith told Ars as companies continue to rake in profits and workers feel their work-life balance slipping away while their efforts in the office are potentially “used to increase control and cause broader suffering,” some of the biggest fights workers raised in 2024 may intensify next year.

“It’s like a shock to employees, these industries pushing people to lower your expectations because we’re going to lay off hundreds of thousands of you just because we can while we make more profits than we ever have,” Smith said. “I think workers are going to step into really broad campaigns to assert a different worldview on employment security.”

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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Ars’ favorite games of 2024 that were not released in 2024

cyberpunk 2077, cyberpunk 2077 phantom liberty, Features, fights in tight spaces, freelancer, gaming, goty, grounded, morrowind, stardew valley, Tetrisweeper, The Elder Scrolls, the elder scrolls iii: morrowind, Uncategorized, Wing Commander / Mike M. / December 27, 2024

Look what we found laying around

The games that found us in 2024, from 2003 space sims to 2022 backyard survival.

More than 18,500 games will have been released onto the PC gaming platform Steam in the year 2024, according to SteamDB. Dividing that by the number of people covering games at Ars, or the gaming press at large, or even everybody who games and writes about it online, yields a brutal ratio.

Games often float down the river of time to us, filtered by friends, algorithms, or pure happenstance. They don’t qualify for our best games of the year list, but they might be worth mentioning on their own. Many times, they’re better games then they were at release, either by patching or just perspective. And they are almost always lower priced.

Inspired by the cruel logic of calendars and year-end lists, I asked my coworkers to tell me about their favorite games of 2024 that were not from 2024. What resulted were some quirky gems, some reconsiderations, and some titles that just happened to catch us at the right time.

Stardew Valley

ConcernedApe; Basically every platform

After avoiding it forever and even bouncing off of it once or twice, I finally managed to fall face-first into Stardew Valley (2016) in 2024. And I’ve fallen hard—I only picked it up in October, but Steam says I’ve spent about 110 hours playing farmer.

In addition to being a fun distraction and a great way to kill both short and long stretches of time, what struck me is how remarkably soothing the game has been. I’m a nervous flyer, and it’s only gotten worse since the pandemic, but I’ve started playing Stardew on flights, and having my little farm to focus on has proven to be a powerful weapon against airborne anxiety—even when turbulence starts up. Ars sent me on three trips in the last quarter of the year, and Stardew got me through all the flights.

Hell, I’m even enjoying the multiplayer—and I don’t generally do multiplayer. My cousin Shaun and I have been meeting up most weekends to till the fields together, and the primary activity tends to be seeing who can apply the most over-the-top creatively scatological names to the farm animals. I’ve even managed to lure Ur-Quan Masters designer Paul Reiche III to Pelican Town for a few weekends of hoedowns and harvests. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paul was already a huge fan of the game. And also of over-the-top creatively scatological farm animal names. Between him and Shaun, I’m amassing quite a list!)

So here’s to you, Stardew Valley. You were one of the brightest parts of my 2024, and a game that I already know I’ll return to for years.

— Lee Hutchinson

Grounded

First-person perspective of a suburban house in the background, fall leaves on a tree nearby, and a relatively giant spider approaching the player, who is holding a makeshift bow and arrow, ready to fire. — Credit: Xbox Game Studios

Obsidian; Windows, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation

My favorite discovery this year has probably been Grounded, a Microsoft-published, Obsidian Entertainment-developed survival crafting game that was initially released back in 2022 (2020 if you count early access) but received its final planned content update back in April.

You play as one of four plucky tweens, zapped down to a fraction-of-an-inch high as part of a nefarious science experiment. The game is heavily inspired by 1989’s classic Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, both in its ’80s setting and its graphical design. Explore the backyard, fight bugs, find new crafting materials, build out a base of operations, and power yourself up with special items and steadily better equipment so you can figure out what happened to you and get back to your regular size.

Grounded came up because I was looking for another game for the four-player group I’ve also played Deep Rock Galactic and Raft with. Like Raft, Grounded has a main story with achievable objectives and an endpoint, plus a varied enough mix of activities that everyone will be able to find something they like doing. Some netcode hiccups notwithstanding, if you like survival crafting-style games but don’t like Minecraft-esque, objective-less, make-your-own-fun gameplay, Grounded might scratch an itch for you.

— Andrew Cunningham

Fights in Tight Spaces

A black-colored figure does a backwards flip kick on a red goon holding a gun, while three other red and maroon goons point guns at him from a perpendicular angle, inside a grayscale room. — Credit: Raw Fury

Ground Shatter; Windows, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation

I spent a whole lot of time browsing, playing, and thinking about roguelike deckbuilders in 2024. Steam’s recommendation algorithm noticed, and tossed 2021’s Fights in Tight Spaces at me. I was on a languid week’s vacation, with a Steam Deck packed, with just enough distance from the genre by then to maybe dip a toe back in. More than 15 hours later, Steam’s “Is this relevant to you?” question is easy to answer.

Back in college, I spent many weekends rounding out my Asian action film knowledge, absorbing every instance of John Woo, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Flying Guillotine, Drunken Master, and whatever I could scavenge from friends and rental stores. I thrilled to frenetic fights staged in cramped, cluttered, or quirky spaces. When the hero ducks so that one baddie punches the other one, then backflips over a banister to two-leg kick the guy coming up from beneath? That’s the stuff.

Fights gives you card-based, turn-by-turn versions of those fights. You can see everything your opponents are going to do, in what order, and how much it would hurt if they hit you. Your job is to pick cards that move, hit, block, counter, slip, push, pull, and otherwise mess with these single-minded dummies, such that you dodge the pain and they either miss or take each other out. Woe be unto the guy with a pistol who thinks he’s got one up on you, because he’s standing right by a window, and you’ve got enough momentum to kick a guy right into him.

This very low-spec game has a single-color visual style, beautifully smooth animations, and lots of difficulty tweaking to prevent frustration. The developer plans to release a game “in the same universe,” Knights in Tight Spaces, in 2025, and that’s an auto-buy for me now.

— Kevin Purdy

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Axe-wielding polygonal character, wearing furs and armor, complete with bear face above his head, in front of a wooden lodge in a snowy landscape. — Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

Bethesda; Windows, Xbox

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind always had a sort of mythic quality for me. It came out when I was 18 years old—the perfect age for it, really. And more than any other game I had ever played, it inspired hope and imagination for where the medium might go.

In the ensuing years, Morrowind (2002) ended up seeming like the end of the line instead of the spark that would start something new. With some occasional exceptions, modern games have emphasized predictable formulae and proven structures over the kind of experimentation, depth, and weirdness that Morrowind embraced. Even Bethesda’s own games gradually became stodgier.

So Morrowind lived in my memory for years, a sort of holy relic of what gaming could have been before AAA game design became quite so oppressively formalist.

After playing hundreds of hours of Starfield this year, I returned to Morrowind for the first time in 20 years.

To be clear: I quite liked Starfield, counter to the popular narrative about it—though I definitely understood why it wasn’t for everyone. But people criticized Starfield for lacking the magic of a game like Morrowind, and I was skeptical of that criticism. As such, my return to the island of Vvardenfell was a test: did Morrowind really have a magic that Starfield lacks, even when taken out of the context of its time and my youthful imagination and open-mindnedness?

I was surprised to find that the result was a strong affirmative. I still like Starfield, but its cardinal sin is that it is unimaginative because it is derivative—of No Man’s Sky, of Privateer and Elite, of Mass Effect, of various 70s and 80s sci-fi films and TV series, and most of all, of Bethesda Game Studios’ earlier work.

In contrast, Morrowind is a fever dream of bold experimentation that seems to come more from the creativity of ambitious designers who were too young to know any better, than from the proven designs of past hits.

I played well over a hundred hours of Morrowind this year, and while I did find it tedious at times, it’s engrossing for anyone who’s willing to put up with its archaic pacing and quirks.

To be clear, many of the design experiments in the game simply don’t work, with systems that are easily exploited. Its designers’ naivety shines through clearly, and its rough edges serve as clear reminders of why today’s strict formalism has taken root, especially in AAA games where too-big budgets and payrolls leave no room at all for risk.

Regardless, it’s been wild to go back and play this game from 2002 and realize that in the 22 years since there have been very few other RPGs that were nearly as brazenly creative. I love it for that, just as much as I did when I was 18.

— Samuel Axon

Tetrisweeper

Tetris-style colored blocks fallen inside a column on top of settled blocks, most of which are gray and have Minesweeper-like numbers indicating an explosive tile nearby. — Credit: Kertis Jones Interactive

Kertis Jones; Itch.io, coming to Steam

If you ask someone to list the most addictive puzzle games of all time, Tetris and Minesweeper will probably be at or near the top of the list. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Tetrisweeper makes an even more addictive experience by combining the two grid-based games together in a frenetic, brain-melting mess.

Tetrisweeper starts just like Tetris, asking you to arrange four-block pieces dropping down a well to make lines without gaps. But in Tetrisweeper, those completed lines won’t clear until you play a game of Minesweeper on top of those dropped pieces, using adjacency information and logical rules to mark which ones are safe and which ones house game-ending mines (if you want to learn more about Minesweeper, there’s a book I can recommend).

At first, playing Tetris with your keyboard fingers while managing Minesweeper with your mouse hand can feel a little unwieldy—a bit like trying to drive a car and cook an omelet at the same time. After a few games, though, you’ll learn how to split your attention effectively to drop pieces and solve complex mine patterns nearly simultaneously. That’s when you start to master the game’s intricate combo multiplier system and bonus scoring, striving for point-maximizing Tetrisweeps and T-spins (my high score is just north of 3 million, but pales in comparison to that of the best players).

While Tetrisweeper grew out of a 2020 Game Jam, I didn’t discover the game until this year, when it helped me clear my head during many a work break (and passed the time during a few dull Zoom calls as well). I’m hoping the game’s planned Steam release—still officially listed as “Coming Soon”—will help attract even more addicts than its current itch.io availability.

— Kyle Orland

Freelancer

Ship with three thruster engines approaching a much larger freighter, long and slightly cylindrical, in murky green space, with a HUD around the borders.

Digital Anvil; Windows

What if I told you that Star Citizen creator Chris Roberts previously tried to make Star Citizen more than two decades ago but left the project and saw it taken over by real, non-crazy professionals who had the discipline to actually finish something?

That’s basically the story behind 2003’s forgotten PC game Freelancer. What started as a ludicrously ambitious space life sim concept ended up as a sincere attempt to make games like Elite and Wing Commander: Privateer far more accessible.

That meant a controversial, mouse-based control scheme instead of flight sticks, as well as cutting-edge graphics, celebrity voice actors, carefully designed economy and progression systems, and flashy cutscenes.

I followed the drama of Freelancer‘s development in forums, magazines, and gaming news websites when I was younger. I bought the hype as aggressively as Star Citizen fans did years later. The game that came out wasn’t what I was dreaming of, and that disappointment prevented me from finishing it.

Fast-forward to 2024: on a whim, I played Freelancer from beginning to end for the first time.

And honestly? It’s great. In a space trading sim genre that’s filled with giant piles of jank (the X series) or inaccessible titles that fly a little too far into the simulation zone for some (Elite Dangerous), Freelancer might be the most fun you can have with the genre even today.

It’s understandable that it didn’t have much lasting cultural impact since the developers who took it over lacked the wild ambition of the man who started it, but I enjoyed a perfectly pleasant 20–30 hours smuggling space goods and shooting pirates—and I didn’t have to spend $48,000 of real money on a ship to get that.

— Samuel Axon

Cyberpunk 2077

A woman with a red mohawk, wearing a belly shirt, amidst a dense, steel, multi-colored cityscape, suffused with neon. — Credit: CD Projekt Red

CD Projekt Red; Windows, Xbox, PlayStation (macOS in 2025)

Can one simply play, as a game, one of the biggest and most argued-over gaming narratives of all time? Four years after its calamitous launch sparked debates about AAA gaming sprawl, developer crunch, game review practicalities, and, eventually, post-release redemption arcs, what do you get when you launch Cyberpunk 2077?

I got a first-person shooter, one with some interesting ideas, human-shaped characters you’d expect from the makers of The Witcher 3, and some confused and unrefined systems and ideas. I enjoyed my time with it, appreciate the work put into it, and can recommend it to anyone who is okay with something that’s not quite an in-depth FPS RPG (or “immersive sim”) but likes a bit of narrative thrust to their shooting and hacking.

You can’t fit everything about Cyberpunk 2077 into one year-end blurb (or a 1.0 release, apparently), so I’ll stick to the highs and lows. I greatly enjoyed the voice performances, especially from Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba (the latter in the Phantom Liberty DLC), and those behind Jackie, Viktor Vektor, and the female version of protagonist V. I was surprised at how good the shooting felt, given the developer’s first time out; the discovery of how a “Smart” shotgun worked will stick with me a while. The driving: less so. There were moments of quiet, ambient world appreciation, now that the game’s engine is running okay. And the side quests have that Witcher-ish quality to them, where they’re never as straightforward as described and also tell little stories about life in this place.

What seems missing to me, most crucially, are the bigger pieces, the real choices and unexpected consequences, and the sense of really living in this world. You can choose one of three backgrounds, but it only comes up as an occasional dialogue option. You can build your character in myriad ways, and there are lots of dialogue options. But the main quest keeps you on a fairly strict path, with the options to talk, hack, or stealth your way past inevitable shootouts not as great as you might think. Once you’ve brought your character up to power-fantasy levels, the larger city becomes a playground, but not one I much enjoyed playing in. (Plus, the idea of idle wandering and amassing wealth, given the main plot contrivance, is kind of ridiculous, but this is a game, after all).

Phantom Liberty, in my experience, patches up every one of these weaknesses inside its smaller play space, providing more real choices and a tighter story, with more set pieces arriving at a faster pace. If you can buy this game bundled with its DLC, by all means, do so. I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs in my mid-2024 playthrough, nor even many crashes. Your mileage may vary, especially on consoles, as other late-coming players have seen.

Waiting on this game a good bit certainly helps me grade it on a curve; nobody today is losing $60 on something that looks like it’s playing over a VNC connection. When CD Projekt Red carries on in this universe, I think they’ll have learned a lot from what they delivered here, much like we’ve all learned about pre-release expectations. It’s okay to take your time getting to a gargantuan game; there are lots of games from prior years to look into.

— Kevin Purdy

Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.

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I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps, and I can’t stop

Features, glide, glide apps, progressive web apps, PWAs, spreadsheet apps, Tech, webapps / Tim Belzer / December 26, 2024

Software is eating the world and I have snacks for it

How I tackled takeout, spices, and meal ideas with spreadsheets and Glide.

It started, like so many overwrought home optimization projects, during the pandemic.

My wife and I, like many people stuck inside, were ordering takeout more frequently. We wanted to support local restaurants, reduce the dish load, and live a little. It became clear early on that app-based delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats were not the best way to support local businesses. If a restaurant had its own ordering site or a preferred service, we wanted to use that—or even, heaven forfend, call the place.

The secondary issue was that we kept ordering from the same places, and we wanted to mix it up. Sometimes we’d want to pick something up nearby. Sometimes we wanted to avoid an entire category (“Too many carbs this week, no pasta”) or try the newest places we knew about, or maybe a forgotten classic. Or just give me three places randomly, creative constraints, please—it’s Friday.

At its core, this is a shared list, i.e. spreadsheet. But my spreadsheet maintenance enthusiasm greatly outweighs that of my spouse. More than that, have you ever pulled up a Google Sheet or online Excel file on your normal-sized phone to make changes? I do so only in moments of true desperation.

For things that are bigger than a note or dry-erase board but smaller than paying for some single-use, subscription-based app, I build little private webapps with Glide. You might use something else, but Glide is a really nice entry into the spreadsheet-to-app milieu. The apps it creates are the kind that can easily be shared and installed (i.e., “Add to Home Screen”) on phones, tablets, or desktops, from a browser. Here’s how it worked for me.

Why you might want to make a little personal webapp

Glide is technically a no-code tool aimed at businesses, but you get one user-based published app for free, and you can have more “private” apps if you’re truly keeping it to your household or friend group. Each full-fledged app can have 10 users and up to 25,000 rows, which should probably be enough for most uses.

I do wish there was a “prosumer” kind of account that billed for less than $828 per year. If you want more than one (relatively) small-scale apps, there are alternatives, like Google’s AppSheet (included in most paid Google Workspace accounts). But most are just as business-oriented, and none have struck me as elegant a tool as Glide.

As mentioned, my primary use for a sheet-based app is to make searching, filtering, reading, and editing that sheet far easier. In the case of my takeout app, that meant being able to search anything—a specific restaurant, “tacos,” a quadrant of the District of Columbia. And a sorting option for when I added a restaurant, so I can find the place I added while a friend was recommending it.

Let’s whip up a webapp

Google Sheet showing the columns Restaurant, Category, Address, Order Link, Phone, Quadrant, Notes/Hours, and Added — The spreadsheet behind my “DC Takeout” app. Credit: Kevin Purdy

Throwing that sheet fresh into Glide, it’s not off to a bad start. The main view of Glide is a usable version of your app, and I can see that I can already type whatever I want into the search bar, and it will search across fields.

I could honestly stop here if I wasn’t picky about some of the quirks I’m seeing. The app is showing screens, “Public” and “Users,” and I want to hide them. In the upper-left corner, in Navigation, I’ll click an eye icon to hide the “Users” section. With “Public” selected, I’ll change the Label in the upper-right to “DC Takeout,” and, if I was going to have more than one screen, give it an icon.

The app already provided a “+” button for adding restaurants, just a simple vertical stack of entry boxes, along with a date picker for Date Added. If you prefer something static, toggle off the options in the “Actions” field in the bottom-right.

Searching is pretty robust, but what if you want to browse a broad category or just see stuff that’s nearby? In the “Options” section to the right, you can add in In-App Filter, which creates a familiar arrow-shaped three-bar button to the right of the search bar. I’ve added Quadrant and Category filters. If I want to go further here, it’s on me and my spreadsheet. Open on Mondays? Offers pick-up? Has a bar? The possibilities are endless, even if my weekend spreadsheet time is not.

Phone app showing a filter for quadrant and restaurant catgegory. — Simple filter for my takeout app. I need to get the category to be comma-separate values, not a single pile of descriptors. Credit: Kevin Purdy

What happens when you click on a restaurant? Right now, you see, essentially, a vertical readout of everything in that spreadsheet row. What could you see? Well, you’ve got an address there, so how about a map?

Click on a restaurant in the fake phone, and on the left you can see “Components,” one of which is our map. Set the address to equal the address column in your sheet, and, in “Options,” set Visibility so that it only shows up when the address field is not empty. In “Actions,” you can set it so that clicking the map opens the phone’s default mapping app, set to the proper address. (If you’re struggling to get the right place to show up, you might want to check out a sample address in Mapbox’s API; it can be a little finicky about how it parses them.)

Map showing on a phone layout, with La Casina, a Romano pizza place, selected with details showing. — Take me to the slightly different pizza! Credit: Kevin Purdy

Glide offers dozens more ways to customize every little thing about your app.

That’s about all I need from a “mix up your takeout and use the right apps” app, one made mostly for me, my spouse, and nearby friends and visitors. Pretty much anything you’d find useful while sitting down at a spreadsheet, you can also make useful through a little phone webapp.

Joyful overkill

I went a good deal further with my “DIYRoot” app. After using a couple meal delivery services, I sussed out the kinds of recipe formulas they were mixing up each week, plus the items or equivalents I had found at nearby stores. Knowing that I could figure out the basic cooking, I made an app that listed as many recipes as I could find, broke them into components, let me add them to an erasable menu plan and shopping list, and even had some pictures.

Image of a phone app, showing — The best version of an entry has an image, ingredients, and recipe. There’s a button to add it to the menu and all the items to a list. Credit: Kevin Purdy

I didn’t quite master this app (the shopping list is plagued by blank items/rows), and it’s now technically an outdated “Classic” Glide app; maybe I’ll give it another shot. More successful is my most recent effort, “Pantry Items,” which is just a searchable list of spices and sauces, a note about how much I have left of each, and, through a webhook, add anything I see missing to a shopping list on Bring.

I can feel some people reading this article demanding that I just learn Swift or some mobile-friendly JavaScript package and make some real apps, but I steadfastly refuse. I enjoy the messy middle of programming, where I have just enough app, API, and logic knowledge to make something small for my friends and family that’s always accessible on this little computer I carry everywhere, but I have no ambitions to make it “real.” Anyone can add to it through the relatively simple spreadsheet. Heck, I’ll even take feature requests if I’m feeling gracious.

I use Glide, but you might have something else even simpler (and should recommend it as such in the comments). Just be warned that once you start thinking (or overthinking) along these lines, it can be hard to stop, even without the worldwide pandemic.

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2024: The year AI drove everyone crazy

AI, AI jabberwocky, air canada, Anthropic, Biz & IT, chatgpt, confabulation, Features, Google, GPT-4o, jabberwocky, machine learning, Meta, openai, OpenAI o1, rat genitals, Wonka / Mike M. / December 26, 2024

What do eating rocks, rat genitals, and Willy Wonka have in common? AI, of course.

It’s been a wild year in tech thanks to the intersection between humans and artificial intelligence. 2024 brought a parade of AI oddities, mishaps, and wacky moments that inspired odd behavior from both machines and man. From AI-generated rat genitals to search engines telling people to eat rocks, this year proved that AI has been having a weird impact on the world.

Why the weirdness? If we had to guess, it may be due to the novelty of it all. Generative AI and applications built upon Transformer-based AI models are still so new that people are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. People have been struggling to grasp both the implications and potential applications of the new technology. Riding along with the hype, different types of AI that may end up being ill-advised, such as automated military targeting systems, have also been introduced.

It’s worth mentioning that aside from crazy news, we saw fewer weird AI advances in 2024 as well. For example, Claude 3.5 Sonnet launched in June held off the competition as a top model for most of the year, while OpenAI’s o1 used runtime compute to expand GPT-4o’s capabilities with simulated reasoning. Advanced Voice Mode and NotebookLM also emerged as novel applications of AI tech, and the year saw the rise of more capable music synthesis models and also better AI video generators, including several from China.

But for now, let’s get down to the weirdness.

ChatGPT goes insane

Early in the year, things got off to an exciting start when OpenAI’s ChatGPT experienced a significant technical malfunction that caused the AI model to generate increasingly incoherent responses, prompting users on Reddit to describe the system as “having a stroke” or “going insane.” During the glitch, ChatGPT’s responses would begin normally but then deteriorate into nonsensical text, sometimes mimicking Shakespearean language.

OpenAI later revealed that a bug in how the model processed language caused it to select the wrong words during text generation, leading to nonsense outputs (basically the text version of what we at Ars now call “jabberwockies“). The company fixed the issue within 24 hours, but the incident led to frustrations about the black box nature of commercial AI systems and users’ tendency to anthropomorphize AI behavior when it malfunctions.

The great Wonka incident

A photo of the Willy's Chocolate Experience, which did not match AI-generated promises. — A photo of “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” (inset), which did not match AI-generated promises, shown in the background. Credit: Stuart Sinclair

The collision between AI-generated imagery and consumer expectations fueled human frustrations in February when Scottish families discovered that “Willy’s Chocolate Experience,” an unlicensed Wonka-ripoff event promoted using AI-generated wonderland images, turned out to be little more than a sparse warehouse with a few modest decorations.

Parents who paid £35 per ticket encountered a situation so dire they called the police, with children reportedly crying at the sight of a person in what attendees described as a “terrifying outfit.” The event, created by House of Illuminati in Glasgow, promised fantastical spaces like an “Enchanted Garden” and “Twilight Tunnel” but delivered an underwhelming experience that forced organizers to shut down mid-way through its first day and issue refunds.

While the show was a bust, it brought us an iconic new meme for job disillusionment in the form of a photo: the green-haired Willy’s Chocolate Experience employee who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else on earth at that moment.

Mutant rat genitals expose peer review flaws

An actual laboratory rat, who is intrigued. Credit: Getty | Photothek

In February, Ars Technica senior health reporter Beth Mole covered a peer-reviewed paper published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology that created an uproar in the scientific community when researchers discovered it contained nonsensical AI-generated images, including an anatomically incorrect rat with oversized genitals. The paper, authored by scientists at Xi’an Honghui Hospital in China, openly acknowledged using Midjourney to create figures that contained gibberish text labels like “Stemm cells” and “iollotte sserotgomar.”

The publisher, Frontiers, posted an expression of concern about the article titled “Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway” and launched an investigation into how the obviously flawed imagery passed through peer review. Scientists across social media platforms expressed dismay at the incident, which mirrored concerns about AI-generated content infiltrating academic publishing.

Chatbot makes erroneous refund promises for Air Canada

If, say, ChatGPT gives you the wrong name for one of the seven dwarves, it’s not such a big deal. But in February, Ars senior policy reporter Ashley Belanger covered a case of costly AI confabulation in the wild. In the course of online text conversations, Air Canada’s customer service chatbot told customers inaccurate refund policy information. The airline faced legal consequences later when a tribunal ruled the airline must honor commitments made by the automated system. Tribunal adjudicator Christopher Rivers determined that Air Canada bore responsibility for all information on its website, regardless of whether it came from a static page or AI interface.

The case set a precedent for how companies deploying AI customer service tools could face legal obligations for automated systems’ responses, particularly when they fail to warn users about potential inaccuracies. Ironically, the airline had reportedly spent more on the initial AI implementation than it would have cost to maintain human workers for simple queries, according to Air Canada executive Steve Crocker.

Will Smith lampoons his digital double

The real Will Smith eating spaghetti, parodying an AI-generated video from 2023. Credit: Will Smith / Getty Images / Benj Edwards

In March 2023, a terrible AI-generated video of Will Smith’s AI doppelganger eating spaghetti began making the rounds online. The AI-generated version of the actor gobbled down the noodles in an unnatural and disturbing way. Almost a year later, in February 2024, Will Smith himself posted a parody response video to the viral jabberwocky on Instagram, featuring AI-like deliberately exaggerated pasta consumption, complete with hair-nibbling and finger-slurping antics.

Given the rapid evolution of AI video technology, particularly since OpenAI had just unveiled its Sora video model four days earlier, Smith’s post sparked discussion in his Instagram comments where some viewers initially struggled to distinguish between the genuine footage and AI generation. It was an early sign of “deep doubt” in action as the tech increasingly blurs the line between synthetic and authentic video content.

Robot dogs learn to hunt people with AI-guided rifles

A still image of a robotic quadruped armed with a remote weapons system, captured from a video provided by Onyx Industries. Credit: Onyx Industries

At some point in recent history—somewhere around 2022—someone took a look at robotic quadrupeds and thought it would be a great idea to attach guns to them. A few years later, the US Marine Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) began evaluating armed robotic quadrupeds developed by Ghost Robotics. The robot “dogs” integrated Onyx Industries’ SENTRY remote weapon systems, which featured AI-enabled targeting that could detect and track people, drones, and vehicles, though the systems require human operators to authorize any weapons discharge.

The military’s interest in armed robotic dogs followed a broader trend of weaponized quadrupeds entering public awareness. This included viral videos of consumer robots carrying firearms, and later, commercial sales of flame-throwing models. While MARSOC emphasized that weapons were just one potential use case under review, experts noted that the increasing integration of AI into military robotics raised questions about how long humans would remain in control of lethal force decisions.

Microsoft Windows AI is watching

A screenshot of Microsoft's new — A screenshot of Microsoft’s new “Recall” feature in action. Credit: Microsoft

In an era where many people already feel like they have no privacy due to tech encroachments, Microsoft dialed it up to an extreme degree in May. That’s when Microsoft unveiled a controversial Windows 11 feature called “Recall” that continuously captures screenshots of users’ PC activities every few seconds for later AI-powered search and retrieval. The feature, designed for new Copilot+ PCs using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips, promised to help users find past activities, including app usage, meeting content, and web browsing history.

While Microsoft emphasized that Recall would store encrypted snapshots locally and allow users to exclude specific apps or websites, the announcement raised immediate privacy concerns, as Ars senior technology reporter Andrew Cunningham covered. It also came with a technical toll, requiring significant hardware resources, including 256GB of storage space, with 25GB dedicated to storing approximately three months of user activity. After Microsoft pulled the initial test version due to public backlash, Recall later entered public preview in November with reportedly enhanced security measures. But secure spyware is still spyware—Recall, when enabled, still watches nearly everything you do on your computer and keeps a record of it.

Google Search told people to eat rocks

In May, Ars senior gaming reporter Kyle Orland (who assisted commendably with the AI beat throughout the year) covered Google’s newly launched AI Overview feature. It faced immediate criticism when users discovered that it frequently provided false and potentially dangerous information in its search result summaries. Among its most alarming responses, the system advised humans could safely consume rocks, incorrectly citing scientific sources about the geological diet of marine organisms. The system’s other errors included recommending nonexistent car maintenance products, suggesting unsafe food preparation techniques, and confusing historical figures who shared names.

The problems stemmed from several issues, including the AI treating joke posts as factual sources and misinterpreting context from original web content. But most of all, the system relies on web results as indicators of authority, which we called a flawed design. While Google defended the system, stating these errors occurred mainly with uncommon queries, a company spokesperson acknowledged they would use these “isolated examples” to refine their systems. But to this day, AI Overview still makes frequent mistakes.

Stable Diffusion generates body horror

An AI-generated image created using Stable Diffusion 3 of a girl lying in the grass. Credit: HorneyMetalBeing

In June, Stability AI’s release of the image synthesis model Stable Diffusion 3 Medium drew criticism online for its poor handling of human anatomy in AI-generated images. Users across social media platforms shared examples of the model producing what we now like to call jabberwockies—AI generation failures with distorted bodies, misshapen hands, and surreal anatomical errors, and many in the AI image-generation community viewed it as a significant step backward from previous image-synthesis capabilities.

Reddit users attributed these failures to Stability AI’s aggressive filtering of adult content from the training data, which apparently impaired the model’s ability to accurately render human figures. The troubled release coincided with broader organizational challenges at Stability AI, including the March departure of CEO Emad Mostaque, multiple staff layoffs, and the exit of three key engineers who had helped develop the technology. Some of those engineers founded Black Forest Labs in August and released Flux, which has become the latest open-weights AI image model to beat.

ChatGPT Advanced Voice imitates human voice in testing

An illustration of a computer synthesizer spewing out letters.

AI voice-synthesis models are master imitators these days, and they are capable of much more than many people realize. In August, we covered a story where OpenAI’s ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode feature unexpectedly imitated a user’s voice during the company’s internal testing, revealed by OpenAI after the fact in safety testing documentation. To prevent future instances of an AI assistant suddenly speaking in your own voice (which, let’s be honest, would probably freak people out), the company created an output classifier system to prevent unauthorized voice imitation. OpenAI says that Advanced Voice Mode now catches all meaningful deviations from approved system voices.

Independent AI researcher Simon Willison discussed the implications with Ars Technica, noting that while OpenAI restricted its model’s full voice synthesis capabilities, similar technology would likely emerge from other sources within the year. Meanwhile, the rapid advancement of AI voice replication has caused general concern about its potential misuse, although companies like ElevenLabs have already been offering voice cloning services for some time.

San Francisco’s robotic car horn symphony

A Waymo self-driving car in front of Google's San Francisco headquarters, San Francisco, California, June 7, 2024. — A Waymo self-driving car in front of Google’s San Francisco headquarters, San Francisco, California, June 7, 2024. Credit: Getty Images

In August, San Francisco residents got a noisy taste of robo-dystopia when Waymo’s self-driving cars began creating an unexpected nightly disturbance in the South of Market district. In a parking lot off 2nd Street, the cars congregated autonomously every night during rider lulls at 4 am and began engaging in extended honking matches at each other while attempting to park.

Local resident Christopher Cherry’s initial optimism about the robotic fleet’s presence dissolved as the mechanical chorus grew louder each night, affecting residents in nearby high-rises. The nocturnal tech disruption served as a lesson in the unintentional effects of autonomous systems when run in aggregate.

Larry Ellison dreams of all-seeing AI cameras

A colorized photo of CCTV cameras in London, 2024.

In September, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison painted a bleak vision of ubiquitous AI surveillance during a company financial meeting. The 80-year-old database billionaire described a future where AI would monitor citizens through networks of cameras and drones, asserting that the oversight would ensure lawful behavior from both police and the public.

His surveillance predictions reminded us of parallels to existing systems in China, where authorities already used AI to sort surveillance data on citizens as part of the country’s “sharp eyes” campaign from 2015 to 2020. Ellison’s statement reflected the sort of worst-case tech surveillance state scenario—likely antithetical to any sort of free society—that dozens of sci-fi novels of the 20th century warned us about.

A dead father sends new letters home

An AI-generated image featuring Dad's Uppercase handwriting. — An AI-generated image featuring my late father’s handwriting. Credit: Benj Edwards / Flux

AI has made many of us do weird things in 2024, including this writer. In October, I used an AI synthesis model called Flux to reproduce my late father’s handwriting with striking accuracy. After scanning 30 samples from his engineering notebooks, I trained the model using computing time that cost less than five dollars. The resulting text captured his distinctive uppercase style, which he developed during his career as an electronics engineer.

I enjoyed creating images showing his handwriting in various contexts, from folder labels to skywriting, and made the trained model freely available online for others to use. While I approached it as a tribute to my father (who would have appreciated the technical achievement), many people found the whole experience weird and somewhat disturbing. The things we unhinged Bing Chat-like journalists do to bring awareness to a topic are sometimes unconventional. So I guess it counts for this list!

For 2025? Expect even more AI

Thanks for reading Ars Technica this past year and following along with our team coverage of this rapidly emerging and expanding field. We appreciate your kind words of support. Ars Technica’s 2024 AI words of the year were: vibemarking, deep doubt, and the aforementioned jabberwocky. The old stalwart “confabulation” also made several notable appearances. Tune in again next year when we continue to try to figure out how to concisely describe novel scenarios in emerging technology by labeling them.

Looking back, our prediction for 2024 in AI last year was “buckle up.” It seems fitting, given the weirdness detailed above. Especially the part about the robot dogs with guns. For 2025, AI will likely inspire more chaos ahead, but also potentially get put to serious work as a productivity tool, so this time, our prediction is “buckle down.”

Finally, we’d like to ask: What was the craziest story about AI in 2024 from your perspective? Whether you love AI or hate it, feel free to suggest your own additions to our list in the comments. Happy New Year!

Benj Edwards is Ars Technica’s Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site’s dedicated AI beat in 2022. He’s also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC.

2024: The year AI drove everyone crazy Read More »

The 20 most-read stories of 2024 on Ars Technica

2024, Features, RECAP, Staff / Paul Patrick / December 25, 2024

Ars looks back at the top stories of the year.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Hey, look at that! Another year has flown by, and I suspect many people would say “good riddance” to 2024.

The 2020s have been quite the decade so far. No matter what insanity has transpired by a particular December 31, the following year has shown up and promptly said, “Hold my beer.”

The biggest news at Ars in 2024 was our first site redesign in nearly a decade. We’re proud of Ars 9.0 (we’re up to 9.0.3 now), and we have continued to make changes based on your feedback. The best kind of feedback, however, is your clicks. Those clicks power this recap, so read on to learn which stories our readers found especially compelling.

20. NASA is about to make its most important safety decision in nearly a generation

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, seen docked at the International Space Station through the window of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Credit: NASA

In June, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were sent into space for a mission slated to last a little over a week. Six months later, they are still orbiting this terrestrial ball.

The two retired naval test pilots were the first people to catch a ride to orbit on the Boeing Starliner. Unfortunately for them (and Boeing), Starliner developed problems with its propulsion system.

Figuring out how to get them back down to Earth was arguably the biggest safety decision NASA has had to make in decades. Stephen Clark unpacked the situation, looking at how NASA’s culture of safety has evolved since the Challenger accident.

19. macOS 15 Sequoia: The Ars Technica review

One constant in our year-end recaps is operating system reviews. During 2024, Apple’s annual macOS release was the sole OS review to hit the top 20.

Touted as “the AI one,” most of the Apple Intelligence features didn’t show up until macOS 15.1 was released. The overall verdict on Sequoia? 2024’s installment of macOS was a solid update. Andrew Cunningham liked the new window tiling, mostly unchanged backward compatibility, and all of the minor but useful tweaks to many of the built-in apps.

18. What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world

xz Utils is a popular open-source data-compression utility for *nix OSes. In late March, one developer floored developers everywhere when he revealed a backdoor in the utility. The malicious code planted in versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 targeted encrypted SSH connections.

Thankfully, the malicious code was caught before it was merged into Debian and Red Hat. Years in the making and described the “best executed supply chain attack” by one cryptography engineer, the effort came thisclose to success. Dan Goodin explains what we know and how this might have happened.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | NASA

One of the problems humankind faces as we climb out of Earth’s gravitational well is cosmic radiation. On a long voyage to Mars, the crew will need to be protected against solar storms and other space radiation. Right now, ensuring that level of protection would require tons of shielding material, but that may change.

Active shielding was proposed in the 1960s, but the initial research didn’t result in any working prototypes. Now, the ESA and NASA are looking at magnetic fields and electrostatic shields to protect space travelers. Researchers have built and tested small-scale models of their electrostatic shields, and the ESA is working on superconducting magnets.

16. I added a ratgdo to my garage door, and I don’t know why I waited so long

Messing around with the electronics in our dwellings is part of the Ars DNA. In 1998, we were overclocking our Celerons. In 2024, we’re messing with our garage door openers.

Senior Tech Editor Lee Hutchinson hates looking out the back window to see if he remembered to close his garage door, so he stuck a Raspberry Pi out there that would email him every time the garage door opened or closed. Unfortunately for Lee and his Raspberry Pi, Houston is hot and humid for approximately 10 months out of the year, so his tiny computer gave up the ghost after one 98° day too many.

Instead of using the MyQ app that came with his garage door opener, he grabbed a ratgdo—a tiny little board with built-in Wi-Fi that gets wired into the garage door opener’s terminals. The result? A daily experience of the magic of functional home automation.

15. Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid moves like no robot you’ve ever seen

Moves like Jagger? Not quite, but the latest Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics moves like it could bust a move out on the dance floor.

This Atlas uses electricity instead of hydraulics. While the old Atlas was capable of lifting heavy objects and traveling across all kinds of terrain, the heavy and complicated hydraulics made it massive. The all-electric version can move in ways that its predecessor couldn’t, as there are no hydraulic lines to worry about. As a result, the Atlas has an uncanny range of motion.

Hyundai was the first company to test Atlas in a manufacturing environment.

14. Unpatchable vulnerability in Apple chip leaks secret encryption keys

Even though CPU manufacturers have been baking security features into their silicon for some time, malicious actors and researchers keep poking and prodding, looking for security flaws. A group of researchers found a dreaded unpatchable vulnerability in Apple silicon, one that doesn’t even require root access.

The attack, dubbed GoFetch, works against classical and hardened encryption algorithms and can extract a 2048-bit RSA key in less than an hour. It takes advantage of the chips’ data memory-dependent prefetcher, which optimizes performance by reducing latency between the CPU and RAM. Since you can’t patch silicon, the only solution is adding defenses to cryptographic code, and those come with performance penalties.

13. Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot

Depending on how you feel about interacting with actual humans for customer support, the rise of AI customer-service chatbots has been either a boon or a curse. An example of the latter comes courtesy of Air Canada.

Jake Moffatt had to fly from Vancouver to Toronto for his grandmother’s funeral, so he asked Air Canada’s chatbot to explain the airline’s bereavement policy. The chatbot gave Moffatt incorrect instructions, telling him that he could be reimbursed for a reduced bereavement rate up to 90 days of the ticket being issued. Unfortunately for everyone involved, this was not the policy of Air Canada.

The airline refused to honor the policy spelled out by its chatbot, at least until Moffatt took them to small claims court and won. When we last checked, the chatbot was no longer active.

12. In rare move from printing industry, HP actually has a decent idea

Someone touching a piece of paper that's sitting in a printer

There are some days that I long for my old Stylewriter printer. It was slow and dumb as a rock, but it more than adequately performed the function of putting ink on paper. I now have a multifunction printer/scanner/fax that suffers print quality problems partly because of how little it’s used. It might be different if I wanted to spend over $300 for a set of HP-branded toner cartridges instead of roughly $80 for generic ones, but I’d rather live with faded printouts.

HP has rightfully been the target of ire from consumers, and as Scharon pointed out, that company has been a major cause of broken trust between printer OEMs and consumers. So we were all surprised when HP came up with an idea that could simplify and speed up some print jobs. Having a new feature that would improve the printing feature is so much better than, say, using DRM to ensure third-party products don’t function correctly with HP printers.

11. It turns out NASA’s Mars helicopter was much more revolutionary than we knew

Ingenuity made its first flight on Mars in April 2021. Seventy-two flights and nearly three years later, the small helicopter made its last flight. As Eric Berger noted, Ingenuity stood out from other NASA hardware in two ways. First, it proved that powered flight on other worlds was a possibility. Despite Mars’ very thin atmosphere, the copter was able to zoom around on its carbon fiber blades.

More importantly, Ingenuity was built with commercial, off-the-shelf hardware. The success of its mission has opened the door to other possibilities, like flying a nuclear-powered drone through the thick, nitrogen-heavy atmosphere of Titan.

10. After Russian ship docks to space station, astronauts report a foul smell

Around these parts, the usual response to a foul smell is a glance in the dog’s direction. But when you’re in a tiny space station orbiting the Earth, a bad odor is particularly worrying, as astronauts on the International Space Station found out in November.

When the Russian cargo craft docked with the ISS, the Russian cosmonauts that opened the hatch were greeted by a wave of stink. The “toxic” smell was so bad that the Russians immediately shut the hatch.

Ultimately, the astronauts crewing the ISS were not in danger, and after some extra air scrubbing, the hatch was opened and the supplies unloaded.

9. What I learned when I replaced my cheap Pi 5 PC with a no-name Amazon mini desktop

Two cheapo Intel mini PCs, a Raspberry Pi 5, and an Xbox controller for scale. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

One of the fun things about working at Ars Technica is watching Andrew Cunningham stretch the limits of obsolete or inexpensive hardware and software. His attempt to use a Raspberry Pi 5 as a daily-driver desktop had mixed results, but that didn’t stop him from trying out a couple of sub-$200 PCs from Amazon.

Andrew ultimately settled on the $170 Bostgame B100 and $180 GMKtec NucBox G2. Both of them used Intel Processor N100 quad-core chips and could run Windows 11 along with some Linux distros. If you’re curious about what it’s like to use a tiny, inexpensive desktop for your daily computing needs, check out Andrew’s write-up.

8. Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent

Complaining about your employer online is a time-honored tradition. Frustrated workers vent all over the Internet, but the hub of employee griping has historically been Glassdoor. That changed for a lot of folks when Glassdoor inexplicably decided to link real names to formerly anonymous accounts.

When Glassdoor acquired the professional networking app Fishbowl in 2021, every Glassdoor user was also signed up for a Fishbowl account. The big difference is that Fishbowl requires identity verification, so Glassdoor changed its terms of service to require the same.

“Since we require all users to have their names on their profiles, we will need to update your profile to reflect this,” a Glassdoor employee wrote to a user named Monica, reassuring her that “your anonymity will still be protected.” Monica did not trust the company’s assurances that it would go to court to “defeat requests for user information,” instead requesting that Glassdoor delete her account entirely. She wasn’t the only one.

7. What’s happening at Tesla? Here’s what experts think.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Beata Zawrzel

Tesla is responsible for two things: making electronic vehicles a realistic option for most drivers and helping make founder Elon Musk the world’s richest person. But after years of astronomical growth, Tesla has been on a downward slide. The Chinese market has gotten much tougher for Tesla—and everyone else—due to Chinese OEMs churning out low-cost BEVs. There have been safety problems with Tesla, and the company’s once legendary profit margins have crated to below industry average.

What’s going on? Our crack automotive reporter Jonathan Gitlin talked to some experts to see if Tesla was primed for a turnaround or if its slump was indicative of more troubles to come.

6.The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station on June 13. Credit: NASA

It all started with some weird sounds. “I’ve got a question about Starliner,” astronaut Butch Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston in late August. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker… I don’t know what’s making it.”

While that space oddity turned out to be just a weird anomaly, it may have helped prepare Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams for the bad Starliner news that followed—and an extra-long stay in orbit.

5. Here’s what it’s like to charge an EV at Electrify America’s new station

A row of EVs charging at EA's flagship location in San Francisco — Credit: Roberto Baldwin

I’ve been an EV owner for five years. During that time I’ve been exposed to just about every facet of EV ownership, including charging on road trips. With the right combination of apps (shoutout to PlugShare) and planning, road trips should be problem-free. But sometimes chargers are few and far between, out of service, crowded, or just plain janky.

Out of all the charging networks—and I’ve tried almost all of them at some point—Electrify America has been the most reliable for me. Their new flagship charging station is a far cry from their outposts typically located at the far end of a giant parking lot connected to a Walmart or Meijer. Instead of aimlessly wandering the aisles of a big-box retailer, drivers can chill in a well-appointed and secure space while their cars are topped off with electrons.

Want to increase EV adoption? Get more of these working, secure, and well-lit stations up and running ASAP.

4. Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else”

Signage outside Dell Technologies headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, US, on Monday, Feb. 6, 2023.

Ars has been all about the remote workforce since our launch in 1998. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, remote work became a thing for millions of workers. Some companies have adapted nicely to this new reality, realizing that their employees could do their jobs just as well from the comfort of their homes while pocketing some savings from a reduced office footprint.

Others have been less sanguine about remote work. Some have tried luring workers back to the office with perks, while others—like Dell—have been more coercive in their approach. The PC manufacturer told employees who stayed remote that they would be giving up on promotions or changing roles within the company. Internal tracking data showed that almost half of Dell’s workforce simply shrugged and stayed remote, consequences or not.

3. What I learned from using a Raspberry Pi 5 as my main computer for two weeks

The Raspberry Pi 5 inside its official case. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

We read about Andrew’s experience with a pair of sub-$200 desktop PCs, but this story is what started it all. The spec sheet looked promising enough, with support for two 4K displays running at 60 Hz and space for an internal PCIe SSD, but the experience was not what he’d hoped.

Andrew’s time using the Raspberry Pi 5 as his daily driver started out disappointing, but once he reset his expectations, he ended up pleasantly surprised by the experience.

If you’re looking for the cheapest mini desktop PC possible, you’ll want to look elsewhere, but if you want to see how far along Arm Linux has come, read Andrew’s article.

2. What happens when an astronaut in orbit says he’s not coming back?

The STS-51-B mission begins with the liftoff of the *Challenger* from Pad 39A in April 1985. Credit: NASA

Being strapped into a small space and thundered into space aboard a giant rocket has to be an incredibly stressful experience. But sometimes the stress doesn’t end with a successful launch. We don’t often get to peer behind the curtains and get a glimpse of the mental state of an astronaut, so when we do, it’s jarring.

“Hey, if you guys don’t give me a chance to repair my instrument, I’m not going back,” said astronaut Taylor Wang during a Space Shuttle mission in 1985. The first Chinese-born person in space, Wang was heading up an experiment on the behavior of liquid droplets in microgravity. When it didn’t work at the outset, Wang asked permission to troubleshoot it and make repairs. When Mission Control denied his request, he uttered that chilling sentence.

1. The surprise is not that Boeing lost commercial crew but that it finished at all

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is lifted to be placed atop an Atlas V rocket for its first crewed launch. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Not only has there been a lot of Boeing on this top 20 list, there has been a lot of Boeing in the news all year. And most of that news has been bad.

Eric Berger dives deep into the development of Starliner, outlining the problems and setbacks that plagued its development, trying to answer the big question of how a company like Boeing, which had been at the acme of crewed spaceflight for decades, fell so far behind competition that didn’t even exist 20 years ago?

Thank you for making Ars a daily read during 2024. May you and those you love have a happy and safe holiday season.

Eric Bangeman is the Managing Editor of Ars Technica. In addition to overseeing the daily operations at Ars, Eric also manages story development for the Policy and Automotive sections. He lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, where he enjoys cycling, playing the bass, and refereeing rugby.

The 20 most-read stories of 2024 on Ars Technica Read More »

TV Technica 2024: Our picks for the best of TV

Best of 2024, culture, Features, TV Technica / Mike M. / December 24, 2024

From wacky crime capers and dystopian video game adaptions to sweeping historical epics, 2024 had a little of everything

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Editor’s note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed shows that some might consider spoiler-y.

This was another good year for television, with established favorites sharing space on our list with some intriguing new shows. Really, 2024 had a little of everything, from wacky crime capers (Bad Monkey) and Satanic Panic (Hysteria) to dystopian video game adaptations (Fallout) and sweeping historical epics (Shōgun), with plenty of genre-mashup delights in between. While streaming platforms continue to dominate, the selection is more evenly distributed across them this year, with only Hulu and Netflix snagging more than two slots (depending on whether or not you lump Hulu together with Disney+ after the merger).

As always, we’re opting for an unranked list, with the exception of our “year’s best” vote at the very end, so you might look over the variety of genres and options and possibly add surprises to your eventual watchlist. We invite you to head to the comments and add your own favorite TV shows released in 2024.

Interior Chinatown (Hulu)

This meta action comedy is showrunner Charles Yu’s adaption of his own 2020 satirical novel of the same name, which employed the screenplay format as a narrative structure. Interior Chinatown keeps that concept; here, the characters are, in turn, characters in a police procedural called Black and White, clearly modeled on the Law and Order franchise.

Jimmy O. Yang plays Willis Wu, a waiter in a Chinese restaurant who is initially unaware that he is just a background character on the show within the show. Then he witnesses a kidnapping and detectives Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy) and Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones) are called in to investigate. They actually can’t see or hear Willis—or any background character, for that matter—unless he happens to have a purpose to the spotlight action. So Willis and Chinatown’s residents are just going about their business and every now and then the spotlight flashes on and Green and Turner saunter through for a “scene.”

As Willis tries to solve the case of his missing older brother with the help of supporting character Detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), he uncovers a possible criminal underground enterprise in Chinatown and some well-kept family secrets. The writing is clever, the plot twists abound, the characters are fully drawn, and there are plenty of humorous and heartfelt moments to break up the main action. Special shout-out to Ronny Chieng as Willis’ best friend Fatty, who has to take over Willis’ waiter duties and inadvertently becomes a viral sensation with his rude outbursts directed at non-Asian customers. White people actually start flocking to the restaurant to be verbally abused by “Mean Waiter,” much to Fatty’s exasperation. It’s those kinds of unexpected twists that make Interior Chinatown unique.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Penguin (Max)

My pick for the best television show in 2024 is a limited series based on the Batman universe character: The Penguin. It’s a sequel of sorts to The Batman film released in March 2022. The best way to describe the series, I believe, is The Sopranos comes to Gotham, but with even more grit and atmosphere. Batman is not involved at all. Colin Farrell plays the Penguin, whose real name is Oz Cobb, and who is struggling to rise to power in the fictional city’s criminal underworld. Viewers have to struggle to recognize Farrell, who is acting a tour de force beneath some pretty involved prosthetics and makeup.

The other standout performer is Cristin Milioti, who plays a presumed psychopathic serial killer but, well, I don’t want to spoil it. She’s fabulous. The whole show is amazing, actually, and I’m not normally one for comic book movies or television. I don’t recommend binging it but rather sipping each of the eight episodes as if it were fine wine.

—Eric Berger

Sweetpea (Starz)

Are killer psychopaths born or made? One might ponder that question after watching Sweetpea, the story of a shy young woman who has been bullied or ignored much of her life and finally snaps, with fatal consequences. Based on the novel by CJ Skuse, the series stars Ella Purnell (of Yellowjackets fame) as Rhiannon, an administrative assistant at her local newspaper who lives with her ailing dad and dog. But then everything goes wrong at once: her father dies, her dog is run over, and her sister insists on selling the family home, forcing Rhiannon to find a new place—and the estate agent is Rhiannon’s high school nemesis, Julia (Nicole Lecky).

Sweetpea is essentially a revenge fantasy. It would be so easy for the viewer to just become exasperated with Rhiannon’s passivity and occasional self-pitying rants, but Purnell’s intense performance brings out the rage and violence simmering underneath that quiet surface. Rhiannon really is invisible to most people, brought home when she takes refuge from the rain at an underpass and a passing drunk guy ends up peeing all over her. “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you there,” he shrugs. It’s a powerful moment when an enraged Rhiannon stabs this complete stranger over and over, screaming, “Can you see me now?” Along with the guilt and fear come increased confidence and strength, and maybe even a love interest—but can Rhiannon really get away with murder?

—Jennifer Ouellette

Matlock (CBS)

Children of the late ’80s/early ’90s will no doubt have fond memories of the popular mystery series/legal drama Matlock, starring Andy Griffith in the title role of Andy Matlock, criminal defense attorney. We now have a gender-flipped version starring Kathy Bates, but it’s not a remake. Rather, Bates plays a wealthy retired lawyer named Madeleine Kingston who goes undercover as a legal assistant at a large law firm, taking on the alias surname of Matlock because the show was one of her deceased daughter’s favorites.

Matty’s objective: to find evidence that the firm covered up the fact that an opioid manufactured by one of their pharmaceutical giant clients was highly addictive, thereby contributing to her daughter’s death by opioid overdose. But first she has to prove herself by helping win several smaller cases, all while juggling a dual identity and nosing around the firm’s files on the sly. Honestly, it’s refreshing to see a simple, case-of-the-week (with a longer season arc) network series with likable characters, good writing, and strong performances throughout the cast. It’s a winning combination that makes Matlock the perfect comfort watch.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Star Trek: Lower Decks S5 (Paramount+)

The animated adventures of the crew of the USS Cerritos had its fifth and final season this year. Set in a post-Voyager, pre-Picard timeframe, which for many is Starfleet in its golden era, it was initially dismissed by some as “Rick and Morty in space” due to previous work from its creators. But over the past five seasons, Lower Decks has proven to be Star Trek through and through—just animated and also funny. And quite bawdy.

It’s fair to say that there’s a lot of fan service in Lower Decks, but also that this fan likes what he’s being served. Deep cuts abound, from across decades of Trek canon, and like previous seasons, a number of guest stars show up in episodes, including Brent Spiner (Data in The Next Generation), Alfre Woodard (Lily Sloan in First Contact), Andrew Robinson (Elim Garak in Deep Space 9), Alexander Siddig (Julian Bashir in DS9), Jolene Blalock (T’Pol in Enterprise), and Garrett Wang (Harry Kim in Voyager). But perhaps not entirely as you might expect them—the overarching plot this season involves rifts being opened to parallel universes in the multiverse, potentially destroying them all.

At the time of writing the final episode has yet to air, but the one that precedes it (“Fissure Quest”) is Lower Decks at its very finest. It paints Starfleet at its optimistic best, pokes a whole bunch of nostalgia buttons, and makes me laugh repeatedly. Not every episode in season 5 has been quite as good, but it wouldn’t be real Trek if there wasn’t the occasional miss.

It is within the realms of possibility that Paramount+’s cancellation will not be the end for the show, with fans hoping another streaming network could pick it up, the way that Netflix took over showing the second season of Star Trek: Prodigy that Paramount wanted to shelve. Right now, the odds of that happening are pretty remote, though, and in the spirit of optimism best embodied by Mariner and her gang, let’s not be sad it’s over, let’s be happy it happened.

—Jonathan Gitlin

The Cowboy Channel’s “Texas Swing”

My personal end-of-year TV list would never be complete without a nod to The Cowboy Channel, i.e., the only place where you can follow your favorite cowboys and cowgirls throughout the rodeo season as they compete to rack up enough wins to qualify for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas in December. Seven years after its founding, The Cowboy Channel has clearly had a significant impact on boosting the visibility of the sport, as well as attendance at live rodeo events.

This year, we’re focusing on the so-called “Texas Swing”: five major rodeos in the Lone Star state running from the end of January through mid-April, in Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and San Angelo. The rodeo season runs year-round, officially from October 1 through September 30. But the Texas Swing collectively pays out several million dollars, giving athletes a chance to take an early lead in the rankings. (Most event winners at the Houston rodeo in particular typically end up qualifying for the NFR.) So there’s a lot at stake, and The Cowboy Channel’s extensive coverage and commentary is essential viewing for following those stakes.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Lincoln Lawyer S3 (Netflix)

Crime novel publishing juggernaut Michael Connelly already had one great TV series to his name, based on fictional detective Harry Bosch (the eponymous Bosch). Then Netflix developed The Lincoln Lawyer, based on Connelly’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller, starring Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in the title role. The nickname comes from the fact that Mickey often works out of his Lincoln Navigator. (There was also a 2011 film adaption, The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, but the two projects are very different.)

Season 3 was based on Connelly’s 2013 novel, The Gods of Guilt, and it’s adapted exceptionally well for television. As always, Garcia-Rulfo is terrific as Haller, surrounded by a top-notch supporting cast, notably Mickey’s legal aide and ex-wife, Lorna (Becki Newton), freelance investigator Cisco (Angus Sampson), and Izzy (Jazz Raycole), a former client who becomes Mickey’s personal driver (and later the office manager). But as with Bosch, it’s the city of Los Angeles that truly shines, a character in its own right, always lurking in the background.

—Jennifer Ouellette

True Detective: Night Country (HBO)

HBO’s True Detective, created by Nic Pizzolatto, was a pop-culture sensation when it debuted in 2014. (Remember “time is a flat circle”?) Its sophomore outing lacked the original’s surreal magic, but S3 was a solid return to form, mixing elements of noir and procedural drama to weave a haunting tale of fractured time and memory. Pizzolatto wasn’t involved in this year’s even stronger fourth season, subtitled Night Country, with Issa Lopez taking over as showrunner. Lopez has reinvented the series, creating what she viewed as a “dark mirror” to Pizzolatto’s three seasons that stands on its own.

Night Country is set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, where eight scientists at a research station mysteriously go missing one night with no trace, leaving a severed tongue at the scene. They are found soon after out on the ice, naked bodies tangled and frozen together in a pile, with their clothes neatly folded on the snow. It’s up to Detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) to crack the case. Night Country only tangentially evokes the Yellow King mythology of the prior three seasons, but it does capture the anthology series’ essential spookiness and supernatural undertones despite the all-too-human solution to the case.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Only Murders in the Building S4 (Hulu)

This charming Emmy-nominated comedy series has made our “Best of TV” list every season, and 2024 is no exception. Only Murders in the Building stars Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, all residents of the same Manhattan apartment complex, the Arconia. The unlikely trio teamed up to launch their own true crime podcast whenever someone died in the building under suspicious circumstances, chronicling their independent investigation to solve the murder. There’s no shortage of podcast fodder since this single building has a shockingly high murder rate.

This time around, the trio investigates the death of Charles’ longtime stunt double Sazz (Jane Lynch), who was shot dead in his apartment while he and his pals were celebrating wrapping the prior podcast season. It’s a complicated mystery involving the strange residents of the Arcadia’s West Tower, a bar specifically for stunt performers, and a film adaption of the trio’s first-season podcast. Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, and Eva Longoria play fictional versions of themselves cast as Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, respectively, and naturally get into the sleuthing spirit. And Meryl Streep makes a welcome return as Oliver’s actress girlfriend Loretta.

This season was a bit more meta than the prior three, largely because so much of the action shifts to Hollywood for several episodes—every episode title is a reference to an actual film—as well as a foray to Long Island to hide out with Charles’ sister Doreen (Melissa McCarthy). That served to keep things fresh after four seasons; S5 will focus on the death of the building’s doorman, found floating in the Arcadia’s fountain in the season finale. OMITB will eventually run out of fresh takes on its clever concept, but it hasn’t done so yet.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Sticky (Prime Video)

Perhaps you’ve heard of the infamous Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2011–2012, in which a group of thieves managed to steal over $18 million worth of maple syrup from a strategic reserve storage facility in Quebec. If not, you’ll probably find yourself googling it after watching The Sticky, a delightfully dark comic series very (very!) loosely based on the heist.

Margo Martindale plays Ruth Landry, a struggling maple syrup farmer who is about to lose her farm to the greedy head of the collective, Leonard (Guy Nadon). So she conspires with shady businessman Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos) and security guard Remy (Guillaume Cyr) to steal millions of dollars of maple syrup in revenge. Their elaborate plan soon hits all kinds of darkly hilarious snags that lead to more serious repercussions. With its flinty, morbid humor and collection of eccentric characters—including a star turn by Jamie Lee Curtis as a tough mafia enforcer named Bo Shea—The Sticky is definitely channeling the Cohn brothers’ Fargo. But series creators Brian Donovan and Ed Herro have added their unique stamp to make it very much their own.

—Jennifer Ouellette

St. Denis Medical (NBC)

Just when we thought smart, sophisticated network sitcoms were a disappearing relic from the golden age of broadcast television, NBC comes out with St. Denis Medical, a thoroughly enjoyable mockumentary in the style of The Office and Parks and Recreation. Here the setting is the chronically underfunded ER of an Oregon hospital, and the camera crew follows the overworked doctors and nurses as they go about their daily duties.

You’ve got Joyce (Wendi McLendon-Covey), the ambitious executive director; Alex (Allison Tolman), the workaholic supervising nurse; Bruce (Josh Lawson), a cocky trauma surgeon; burnt-out emergency physician Ron (David Alan Grier); newly hired nurse Matt (Mekki Leeper), who hails from a strict religious group in Montana; and his crush, the cool and capable nurse, Serena (Kahyun Kim). The format may be familiar, but the show nonetheless feels fresh, thanks to top-notch writing and performances from its talented cast.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Yellowstone (Paramount+)

Series creator Taylor Sheridan first pitched this neo-Western drama as “The Godfather in Montana”; one might also think of it as Succession on a ranch. It follows the members of the Dutton family, led by patriarch John Dutton III (Kevin Costner), as they struggle to preserve their massive Montana cattle ranch: the titular Yellowstone. One source of tension is that the ranch shares borders with the Broken Rock Indian Reservation. But the biggest threats come from billionaire corporate land developers and scheming local government officials, eager to get their greedy hands on all that gorgeous acreage to build casinos, resort hotels, golf courses, and the like.

Yellowstone is basically a nighttime soap and a particularly good one, thanks to strong, complex characters and their interrelationships/intense personal conflicts. The Duttons are not good people, but nor are they entirely evil, despite doing many evil deeds—often for a good cause but not always. (The body count at the “train station” alone would get them multiple life sentences.) Seasons 2–4 represent the series at its peak. Alas, Costner left after the first part of S5; the second half unceremoniously kills off his character at the start of the first episode, with the remaining season dealing with the messy aftermath of what turns out to be an assassination.

I’ll be frank: Without Costner as an anchor, the second part of S5 just wasn’t as strong as prior seasons or even the first half of S5. There are several plot holes, extra scenes clearly included just to boost Sheridan’s ego, and the dialogue has become overly preachy and didactic—almost as annoying as Aaron Sorkin’s mini-sermons in later seasons of The West Wing, which is saying something.

Still, the show gave us one heck of a full-blown revenge fantasy finale. Yellowstone makes this year’s list because the series as a whole—and its supremely talented cast—deserves a fitting farewell for the top-notch entertainment it’s provided since 2018. Sure, there are spinoffs, including one in development featuring fan favorites Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) and Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser). But there will never be anything quite like the OG.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Interview with the Vampire S2 (AMC)

Anne Rice’s bestselling 1976 gothic horror novel gets a fresh adaptation for television that is markedly different in many ways from the 1994 film adaptation. The main character, Louis (Jacob Anderson), is reimagined as a mixed-race Creole pimp in New Orleans’ red light district rather than a white plantation owner. And child vampire Claudia (Delainey Haines in S2) is now 14 instead of a 5-year-old. The first season covered the novel’s first half, in which Louis shares, in flashbacks, what happened between him and the enigmatic vampire Lestat (Sam Reid) with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian).

That proved to be a toxic relationship that ended badly, with Louis and Claudia nearly killing Lestat and running away to Europe. In S2, they join up with a vampire coven in Paris led by the vampire Armand (Assad Zaman), hoping they have found a stable home. But it turns out the coven’s founder was none other than Lestat, putting that newfound family at risk. It’s hard to go wrong with Rice’s captivating storyline and unforgettable characters, especially with such strong performances from the main cast and evocative settings, bringing the written page to vivid life.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Bodkin (Netflix)

This British satirical dark comedy features an American podcaster named Gilbert (Will Forte), who travels to a small Irish coastal town called Bodkin to record an investigative podcast about the disappearance of three people decades earlier during a Samhain festival. He’s aided by his assistant, aspiring journalist Emmy (Robyn Cara), and by a veteran Irish investigative journalist, Dove (Siobhan Cullen), on assignment in exile from London after a story falls apart when her whistleblower source unexpectedly dies.

Naturally the locals are not thrilled about podcasters digging up the past, but over seven episodes, Gilbert and his team not only solve the cold case, they heal a few long-standing emotional wounds in the process. The humor is more sly and subtle than, say, Only Murders in the Building, but Bodkin is nonetheless a quirky gem of a series, with a colorful setting filled with likable, eccentric characters. It’s worth a watch.

—Jennifer Ouellette

My Lady Jane (Prime Video)

The tragic fate of Lady Jane Grey, aka the Nine Days’ Queen, is well-known to aficionados of English history. Named as Edward VI’s successor, she was named queen while still a teenager but quickly deposed in favor of Edward’s Catholic half-sister Mary; Jane was eventually executed. The historical fantasy series My Lady Jane offers an alternative scenario where Jane (Emily Bader) avoids that fate with the help of her eventual husband, Lord Guilford Dudley (Edward Bluemel), and humans who can take animal form known as Ethians. Ordinary humans are known as Verity, and the two sects are explicitly forbidden from mixing.

There is no sense in which My Lady Jane is intended as an accurate historical portrayal of 16th century England; the deliberate anachronisms alone are a testament to that, not to mention the constant presence of magic. Instead, showrunner Gemma Burgess has put together an irreverent engaging romp rife with witty banter, political intrigue, and a bit of derring-do—not to mention a killer soundtrack. Sadly, Amazon canceled the series after one season, much to the dismay of fans, including George R.R. Martin. So we won’t find out if Jane eventually figures out how to reclaim her throne from the scheming Mary.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Renegade Nell (Disney+)

Award-winning British TV writer Sally Wainwright is best known for the dramatic series Happy Valley (2014–2023) and Gentleman Jack (2019–2022), the latter produced jointly by BBC and HBO. Wainwright partnered with Disney+ for her latest series, the resolutely PG-13 Renegade Nell, which is a different beast altogether: a good old-fashioned, swashbuckling comic adventure with a supernatural twist, featuring a sassy cross-dressing heroine forced to turn to highway robbery to survive.

Set in 1705 during the reign of Queen Anne, the series stars Louisa Harland (Derry Girls) as Nell Jackson, widowed and possessed of occasional supernatural skills whenever someone threatens her, courtesy of a fairy sprite named Billy Blind (Nick Mohammed). Nell runs afoul of the louche, drunken offspring of the town’s landlord, things escalate, and Nell finds herself on the run and framed for murder, along with her two sisters, Roxy (Bo Bragason) and George (Florence Keen), and the Blanchefords’ former groomsman, Rasselas (Enyi Okoronkwo). The group gets further assistance from a charming aristocratic dandy/secret highwayman named Charles Devereaux (Frank Dillane).

The writing, pacing, and production values are top-notch, and the cast is terrific across the board. Renegade Nell keeps the action flowing and wisely never takes itself too seriously. Sure, there is injustice, class warfare, and strong intelligent women chafing within the strict confines of traditional binary gender roles. But Wainwright never lets the story get bogged down in heavy-handed symbolism or didacticism. Sadly, Disney+ canceled the series, but this one season stands just fine on its own.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Decameron (Netflix)

Let’s get one thing straight: Netflix’s The Decameron has almost nothing to do with Boccaccio’s 14th century collection of stories, apart from the title and being set in the middle of the Black Plague in Florence. The main characters retreat to a secluded villa as bodies mount in the city, but they don’t sit around telling stories. They become the stories: mistaken identity, forbidden desires, illicit trysts, arranged marriages, and maybe even true love all factor into the plot, such that it is. And, of course, they must fend off others also fleeing the plague, including a ruthless band of mercenaries intent on taking over their villa.

Series creator Kathleen Jordan has put together a terrific cast with impeccable comic timing, well up to the task of playing into some pretty dark humor—death by Black Plague isn’t pretty, yet somehow you’ll find yourself chuckling about it. The Decameron is original, smartly silly, and quite unapologetically bawdy, making it a refreshing addition to the TV comedy landscape.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Get Millie Black (HBO)

In the mood for an edgy British crime series? HBO has you covered with Get Millie Black, starring Tamara Lawrance as a Jamaican-born detective who gets kicked out of Scotland Yard and finds herself back home, working a missing persons case with the Jamaican Police Force. That brings her and partner Curtis (Gershwyn Eustache) into conflict with the wealthy and powerful ruling family of Kingston, with a possible connection to the London case that led to Millie’s ouster from the Yard.

She’s also dealing with her estranged transgender sister, Hibiscus (Chyna McQueen), who insists on living in a slum area called the Gully, and trying to navigate her love life. Get Millie Black is a good, meaty procedural with a compelling lead, but what really makes the series is the authentic Jamaican setting, and the way the viewer is effortlessly immersed in the local dynamics and cultural/political tensions of Kingston—right down to the dialect (HBO has helpfully provided subtitles, which do come in handy at times).

—Jennifer Ouellette

Cursed Gold (National Geographic/Disney+)

Credit: Recovery Limited Partnership Liquidating Trust

Many people dream of finding lost or hidden treasure, but sometimes realizing that dream turns out to be a nightmare. Such was the case for Tommy Thompson, an American treasure hunter who famously beat the odds to discover the location of the SS Central America shipwreck (aka the “ship of gold”) in 1988. Thompson and his team recovered significant amounts of gold and artifacts to great fanfare, but the euphoria proved short-lived. His many travails make the perfect fodder for National Geographic’s riveting three-part documentary about Thompson’s spectacular rise and precipitous fall: Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal, based on a 1998 book by Gary Kinder.

Director Sam Bedstead read Kinder’s book and wanted to tell his own version of Thompson’s story, including everything that happened after the book was published. A lot happened, including Thompson panicking and going on the run in 2012, stashing some $4 million in offshore accounts. (Thompson is currently in prison for contempt of court.) Bedstead combed through over 700 pages of court transcripts and more than 600 hours of archival footage from the original salvage expedition to make Cursed Gold, as well as conducting follow-up interviews with many of the relevant parties. The end result is a documentary that plays like a thriller, with Thompson as the semi-tragic figure at the center.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Moonflower Murders (PBS)

This is the follow-up to 2023’s delightful Magpie Murders, in which literary editor Susan Ryland (Lesley Manville) solved the murder of her bestselling author Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) and located the missing final chapter of Conway’s last manuscript—which just happened to be crucial to identifying the killer. She was helped along the way by recurring imaginary conversations with Conway’s star detective Atticus Pund (Timothy McMullan), playing out Conway’s final fictional mystery alongside Susan’s real investigation.

It was clever gimmick that made for a delightful series, and Moonflower Murders gives us more of the same story-within-a-story framework. Susan is now semi-retired and living in Crete with fiancé Andreas (Alexandros Logothetis) as they struggle to revive the fortunes of the hotel Andreas purchased. She is approached by a hotelier couple whose daughter Cecily has gone missing. Cecily called them after reading one of Conway’s Atticus Pund novels and said the wrong man had been jailed for a murder that took place at the couple’s hotel eight years earlier.

The solution is hidden somewhere in the novel, because Conway had a habit of using thinly veiled people and events from real life. Susan must track down what happened to Cecily with Imaginary Atticus by her side once again, offering helpful insights. And maybe she’ll figure out what really happened with the hotel murder and exonerate an innocent man. Moonflower Murders is the perfect comfort watch for a long, lazy weekend.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Agatha All Along (Disney+)

The MCU’s foray into streaming television has produced mixed results, but one of my favorites is the weirdly inventive, oh-so-meta WandaVision. I’m happy to report that the spinoff sequel, Agatha All Along, taps into that same offbeat creativity, giving us a welcome reminder of just how good the MCU can be when it’s firing on all storytelling cylinders.

We find Agatha Harkness (Katherine Hahn) still under Wanda Maximoff’s original spell as a nosy neighbor in a small town. A mysterious young Teen (Joe Locke) breaks the hex and asks her to show him the way to the legendary Witches’ Road, a journey involving a series of trials. The reward: any surviving witches get what they most desire. Agatha wants her powers back—and Teen, well, his motives are murkier, as is his identity. Rounding out the coven are Lilia (Patti LuPone), a divination witch; Jennifer (Sasheer Zamata), a potions witch; Alice (Ali Ahn), a protection witch; and Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp, reprising her WandaVision role) standing in for a green witch on account of her gardening skills. Agatha is also being pursued by her ex, Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), a powerful green witch, as well as the Salem Seven, vengeful wraiths of Agatha’s first coven.

A large part of WandaVision‘s delight came from the various sitcom styles featured in each episode. Agatha All Along has its own take on that approach: Each trial takes on the setting and style of witches from popular culture (even the ending credits play on this). And the seventh episode, “Death’s Hand in Mine,” focusing on Lilia and a deadly tarot reading, might just be the best single episode of all the Marvel TV series to date. In my review, I questioned one creative choice in the series finale, which didn’t quite work for me. On the whole, though, Agatha All Along is marvelously entertaining, binge-able fun with just enough emotional resonance and heartbreak to give it a bit of depth.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Hysteria (Peacock)

Hysteria is a show about a small US town in the’ 80s that descends into paranoia, fear, and a hive-mind-like frenzy after a high school boy goes missing in the ’80s. I came to the show for Bruce Campbell, hoping for another tale of horror with a dark comedy twist à la Evil Dead. But I ended up staying for a standout, memorable cast and a fascinating dive into how hive minds form amid uncertainty and danger.

Things get more interesting when a trio of outcast teens pretend to be Satanists to get people interested in their rock band. The falsehood simultaneously makes the children more popular in their school and pariahs in their town, as people suspect that they had something to do with the missing boy. Strong acting and personable deliveries from all three actors (Emjay Anthony as Dylan, Kezii Curtis as Spud, and, especially, Chiara Aurelia as Jordy) kept me pressing play as the teens toed the blurring line between their lie and their reality.

Their classmates, who Dylan desperately wants to impress, are also captivating. At times, you may actually find yourself rooting for the popular girl or jock, who turn out to have darker inclinations and more layers than their typical stereotypes. In fact, no character, including Dylan’s parents (Julie Bowen from Modern Family and voice actor and Port Charles star Nolan North) and Christian mother Tracy (Anna Camp, True Blood), are what they seem.

While maintaining a quirky and mysterious air, the show yields questions like, is a cult real if its creators are pretending but its followers aren’t? What can leave adults vulnerable to that special flavor of panic that makes them question their own families, faith leaders, and even the genre of rock and roll? And how easy is it for people to fall victim to mass hysteria when confronted with real-life peril, confusing phenomena, and a relatable desire to be part of something, which doesn’t go away after high school?

Toss in some classic rock and roll and appearances from an extraordinary entity, and you have a one-of-a-kind comedy horror that doesn’t go where you expect but brings you on a hell of a ride that’ll make you wonder if you, too, might have been part of the hysteria.

And yes, Campbell does deliver.

—Scharon Harding

Rivals (Hulu)

This is an adaptation of a 1988 Jilly Cooper novel of the same name. It’s a contemporary spin, although the series is still set in 1980s England in the Cotswolds region, which makes for a super fun soundtrack packed with ’80s nostalgia. The central rivals are Tony, Lord Baddingham (David Tennant), a nouveau riche managing director of a TV station who married into nobility, and Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), a retired Olympics show jumper and incorrigible womanizer who represents aristocratic class and old money. But there’s plenty of scheming and cattiness and class warfare to go around among the rest of the colorful ensemble cast.

It’s nice to see Tennant sink his teeth into such a villainous role, and he’s well-matched against Hassell, who is the perfect charming louche with just enough lingering shreds of humanity to occasionally do something decent. Rivals is a briskly paced and positively addictive British romp with plenty of scandalous twists, lusty ribald humor, and more serious notes of genuine pain lurking beneath the frothy surface. You end up really caring about the characters, even the more dastardly ones—a tribute to the stellar cast and writing.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Monsieur Spade (AMC)

Along with Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet‘s legendary private detective Sam Spade pretty much defined noir crime fiction in the 1930s. But what happens when the hard-boiled detective gets old and longs for a peaceful retirement? That’s the premise behind Monsieur Spade, starring Clive Owen as a middle-aged Spade who has left his past behind for a peaceful life in the small French town of Bozouls in the 1960s.

Spade is mourning the loss of his wife, Gabrielle (Chiara Mastroianni), who thoughtfully left him her estate so he could continue his life of leisure. That quiet existence is shattered by the brutal murder of six beloved nuns in the nearby convent. They had been caring for Spade’s rebellious teenage ward, Teresa (Cara Bossom), whose life may now be in danger due to the shenanigans of her criminal biological father. Spade must find the fortitude for one last case, digging up secrets many in the town would prefer to stay buried, and face off against an old adversary. Owen makes a terrific older Spade, all craggy features and rasping voice. It’s a good, twisty thriller with great characters and a satisfying conclusion, very much in the spirit of the original.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Slow Horses S4 (Apple TV+)

Four seasons in and counting, there is still no better spy thriller on TV these than this always riveting British spy thriller, based on the “Slough House” series of novels by Mick Herron, and it just keeps getting better. Slough House is basically a dead-end administrative purgatory for MI5 agents who screw up or otherwise fall short of expectations, mockingly derided as the “slow horses” of the title. Slough House is headed by the slovenly, flatulent, and frequently intoxicated Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who routinely heaps verbal abuse on his staff but is nonetheless a brilliant spymaster in his own smelly way.

S4 kicks off with a suicide bomber striking a London shopping mall, whose name turns out to be that of an MI5 “cold body” (fake identity). There is also an assassination attempt against retired senior MI5 officer David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce), grandfather to slow horse River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), and the two events might just be connected. Slow Horses has already been renewed for more seasons and why not? It’s just as taut, thrilling, sardonically humorous, and occasionally heartbreaking as ever, with no sign of flagging.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Light Shop (Hulu)

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like Light Shop, an eerily haunting Korean horror mystery adapted from a popular webtoon by Kang Full. Ju Ji-Hoon stars as Jung Won-Young, the enigmatic owner of the titular light shop, located at the end of a foreboding dark alley. Various strangers are drawn to the light shop, perhaps because it’s not just a place to purchase bulbs; it’s also a nexus connecting the worlds of the living and the dead. Won-Young is able to discern which is which—and which of the lost souls that wander into his shop might just be trapped between the two worlds.

There’s the young man on a bus who keeps seeing the same mysterious woman sitting on the bench at his stop, until he finally invites her home and quickly realizes she’s not what she seems. There’s a screenwriter who moves into a new house and discovers that it might be haunted; a young schoolgirl who comes by the shop every day for her mother and yet never seems to buy any bulbs; a middle-aged man who wanders aimlessly through the alley weeping while soaking wet; and a sad silent woman in red high heels who morphs into an elongated shambling zombie-like figure in the dark.

Fair warning: The first few episodes can be disorienting because it’s so challenging to figure out what’s going on. But the disparate threads of all the individual stories start to come together by the end of the fourth episode as we learn how the seemingly random strangers are connected, and the rest of the series brings it all home in a powerful finale that is equal parts horrifying and bittersweet. I don’t know if Kang Full has more stories to tell—I can see Light Shop working as an anthology series—but these eight episodes stand on their own as some truly innovative storytelling.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Bad Monkey (Apple TV+)

Based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel of the same name, Bad Monkey is the perfect vehicle for Vince Vaughn’s roguish motor-mouth charm. He plays Andrew Yancy, a demoted detective who now does restaurant inspections, until his friend (another detective) tells him about a severed arm recovered by a tourist in the waters of South Florida. So begins a wild caper involving insurance fraud, real estate developers, multiple murders, at least one faked death, and a bit of spooky Obeah voodoo for good measure, courtesy of the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith).

In other words, it’s pretty much vintage Hiaasen and Bad Monkey is a particularly good adaptation. The characters and casting are perfection, especially Meredith Harper as Eve Stripling, who seems like your average shallow, manipulative, gold-digging beauty—until you realize jut how ruthless she’s prepared to be to get what she wants. Props also to Zach Braff as Izzy, who gets caught up in the fraud scheme and pays a heavy price, as well as Scott Glenn as Yancy’s father, dishing laconic wisdom while fishing on a dock to anyone who cares to listen.

—Jennifer Ouellette

A Man on the Inside (Netflix)

For those who miss Ted Danson’s endearing portrayal of Michael, the human-loving demon in The Good Place, we now have A Man on the Inside, created by Michael Schur (who also created The Good Place). Danson plays Charles Nieuwendyk, a very Michael-like recently widowed retired engineering professor who gets hired by a private detective to go undercover at a San Francisco retirement community. A ruby necklace has gone missing, and it’s Charles’s job to snoop around and ferret out the culprit.

Once again, Schur has assembled a stellar cast of diverse characters, with crisp, whip-smart writing. The show is alternatively funny, sweet, sour, and touching, while never lapsing into schmaltz—although we’ll risk a bit of schmaltz to observe that the real meaning is not the mystery of the ruby necklace but the relationships and personal growth that occur along the way. At its heart, the show is about coming to terms with the grief and loneliness that so often comes with aging. Netflix just renewed A Man on the Inside for a second season, so we’ll get to see what Charles gets up to on his next undercover assignment.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Fallout (Prime Video)

Amazon has had a rocky history with big, geeky properties making their way onto Prime Video. The Wheel of Time wasn’t for everyone, and I have almost nothing good to say about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Fallout broke that bad streak; as a video game adaptation, it’s right up there with The Last of Us. A specific cocktail of tongue-in-cheek humor, sci-fi campiness, strong themes, great characters, and visceral violence came together into a fantastic show.

Fallout‘s violence can be sudden, brutal, and casual. Heads explode from shotgun blasts like popped bubbles in Cronenbergian splatters. Someone’s face gets ripped right off, and another person gets a fork plunged into their eyeball. Homages to the Bethesda games’ slow-motion kills are aplenty, with gratuitous shots of bullets tearing through bodies and painting the walls red. It’s so over the top that it didn’t bother me; it’s cartoon violence, ultimately, though a couple of instances of dog-related violence didn’t feel too great. Of course, the games were like this, too. It just hits a little differently when it’s live action.

The Fallout games are hilarious—goofy, even, and that tracks right into the show. It’s not always as laugh-out-loud funny as I expected (though it sometimes is), but it’s definitely fun, and there are some strong jokes. Even the violence is hilarious if you have the stomach for it. You don’t have to have played the games to appreciate the action or comedy in Fallout, but there’s obviously a whole additional layer here for people who’ve been playing the games for years. Almost every shot includes something for fans of the games to recognize, from Nuka-Cola bottles to Assaultron robot frames to Vault Boy bobbleheads.

I love the fact that this show focuses on three different characters in equal measure, each of them embodying a type of character a player of Fallout might create. Lucy is the do-gooder vault dweller, Maximus is the aspirant warrior, and The Ghoul is the wasteland rogue. Through those characters, the show captures the full range of the Fallout experience. What we see happen in the plot seems to naturally come from the characters’ personalities, values, words, and actions.

On their own, all those elements made for entertaining viewing, but there has always been more to Fallout: It has a point of view and strong themes in its satirical take on American culture. The TV series does those themes justice. But don’t for a second think that Fallout‘s point of view relates to self-righteous moralizing. By the end of the season, you have at least one big reason to hate every faction, all of which are deeply flawed in their visions of what the world order should look like or how to achieve it.

—Samuel Axon

And now, for our top TV pick of 2024:

Shogun (FX/Hulu)

This sumptuous series is adapted from James Clavell’s hugely influential 1975 epic novel of the same name. It’s a fictionalized account of the key players and events in 17th century feudal Japan that ultimately led to the naming of a new shōgun (central ruler), Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the advent of the Edo period. Clavell’s novel also includes a fictionalized version of an English navigator named William Adams, aka Miura Anjiin (“the pilot of Miura”), who was the first of his nation to reach Japan in 1600, eventually becoming a samurai and one of Tokugawa’s key advisers.

Cosmo Jarvis (Peaky Blinders, Raised by Wolves) stars as John Blackthorne (based on Adams) while Hiroyuki Sanada plays Toranaga (based on Tokugawa). Blackthorne finds himself embroiled in this hotbed of political intrigue when Toranaga takes a shine to him, envisioning a key role for the English pilot in Toranaga’s own secret machinations. Caught between them is the alluring translator, Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), who finds herself torn between her loyalty to Toranaga and her Catholic faith—not to mention a growing attraction to the foreign Anjin.

The storytelling, the characters, the stellar performances, the expert pacing all contribute to the show’s success. But it’s also a visually stunning achievement that brings 17th century feudal Japan to vivid life, thanks to masterful visual effects that have been woven in so seamlessly, it can be challenging to distinguish between the CGI and the real footage. It’s been described as “a Game of Thrones set in 17th century Japan,” although calling it a 17th century Japanese Godfather also captures the essence of the series. Two more seasons are in development, and we’ll be watching. But it was Clavell’s timeless story and characters that make Shōgun what it is; the showrunners have a massive challenge ahead to meet that highest of bars.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

TV Technica 2024: Our picks for the best of TV Read More »

Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2024

Best of 2024, culture, Features, Film Technica, films / Paul Patrick / December 23, 2024

lighting up the silver screen

This year’s list features quite a bit of horror mixed in with the usual blockbuster fare—plus smaller hidden gems.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Editor’s note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed films that some might consider spoiler-y.

This was the year that Marvel Studios hit the pause button on its deluge of blockbuster superhero movies, after rather saturating the market in recent years. It proved to be a smart move: the only Marvel theatrical release was the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine, a refreshingly irreverent, very meta take on the genre that delighted audiences and lit up the global box office. Perhaps audiences aren’t so much bored with superhero movies as becoming more discriminating in their choices. Give us a fun, fresh take and we’ll flock back to theaters.

Fewer superhero franchise entries meant there was more breathing room for other fare. Horror in particular had a stellar year, with numerous noteworthy offerings, touching on body horror (The Substance), Satanic Panic (Late Night with the Devil), psychological horror (Heretic), hauntings (The Oddity), a rom-com/revenge mashup (Your Monster), an inventive reimagining of a classic silent film (Nosferatu), and one very bloodthirsty child vampire with a wicked sense of humor (Abigail). Throw in a smattering of especially strong sequels (Inside Out 2, Dune: Part 2), a solid prequel (Furiosa), and a few hidden gems, and we had one of the better years for film in recent memory.

The Fall Guy

I love to mentally check out with a good movie when I fly. So, on a recent trip to New York City for Technicon, I settled into my narrow, definitely-not-my-couch airline seat and fell in love with The Fall Guy, a movie based on the TV show I remember watching as a teen back in the ’80s.

Directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2, the John Wick franchise), The Fall Guy is pure entertainment—part rom-com, part action, funny as heck, and super meta. Leitch is perfectly suited to direct a film about a stuntman, having been one himself (he was Brad Pitt’s stunt-double five times). And the actors clearly are having a ton of fun roasting the industry, while also paying tribute to the invisible heroes of any movie: the stunt performers.

A year after a nearly fatal fall (yeah, pun apparently intended), stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) is persuaded by his former producer, Gail (Hannah Waddington), to come to the rescue for a film his ex-girlfriend, Jody (Emily Blunt), is directing after the lead actor and his stuntman disappear. Gail asks him to find them to save the film and Jody’s career. The exaggerated stunts, meta jokes (Tom Cruise, “I do my own stunts”), unicorn, callbacks to favorite films (Notting Hill etc.), and unflagging plot made for a quick flight for me. The chemistry between Blunt and Gosling makes the movie and provided an at-times hilarious-yet-believable romantic tension. (I’ll never forget the giant monster hand nor the air pistols.) And the cameo by the real fall guy left me elated.

A few years back, also on a flight, I remember watching Gosling’s comedy chops in The Nice Guys and laughing aloud several times (Always awkward. Sorry seat mates.). I did the same with The Fall Guy as well. But could my enthusiasm for the movie get anyone in my family to watch it with me on our giant COVID-purchase TV with the surround sound and subwoofer on high?? Not for a solid month. But once I did, they were sold.

—Kerry Staurseth

Hit Man

I grew up in Richard Linklater’s Texas, and there seems to be something—the characters, the story, the setting, or the aesthetic—that resonates with my personal experience in most of his films. I can’t say the same for Hit Man, but this isn’t meant to be a criticism. Instead, Linklater’s Hit Man offers nearly two hours of pure escapism that many of us need. It’s smart, with witty dialogue, more than a few moments of side-splitting humor, and a story that is too good to be true, although the premise is based on true events.

Gary, played by Glen Powell (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater), is a chameleon. Gary starts the film as a meek, somewhat nerdy college professor, but circumstances quickly force him into the uncomfortable position of becoming an undercover police informant. As we learn early in the film, this involves portraying a fake hitman to rope suspects into contract killing schemes and then prosecution. While I may question the legality or ethics of this setup, it creates a canvas for Linklater and Powell to create funny, sympathetic characters thrust into situations that, while far-fetched, somehow seem believable.

Ultimately, Hit Man provides a laboratory for character development for the audience and within the film itself. In the film, Gary’s academic background helps him craft characters to match the circumstances and attitudes of each of his targets. Gary’s hitman personas can turn up the charm, abrasiveness, or faux bravado as the situation requires it. Gary reinvents himself at every turn, showcasing Powell’s acting range. That is, until Gary runs into Madison, portrayed by Adria Arjona. Then, things become a little too real for Gary, and you’ll have to watch the film to see what happens next.

—Stephen Clark

Heretic

Hugh Grant launched his career playing charmingly self-effacing rom-com heroes (cf. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill). But in recent years, he’s embraced his darker side, playing roguish villains in films like The Gentlemen and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, as well as for the BBC miniseries A Very English Scandal. Heretic gives him his most disturbing role yet.

Grant plays Mr. Reed, a reclusive man who invites the Mormon missionaries who come knocking on his door inside for some of his wife’s blueberry pie. But Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) soon realize there is no Mrs. Reed, that delicious blueberry smell is from a candle, they have no cell phone signal, and they are locked inside with a lunatic. They must figure out how to escape from the basement dungeon in which Reed traps them, a torturous environment in which to test their faith.

Heretic has its share of blood and violence, but the focus is more on the psychological trauma inflicted on the young women. And its treatment of the Mormon faith is surprisingly nuanced for the horror genre. Still, it’s Grant’s subtly sinister performance that really makes the film: He brings just a hint of his trademark rom-com charm to the role, which somehow makes everything he says and does doubly chilling.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Tuesday

This quietly devastating indie fantasy drama stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Zora, a mother whose 15-year-old daughter Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is confined to a wheelchair with an incurable terminal disease. The fantastical element is Death, who comes to release Tuesday from her suffering in the form of a talking macaw that can alter its size at will. But Zora isn’t ready to let her daughter go; she swallows Death to keep her daughter alive—with the added complication that now nobody can die.

At its heart, Tuesday is an unsettling fable about human mortality and learning not just to confront, but to embrace, Death. That’s a pretty heavy theme, and the film offers no pat, easy answers in its resolution. But first-time director DainaO.Pusić brings a light touch to the melancholy, bolstered by Louis-Dreyfus’ courageous performance.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Substance

Listen, I’m not here to convince you that The Substance changed my life, but it’s been a while since a modern sci-fi/horror movie fixated on the fear of death and aging made my skin crawl, so like many viewers in 2024, I was itching to press play. Demi Moore stars as Elizabeth Sparkle, a 50-year-old fitness icon who foolishly injects an experimental drug to maintain her celebrity and quickly regrets birthing a younger double (played by Margaret Qualley), whom she now must split her life with.

Between firm butts flexing and gory mutations emerging, Moore’s and Qualley’s characters clash, forgetting they are “the one” and spiraling toward doom. And while most body horror movies are viewed as gratuitous, The Substance lives up to its title. Somehow, through a nauseating cascade of increasingly grotesque distortions of the human form, the movie morphs into a meaningful satire on society’s stance that older women are irrelevant—blowing a kiss into the camera at the genre’s past tendency to objectify female characters.

—Ashley Belanger

Rez Ball

This is a classic feel-good sports movie that manages to seem both familiar and fresh, thanks to its setting on a Navajo reservation. (It’s based on the nonfiction novel Canyon Dreams by Michael Powell.) Rez Ball follows one season of the Chuska Warriors, a Native American high school basketball team competing for the state championship. Their star player is Nataanii (Kusem Goodwind), whose mother and sister were killed by a drunk driver the prior year. Nataanii has been struggling with his grief ever since, and when he doesn’t show up for practice one day, the team learns he committed suicide.

It’s up to coach Heather (Jessica Matten), a former WNBA player, to help her team recover from the shocking loss and regroup to finish the season. She names Nataanii’s best friend, Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt), as team captain and employs some novel team-building exercises—most notably a shepherding task in which the team must work together to bring sheep down from a mountain and back into their enclosure. Then there’s her clever strategy of training the team to call all their plays in their native language—shades of the World War II “code talkers.” (There’s even a sly humorous reference to the 2002 Nicolas Cage movie Windtalkers in between all the frybread jokes.)

Director Sydney Freeland hits all the familiar notes of this genre and ably captures the basketball sequences—is there really any doubt we’ll have a happy(ish) ending? Yet the film earns its payoff, driven not by genuine suspense, but by the sheer determination of the team members and how they bond to overcome their grief and bring some joy out of their shared tragedy.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Oddity

Oddity is a pitch-perfect supernatural thriller that never should have worked. Writer-director Damian McCarthy has explained that the movie comprised “a mix of a lot of old ideas” that he “could never find a home for.” That hodgepodge storytelling approach could have been a forced recipe for disaster if McCarthy wasn’t such an undeniable master of tension. Telling the story of a psychic medium-antiques dealer desperate to divine the events leading to her twin sister’s shocking murder in an abandoned Irish manor, the movie managed to feel fast-paced while drawing out an unrelenting sense of dread.

The bulk of that tension comes from a haunted wooden man that remains onscreen and barely ever moves—leaving the audience painfully stuck anticipating the moment when the nightmarish figure will spring to life. With slasher movie elements and twists as jarring as the wooden man’s startling features, Oddity had some horror fans within minutes smashing pause to recover from the brutal opening scene before returning to finish McCarthy’s curious haunted house tour de force.

—Ashley Belanger

Abigail

Six criminals get more than they bargained for when they are hired to kidnap the young daughter of a wealthy underworld kingpin: budding ballerina Abigail (Alisha Weir). Joey (Melissa Barrera) is the only member to be kind to their captive, clearly bothered by the fact that their target is a child. Abigail responds to that kindness with an ominous sweetness: “I’m sorry about what’s going to happen to you.”

So begins one of the goriest and funniest vampire rampages to find its way to the big screen, as the Undead Abigail takes brutal revenge on each of her kidnappers in turn. The carnage is truly next-level, including one infamous scene in which Joey wades through a literal pool of bloody, rotting dead bodies—all victims of Abigail’s ferocious killer instincts. There are some insane plot twists, plenty of perfectly timed humorous moments, and terrific performances from the ensemble cast, especially Weir. If horror comedies are your jam, Abigail is an excellent addition to the genre.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

A nine-year wait between franchise films is, more often than not, an indication that the follow-up can’t meet some lofty expectations of what came before it. But that’s not the case for Furiosa.

Although it’s not the same white-knuckle thrill ride as 2015’s Fury Road, Furiosa gives us another mostly mute protagonist in an expertly crafted action film that overlaps as a revenge flick. While Anya Taylor-Joy delivers a cold, steely interpretation of the eponymous protagonist, it’s the object of her revenge, Chris Hemsworth’s villain Dementus, that offers a new variation to the typically bleak wasteland: levity.

Hemsworth relishes his chance here to show another side of his acting chops, and the result is one of the funniest and zaniest villainous performances in recent memory. Dementus’ malice is matched by his penchant for delivering self-aggrandizing speeches, which are a nice reminder that, even as the world fell, not everyone lost their sense of humor.

—Jacob May

I Saw the TV Glow

As anyone who’s spent years rewatching a beloved sci-fi/fantasy show could likely glean from its ethereal title, I Saw the TV Glow was made to immerse viewers in the sort of complex mythology that keeps the most engaged superfans glued to the screen. Surreally blurring the lines between TV fiction and reality, the A24 film follows an alienated teen boy who deeply bonds with an older female classmate over a monster-of-the-week TV show that comes on past his bedtime.

What starts at a sleepover evolves into an existential nightmare suggesting that the boy’s truth might be a fiction constructed by the “Big Bad” villain from his favorite TV show. This absurd possibility follows the boy as he grows into a man with his own family, all while continuing to take comfort in his all-time favorite TV show. The mesmerizing conclusion injected a disturbing sense of wonder into 2024, leaving some viewers as slack-faced as the boy was when he finally got to watch the late-night TV show that he somehow knew would light him up inside.

—Ashley Belanger

Thelma

Elderly people are so often invisible in our youth-oriented society, so it’s nice to see two 90-something characters take center stage in this charming comedy-drama written and directed by Josh Margolin. June Squibb plays the titular Thelma, who gets taken in by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) to the tune of $10,000. The police won’t help, but Thelma has a P.O. box address as a clue and sets out to get her money back.

Thelma enlists the help of her estranged friend Ben (Richard Roundtree, in his final role), who is eager to escape his assisted living facility for one last adventure, and the two set off on Ben’s two-person scooter. Wacky hijinks and personal growth and enlightenment ensue. The film was inspired by a conversation Margolin had with his own now-deceased grandmother, and that personal experience is the key to Thelma‘s warmth, humor, and authenticity. It’s a lovely twist on the classic road movie and well worth a watch.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Woman of the Hour

In the late 1970s, serial killer Rodney Alcala interrupted his murder spree to make a 1978 appearance on The Dating Game and actually went out on a date with bachelorette Sheryl Bradshaw—who naturally had no idea the charming man who’d won her over with his answers was, in fact, a psychopath. It might seem like an odd bit of trivia on which to base a film, but Anna Kendrick came across Ian MacAllister McDonald’s initial screenplay as the actress was gearing up to make her directorial debut with Netflix and snatched it up.

Kendrick also stars as Sheryl, a struggling LA actress who is persuaded to go on The Dating Game by friends, and her typically winsome, spunky performance—and able direction— lifts Woman of the Hour to the next level. Perhaps the best part of the film is that it doesn’t linger overmuch on the killer or glorify his horrific deeds. The focus stays squarely on Sheryl and a woman in the audience named Laura (Nicolette Robinson), who recognizes Rodney (Daniel Zovatto) as the man last seen with her missing best friend. It’s a well-done, quietly thrilling period piece that bodes well for Kendrick’s future as a director.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Your Monster

It’s been quite a year for Melissa Barrera, who followed up her standout Final Girl performance in Abigail with another star turn in the decidedly offbeat Your Monster—part romantic comedy, part horror/revenge fantasy, weaving in such disparate influences as the late ’80s TV series Beauty and the Beast and classic Broadway musicals like A Chorus Line. It’s based on a 2019 short film by writer/director Caroline Lindy, inspired by Lindy’s one-time boyfriend breaking up with her when she received a cancer diagnosis.

Barrera plays Laura, an actress who also loses her boyfriend after a cancer diagnosis—plus he reneges on his promise to let her audition for the musical she co-wrote—and goes back to her childhood home to recuperate. There she encounters the proverbial Monster in the closet (Tommy Dewey), who is none too pleased about suddenly having a “roommate” again. At first he tries to scare her, but soon they’re bonding over old movies and Chinese takeout; Monster might just be the ideal boyfriend she’s been looking for.

Of course, Monster is also very much a manifestation of Laura’s psyche, particularly her subsumed rage. Naturally they plot revenge on her selfish ex, and when it comes, it’s everything a jilted lover could want from the experience. Your Monster can’t quite decide on a tone, shifting constantly between comedy and horror, love and revenge. But that’s part of what makes this quirky film so appealing: Lindy isn’t afraid to take creative risks, and she makes it all work in the end.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Will and Harper

A few years ago, comic actor Will Ferrell was on-set filming a movie when he received a surprising text from Harper Steele, a close friend of some 30 years, dating back to their time together on Saturday Night Live. Steele informed him of her gender transition. Ferrell’s response was to organize a road trip for the two of them, starting in New York City, where they first met, hitting stops in Washington, DC, Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Amarillo, Texas—documenting the journey all along the way.

The result is Will and Harper, a surprisingly sweet, refreshingly frank, and thought-provoking film that celebrates an enduring friendship. There’s never a question of Ferrell not accepting his friend’s transition, but there are some awkward growing pains. The pair don’t shy away from more difficult conversations, peppered with humor, while downing cans of Pringles, and it’s that well-meaning honesty that keeps the film grounded and centered on their relationship, without falling into didactic preachiness.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Wicked Little Letters

Trolling didn’t begin with social media. Back in the 1920s, several residents of the seaside town of Littlehampton in England began receiving poison pen letters rife with obscenities and false rumors. It became known as the Littlehampton libels, with the culprit revealed to be a 30-year-old laundress named Edith Swan, who tried to pin the blame on her neighbor, Rose Gooding, until she was found out. (Poor Gooding actually served over a year of jail time before she was exonerated.)

Wicked Little Letters is the fictionalized account of those events, starring Olivia Coleman as Edith and Jessie Buckley as Rose, emphasizing the complicated relationships and psychological foibles of the central characters. Even if you know nothing about the case, we learn early on who the true culprit is, and the film then becomes a cat-and-mouse game as Rose’s allies try to prove Edith is the true poison pen. The true enjoyment is watching everything play out with equal parts humor and pathos.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Nosferatu

Director Robert Eggers can be a polarizing figure for moviegoers. How much you enjoyed The Witch, The Northman, or 2019’s The Lighthouse (inspired by a real-life 1801 tragedy involving two Welsh lighthouse keepers trapped in a storm) likely depends on your taste for Eggers’ dark mythic sensibility and penchant for hallucinatory imagery. With Nosferatu—a daring reinvention of the seminal 1922 German silent film by F.W. Murnau, based in turn on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula—Eggers leans fully into supernatural gothic horror, with spectacular, genuinely scary results.

It’s hard to go wrong with Bill Skarsgård in the lead role of the vampire Count Orlok; his portrayal of Pennywise the Clown in It is still giving people nightmares. Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult also shine as Ellen (the unfortunate object of Orlok’s murderous pursuit, slowly driven mad as he closes in) and her hapless fiancé, Thomas, as does Willem Dafoe as the eccentric Professor von Franz. The basic outlines of Stoker’s plot remain, but Eggers has also infused his film with a visual language that evokes both Murnau’s distinctive German expressionism and the Eastern European folklore that inspired Stoker. This is not so much a remake as an innovative re-imagining by a director whose sensibility is perfectly suited to the task.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Monkey Man

Dev Patel’s latest film completely missed me when it got a limited cinematic release this spring. Instead, I stumbled across it streaming on Peacock and went in cold with nothing more than good vibes toward the actor—and now director—based on his performances in films like Chappie. Which made the initial fight, with Patel wearing a monkey mask, a little confusing at first.

Monkey Man is a good old revenge film, following Patel’s character as he negotiates the underworld of the fictional Indian city of Yatana in a quest to avenge his mother, who was brutally murdered when their village was ethnically cleansed by Hindu nationalists. The fight scenes are frenetic and visceral, influenced by films like John Wick but also The Raid, and the hand-to-hand combat in Marvel’s Daredevil. But it’s also a film with a political message or two. Perhaps the best way to describe it is like a cross between John Wick and RRR—if you liked both of those films, you’ll probably love Monkey Man.

—Jonathan Gitlin

The Three Musketeers Part 2: Milady

Last year, The Three Musketeers Part 1: D’Artagnan made our annual list, in which we celebrated finally having a quintessential French adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic 1844 novel to rival Richard Lester’s iconic two-part 1970s US adaptation. Part 2: Milady covers the events of the second half of the novel, as D’Artagnan (Francois Civil) and his compatriots rush to rescue his kidnapped lover, Constance (Lyna Khoudri), and prevent the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) by Eva Green’s deliciously wicked Milady de Winter.

Both films were shot back to back, so the same top-notch storytelling and able performances are present. And director Martin Bourboulon heard the complaints about how dark the first installment was in places and corrected the colorimetry. My only quibble: unlike Part 1, Part 2 actually deviates quite substantially from the source material, particularly with regard to the fates of Constance and Milady. In fact, the finale is left open-ended. Could a third installment be in the offing? (An adaptation of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo is releasing soon by the same team.) Still, it’s a magnificent, hugely entertaining film that pairs beautifully with its predecessor.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Late Night with the Devil

Framed as a documentary with behind-the-scenes found-footage elements, Late Night with the Devil tells the story of a late-night talk show, Night Owls with Jack Delroy, and its producers’ attempts to put on an unforgettable Halloween night show in 1977. Things start out in an appropriate-for-TV spooky tone, and the movie’s ’70s aesthetic really sells the vibe.

But as the show goes on, the guests get progressively weirder, the segments become more sinister, and it starts to be difficult to tell if the guests are putting on an act or if something darker is going on. Is the host really going to try to commune with the devil on a late-night variety hour? That quickly becomes the plan. I won’t spoil more than that, but I found the ride compelling from start to finish.

This was a good year for horror movies, and Late Night with the Devil was one of my favorites. David Dastmalchian’s performance as the host was a real standout. The whole package is great fun, and everything wraps up in a blessedly tight 95 minutes (man, movies are way too long these days). Genre fans shouldn’t miss this one.

—Aaron Zimmerman

Wicked Part 1

I was lucky enough to see Wicked on Broadway near the end of Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth’s iconic runs originating the characters of Elphaba and Glinda for the stage. Since then I’ve seen the live version of the musical five more times at various points and listened to the soundtrack hundreds of times more. Despite all that, the unavoidable marketing for this movie had me worried it was going to be an overproduced cinematic flop on the order of Cats or Dear Evan Hansen.

Happily, my worries were overblown. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande bring real chemistry and pathos to the show’s main roles and have the pipes to pull off some extremely difficult songs without breaking a sweat. I was also impressed with the movie’s top-notch choreography, which evokes the golden age of silver screen musicals and demands to be seen in a theater with as big a screen as possible.

My only quibble with this adaptation is the pacing, which suffers thanks to a few unnecessary backstory additions and a few too many long, lingering shots and pregnant pauses that even mess up the flow of some iconic songs. Why they decided to shoot “Defying Gravity” like an action movie—and decided not to cut to the credits right after Erivo’s soaring final note—will always be a huge mystery to me. A version of this movie that was about 45 minutes shorter would have been perfect. The version we got was instead just a very good adaptation of a very good musical.

—Kyle Orland

The Wild Robot

This is the final film to be animated entirely in-house at DreamWorks, based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Peter Brown. It features a plucky service robot called ROZZUM unit 7134, aka “Roz” (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o), who gets shipwrecked on a desert island and must learn to adapt. Along the way, Roz befriends some of the local wildlife—Pedro Pascal voices a mischievous red fox named Fink, with Bill Nighy voicing an elderly goose named Longneck—and adopts an orphaned goose named Brightbill (Kit Connor).

Director Chris Sanders was inspired both by classic Disney animated movies and Hayao Miyazaki, creating what he described as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest” for the visual CGI style of The Wild Robot. It makes for quite a striking combination. Plot-wise, there are elements of E.T. and Pixar’s Wall-E here, but Sanders has created a unique take on those tropes and standout characters that are all his own. Along with Inside Out 2 (see below) this is one of the best animated movies of the year.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Deadpool & Wolverine

The Deadpool & Wolverine movie was a long time coming. That’s not just because Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) has been making comically obsessive requests to hang out with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine since the first Deadpool. But the movie itself feels like an homage to the comic book movies before it, combining fan service with a true, sensible (for a comic book movie) plot and a satisfying conclusion that leaves the characters more mature and content than when we last saw them.

Some may be concerned about the return of Jackman, considering his version of Wolverine was supposed to come to a dramatic and spectacular conclusion with the 2017 movie Logan. In fact, the movie is about Deadpool’s universe crumbling (as related by the Time Variance Authority from the show Loki) due to that version of Wolverine no longer being around. But Deadpool & Wolverine handles this well by visiting the end location of Logan and establishing that Jackman is now playing a Wolverine from an alternate universe and is still highly capable of playing the fierce, acrobatic, and iconic X-Man.

Deep down, the movie is about two men who have typically felt alone and unworthy of the people they love finding new paths to manhood, self-respect, and acceptance of their roles in the world. But for comic book fans, it’s really about action-packed nostalgia. The good feels are bolstered by epic cameos of characters you might have forgotten were Marvel-related at all (if possible, I highly recommend seeing this movie spoiler-free).

Unexpectedly one of the best parts of the movie comes from the ending credits. It features behind-the-scenes footage from 12 X-Men movies going back 24 years. With clips featuring the likes of a young Jackman, Halle Berry (who has played Storm), and Patrick Stewart (who has played Professor X), it’s a reminder of a time when comic books felt new and bold and a tribute to how long all of us—from the actors, to the crew, to the audience—have been on this journey. Ultimately, Deadpool & Wolverine provides a fulfilling and happy goodbye to all those pieces.

—Scharon Harding

Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, based on Florida’s infamous Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a relic of the Jim Crow era. The school’s staff inflicted all manner of abuse, beatings, rapes, and torture on its unfortunate charges and even murdered many of them; as of 2012, nearly 100 deaths had been documented, along with 55 burial sites on school grounds. (There could be as many as 27 more burial sites, based on ground-penetrating radar surveys.)

A young Black boy named Elwood (Ethan Cole Sharp) in 1962 is a promising student until he is mistakenly arrested for being an accomplice to car theft. He’s sent to the segregated Nickel Academy, where he makes friends with Turner (Brandon Wilson). (Daveed Diggs plays a grown Elwood, now a successful businessman in New York City.) The two witness and experience so much abuse that Elwood finally decides to fight back, despite the risk of retaliation by the school’s administrators.

This is powerful subject matter, deftly handled by director RaMell Ross, who manages to tell a compelling story without turning it into what’s become known as “Black trauma porn.” The most controversial aspect of the film is Ross’ choice to shoot it from a first-person point of view with a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. So we see either Elwood speaking in a scene, with Turner off-camera, or vice versa, and the two are only occasionally onscreen at the same time. Some might find this choice annoying, but I found it kept me centered on one boy’s perspective at a time, which served to make the final plot twist all the more satisfying.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Inside Out 2

I cried multiple times the first time I saw Inside Out in the theater, and still tear up when I watch it at home. So I was prepared to be even more emotional at Inside Out 2, especially given that I’m now the parent of a tween child myself.

I wasn’t quite moved to tears by this tale of Riley struggling with newfound feelings of Anxiety, pushing her to more and more desperate plans to ingratiate herself with a group of “cool” kids. But I will admit that my heart did break a little during the climactic scene, which shows the inner turmoil inherent to a true panic attack in a way that can resonate with both children and adults.

There were a couple of inconsistent attempts at comedy in Inside Out 2 that felt like they came from a completely different movie. And I found myself missing the original voice actors for Disgust and Envy, as well as Lewis Black’s original Anger voice (which has noticeably diminished as he’s aged). But none of this was enough to diminish the strong emotional core of a movie that will be relatable to anyone who’s busy growing up or just remembers doing the same.

—Kyle Orland

And now… our pick for the best movie of 2024:

Dune: Part 2

David Lynch’s 1984 Dune was a huge chunk of my high school experience, being as I was part of a small group of friends obsessed with the movie—with its incredible visuals, its outsize but seemingly earnest camp, and its absolutely endless quotability. We sprinkled the movie’s words throughout our conversations, experimented with re-creating portions of it with video cameras and action figures, and reveled in exploring something that felt truly ours—largely because the movie was rejected and forgotten by so many others.

If anything, Lynch’s Dune put paid to the notion that Frank Herbert’s novel could be successfully ported to film. It’s a heroic effort, but it’s a bloody mess. And I would have gone to my grave thinking that Dune remained one of the most unfilmable classic bits of 20th-century science fiction—until Denis Villeneuve went and made the dang thing anyway.

The viscerally visual filmmaker who famously hates dialog did something I genuinely believed was impossible: He gave us a (two-part) translation of the book to screen that is both faithful to the original, and also shows us new things that feel like they’ve been there all along, waiting to be discovered.

Dune: Part Two is a masterpiece. It is the product of craftsmen at the top of their crafts, including and especially the craftsman in the director’s seat. Dune gives us a peek at exactly what Villeneuve means when he talks about the “paradise” of a movie without dialogue—there are long, almost Tarkovsky-esque stretches where vast cyclopean imagery juxtaposes itself against tiny human tableaus, underpinned by nothing but Hans Zimmer’s transcendent music. And it’s not just that these stretches work—they work fantastically well!—it’s that in many ways they carry the movie to places that rapid-fire Aaron Sorkin-style banter could never reach. The visuals show us things—things words never could.

Speaking of Hans Zimmer—let’s talk about that score. It’s an absolutely masterful creation that figures so prominently in our experience of Arrakis that it becomes a character itself, a second unseen narrator who alternates with poor unloved Irulan as the voice of the world. Paul and Chani’s love theme, a composition titled “A Time of Quiet Between the Storms,” is one of the most powerfully emotional pieces of music I’ve ever heard, embodying almost the platonic ideal of pure, mournful longing; the emotional hammer-blow delivered by its apocalyptic, civilization-ending reprise “Kiss the Ring” left me speechless and wide-eyed in the theater.

Folks, Dune: Part Two is a good movie. It (and its prequel) is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, successfully adapting a difficult book into a movie and retaining the bits that mattered most. Villeneuve was born to make these films, and Zimmer was born to score them. They are true art. If anything, I’m even more excited now about another of Villeneuve’s upcoming projects: he’s taken over the reins for the long-stalled, long-rumored, finally-happening-for-real adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, a book that heavily imprinted itself on me in fourth grade and that I’ve reread at least once a year for most of my life. If Villeneuve brings his A-game, I have the highest hopes for Rama.

—Lee Hutchinson

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