Shortly after its inauguration, the Trump administration has made no secret that it isn’t especially interested in funding research. Before January’s end, major science agencies had instituted pauses on research...
Here are the reasons SpaceX won nearly all recent military launch contracts
“I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws.” President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, speak...
Revolt brews against RFK Jr. as experts pen rally cries in top medical journal
“Courage and clarity” In a more acerbic article, Vanderbilt researchers Jeremy Jacobs and Garrett Booth blasted Kennedy’s appointment of infamous anti-vaccine advocate David Geier to lead a federal study on...
Google announces faster, more efficient Gemini AI model
We recently spoke with Google’s Tulsee Doshi, who noted that the 2.5 Pro (Experimental) release was still prone to “overthinking” its responses to simple queries. However, the plan was to...
NASA nominee asks why lunar return has taken so long, and why it costs so much
WASHINGTON, DC—Over the course of a nearly three-hour committee hearing Wednesday, the nominee to lead NASA for the Trump administration faced difficult questions from US senators who sought commitments to...
Take It Down Act nears passage; critics warn Trump could use it against enemies
Anti-deepfake bill raises concerns about censorship and breaking encryption. The helicopter with outgoing US President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden departs from the East Front of the...
Trump boosts China tariffs to 125%, pauses tariff hikes on other countries
On Wednesday, Donald Trump, once again, took to Truth Social to abruptly shift US trade policy, announcing a 90-day pause “substantially” lowering reciprocal tariffs against all countries except China to...
OpenAI helps spammers plaster 80,000 sites with messages that bypassed filters
“AkiraBot’s use of LLM-generated spam message content demonstrates the emerging challenges that AI poses to defending websites against spam attacks,” SentinelLabs researchers Alex Delamotte and Jim Walter wrote. “The easiest...
After months of user complaints, Anthropic debuts new $200/month AI plan
A screenshot of various Claude pricing plans captured on April 9, 2025. Credit: Benj Edwards Probably not coincidentally, the highest Max plan matches the price point of OpenAI’s $200 “Pro”...
Windows 11’s Copilot Vision wants to help you learn to use complicated apps
Some elements of Microsoft’s Copilot assistant in Windows 11 have felt like a solution in search of a problem—and it hasn’t helped that Microsoft has frequently changed Copilot’s capabilities, turning...
Llama Does Not Look Good 4 Anything
Llama Scout (17B active parameters, 16 experts, 109B total) and Llama Maverick (17B active parameters, 128 experts, 400B total), released on Saturday, look deeply disappointing. They are disappointing on the...
The Ars cargo e-bike buying guide for the bike-curious (or serious)
Fun and functional transportation? See why these bikes are all the rage. Credit: Aurich Lawson | John Timmer Credit: Aurich Lawson | John Timmer Are you a millennial parent who...
Mario Kart World’s $80 price isn’t that high, historically
We assembled data for those game baskets across 21 non-consecutive years, going back to 1982, then normalized the nominal prices to consistent February 2025 dollars using the Bureau of Labor...
“The girl should be calling men.” Leak exposes Black Basta’s influence tactics.
A leak of 190,000 chat messages traded among members of the Black Basta ransomware group shows that it’s a highly structured and mostly efficient organization staffed by personnel with expertise...
Fewer beans = great coffee if you get the pour height right
Based on their findings, the authors recommend pouring hot water over your coffee grounds slowly to give the beans more time immersed in the water. But pour the water too...
Twitch makes deal to escape Elon Musk suit alleging X ad boycott conspiracy
Instead, it appears that X decided to sue Twitch after discovering that Twitch was among advertisers who directly referenced the WFA’s brand safety guidelines in its own community guidelines and...
Victory for DOGE as appeals court reinstates access to personal data
A US appeals court ruled yesterday that DOGE can access personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), overturning an order issued by...
Carmack defends AI tools after Quake fan calls Microsoft AI demo “disgusting”
The current generative Quake II demo represents a slight advancement from Microsoft’s previous generative AI gaming model (confusingly titled “WHAM” with only one “M”) we covered in February. That earlier...
Creating a distinctive aesthetic for Daredevil: Born Again
Ars chats with cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera on bringing a 1970s film vibe to the Marvel series. Enthusiasm was understandably high for Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel’s revival of the hugely...
Japanese railway shelter replaced in less than 6 hours by 3D-printed model
Hatsushima is not a particularly busy station, relative to Japanese rail commuting as a whole. It serves a town (Arida) of about 25,000, known for mandarin oranges and scabbardfish, that...
