ArsTechnica
Review: The John Wick franchise is alive and kicking with Ballerina
Ana de Armas shone in the original Knives Out (2019) and as one of the best Bond girls in recent memory in No Time to Die (2021). She proves herself a fierce and lethal adversary against a cultish syndicate in the new film Ballerina—excuse me, From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. (Why, Lionsgate? Just... why?) I love them all, but this is probably my favorite John Wick film since the original in 2014 (which may never be surpassed).
(Mostly mild spoilers, and a couple of significant reveals below the gallery. We'll give you a heads-up when we get there.)
Chronologically, Ballerina takes place during the events of John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. As previously reported, Parabellum found Wick declared excommunicado from the High Table for killing crime lord Santino D'Antonio on the grounds of the Continental. On the run with a bounty on his head, he made his way to the headquarters of the Ruska Roma crime syndicate, led by the Director (Anjelica Huston), where he was trained as an assassin. The Director also trains girls to be ballerina-assassins, one of whom is Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas). We see snippets of these events from Eve's perspective in Ballerina, just to establish the continuity.
After AI setbacks, Meta bets billions on undefined “superintelligence”
Meta has developed plans to create a new artificial intelligence research lab dedicated to pursuing "superintelligence," according to reporting from The New York Times. The social media giant chose 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, to join the new lab as part of a broader reorganization of Meta's AI efforts under CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Superintelligence refers to a hypothetical AI system that would exceed human cognitive abilities—a step beyond artificial general intelligence (AGI), which aims to match an intelligent human's capability for learning new tasks without intensive specialized training.
However, much like AGI, superintelligence remains a nebulous term in the field. Since scientists still poorly understand the mechanics of human intelligence, and because human intelligence resists simple quantification with no single definition, identifying superintelligence when it arrives will present significant challenges.
Ars Live recap: Where does NASA go from here?
Recently, during the first Ars Live event of this year, two noted space journalists joined Ars space editor Eric Berger for a discussion of NASA's future in the age of the second Trump administration.
During the hour-long discussion, Christian Davenport of The Washington Post and Joey Roulette of Reuters covered a range of issues, from uncertainty at the space agency to the likelihood of NASA sponsoring a humans-to-Mars mission any time soon.
This is an especially frenetic time in space policy. In the days since this video was recorded, President Trump canceled the longstanding nomination of private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become NASA administrator—at the time we recorded the video, Senate approval was assured, and a vote was imminent. Then Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk had a serious falling out, with the two trading nasty words on social media and culminating in Musk threatening to end Dragon spacecraft missions before pulling back.
Ocean acidification crosses “planetary boundaries”
A critical measure of the ocean’s health suggests that the world’s marine systems are in greater peril than scientists had previously realized and that parts of the ocean have already reached dangerous tipping points.
A study, published Monday in the journal Global Change Biology, found that ocean acidification—the process in which the world’s oceans absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, becoming more acidic—crossed a “planetary boundary” five years ago.
“A lot of people think it’s not so bad,” said Nina Bednaršek, one of the study’s authors and a senior researcher at Oregon State University. “But what we’re showing is that all of the changes that were projected, and even more so, are already happening—in all corners of the world, from the most pristine to the little corner you care about. We have not changed just one bay, we have changed the whole ocean on a global level.”
IBM now describing its first error-resistant quantum compute system
On Tuesday, IBM released its plans for building a system that should push quantum computing into entirely new territory: a system that can both perform useful calculations while catching and fixing errors and be utterly impossible to model using classical computing methods. The hardware, which will be called Starling, is expected to be able to perform 100 million operations without error on a collection of 200 logical qubits. And the company expects to have it available for use in 2029.
Perhaps just as significant, IBM is also committing to a detailed description of the intermediate steps to Starling. These include a number of processors that will be configured to host a collection of error-corrected qubits, essentially forming a functional compute unit. This marks a major transition for the company, as it involves moving away from talking about collections of individual hardware qubits and focusing instead on units of functional computational hardware. If all goes well, it should be possible to build Starling by chaining a sufficient number of these compute units together.
"We're updating [our roadmap] now with a series of deliverables that are very precise," IBM VP Jay Gambetta told Ars, "because we feel that we've now answered basically all the science questions associated with error correction and it's becoming more of a path towards an engineering problem."
A history of the Internet, part 2: The high-tech gold rush begins
In 1965, Ted Nelson submitted a paper to the Association for Computing Machinery. He wrote: “Let me introduce the word ‘hypertext’ to mean a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper.” The paper was part of a grand vision he called Xanadu, after the poem by Samuel Coleridge.
A decade later, in his book “Dream Machines/Computer Lib,” he described Xanadu thusly: “To give you a screen in your home from which you can see into the world’s hypertext libraries.” He admitted that the world didn’t have any hypertext libraries yet, but that wasn’t the point. One day, maybe soon, it would. And he was going to dedicate his life to making it happen.
As the Internet grew, it became more and more difficult to find things on it. There were lots of cool documents like the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Internet, but to read them, you first had to know where they were.
Apple details the end of Intel Mac support and a phaseout for Rosetta 2
The support list for macOS Tahoe still includes Intel Macs, but it has been whittled down to just four models, all released in 2019 or 2020. We speculated that this meant that the end was near for Intel Macs, and now we can confirm just how near it is: macOS Tahoe will be the last new macOS release to support any Intel Macs. All new releases starting with macOS 27 will require an Apple Silicon Mac.
Apple will provide additional security updates for Tahoe until fall 2028, two years after it is replaced with macOS 27. That's a typical schedule for older macOS versions, which all get one year of major point updates that include security fixes and new features, followed by two years of security-only updates to keep them patched but without adding significant new features.
Apple is also planning changes to Rosetta 2, the Intel-to-Arm app translation technology created to ease the transition between the Intel and Apple Silicon eras. Rosetta will continue to work as a general-purpose app translation tool in both macOS 26 and macOS 27.
Mercedes’ next electric GLC rides great—we’ve driven the prototype
IMMENDINGEN, Germany—The Mercedes-Benz Testing and Technology Center in Immendingen, Germany, isn't a top-secret facility because of its location. It's top secret because of what happens on the 520 hectares of land. Its 62-kilometer track is where Mercedes engineers can develop and hone every new vehicle in conditions experienced all around the world. Experiencing those conditions in a prototype is why I was there on an annoyingly rainy day.
After receiving the tour in a new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, I settled into the driving seat of the all-new Mercedes-Benz GLC with EQ Technology—that's the electric one. Being a prototype, it was still wearing camouflage, and the interior was covered in black fabric, so I couldn't see everything. But I was assured that the ride, handling, and performance are all sorted. The infotainment software and interior details are still being finalized.
The upcoming GLC is slightly longer than its gasoline-powered counterpart to accommodate the 94.5 kWh battery pack. Mercedes is estimating 650 kilometers of range on the optimistic WLTP testing cycle. Based on some rough math, 330 miles on the EPA cycle seems about right.
Apple tiptoes with modest AI updates while rivals race ahead
On Monday, Apple announced a series of incremental Apple Intelligence updates at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, focusing on practical features like live phone call translation and visual search rather than the ambitious race for AI breakthroughs that rivals have been promoting.
Notably absent was any concrete update on the much-needed "more personalized" Siri that Apple first announced at last year's WWDC but has yet to demo publicly or provide specifics about. (Siri still feels woefully outdated after using ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode, for example.)
In our WWDC keynote preview from last week, we pointed out that Apple has faced intense pressure to deliver on AI after overpromising features it wasn't ready to launch—a controversy that led to an executive reshuffle of those handling Apple's AI efforts.
Anti-vaccine advocate RFK Jr. fires entire CDC panel of vaccine advisors
Anti-vaccine advocate and current US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary action of firing all 17 vaccine experts on a federal committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunization practices.
In an opinion piece published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, Kennedy announced that he had cleared out the committee, accusing them of being "plagued with persistent conflicts of interest" and a group that has "become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine."
"Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028," Kennedy added.
Second New Glenn launch slips toward fall as program leadership departs
A few weeks ago, the chief executive of Blue Origin, Dave Limp, convened an all-hands meeting for the more than 12,000 employees at the company. Among the most critical items he discussed was the launch rate for the New Glenn rocket and how the company would fall significantly short of its goal for this year.
Before 2025 began, Limp had set expectations alongside Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos: New Glenn would launch eight times this year.
However, since the rocket's mostly successful debut in January, five months have passed. At one point the company targeted "late spring" for the second launch of the rocket. However, on Monday, Limp acknowledged on social media that the rocket's next flight will now no longer take place until at least August 15. Although he did not say so, this may well be the only other New Glenn launch this year.
Apple drops support for just three iPhone and iPad models from iOS and iPadOS 26
Every year, Apple releases new versions of iOS and iPadOS, and most years those updates also end support for a handful of devices that are too old or too slow or otherwise incapable of running the new software.
Though this year's macOS 26 Tahoe release was unkind to Intel Macs, the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 releases are more generous, dropping support for just two iPhone models and a single iPad. The iOS 26 update won't run on 2018's iPhone XR or XS, and iPadOS 26 won't run on 2019's 7th-generation iPad. Any other device that can currently run iOS or iPadOS 18 will be able to upgrade to the new versions and pick up the new Liquid Glass look, among other features.
Everything that runs iOS 26. Credit: Apple Everything that runs iPadOS 26. Credit: AppleApple never provides explicit reasoning for why it drops the devices it drops, though they can usually be explained by some combination of age and technical capability. The 7th-gen iPad, for example, was still using a 2017-vintage Apple A10X chip despite being introduced a number of years later.
Prepping for Starship, SpaceX is about to demolish one of ULA’s launch pads
The US Air Force is moving closer to authorizing SpaceX to move into one of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with plans to use the facility for up to 76 launches of the company's Starship rocket each year.
A draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released this week by the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, found SpaceX's planned use of Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral would have no significant negative impacts on local environmental, historical, social, and cultural interests. The Air Force also found SpaceX's plans at SLC-37 will have no significant impact on the company's competitors in the launch industry.
The Defense Department is leading the environmental review and approval process for SpaceX to take over the launch site, which the Space Force previously leased to United Launch Alliance, one of SpaceX's chief rivals in the US launch industry. ULA launched its final Delta IV Heavy rocket from SLC-37 in April 2024, a couple of months after the military announced SpaceX was interested in using the launch pad.
macOS Tahoe signals that the end is near for Intel Macs, dumping all but four models
Apple's new macOS Tahoe release isn't the end of the road for Intel Macs, but it sends Apple's clearest signal yet that it's nearly finished with the Intel Mac era. The macOS 26 update will support just four Intel Macs, all released in 2019 or 2020, and it entirely drops support for all Intel versions of the MacBook Air and Mac mini.
Other models that run the current macOS 15 Sequoia release that won't support macOS Tahoe include all 15-inch MacBook Pros, all 13-inch MacBook Pros with two Thunderbolt ports, and the 4K and 5K versions of the 2019 iMac.
The compatibility list for macOS 26 Tahoe. Credit: AppleApple has generally been pulling support for new macOS releases from Intel Macs more aggressively than it was in the mid-to-late 2010s, giving most systems six-ish years of new macOS releases followed by another two years of security updates. Some models fared better than others; for example, Intel MacBook Air models have been getting dropped more aggressively than MacBook Pros.
With visionOS 26, Apple begins to zero-in on what the Vision Pro is actually used for
As part of a wider software rebranding effort, Apple's visionOS is jumping from version 2 to 26 with a new software update announced during the company's developer conference this week.
visionOS 26 will reach Vision Pro users later this year, and it focuses on refining the focus of the device based on how users are actually using it rather than whatever wild ideas the company had during its initial development—including addressing common complaints about how the Vision Pro doesn't support some features of popular competing mixed-reality headsets.
For example, the headset will soon support native playback of 3D video recorded by people other than Apple and downloaded from anywhere on the Internet—something you had to use a few, somewhat janky third-party apps to do until now, but which is an easier-to-access feature of some other mixed-reality headsets.
Apple’s macOS 26 Tahoe has new Liquid Glass look, customizable folders, and more
Apple unveiled the next version of macOS today during the Worldwide Developers Conference. Codenamed Tahoe, macOS 26 gets a visual refresh with the same "Liquid Glass" look that Apple is introducing across all of its operating systems this year. Apple has also changed the version number, jumping directly from version 14 to version 26 as it shifts to unified year-based version numbering across all of its operating systems.
Liquid Glass goes all-in on translucency and transparency, changing the look of icons and windows across the operating system. Most significantly, the macOS menu bar has become entirely invisible, and the Control Center has adopted a new, glassy, translucent appearance. The same color-tinting customization features available on iOS and iPadOS are coming to the Mac this year, giving users multiple customization options on top of the standard light and dark modes and accent colors.
The invisible menu bar and glassy Control Center in macOS Tahoe. Credit: AppleThe new look will probably define the release in the minds of most users, but it's bringing the standard handful of new features and refinements across the built-in apps. For the Finder, folders can be customized with colors and emoji labels to help them stand out from a big list of folders.
Apple consolidates iOS gaming features in new Games app
At its Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple unveiled a new iOS Games App that Apple Senior Director of Marketplace Platforms and Technologies Ann Thai promoted as "a new destination to help you get more out of your games."
The most relevant new social feature in the app comes in the "Play Together" tab, which provides a quick look at what your friends are playing on iOS. That tab will also integrate a new Challenges feature, which game developers can use to turn single-player games into score-based competitions between friends. These interpersonal Challenges come on top of the standard game leaderboards already common through iOS's Game Center, allowing for a new way to compete socially.
Other than that, the new Games app seems to consolidate several features that were previously split between Game Center and the App Store. On the Home tab, the Games app will let you see games with new update, time-sensitive in-game events, and recommendations for new games to try. A Library tab will show every iOS game you've ever downloaded in a single place, while the Apple Arcade tab shows subscribers what's available to download. The Games app will work in both portrait and landscape mode and be navigable via controller.
YouTube will “protect free expression” by pulling back on content moderation
YouTube videos may be getting a bit more pernicious soon. Google's dominant video platform has spent years removing discriminatory and conspiracy content from its platform in accordance with its usage guidelines, but the site is now reportedly adopting a lighter-touch approach to moderation. A higher bar for content removal will allow more potentially inflammatory content to remain up in the "public interest."
YouTube has previously attracted the ire of conservatives for its removal of QAnon and anti-vaccine content. According to The New York Times, YouTube's content moderators have been provided with new guidelines and training on how to handle the deluge of provocative content on the platform. The changes urge reviewers to pull back on removing certain videos, a continuation of a trend not just at YouTube, but on numerous platforms that host user-created content.
Beginning late last year, YouTube began informing moderators they should err on the side of caution when removing videos that are in the public interest. That includes user uploads that discuss issues like elections, race, gender, sexuality, abortion, immigration, and censorship. Previously, YouTube's policy told moderators to remove videos if one-quarter or more of the content violated policies. Now, the exception cutoff has been increased to half. In addition, staff are now told to bring issues to managers if they are uncertain rather than removing the content themselves.
Apple targets “more personal and expressive” iOS 26 with new Liquid Glass design
At the Worldwide Developers Conference today, Apple unveiled iOS 26, its next iPhone operating system (OS), which is centered on Apple's new Liquid Glass design for its software platform.
Available across Apple's other upcoming OSes, like macOS 26 Tahoe, Liquid Glass aims to make the software look and operate as if it has glass edges. You can see this approach throughout iOS 26 in things like the app icon's appearance, which includes softer edges and the option to be translucent.
DOGE wins at Supreme Court; conservative majority ends limits on data access
The Supreme Court allowed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access Social Security Administration (SSA) records on Friday, overturning lower-court decisions that imposed some limits on DOGE's data access.
"We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work," the Supreme Court order said. The court also sided with the Trump administration in a different DOGE case, finding that a lower court's discovery order requiring DOGE to provide information about its government cost-cutting operations was too broad (more on that ruling later in this article).
The data-access ruling was in a case filed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the Alliance for Retired Americans; and American Federation of Teachers. US District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander previously issued a preliminary injunction, writing that DOGE "is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion." The District of Maryland judge found that plaintiffs are likely to win their case alleging that the government violated the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.