ArsTechnica
On a day of rebranding at the Pentagon, this name change slipped under the radar
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday authorizing the Department of Defense to refer to itself as the Department of War, reverting to a more bellicose title used until a 1940s-era military shakeup in the aftermath of World War II.
The order approves the Pentagon's use of the Department of War name as an "additional secondary title" for the Department of Defense while the Trump administration seeks congressional approval to officially change the name. Until Congress votes on the issue, the name change is effectively a rebrand of the DoD that could be reversed with the signature of a future president.
But there was another potential name change revealed by the Pentagon on Friday, just hours before Trump signed the War Department order. This one may have more staying power.
EchoStar to sell spectrum to SpaceX after FCC threatened to revoke licenses
SpaceX's complaints to the Federal Communications Commission have helped the satellite company land a $17 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses from EchoStar.
The deal consists of up to $8.5 billion in cash and up to $8.5 billion in SpaceX stock, EchoStar said. SpaceX also agreed to pay $2 billion worth of interest payments on EchoStar debt through November 2027.
After SpaceX alleged that EchoStar subsidiary Dish Network "barely uses" its spectrum and urged the FCC to make the spectrum available to other carriers, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced an investigation into EchoStar and threatened to revoke its spectrum licenses. EchoStar countered that it had met the network construction deadlines associated with its spectrum licenses, but decided to start selling off the licenses instead of fighting the FCC.
The Polestar 5 electric sedan makes its world debut
Today, Polestar debuted its newest model. Just as three is followed by four, next in the series comes five—in this case the Polestar 5. And the new EV is a little departure from the products we've seen so far from this Swedish/Chinese startup. It's a handsome if angular sedan that, like the Polestar 4 SUV, eschews a rear window in favor of more headroom for passengers and a rear-view camera.
"Polestar 5 is bringing the future to our present. Our vision for Polestar's design, technology, and sustainability direction is no longer a dream but a reality our customers can buy," said Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller. "With its pure Scandinavian design inside and out, unique platform, powerful motors, sophisticated chassis, cutting-edge technology, and consciously sustainable materials, the Polestar 5 is a guiding star for the industry and the perfect Polestar flagship."
As we found out when we met the car early during its development, the Polestar 5 uses a bonded aluminum chassis, similar to various Lotuses and most current Aston Martins. Indeed, plenty of the development engineers working at Polestar's UK R&D center in Coventry can count those brands on their CVs. The bonded aluminum approach results in a very stiff but quite light chassis, making it a good starting point for a performance car.
Benoit Blanc goes full Gothic in Wake Up Dead Man trailer
Private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) might just turn out to be Rian Johnson's greatest creation. Introduced in 2019's Knives Out, Blanc's syrupy Southern drawl and idiosyncratic approach to solving a mysterious New England death charmed audiences worldwide and launched a modern whodunnit franchise.
The third installment in the series, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, has already garnered early rave reviews after screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) over the weekend. And now Netflix has released the official trailer, showcasing Blanc tackling the inexplicable death of a parish priest in a spookily Gothic small-town setting.
(Very minor spoilers for Knives Out and Glass Onion below.)
AI will consume all of IT by 2030—but not all IT jobs, Gartner says
In five years, you won’t be able to spell IT without AI, Gartner predicted today.
VP analysts Alicia Mullery and Daryl Plummer delivered the sentiment at their keynote address at Gartner’s IT Symposium in Gold Coast, Australia, as reported by The Register. Gartner believes that by 2030, all work performed by an IT department will involve the use of AI. That’s a progression from the 81 percent of IT work that’s done today without any use of AI, per Mullery.
By 2030, not only will all IT work rely on AI, but much of it will be performed by bots without the help of humans, Gartner’s analysts said. They predicted that in five years, 25 percent of IT work will be totally performed by bots, while 75 percent of IT workloads will be performed by humans with the help of AI.
Trump’s attempt to fire FTC Democrat gets a boost from Supreme Court
President Trump's attempt to fire a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission was given a boost today, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay that temporarily blocks a lower-court ruling against Trump.
The Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the merits of the case. Today's order from Roberts stayed the lower-court ruling "pending further order of The Chief Justice or of the Court." Roberts set a September 15 deadline for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the Democrat who was fired from the FTC, to file a response to the government's motion for a longer-term stay.
Slaughter beat Trump last week in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which affirmed a District Court ruling that Trump violated US law and Supreme Court precedent with her firing. Slaughter was back in her office temporarily. Her name was re-added to the FTC website's list of commissioners after last week's ruling, but was off the list again as of today.
F1 in Italy: Look what happens when the downforce comes off
Formula 1 held its Italian Grand Prix at Monza this past weekend. It's the third-oldest purpose-built racetrack on the planet, and even includes an old and rather dangerous-looking oval that, while no longer in use, is accessible on foot if you feel like exploring. It's a deceptively simple-looking track where it's all about top speed and nailing your braking into the four heavy deceleration zones. Downforce is actually an impediment here, and that means the pecking order that we have become familiar with this season got a little upended.
That was apparent from free practice on Friday, topped by the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc, with Carlos Sainz's Williams in third. Verstappen looked quick in his Red Bull, armed with a new Monza-spec rear wing that made his car cut through the air even more efficiently. The McLarens of title contenders Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris got faster through the practice sessions, with the Williams of Alex Albon and Sainz continuing to look strong.
Things often get messy when the cars have to funnel through the first chicane. Credit: Alessio Morgese/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesQualifying did not go well for the Williams drivers. The time constraints of the qualifying sessions meant neither Albon nor Sainz was able to get their tires into the right temperature window, and the two were relegated in Q2. Hopes of a home pole for Ferrari—and a repeat of last year's win—were not to be, as Leclerc could manage only fourth on the grid. Hamilton was just over a tenth of a second slower in fifth, but would have to take a grid penalty as a consequence of last weekend's Dutch Grand Prix.
All 54 lost clickwheel iPod games have now been preserved for posterity
Last year, we reported on the efforts of classic iPod fans to preserve playable copies of the downloadable clickwheel games that Apple sold for a brief period in the late '00s. The community was working to get around Apple's onerous FairPlay DRM by having people who still owned original copies of those (now unavailable) games sync their accounts to a single iTunes installation via a coordinated Virtual Machine. That "master library" would then be able to provide playable copies of those games to any number of iPods in perpetuity.
At the time, the community was still searching for iPod owners with syncable copies of the last few titles needed for their library. With today's addition of Real Soccer 2009 to the project, though, all 54 official iPod clickwheel games are now available together in an easily accessible format for what is likely the first time.
All at once, then slowlyGitHub user Olsro, the originator of the iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project, tells Ars that he lucked into contact with three people who had large iPod game libraries in the first month or so after the project's launch last October. That includes one YouTuber who had purchased and maintained copies of 39 distinct games, even repurchasing some of the upgraded versions Apple sold separately for later iPod models.
Congress and Trump may compromise on the SLS rocket by axing its costly upper stage
There are myriad questions about how NASA's budget process will play out in the coming weeks, with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 looming.
For example, the Trump administration may seek to shut off dozens of science missions that are either already in space or in development. Although Congress has signaled a desire to keep these missions active, absent a confirmed budget, the White House has made plans to turn off the lights.
Some answers may be forthcoming this week, as the House Appropriations Committee will take up the Commerce, Justice, and Science budget bill on Wednesday morning. However, great uncertainty remains about whether there will be a budget passed by October 1 (unlikely), a continuing resolution, or a government shutdown.
Tiny Vinyl is a new pocketable record format for the Spotify age
In 2019, Record Store Day partnered with manufacturer Crosley to revive a 3-inch collectible vinyl format first launched in Japan in 2004. Five years later, a new 4-inch-sized format called Tiny Vinyl wants to take the miniature vinyl collectible crown, and launch partner Target is throwing its considerable weight behind it as an exclusive launch partner, with 44 titles expected in the coming weeks.
It’s 2025, and the global vinyl record market has reached $2 billion in annual sales and is still growing at roughly 7 percent annually, according to market research firm Imarc. Vinyl record sales now account for over 50 percent of physical media sales for music (and this is despite a recent resurgence in both cassette and CD sales among Millennials). It's in this landscape that Tiny Vinyl founders Neil Kohler and Jesse Mann decided to come up with a fun new collectible vinyl format.
An “aha” momentKohler’s day job is working with toy companies to develop and market their ideas. He was involved in helping Funko popularize its stylized vinyl figurines, now a ubiquitous presence at pop culture conventions, comic book stores, and toy shops of all kinds. Mann has worked in production, marketing, and the music business for nearly three decades, including a stint at LiveNation and years of running operations for the annual summer music festival Bonnaroo. Both men are based in Nashville—Music City, USA—and the proximity to one of the main centers of the music industry clearly had an impact.
Porsche’s insanely clever hybrid engine comes to the 911 Turbo S
Today, Porsche debuted a new 911 variant at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, Germany. It's the most powerful 911 to date, excluding some limited-run models, and may well be the quickest to 60 mph from a standing start, dispatching that dash in just 2.4 seconds. And it's all thanks to one of the most interesting hybrid powertrains on sale today.
Rather than just bolting an electric motor to an existing 911, Porsche designed an entirely new 3.6 L flat-six engine, taking the opportunity to ditch the belt drive and move some of the ancillaries, which can instead be powered by the car's 400 V traction battery.
The system debuted in the 911 GTS T-Hybrid, which Ars recently reviewed. For that car, Porsche added a single electric turbocharger, which works like the MGU-H in a Formula 1 car. It spins up almost instantly to 120,000 rpm to eliminate throttle lag, but also recaptures excess energy from the spinning turbine and sends that to the 1.9 kWh battery pack.
GOP may finally succeed in unrelenting quest to kill two NASA climate satellites
It was in 2002, during the George W. Bush administration, when NASA decided to put a satellite into orbit to track emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas pumped into the atmosphere through human activity.
After many twists and turns, NASA's 23-year remit of charting greenhouse gas emissions could come to a close as soon as the end of this month. President Donald Trump's budget request to Congress calls for terminating 41 of NASA's 124 science missions in development or operations, and another 17 would see their funding zeroed out in the near future. Overall, the proposed budget slashes NASA's spending by 25 percent and cuts NASA's science funding in half.
This year's federal budget runs out September 30, and although lawmakers from both parties have signaled they will reject most of Trump's cuts, it's far from certain that Congress will pass a budget for the next fiscal year before the looming deadline. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has directed NASA managers to make plans to close out the missions tagged for cancellation.
Who can get a COVID vaccine—and how? It’s complicated.
As fall approaches and COVID cases tick up, you might be thinking about getting this season's COVID-19 vaccine. The annually updated shots have previously been easily accessible to anyone over 6 months of age. Most people could get them at no cost by simply walking into their neighborhood pharmacy—and that's what most people did.
However, the situation is much different this year with an ardent anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as the country's top health official. Since taking the role, Kennedy has worked diligently to dismantle the country's premier vaccination infrastructure, as well as directly hinder access to lifesaving shots. That includes restricting access to COVID-19 vaccines—something he's done by brazenly flouting all standard federal processes while providing no evidence-based reasoning for the changes.
How we got hereIn late May, Kennedy unilaterally decided that all healthy children and pregnant people should no longer have access to the shots. He announced the unprecedented change not through official federal channels, but via a video posted on Elon Musk's X platform. Top vaccine and infectious disease officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which sets federal vaccination recommendations—said they also learned of the change via X.
“First of its kind” AI settlement: Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion
Authors revealed today that Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion and destroy all copies of the books the AI company pirated to train its artificial intelligence models.
In a press release provided to Ars, the authors confirmed that the settlement is "believed to be the largest publicly reported recovery in the history of US copyright litigation." Covering 500,000 works that Anthropic pirated for AI training, if a court approves the settlement, each author will receive $3,000 per work that Anthropic stole. "Depending on the number of claims submitted, the final figure per work could be higher," the press release noted.
Anthropic has already agreed to the settlement terms, but a court must approve them before the settlement is finalized. Preliminary approval may be granted this week, while the ultimate decision may be delayed until 2026, the press release noted.
What to expect (and not expect) from yet another September Apple event
Apple's next product event is happening on September 9, and while the company hasn't technically dropped any hints about what's coming, anyone with a working memory and a sense of object permanence can tell you that an Apple event in the month of September means next-generation iPhones.
Apple's flagship phones have changed in mostly subtle ways since 2022's iPhone 14 Pro added the Dynamic Island and 2023's refreshes switched from Lightning to USB-C. Chips get gradually faster, cameras get gradually better, but Apple hasn't done a seismic iPhone X-style rethinking of its phones since, well, 2017's iPhone X.
The rumor mill thinks that Apple is working on a foldable iPhone—and such a device would certainly benefit from years of investment in the iPad—but if it's coming, it probably won't be this year. That doesn't mean Apple is totally done iterating on the iPhone X-style design, though. Let's run down what the most reliable rumors have said we're getting.
Civilization VII team at Firaxis Games faces layoffs
Firaxis Games, the studio that developed Civilization VII, is undergoing layoffs. The news went public when a former employee took to LinkedIn to announce her unemployment; Game Developer picked the story up, and publisher 2K Games soon confirmed it.
"We can confirm there was a staff reduction today at Firaxis Games, as the studio restructures and optimizes its development process for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity," a spokesperson wrote to multiple news outlets. The company did not confirm the number of people laid off.
The two most recent Firaxis games, 2022's Marvel's Midnight Suns and 2025's Civilization VII, both appeared to launch to lukewarm initial sales and player numbers.
Ignoring Trump threats, Europe hits Google with 2.95B euro fine for adtech monopoly
Google may have escaped the most serious consequences in its most recent antitrust fight with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), but the European Union is still gunning for the search giant. After a brief delay, the European Commission has announced a substantial 2.95 billion euro ($3.45 billion) fine relating to Google's anti-competitive advertising practices. This is not Google's first big fine in the EU, and it probably won't be the last, but it's the first time European leaders could face blowback from the US government for going after Big Tech.
The case stems from a complaint made by the European Publishers Council in 2021. The ensuing EU investigation determined that Google illegally preferenced its own ad display services, which made its Google Ad Exchange (AdX) marketplace more important in the European ad space. As a result, the competition says Google was able to charge higher fees for its service, standing in the way of fair competition since at least 2014.
A $3.45 billion fine would be a staggering amount for most firms, but Google's earnings have never been higher. In Q2 2025, Google had net earnings of over $28 billion on almost $100 billion in revenue. The European Commission isn't stopping with financial penalties, though. Google has also been ordered to end its anti-competitive advertising practices and submit a plan for doing so within 60 days.
Lenovo demos laptop with a screen you can swivel into portrait mode
Lenovo has proven again that it isn’t content with PC designs. The latest era of laptops has been focused on ultralight computers that are easy to transport, but they're hard to differentiate. However, Lenovo’s continual experimentation has brought us some unique laptop releases and concepts in recent years, including a laptop with a screen that expands by rolling, a laptop with an outward folding screen, laptops with foldable screens, and laptops with dual 14-inch displays.
The ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept laptop shown off today at the IFA conference in Berlin continues this exploration with a screen that you can swivel into and out of portrait mode.
Concept laptopThe VertiFlex PC demoed is a prototype. Lenovo doesn't have any plans to release the laptop and hasn't provided further details, like the components used in the prototype. That said, Lenovo has previously turned concepts into real products, such as the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable.
Warner Bros. sues Midjourney to stop AI knockoffs of Batman, Scooby-Doo
Warner Bros. hit Midjourney with a lawsuit Thursday, crafting a complaint that strives to shoot down defenses that the AI company has already raised in a similar lawsuit filed by Disney and Universal Studios earlier this year.
The big film studios have alleged that Midjourney profits off image generation models trained to produce outputs of popular characters. For Disney and Universal, intellectual property rights to pop icons like Darth Vader and the Simpsons were allegedly infringed. And now, the WB complaint defends rights over comic characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, as well as characters considered "pillars of pop culture with a lasting impact on generations," like Scooby-Doo and Bugs Bunny, and modern cartoon characters like Rick and Morty.
"Midjourney brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property as if it were its own," the WB complaint said, accusing Midjourney of allowing subscribers to "pick iconic" copyrighted characters and generate them in "every imaginable scene."
NASA’s acting chief “angry” about talk that China will beat US back to the Moon
NASA's interim administrator, Sean Duffy, said Thursday he has heard the recent talk about how some people are starting to believe that China will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program.
"We had testimony that said NASA will not beat China to the Moon," Duffy remarked during an all-hands meeting with NASA employees. "That was shade thrown on all of NASA. I heard it, and I gotta tell you what, maybe I am competitive, I was angry about it. I can tell you what, I'll be damned if that is the story that we write. We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon."
Duffy's remarks followed a Congressional hearing on Wednesday during which former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA administrator during President Trump's first term, said China had pulled ahead of NASA and the United States in the second space race.