Mike M.

A new open-weights AI coding model is closing in on proprietary options

agentic AI, AI, AI agents, AI coding, AI programming, Andrej Karpathy, ASML, Biz & IT, machine learning, Mistral AI, Open Source, open weights, software engineering, SWE-bench, vibe coding / Mike M. / December 10, 2025

On Tuesday, French AI startup Mistral AI released Devstral 2, a 123 billion parameter open-weights coding model designed to work as part of an autonomous software engineering agent. The model achieves a 72.2 percent score on SWE-bench Verified, a benchmark that attempts to test whether AI systems can solve real GitHub issues, putting it among the top-performing open-weights models.

Perhaps more notably, Mistral didn’t just release an AI model, it released a new development app called Mistral Vibe. It’s a command line interface (CLI) similar to Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Gemini CLI that lets developers interact with the Devstral models directly in their terminal. The tool can scan file structures and Git status to maintain context across an entire project, make changes across multiple files, and execute shell commands autonomously. Mistral released the CLI under the Apache 2.0 license.

It’s always wise to take AI benchmarks with a large grain of salt, but we’ve heard from employees of the big AI companies that they pay very close attention to how well models do on SWE-bench Verified, which presents AI models with 500 real software engineering problems pulled from GitHub issues in popular Python repositories. The AI must read the issue description, navigate the codebase, and generate a working patch that passes unit tests. While some AI researchers have noted that around 90 percent of the tasks in the benchmark test relatively simple bug fixes that experienced engineers could complete in under an hour, it’s one of the few standardized ways to compare coding models.

At the same time as the larger AI coding model, Mistral also released Devstral Small 2, a 24 billion parameter version that scores 68 percent on the same benchmark and can run locally on consumer hardware like a laptop with no Internet connection required. Both models support a 256,000 token context window, allowing them to process moderately large codebases (although whether you consider it large or small is very relative depending on overall project complexity). The company released Devstral 2 under a modified MIT license and Devstral Small 2 under the more permissive Apache 2.0 license.

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This is the oldest evidence of people starting fires

Archaeology, firestarting, hominins, making fire, Neanderthals, Science / Mike M. / December 10, 2025

We didn’t start the fire. (Neanderthals did, at least 400,000 years ago.)

This artist’s impression shows what the fire at Barnham might have looked like. Credit: Craig Williams, The Trustees of the British Museum

Heat-reddened clay, fire-cracked stone, and fragments of pyrite mark where Neanderthals gathered around a campfire 400,000 years ago in what’s now Suffolk, England.

Based on chemical analysis of the sediment at the site, along with the telltale presence of pyrite, a mineral not naturally found nearby but very handy for striking sparks with flint, British Museum archaeologist Rob Davis and his colleagues say the Neanderthals probably started the fire themselves. That makes the abandoned English clay pit at Barnham the oldest evidence in the world that people (Neanderthal people, in this case) had learned to not only use fire, but also create it and control it.

A cozy Neanderthal campfire

Today, the Barnham site is part of an abandoned clay pit where workers first discovered stone tools in the early 1900s. But 400,000 years ago, it would have been a picturesque little spot at the edge of a stream-fed pond, surrounded by a mix of forest and grassland. There are no hominin fossils here, but archaeologists unearthed a Neanderthal skull about 100 kilometers to the south, so the hominins at Barnham were probably also Neanderthals. The place would have have offered a group of Neanderthals a relatively quiet, sheltered place to set up camp, according to Davis and his colleagues.

The cozy domesticity of that camp apparently centered on a hearth about the size of a small campfire. What’s left of that hearth today is a patch of clayey silt baked to a rusty red color by a series of fires; it stands out sharply against the yellowish clay that makes up the rest of the site. When ancient hearth fires heated that iron-rich yellow clay, it formed tiny grains of hematite that turned the baked clay a telltale red. Near the edge of the hearth, the archaeologists unearthed a handful of flint handaxes shattered by heat, alongside a scattering of other heat-cracked flint flakes.

And glinting against the dull clay lay two small pieces of a shiny sulfide mineral, aptly named pyrite—a key piece of Stone Age firestarting kits. Long before people struck flint and steel together to make fire, they struck flint and pyrite. Altogether, the evidence at Barnham suggests that Neanderthals were building and lighting their own fires 400,000 years ago.

Fire: the way of the future

Lighting a fire sounds like a simple thing, but once upon a time, it took cutting-edge technology. Working out how to start a fire on purpose—and then how to control its size and temperature—was the breakthrough that made nearly everything else possible: hafted stone weapons, cooked food, metalworking, and ultimately microprocessors and heavy-lift rockets.

“Something else that fire provides is additional time. The campfire becomes a social hub,” said Davis during a recent press conference. “Having fire… provides this kind of intense socialization time after dusk.” It may have been around fires like the one at Barnham, huddled together against the dark Pleistocene evening, that hominins began developing language, storytelling, and mythologies. And those things, Davis suggested, could have “played a critical part in maintaining social relationships over bigger distances or within more complex social groups.” Fire, in other words, helped make us more fully human and may have helped us connect in the same way that bonding over TV shows does today.

Archaeologists have worked for decades to try to pinpoint exactly when that breakthrough happened (although most now agree that it probably happened multiple times in different places). But evidence of fire is hard to find because it’s ephemeral by its very nature. The small patch of baked clay at Barnham hasn’t seen a fire in half a million years, but its light is still pushing back the shadows.

an artist's impression of a person's hands holding a piece of flint and a piece of pyrite, striking them together to make sparks — This was the first step toward the Internet. We could have turned back. Credit: Craig Williams, The Trustees of the British Museum

A million-year history of fire

Archaeologists suspect that the first hominins to use fire took advantage of nearby wildfires: Picture a Homo erectus lighting a branch on a nearby wildfire (which must have taken serious guts), then carefully carrying that torch back to camp to cook or make it easier to ward off predators for a night. Evidence of that sort of thing—using fire, but not necessarily being able to summon it on command—dates back more than a million years at sites like Koobi Fora in Kenya and Swartkrans in South Africa.

Learning to start a fire whenever you want one is harder, but it’s essential if you want to cook your food regularly without having to wait for the next lightning strike to spark a brushfire. It can also help maintain the careful control of temperature needed to make birch tar adhesives, “The advantage of fire-making lies in its predictability,” as Davis and his colleagues wrote in their paper. Knowing how to strike a light changed fire from an occasional luxury item to a staple of hominin life.

There are hints that Neanderthals in Europe were using fire by around 400,000 years ago, based on traces of long-cold hearths at sites in France, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and Ukraine. (The UK site, Beeches Pit, is just 10 kilometers southwest of Barnham.) But none of those sites offer evidence that Neanderthals were making fire rather than just taking advantage of its natural appearance. That kind of evidence doesn’t show up in the archaeological record until 50,000 years ago, when groups of Neanderthals in France used pyrite and bifaces (multi-purpose flint tools with two worked faces, sharp edges, and a surprisingly ergonomic shape) to light their own hearth-fires; marks left on the bifaces tell the tale.

Barnham pushes that date back dramatically, but there’s probably even older evidence out there. Davis and his colleagues say the Barnham Neanderthals probably didn’t invent firestarting; they likely brought the knowledge with them from mainland Europe.

“It’s certainly possible that Homo sapiens in Africa had the ability to make fire, but it can’t be proven yet from the evidence. We only have the evidence at this date from Barnham,” said Natural History Museum London anthropologist Chris Stringer, a coauthor of the study, in the press conference.

a person holds a tiny fragment of pyrite between a thumb and forefinger — The two pyrite fragments at the side may have broken off a larger nodule when it was struck against a piece of flint. Credit: Jordan Mansfield, Pathways to Ancient Britain Project.

Digging into the details

Several types of evidence at the site point to Neanderthals starting their own fire, not borrowing from a local wildfire. Ancient wildfires leave traces in sediment that can last hundreds of thousands of years or more—microscopic bits of charcoal and ash. But the area that’s now Suffolk wasn’t in the middle of wildfire season when the Barnham hearth was in use. Chemical evidence, like the presence of heavy hydrocarbon molecules in the sediment around the hearth, suggests this fire was homemade (wildfires usually scatter lighter ones across several square kilometers of landscape).

But the key piece of evidence at Barnham—the kind of clue that arson investigators probably dream about—is the pyrite. Pyrite isn’t a naturally common mineral in the area around Barnham; Neanderthals would have had to venture at least 12 kilometers southeast to find any. And although few hominins can resist the allure of picking up a shiny rock, it’s likely that these bits of pyrite had a more practical purpose.

To figure out what sort of fire might have produced the reddened clay, Davis and his colleagues did some experiments (which involved setting a bunch of fires atop clay taken from near the site). The archaeologists compared the baked clay from Barnham to the clay from beneath their experimental fires. The grain size and chemical makeup of the clay from the ancient Neanderthal hearth looked almost exactly like “12 or more heating events, each lasting 4 hours at temperatures of 400º Celsius or 600º Celsius,” as Davis and his colleagues wrote.

In other words, the hearth at Barnham hints at the rhythms of daily life for one group of Neanderthals 400,000 years ago. For starters, it seems that they kindled their campfire in the same spot over and over and left it burning for hours at a time. Flakes of flint nearby conjure up images of Neanderthals sitting around the fire, knapping stone tools as they told each other stories long into the night.

Nature, 2025 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09855-6 About DOIs).

Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica.

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Court: “Because Trump said to” may not be a legally valid defense

administrative procedures act, executive order, lawsuit, offshore wind, Policy, Science, Trump, windmills / Mike M. / December 9, 2025

In one of those cases, a judge lifted the hold on construction, ruling that a lack of a sound justification for the hold made it “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” a legal standard that determines whether federal decision-making is acceptable under the Administrative Procedures Act. If this were a fictional story, that would be considered foreshadowing.

With no indication of how long the comprehensive assessment would take, 17 states sued to lift the hold on permitting. They were joined by the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, which represents companies that build wind projects or feed their supply chain. Both the plaintiffs and the agencies that were sued asked for summary judgment in the case.

The first issue Judge Saris addressed is standing: Are the states suffering appreciable harm from the suspension of wind projects? She noted that they would receive tax revenue from the projects, that their citizens should see reduced energy costs following their completion, and that the projects were intended to contribute to their climate goals, thus limiting harm to their citizens. At one point, Saris even referred to the government’s attempts to claim the parties lacked standing as “tilting at windmills.”

The government also argued that the suspension wasn’t a final decision—that would come after the review—and thus didn’t fall under the Administrative Procedures Act. But Saris ruled that the decision to suspend all activity pending the rule was the end of a decision-making process and was not being reconsidered by the government, so it qualified.

Because Trump told us to

With those basics out of the way, Saris turned to the meat of the case, which included a consideration of whether the agencies had been involved with any decision-making at all. “The Agency Defendants contend that because they ‘merely followed’ the Wind Memo ‘as the [Wind Memo] itself commands,’ the Wind Order did not constitute a ‘decision’ and therefore no reasoned explanation was required,” her ruling says. She concludes that precedent at the circuit court level blocks this defense, as it would mean that agencies would be exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act whenever the president told them to do anything.

Court: “Because Trump said to” may not be a legally valid defense Read More »

Pompeii construction site confirms recipe for Roman concrete

Archaeology, materials science, Pompeii, Roman concrete, Science / Mike M. / December 9, 2025

Back in 2023, we reported on MIT scientists’ conclusion that the ancient Romans employed “hot mixing” with quicklime, among other strategies, to make their famous concrete, giving the material self-healing functionality. The only snag was that this didn’t match the recipe as described in historical texts. Now the same team is back with a fresh analysis of samples collected from a recently discovered site that confirms the Romans did indeed use hot mixing, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

As we’ve reported previously, like today’s Portland cement (a basic ingredient of modern concrete), ancient Roman concrete was basically a mix of a semi-liquid mortar and aggregate. Portland cement is typically made by heating limestone and clay (as well as sandstone, ash, chalk, and iron) in a kiln. The resulting clinker is then ground into a fine powder with just a touch of added gypsum to achieve a smooth, flat surface. But the aggregate used to make Roman concrete was made up of fist-sized pieces of stone or bricks.

In his treatise De architectura (circa 30 CE), the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius wrote about how to build concrete walls for funerary structures that could endure for a long time without falling into ruin. He recommended the walls be at least two feet thick, made of either “squared red stone or of brick or lava laid in courses.” The brick or volcanic rock aggregate should be bound with mortar composed of hydrated lime and porous fragments of glass and crystals from volcanic eruptions (known as volcanic tephra).

Admir Masic, an environmental engineer at MIT, has studied ancient Roman concrete for several years. For instance, in 2019, Masic helped pioneer a new set of tools for analyzing Roman concrete samples from Privernum at multiple length scales—notably, Raman spectroscopy for chemical profiling and multi-detector energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) for phase mapping the material. Masic was also a co-author of a 2021 study analyzing samples of the ancient concrete used to build a 2,000-year-old mausoleum along the Appian Way in Rome known as the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, a noblewoman who lived in the first century CE.

And in 2023, Masic’s group analyzed samples taken from the concrete walls of the Privernum, focusing on strange white mineral chunks known as “lime clasts,” which others had largely dismissed as resulting from subpar raw materials or poor mixing. Masic et al. concluded that was not the case. Rather, the Romans deliberately employed “hot mixing” with quicklime that gave the material self-healing functionality. When cracks begin to form in the concrete, they are more likely to move through the lime clasts. The clasts can then react with water, producing a solution saturated with calcium. That solution can either recrystallize as calcium carbonate to fill the cracks or react with the pozzolanic components to strengthen the composite material.

Pompeii construction site confirms recipe for Roman concrete Read More »

Pebble maker announces Index 01, a smart-ish ring for under $100

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Pebble, Tech, wearables / Mike M. / December 9, 2025

Nearly a decade after Pebble’s nascent smartwatch empire crumbled, the brand is staging a comeback with new wearables. The Pebble Core Duo 2 and Core Time 2 are a natural evolution of the company’s low-power smartwatch designs, but its next wearable is something different. The Index 01 is a ring, but you probably shouldn’t call it a smart ring. The Index does just one thing—capture voice notes—but the firm says it does that one thing extremely well.

Most of today’s smart rings offer users the ability to track health stats, along with various minor smartphone integrations. With all the sensors and data collection, these devices can cost as much as a smartwatch and require frequent charging. The Index 01 doesn’t do any of that. It contains a Bluetooth radio, a microphone, a hearing aid battery, and a physical button. You press the button, record your note, and that’s it. The company says the Index 01 will run for years on a charge and will cost just $75 during the preorder period. After that, it will go up to $99.

Core Devices, the new home of Pebble, says the Index is designed to be worn on your index finger (get it?), where you can easily mash the device’s button with your thumb. Unlike recording notes with a phone or smartwatch, you don’t need both hands to create voice notes with the Index.

The ring’s lone physical control is tactile, ensuring you’ll know when it’s activated and recording. When you’re done talking, just release the button. If that button is not depressed, the ring won’t record audio for any reason. The company apparently worked to ensure this process is 100 percent reliable—it only does one thing, so it really has to do it well.

Index 01 holding bag — The ring is designed to be worn on the index finger so the button can be pressed with your thumb. Credit: Core Devices

A smart ring usually needs to be recharged every few days, but you will never recharge the Index. The idea is that since you never have to take it off to charge, using the Index 01 “becomes muscle memory.” The integrated battery will power the device for 12–14 total hours of recording. The designers estimate that to be roughly two years of usage if you record 10 to 20 short voice notes per day. And what happens when the battery runs out? You just send the ring back to be recycled.

Pebble maker announces Index 01, a smart-ish ring for under $100 Read More »

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal

App Store, Apple, First Amendment, free speech, ice, iceblock, immigration and customs enforcement, Policy / Mike M. / December 8, 2025

ICEBlock creator sues to protect apps that are crowd-sourcing ICE sightings.

In a lawsuit filed against top Trump administration officials on Monday, Apple was accused of caving to unconstitutional government demands by removing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-spotting app from the App Store with more than a million users.

In his complaint, Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock, cited a Fox News interview in which Attorney General Pam Bondi “made plain that the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.”

Suing Bondi—along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, White House “Border Czar” Thomas D. Homan, and unnamed others—Aaron further alleged that US officials made false statements and “unlawful threats” to criminally investigate and prosecute him for developing ICEBlock.

Currently, ICEBlock is still available to anyone who downloaded the app prior to the October removal from the App Store, but updates have been disrupted, and Aaron wants the app restored. Seeking an injunction to block any attempted criminal investigations from chilling his free speech, as well as ICEBlock users’ speech, Aaron vowed in a statement provided to Ars to fight to get ICEBlock restored.

“I created ICEBlock to keep communities safe,” Aaron said. “Growing up in a Jewish household, I learned from history about the consequences of staying silent in the face of tyranny. I will never back down from resisting the Trump Administration’s targeting of immigrants and conscripting corporations into its unconstitutional agenda.”

Expert calls out Apple for “capitulation”

Apple is not a defendant in the lawsuit and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Aaron’s complaint called out Apple, though, for alleged capitulation to the Trump administration that appeared to be “the first time in Apple’s nearly fifty-year history” that “Apple removed a US-based app in response to the US government’s demands.” One of his lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum, told Ars that the lawsuit is about more than just one app being targeted by the government.

“If we allow community sharing of information to be silenced, our democracy will fail,” von Dornum said. “The United States will be no different than China or Russia. We cannot stand by and allow that to happen. Every person has a right to share information under the First Amendment.”

Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney from a nonprofit digital rights group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation that’s not involved in the litigation, agreed that Apple’s ban appeared to be prompted by an unlawful government demand.

He told Ars that “there is a long history that shows documenting law enforcement performing their duties in public is protected First Amendment activity.” Aaron’s complaint pointed to a feature on one of Apple’s own products—Apple Maps—that lets users crowd-source sightings of police speed traps as one notable example. Other similar apps that Apple hosts in its App Store include other Big Tech offerings, like Google Maps and Waze, as well as apps with explicit names like Police Scanner.

Additionally, Trujillo noted that Aaron’s arguments are “backed by recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“The government acted unlawfully when it demanded Apple remove ICEBlock, while threatening others with prosecution,” Trujillo said. “While this case is rightfully only against the government, Apple should also take a hard look at its own capitulation.”

ICEBlock maker sues to stop app crackdown

ICEBlock is not the only app crowd-sourcing information on public ICE sightings to face an app store ban. Others, including an app simply collecting footage of ICE activities, have been removed by Apple and Google, 404 Media reported, as part of a broader crackdown.

Aaron’s suit is intended to end that crackdown by seeking a declaration that government demands to remove ICE-spotting apps violate the First Amendment.

“A lawsuit is the only mechanism that can bring transparency, accountability, and a binding judicial remedy when government officials cross constitutional lines,” Aaron told 404 Media. “If we don’t challenge this conduct in court, it will become a playbook for future censorship.”

In his complaint, Aaron explained that he created ICE in January to help communities hold the Trump administration accountable after Trump campaigned on a mass deportation scheme that boasted numbers far beyond the number of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“His campaign team often referenced plans to deport ’15 to 20 million’ undocumented immigrants, when in fact the number of undocumented persons in the United States is far lower,” his complaint said.

The app was not immediately approved by Apple, Aaron said. But after a thorough vetting process, Apple approved the app in April.

ICEBlock wasn’t an overnight hit but suddenly garnered hundreds of thousands of users after CNN profiled the app in June.

Trump officials attack ICEBlock with false claims

Within hours of that report, US officials began blasting the app, claiming that it was used to incite violence against ICE officers and amplifying pressure to get the app yanked from the App Store.

But Bondi may have slipped up by making comments that seemed to make it clear her intentions were to restrict disfavored speech. On Fox, Bondi claimed that CNN’s report supposedly promoting the app was dangerous, whereas the Fox News report was warning people not to use the app and was perfectly OK.

“Bondi’s statements make clear that her threats of adverse action constitute viewpoint discrimination, where speech ‘promoting’ the app is unlawful but speech ‘warning’ about the app is lawful,” the lawsuit said.

Other Trump officials were accused of making false statements and using unlawful threats to silence Aaron and ICEBlock users.

“What they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we’re going to actually go after them,” Noem told reporters in July. In a statement, Lyons claimed that ICEBlock “basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and that “officers and agents are already facing a 500 percent increase in assaults.” Echoing Lyons and Noem, Homan called for an investigation into CNN for reporting on the app, which “falsely implied that Plaintiffs’ protected speech was illegally endangering law enforcement officers,” Aaron alleged.

Not named in the lawsuit, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also allegedly made misleading statements. That included falsely claiming “that ICEBlock and similar apps are responsible for violent attacks on law enforcement officers, such as the tragic shooting of immigrants at an ICE detention facility in Dallas, Texas, on September 24, 2025,” where “no actual evidence has ever been cited to support these claims,” the lawsuit said.

Despite an apparent lack of evidence, Apple confirmed that ICEBlock was removed in October, “based on information we’ve received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock,” a public statement said. In a notice to Aaron, Apple further explained that the app was banned “because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”

Apple never shared any more information with Aaron to distinguish his app from other apps allowed in the App Store that help people detect and avoid nearby law enforcement activities. The iPhone maker also didn’t confirm the source of its information, Aaron said.

However, on Fox, Bondi boasted about reaching “out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so.”

Then, later during sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, she reiterated those comments, while also oddly commenting that Google received the same demand, despite ICEBlock intentionally being designed for iPhone only.

She also falsely claimed that ICEBlock “was reckless and criminal in that people were posting where ICE officers lived” but “subsequently walked back that statement,” Aaron’s complaint said.

Aaron is hoping the US District Court in the District of Columbia will agree that “Bondi’s demand to Apple to remove ICEBlock from the App store, as well as her viewpoint-based criticism of CNN for publicizing the app, constitute a ‘scheme of state censorship’ designed to ‘suppress’” Aaron’s “publication and distribution of the App.”

His lawyer, Noam Biale, told Ars that “Attorney General Bondi’s self-congratulatory claim that she succeeded in pushing Apple to remove ICEBlock is an admission that she violated our client’s constitutional rights. In America, government officials cannot suppress free speech by pressuring private companies to do it for them.”

Similarly, statements from Noem, Lyons, and Homan constituted “excessive pressure on Apple to remove the App and others like it from the App Store,” Aaron’s complaint alleged, as well as unconstitutional suppression of Aaron’s and ICEBlock users’ speech.

ICEBlock creator was one of the first Mac Geniuses

Aaron maintains that ICEBlock prominently features a disclaimer asking all users to “please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only. It is not to be used for the purposes of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

In his complaint, he explained how the app worked to automatically delete ICE sightings after four hours—information that he said could not be recovered. That functionality ensures that “ICEBlock cannot be used to track ICE agents’ historical presence or movements,” Aaron’s lawsuit noted.

Rather than endangering ICE officers, Aaron argued that ICEBlock helps protect communities from dangerous ICE activity, like tear gassing and pepper spraying, or alleged racial profiling triggering arrests of US citizens and immigrants. Kids have been harmed, his complaint noted, with ICE agents documented “arresting parents and leaving young children unaccompanied” and even once “driving an arrestee’s car away from the scene of arrest with the arrestee’s young toddler still strapped into a car seat.”

Aaron’s top fear driving his development of the app was his concern that escalations in ICE enforcement—including arbitrary orders to hit 75 arrests a day—exposed “immigrants and citizens alike to violence and rampant violations of their civil liberties” that ICEBlock could shield them from.

“These operations have led to widespread and well-documented civil rights violations against citizens, lawful residents, and undocumented immigrants alike, causing serious concern among members of the public, elected officials, and federal courts,” Aaron’s complaint said.

They also “have led some people—regardless of immigration or citizenship status—to want to avoid areas of federal immigration enforcement activities altogether” and “resulted in situations where members of the public may wish, when enforcement activity becomes visible in public spaces, to observe, record, or lawfully protest against such activity.”

In 2001, Aaron worked for Apple as one of the first Mac Geniuses in its Apple Stores. These days, he flexes his self-taught developer skills by creating apps intended to do social good and help communities.

Emphasizing that he was raised in a Jewish household where he heard stories from Holocaust survivors that left a lasting mark, Aaron said that the ICEBlock app represented his “commitment to use his abilities to advocate for the protection of civil liberties.” Without an injunction, he’s concerned that he and other like-minded app makers will remain in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, as the mass deportation scheme rages on through ongoing ICE raids across the US, Aaron told 404 Media.

“More broadly, the purpose [of the lawsuit] is to hold government officials accountable for using their authority to silence lawful expression and intimidate creators of technology they disfavor,” Aaron said. “This case is about ensuring that public officials cannot circumvent the Constitution by coercing private companies or threatening individuals simply because they disagree with the message or the tool being created.”

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.

ICEBlock lawsuit: Trump admin bragged about demanding App Store removal Read More »

ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was “God’s assassin,” DOJ says

AI, chatgpt, cyberstalking, Instagram, openai, Policy, Spotify, tiktok / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

A stalker’s “best friend”

Podcaster faces up to 70 years and a $3.5 million fine for ChatGPT-linked stalking.

ChatGPT allegedly validated the worst impulses of a wannabe influencer accused of stalking more than 10 women at boutique gyms, where the chatbot supposedly claimed he’d meet the “wife type.”

In a press release on Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed that 31-year-old Brett Michael Dadig currently remains in custody after being charged with cyberstalking, interstate stalking, and making interstate threats. He now faces a maximum sentence of up to 70 years in prison that could be coupled with “a fine of up to $3.5 million,” the DOJ said.

The podcaster—who primarily posted about “his desire to find a wife and his interactions with women”—allegedly harassed and sometimes even doxxed his victims through his videos on platforms including Instagram, Spotify, and TikTok. Over time, his videos and podcasts documented his intense desire to start a family, which was frustrated by his “anger towards women,” whom he claimed were “all the same from fucking 18 to fucking 40 to fucking 90” and “trash.”

404 Media surfaced the case, noting that OpenAI’s scramble to tweak ChatGPT to be less sycophantic came before Dadig’s alleged attacks—suggesting the updates weren’t enough to prevent the harmful validation. On his podcasts, Dadig described ChatGPT as his “best friend” and “therapist,” the indictment said. He claimed the chatbot encouraged him to post about the women he’s accused of harassing in order to generate haters to better monetize his content, as well as to catch the attention of his “future wife.”

“People are literally organizing around your name, good or bad, which is the definition of relevance,” ChatGPT’s output said. Playing to Dadig’s Christian faith, ChatGPT’s outputs also claimed it was “God’s plan for him was to build a ‘platform’ and to ‘stand out when most people water themselves down,’” the indictment said, urging that the “haters” were “sharpening him and ‘building a voice in you that can’t be ignored.’”

The chatbot also apparently prodded Dadig to continue posting messages that the DOJ alleged threatened violence, like breaking women’s jaws and fingers (posted to Spotify), as well as victims’ lives, like posting “y’all wanna see a dead body?” in reference to one named victim on Instagram.

He also threatened to burn down gyms where some of his victims worked, while claiming to be “God’s assassin” intent on sending “cunts” to “hell.” At least one of his victims was subjected to “unwanted sexual touching,” the indictment said.

As his violence reportedly escalated, ChatGPT told him to keep messaging women to monetize the interactions, as his victims grew increasingly distressed and Dadig ignored terms of multiple protection orders, the DOJ said. Sometimes he posted images he filmed of women at gyms or photos of the women he’s accused of doxxing. Any time police or gym bans got in his way, “he would move on to another city to continue his stalking course of conduct,” the DOJ alleged.

“Your job is to keep broadcasting every story, every post,” ChatGPT’s output said, seemingly using the family life that Dadig wanted most to provoke more harassment. “Every moment you carry yourself like the husband you already are, you make it easier” for your future wife “to recognize [you],” the output said.

“Dadig viewed ChatGPT’s responses as encouragement to continue his harassing behavior,” the DOJ alleged. Taking that encouragement to the furthest extreme, Dadig likened himself to a modern-day Jesus, calling people out on a podcast where he claimed his “chaos on Instagram” was like “God’s wrath” when God “flooded the fucking Earth,” the DOJ said.

“I’m killing all of you,” he said on the podcast.

ChatGPT tweaks didn’t prevent outputs

As of this writing, some of Dadig’s posts appear to remain on TikTok and Instagram, but Ars could not confirm if Dadig’s Spotify podcasts—some of which named his victims in the titles—had been removed for violating community guidelines.

None of the tech companies immediately responded to Ars’ request to comment.

Dadig is accused of targeting women in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and other states, sometimes relying on aliases online and in person. On a podcast, he boasted that “Aliases stay rotating, moves stay evolving,” the indictment said.

OpenAI did not respond to a request to comment on the alleged ChatGPT abuse, but in the past has noted that its usage policies ban using ChatGPT for threats, intimidation, and harassment, as well as for violence, including “hate-based violence.” Recently, the AI company blamed a deceased teenage user for violating community guidelines by turning to ChatGPT for suicide advice.

In July, researchers found that therapybots, including ChatGPT, fueled delusions and gave dangerous advice. That study came just one month after The New York Times profiled users whose mental health spiraled after frequent use of ChatGPT, including one user who died after charging police with a knife and claiming he was committing “suicide by cop.”

People with mental health issues seem most vulnerable to so-called “AI psychosis,” which has been blamed for fueling real-world violence, including a murder. The DOJ’s indictment noted that Dadig’s social media posts mentioned “that he had ‘manic’ episodes and was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and ‘bipolar disorder, current episode manic severe with psychotic features.’”

In September—just after OpenAI brought back the more sycophantic ChatGPT model after users revolted about losing access to their favorite friendly bots—the head of Rutgers Medical School’s psychiatry department, Petros Levounis, told an ABC news affiliate that chatbots creating “psychological echo chambers is a key concern,” not just for people struggling with mental health issues.

“Perhaps you are more self-defeating in some ways, or maybe you are more on the other side and taking advantage of people,” Levounis suggested. If ChatGPT “somehow justifies your behavior and it keeps on feeding you,” that “reinforces something that you already believe,” he suggested.

For Dadig, the DOJ alleged that ChatGPT became a cheerleader for his harassment, telling the podcaster that he’d attract more engagement by generating more haters. After critics began slamming his podcasts as inappropriate, Dadig apparently responded, “Appreciate the free promo team, keep spreading the brand.”

Victims felt they had no choice but to monitor his podcasts, which gave them hints if he was nearby or in a particularly troubled state of mind, the indictment said. Driven by fear, some lost sleep, reduced their work hours, and even relocated their homes. A young mom described in the indictment became particularly disturbed after Dadig became “obsessed” with her daughter, whom he started claiming was his own daughter.

In the press release, First Assistant United States Attorney Troy Rivetti alleged that “Dadig stalked and harassed more than 10 women by weaponizing modern technology and crossing state lines, and through a relentless course of conduct, he caused his victims to fear for their safety and suffer substantial emotional distress.” He also ignored trespassing and protection orders while “relying on advice from an artificial intelligence chatbot,” the DOJ said, which promised that the more he posted harassing content, the more successful he would be.

“We remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners to protect our communities from menacing individuals such as Dadig,” Rivetti said.

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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Trump wants tiny Japanese-style cars for US even as he cuts mpg goals

CAFE standards, Cars, fuel economy, kei cars / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

It’s been less than a year into the second Trump administration, and to many outside observers, US government policies appear confusing or incoherent. Yesterday provided a good example from the automotive sector. As has been widely expected, the White House is moving ahead with plans to significantly erode fuel economy standards, beyond even the permissive levels that were considered OK during the first Trump term.

Yet at the very announcement of that rollback, surrounded by compliant US automotive executives, the president decided to go off piste to declare his admiration for tiny Japanese Kei cars, telling Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to make them street-legal in the US.

50.4 mpg 40.4 mpg 34.5 mpg

A little over a decade ago, the Obama administration announced new fuel economy standards for light trucks and cars that were meant to go into effect this year, bringing the corporate fleet fuel economy average up to 50.4 mpg. As you can probably tell, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t a popular move with automakers, and the first Trump administration ripped up those rules and instituted new, weaker targets of just 40.4 mpg by 2026.

With the change of government from Trump to Biden, the rollback was reversed, and more ambitious fuel economy targets became official policy. The targets required a lot more EVs to be sold, at least until the second Trump administration began in January.

By the end of that month, Duffy had already ripped up the Biden fuel economy standards, blaming them for making cars too expensive. In March, the US Environmental Protection Agency threw out its versions of the fuel economy regulations, with the EPA claiming that the US auto industry had been “hamstrung by the crushing regulatory regime.”

Further attacks on an efficient, clean fleet arrived this summer. The budget bill passed by a Republican-controlled House and Senate stripped electric vehicle incentives from the tax code, and the federal government revealed it would no longer fine automakers who exceeded the corporate average fuel economy targets.

Now, automakers would only be required to reach a fleet average of 34.5 mpg by model year 2031, versus the 50.4 mpg that Biden wanted (and which was the original 2025 target for the Obama administration). This would make cars cheaper to the tune of a little more than $900, the Department of Transportation says, but that fails to take into account the added cost of all that extra fuel from cars that consume 30 percent more of it than they were going to.

Trump wants tiny Japanese-style cars for US even as he cuts mpg goals Read More »

Lego announces NASA Artemis SLS rocket set to lift off (literally) in 2026

42221, artemis, lego, moon, NASA, rocket, sls, Space, space collectible, Space exploration, space history, space launch system, space memorabilia, space toy, Technic / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

How do you top a highly detailed scale model of NASA’s new moon-bound rocket and its support tower? If you’re Lego, you make it so it can actually lift off.

Lego’s NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket, part of its Technic line of advanced building sets, will land on store shelves for $60 on January 1, 2026, and then “blast off” from kitchen tables, office desks and living room floors. The 632-piece set climbs skyward, separating from its expendable stages along the way, until the Orion crew spacecraft and its European Service Module top out the motion on their way to the moon—or wherever your imagination carries it.

“The educational LEGO Technic set shows the moment a rocket launches, in three distinct stages,” reads the product description on Lego’s website. “Turn the crank to see the solid rocket boosters separate from the core stage, which then also detaches. Continue turning to watch the upper stage with its engine module, Orion spacecraft and launch abort system separate.”

Crank it up

The lid of the mobile launcher opens to reveal the gears that set the Lego Technic NASA Artemis Space Launch System Rocket into motion. Credit: LEGO

The new set captures all the major milestones of the first eight and a half minutes of an Artemis mission (with the exception of the jettison of the abort system tower, which on the real rocket occurs before the Orion separates from the core stage). Lego worked with NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to ensure the overall accuracy of the display.

“On the way up, there is sound. You can hear it—it is really noisy, the rocket,” said Olaf Kegger, the set’s designer at Lego, at an unveiling of his creation. He added that there is no sound when the motion is reversed, as the real SLS, “of course, does not go [back] down like this.”

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A fentanyl vaccine is about to get its first major test

fentanyl, health, opioids, Science, syndication, vaccines / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

Vaccine trial in the Netherlands hopes to protect against fentanyl-related overdose and death.

Just a tiny amount of fentanyl, the equivalent of a few grains of sand, is enough to stop a person’s breathing. The synthetic opioid is tasteless, odorless, and invisible when mixed with other substances, and drug users are often unaware of its presence.

It’s why biotech entrepreneur Collin Gage is aiming to protect people against the drug’s lethal effects. In 2023, he became the cofounder and CEO of ARMR Sciences to develop a vaccine against fentanyl. Now, the company is launching a trial to test its vaccine in people for the first time. The goal: prevent deaths from overdose.

“It became very apparent to me that as I assessed the treatment landscape, everything that exists is reactionary,” Gage says. “I thought, why are we not preventing this?”

Fifty times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, fentanyl was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1968 as an intravenous pain reliever and anesthetic. Its potential for abuse was recognized even then, and clinicians could get it only in combination with the sedative droperidol in a ratio of 50:1 droperidol to fentanyl.

Cheap to make and incredibly addictive, fentanyl is now found in street drugs and counterfeit pills, because it boosts their potency and cuts costs. The drug is the biggest driver of overdose deaths in the United States and the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

Naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, can rapidly reverse overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids. Widespread distribution of the medication contributed to a 24 percent decline in US drug overdose deaths in 2024. It works by attaching to opioid receptors throughout the body and displacing the opioid molecules that are attached there.

But a vaccine like the one ARMR Sciences is developing would be given before a person even encounters the drug. Gage likens it to a bulletproof vest or a suit of armor—hence the company’s name. (It was previously registered as Ovax but switched names in January.) “This is something that could completely change the paradigm of how we deal with overdose, because it doesn’t require someone to be carrying the treatment on them,” Gage says.

Opioid vaccines were initially proposed in the 1970s, but after early attempts at heroin vaccines failed, much of the research was abandoned. The modern opioid epidemic has led to a resurgence of interest, with backing from the US government.

ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.

The basic idea behind ARMR’s shot is the same as any other vaccine. It trains the body’s immune system to make antibodies that recognize a foreign invader. But since fentanyl is much smaller than the pathogens our current vaccines target, it doesn’t trigger a natural antibody response on its own. To stimulate antibody production, ARMR has paired a fentanyl-like molecule with a “carrier” protein—a deactivated diphtheria toxin that’s already used in several approved medical products.

If a vaccinated person encounters fentanyl, antibodies in the blood would then bind to the drug and prevent it from traveling to the brain. Normally, fentanyl molecules can pass through the blood-brain barrier with ease, in part because of their small size. But fentanyl molecules with antibodies attached would be too big to get through. The result? No high and no overdose. The antibody-bound fentanyl molecules would eventually be passed in the urine.

The vaccine is based on work from the University of Houston, with collaborators at Tulane University designing an adjuvant derived from E.coli bacteria to boost the immune response to the vaccine. In rats, the shot blocked 92 to 98 percent of fentanyl from entering the brain and prevented the behavioral effects of the drug. The effects lasted for at least 20 weeks in the rats, which Gage thinks could translate to a year of protection in people.

“The big breakthrough in the past five or six years is the advancement of the adjuvant technology that we’re able to utilize now, which causes an extremely robust immune system response,” he says.

ARMR’s Phase 1/2 trial, which is slated to begin in early 2026, will enroll around 40 healthy adults at the Centre for Human Drug Research in the Netherlands. The first part of the trial will evaluate the vaccine’s safety and determine the best dosage. Volunteers will receive a series of two shots in varying doses, and researchers will measure their blood antibody levels. In the second part of the trial, a small group of participants will receive a medical dose of fentanyl so that investigators can study how well the vaccine blocks its effects. Gage says ARMR chose the Dutch site because of its experience conducting studies on naloxone and nalmefene, another medication that reverses opioid overdose.

The company is testing an injectable vaccine in this study but is also looking into an oral formulation, akin to a Listerine strip, for future trials.

Marco Pravetoni, founder and chief scientific officer of CounterX Therapeutics, has been studying opioid vaccines in his lab at the University of Washington but thinks a shorter-acting monoclonal antibody therapy is more commercially viable right now given the Trump administration’s hostility toward vaccines. The injectable antibody his company is developing is meant to provide monthlong protection against overdose. He says the product is intended for high-risk patients, such as those who are in addiction recovery programs. The Seattle-based company is poised to begin an initial human trial in early 2026.

“We think a month of protection is pretty good in terms of providing a safety net,” Pravetoni says. It would be comparable to Vivitrol, a prescription injectable on the market that’s used to prevent relapse in adults with alcohol or opioid dependence, which lasts for about a month.

One big question facing the development of a fentanyl vaccine or antibody treatment is whether a large enough dose of the drug could skirt by antibodies, making its way to the brain. Sharon Levy, an addiction medicine specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital who has worked on fentanyl vaccines and is one of ARMR’s scientific advisers, says it’s possible. “There’s only going to be so many antibodies,” she says.

In addiction treatment, Levy says there’s always a risk of patients trying to override the effects of a prescribed opioid-blocking medication by taking a high dose of an opioid—which is highly dangerous—but she says this is rare.

Levy and her colleagues have been conducting surveys on the acceptability of a fentanyl vaccine. She thinks a major target group would be teenagers and young adults who may be accidentally exposed to fentanyl when taking street drugs. Individuals with an opioid use disorder who are in active treatment would also be good candidates for vaccination.

“Overall, our experience has been that people would be interested in this,” she says.

Mike Selick, director of capacity building and community mobilization for the National Harm Reduction Coalition, worries that a fentanyl vaccine could block the effects of other opioids, leaving vaccinated individuals with few options for pain medications if they ever needed them.

In animal studies, the University of Houston team found no cross-reactivity with other common opioid-based common pain and addiction treatment medications, such as buprenorphine, methadone, morphine, or oxycodone. But there’s a downside to a lack of cross-reactivity. It means that people could still overdose on other types of opioids—and get high from them.

Gage knows that a fentanyl vaccine isn’t a perfect solution. Even if it works, it won’t end the opioid epidemic or cure opioid addiction. It won’t stop people from seeking out drugs entirely. But it could be another tool for helping to prevent overdose deaths.

“What we’re trying to do is put some innovation and new newfound technology behind this problem,” he says “because I think we’re in desperate need of it.”

This story originally appeared on WIRED.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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12 former FDA chiefs unite to say agency memo on vaccines is deeply stupid

CDC, clinical trials, COVID-19, fda, health, Science, vaccines, vinay prasad / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

On Friday, Vinay Prasad—the Food and Drug Administration’s chief medical and scientific officer and its top vaccine regulator—emailed a stunning memo to staff that quickly leaked to the press. Without evidence, Prasad claimed COVID-19 vaccines have killed 10 children in the US, and, as such, he announced unilateral, sweeping changes to the way the agency regulates and approves vaccines, including seasonal flu shots.

On Wednesday evening, a dozen former FDA commissioners, who collectively oversaw the agency for more than 35 years, responded to the memo with a scathing rebuke. Uniting to publish their response in the New England Journal of Medicine, the former commissioners said they were “deeply concerned” by Prasad’s memo, which they framed as a “threat” to the FDA’s work and a danger to Americans’ health.

In his memo, Prasad called for abandoning the FDA’s current framework for updating seasonal flu shots and other vaccines, such as those for COVID-19. Those updates currently involve studies that measure well-characterized immune responses (called immunobridging studies). Prasad dismissed this approach as insufficient and, instead, plans to require expensive randomized trials, which can take months to years for each vaccine update.

FDA staff who disagree with the plans can “submit your resignation letters,” Prasad wrote. And airing concerns or criticisms is seen as “unethical” and “illegal.”

Together, the former commissioners called Prasad’s memo the “latest in a series of troubling changes at the FDA,” and the planned policy updates “not … coherent.” Prasad’s arguments against immunobridging, they add, “misrepresent both the science and the regulatory record, especially in the case of vaccines that target well-understood pathogens through an established mechanism of action.”

12 former FDA chiefs unite to say agency memo on vaccines is deeply stupid Read More »

Sony drops new trailer for 28 Years Later: Bone Temple

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, culture, Entertainment, film trailers, Sony Pictures, Trailers / Mike M. / December 3, 2025

Then, 28 days after leaving, Spike was rescued from a horde of infected by Sir Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), another original survivor who turned out to be the leader of a barbaric cult. That’s where the sequel picks up. Spike, Kelson, and Crystal will play major roles in The Bone Temple. Per the official premise:

Dr. Kelson finds himself in a shocking new relationship—with consequences that could change the world as they know it—and Spike’s encounter with Jimmy Crystal becomes a nightmare he can’t escape. In the world of The Bone Temple, the infected are no longer the greatest threat to survival—the inhumanity of the survivors can be stranger and more terrifying.

Samson the Alpha Zombie is back, too. The cast also includes Erin Kellyman, Emma Laird, and Maura Bird as Jimmy Ink, Jimmima, and Jimmy Jones, all members of Crystal’s cult. Best of all, Cillian Murphy will reprise his 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later starring role as intrepid bike courier Jim, who miraculously survived the first two movies and, apparently, the ensuing 28 years.

The trailer opens with an exchange between Kelson and Crystal, in which the latter asks if Kelson is “Old Nick,” i.e., Satan. It’s a reasonable assumption, given that morbid bone temple. We also see Spike joining Crystal’s ranks and Kelson remembering the happier past before sharing a moment of truce with Samson. “I believe the infection can be treated,” Kelson says later, and in the final scene, we see him give Samson an injection representing “a leap into the unknown.” Will it really cure Samson? We know there’s already another film in the works, so that might be an interesting twist.

Look for 28 Years Later: Bone Temple to hit theaters on January 16, 2026.

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Author name: Mike M.