Mike M.

Two space startups prove you don’t need to break the bank to rendezvous in space

impulse space, mira, otter, Space, Starfish / Mike M. / December 20, 2025

It may be happening quietly, but there is a revolution taking place with in-space transportation, and it opens up a world of possibilities.

In January, a small spacecraft built by a California-based company called Impulse Space launched along with a stack of other satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket. Upon reaching orbit, the rocket’s upper stage sent the satellites zipping off on their various missions.

And so it went with the Mira spacecraft built by Impulse, which is known as an orbital transfer vehicle. Mira dropped off several small CubeSats and then performed a number of high-thrust maneuvers to demonstrate its capabilities. This was the second flight by a Mira spacecraft, so Impulse Space was eager to continue testing the vehicle in flight.

Giving up control

This was all well and good up until this summer, when a funny thing happened. Impulse handed control of Mira over to another company, which had installed its own software package on the vehicle. And this second company, Starfish Space, took control.

This was more than a little weird, acknowledged Eric Romo, the president and chief operating officer of Impulse Space, in an interview.

“I would walk past mission control, and our teams would be on a call together, and I would just pop my head in and say, ‘Hey, don’t crash spaceship, please,’” Romo said. “It was definitely a new thing.”

But Starfish Space did not crash Mira. Rather, it activated its camera on board the spacecraft and started flying the vehicle. To what end? Founded in 2019, the Washington-based company seeks to build affordable spacecraft that can service satellites in space, providing propulsion or other aids to extend their lifetimes.

Now, flying Mira, the company sought to demonstrate that a single lightweight camera system, along with its closed-loop guidance, navigation, and control software, could autonomously rendezvous with another spacecraft. In this case, it was the very first Mira spacecraft launched by Impulse in November 2023. This vehicle no longer has propellant on board to control its orientation, but its solar panels periodically receive enough charge to allow it to communicate with Impulse’s engineers in California.

Two space startups prove you don’t need to break the bank to rendezvous in space Read More »

The evolution of expendability: Why some ants traded armor for numbers

ants, Biology, evolution, Science / Mike M. / December 19, 2025

“Ants reduce per-worker investment in one of the most nutritionally expensive tissues for the good of the collective,” Matte explains. “They’re shifting from self-investment toward a distributed workforce.”

Power of the collective

The researchers think the pattern they observed in ants reflects a more universal trend in the evolution of societal complexity. The transition from solitary life to complex societies echoes the transition from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones.

In a single-celled organism, a cell must be a “jack-of-all-trades,” performing every function necessary for survival. In a multicellular animal, however, individual cells often become simpler and more specialized, relying on the collective for protection and resources.

“It’s a pattern that echoes the evolution of multicellularity, where cooperative units can be individually simpler than a solitary cell, yet collectively capable of far greater complexity,” says Matte. Still, the question of whether underinvesting in individuals to boost the collective makes sense for creatures other than ants remains open, and it most likely isn’t as much about nutritional economics as it is about sex.

Expendable servants

The study focused on ants that already have a reproductive division of labor, one where workers do not reproduce. This social structure is likely the key prerequisite for the cheap worker strategy. For the team, this is the reason we haven’t, at least so far, found similar evolutionary patterns in more complex social organisms like wolves, which live in packs—or humans with their amazingly complex societies. Wolves and people are both social, but maintain a high degree of individual self-interest regarding reproduction. Ant workers could be made expendable because they don’t pass their own genes—they are essentially extensions of the queen’s reproductive strategy.

Before looking for signs of ant-like approaches to quality versus quantity dilemmas in other species, the team wants to take an even closer look at ants. Economo, Matte, and their colleagues seek to expand their analysis to other ant tissues, such as the nervous system and muscles, to see if the cheapening of individuals extends beyond the exoskeleton. They are also looking at ant genomes to see what genetic innovations allowed for the shift from quality to quantity. “We still need a lot of work to understand ants’ evolution,” Matte says.

Science Advances. 2025. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adx8068

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LG TVs’ unremovable Copilot shortcut is the least of smart TVs’ AI problems

AI, chatbots, copilot, generative ai, lg, microsoft, samsung, Tech, TVs / Mike M. / December 19, 2025

But Copilot will still be integrated into Tizen OS, and Samsung appears eager to push chatbots into TVs, including by launching Perplexity’s first TV app. Amazon, which released Fire TVs with Alexa+ this year, is also exploring putting chatbots into TVs.

After the backlash LG faced this week, companies may reconsider installing AI apps on people’s smart TVs. A better use of large language models in TVs may be as behind-the-scenes tools to improve TV watching. People generally don’t buy smart TVs to make it easier to access chatbots.

But this development is still troubling for anyone who doesn’t want an AI chatbot in their TV at all.

Some people don’t want chatbots in their TVs

Subtle integrations of generative AI that make it easier for people to do things like figure out the name of “that movie” may have practical use, but there are reasons to be wary of chatbot-wielding TVs.

Chatbots add another layer of complexity to understanding how a TV tracks user activity. With a chatbot involved, smart TV owners will be subject to complicated smart TV privacy policies and terms of service, as well as the similarly verbose rules of third-party AI companies. This will make it harder for people to understand what data they’re sharing with companies, and there’s already serious concern about the boundaries smart TVs are pushing to track users, including without consent.

Chatbots can also contribute to smart TV bloatware. Unwanted fluff, like games, shopping shortcuts, and flashy ads, already disrupts people who just want to watch TV.

LG’s Copilot web app is worthy of some grousing, but not necessarily because of the icon that users will eventually be able to delete. The more pressing issue is the TV industry’s shift toward monetizing software with user tracking and ads.

If you haven’t already, now is a good time to check out our guide to breaking free from smart TV ads and tracking.

LG TVs’ unremovable Copilot shortcut is the least of smart TVs’ AI problems Read More »

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive

Agent, AI, AI gaming, Claude Code, coding, gaming, Gemini, test / Mike M. / December 19, 2025

How do four modern LLMs do at re-creating a simple Windows gaming classic?

Which mines are mine, and which are AI? Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

The idea of using AI to help with computer programming has become a contentious issue. On the one hand, coding agents can make horrific mistakes that require a lot of inefficient human oversight to fix, leading many developers to lose trust in the concept altogether. On the other hand, some coders insist that AI coding agents can be powerful tools and that frontier models are quickly getting better at coding in ways that overcome some of the common problems of the past.

To see how effective these modern AI coding tools are becoming, we decided to test four major models with a simple task: re-creating the classic Windows game Minesweeper. Since it’s relatively easy for pattern-matching systems like LLMs to play off of existing code to re-create famous games, we added in one novelty curveball as well.

Our straightforward prompt:

Make a full-featured web version of Minesweeper with sound effects that

1) Replicates the standard Windows game and

2) implements a surprise, fun gameplay feature.

Include mobile touchscreen support.

Ars Senior AI Editor Benj Edwards fed this task into four AI coding agents with terminal (command line) apps: OpenAI’s Codex based on GPT-5, Anthropic’s Claude Code with Opus 4.5, Google’s Gemini CLI, and Mistral Vibe. The agents then directly manipulated HTML and scripting files on a local machine, guided by a “supervising” AI model that interpreted the prompt and assigned coding tasks to parallel LLMs that can use software tools to execute the instructions. All AI plans were paid for privately with no special or privileged access given by the companies involved, and the companies were unaware of these tests taking place.

Ars Senior Gaming Editor (and Minesweeper expert) Kyle Orland then judged each example blind, without knowing which model generated which Minesweeper clone. Those somewhat subjective and non-rigorous results are below.

For this test, we used each AI model’s unmodified code in a “single shot” result to see how well these tools perform without any human debugging. In the real world, most sufficiently complex AI-generated code would go through at least some level of review and tweaking by a human software engineer who could spot problems and address inefficiencies.

We chose this test as a sort of simple middle ground for the current state of AI coding. Cloning Minesweeper isn’t a trivial task that can be done in just a handful of lines of code, but it’s also not an incredibly complex system that requires many interlocking moving parts.

Minesweeper is also a well-known game, with many versions documented across the Internet. That should give these AI agents plenty of raw material to work from and should be easier for us to evaluate than a completely novel program idea. At the same time, our open-ended request for a new “fun” feature helps demonstrate each agent’s penchant for unguided coding “creativity,” as well as their ability to create new features on top of an established game concept.

With all that throat-clearing out of the way, here’s our evaluation of the AI-generated Minesweeper clones, complete with links that you can use to play them yourselves.

Agent 1: Mistral Vibe

Play it for yourself

Just ignore that Custom button. It’s purely for show. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Right away, this version loses points for not implementing chording—the technique that advanced Minesweeper players use to quickly clear all the remaining spaces surrounding a number that already has sufficient flagged mines. Without this feature, this version feels more than a little clunky to play.

I’m also a bit perplexed by the inclusion of a “Custom” difficulty button that doesn’t seem to do anything. It’s like the model realized that customized board sizes were a thing in Minesweeper but couldn’t figure out how to implement this relatively basic feature.

The game works fine on mobile, but marking a square with a flag requires a tricky long-press on a tiny square that also triggers selector handles that are difficult to clear. So it’s not an ideal mobile interface.

Presentation

This was the only working version we tested that didn’t include sound effects. That’s fair, since the original Windows Minesweeper also didn’t include sound, but it’s still a notable relative omission since the prompt specifically asked for it.

The all-black “smiley face” button to start a game is a little off-putting, too, compared to the bright yellow version that’s familiar to both Minesweeper players and emoji users worldwide. And while that smiley face does start a new game when clicked, there’s also a superfluous “New Game” button taking up space for some reason.

“Fun” feature

The closest thing I found to a “fun” new feature here was the game adding a rainbow background pattern on the grid when I completed a game. While that does add a bit of whimsy to a successful game, I expected a little more.

Coding experience

Benj notes that he was pleasantly surprised by how well Mistral Vibe performed as an open-weight model despite lacking the big-money backing of the other contenders. It was relatively slow, however (third fastest out of four), and the result wasn’t great. Ultimately, its performance so far suggests that with more time and more training, a very capable AI coding agent may eventually emerge.

Overall rating: 4/10

This version got many of the basics right but left out chording and didn’t perform well on the small presentational and “fun” touches.

Agent 2: OpenAI Codex

Play it for yourself

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those chording instructions at the bottom. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Not only did this agent include the crucial “chording” feature, but it also included on-screen instructions for using it on both PC and mobile browsers. I was further impressed by the option to cycle through “?” marks when marking squares with flags, an esoteric feature I feel even most human Minesweeper cloners might miss.

On mobile, the option to hold your finger down on a square to mark a flag is a nice touch that makes this the most enjoyable handheld version we tested.

Presentation

The old-school emoticon smiley-face button is pretty endearing, especially when you blow up and get a red-tinted “X(“. I was less impressed by the playfield “graphics,” which use a simple “*” for revealed mines and an ugly red “F” for flagged tiles.

The beeps-and-boops sound effects reminded me of my first old-school, pre-Sound-Blaster PC from the late ’80s. That’s generally a good thing, but I still appreciated the game giving me the option to turn them off.

“Fun” feature

The “Surprise: Lucky Sweep Bonus” listed in the corner of the UI explains that clicking the button gives you a free safe tile when available. This can be pretty useful in situations where you’d otherwise be forced to guess between two tiles that are equally likely to be mines.

Overall, though, I found it a bit odd that the game gives you this bonus only after you find a large, cascading field of safe tiles with a single click. It mostly functions as a “win more” button rather than a feature that offers a good balance of risk versus reward.

Coding experience

OpenAI Codex has a nice terminal interface with features similar to Claude Code (local commands, permission management, and interesting animations showing progress), and it’s fairly pleasant to use (OpenAI also offers Codex through a web interface, but we did not use that for this evaluation). However, Codex took roughly twice as long to code a functional game than Claude Code did, which might contribute to the strong result here.

Overall: 9/10

The implementation of chording and cute presentation touches push this to the top of the list. We just wish the “fun” feature was a bit more fun.

Agent 3: Anthropic Claude Code

Play it for yourself

The Power Mod powers on display here make even Expert boards pretty trivial to complete. Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation

Once again, we get a version that gets all the gameplay basics right but is missing the crucial chording feature that makes truly efficient Minesweeper play possible. This is like playing Super Mario Bros. without the run button or Ocarina of Time without Z-targeting. In a word: unacceptable.

The “flag mode” toggle on the mobile version of this game is perfectly functional, but it’s a little clunky to use. It also visually cuts off a portion of the board at the larger game sizes.

Presentation

Presentation-wise, this is probably the most polished version we tested. From the use of cute emojis for the “face” button to nice-looking bomb and flag graphics and simple but effective sound effects, this looks more professional than the other versions we tested.

That said, there are some weird presentation issues. The “beginner” grid has weird gaps between columns, for instance. The borders of each square and the flag graphics can also become oddly grayed out at points, especially when using Power Mode (see below).

“Fun” feature

The prominent “Power Mode” button in the lower-right corner offers some pretty fun power-ups that alter the core Minesweeper formula in interesting ways. But the actual powers are a bit hit-and-miss.

I especially liked the “Shield” power, which protects you from an errant guess, and the “Blast” power, which seems to guarantee a large cascade of revealed tiles wherever you click. But the “X-Ray” power, which reveals every bomb for a few seconds, could be easily exploited by a quick player (or a crafty screenshot). And the “Freeze” power is rather boring, just stopping the clock for a few seconds and amounting to a bit of extra time.

Overall, the game hands out these new powers like candy, which makes even an Expert-level board relatively trivial with Power Mode active. Simply choosing “Power Mode” also seems to mark a few safe squares right after you start a game, making things even easier. So while these powers can be “fun,” they also don’t feel especially well-balanced.

Coding experience

Of the four tested models, Claude Code with Opus 4.5 featured the most pleasant terminal interface experience and the fastest overall coding experience (Claude Code can also use Sonnet 4.5, which is even faster, but the results aren’t quite as full-featured in our experience). While we didn’t precisely time each model, Opus 4.5 produced a working Minesweeper in under five minutes. Codex took at least twice as long, if not longer, while Mistral took roughly three or four times as long as Claude Code. Gemini, meanwhile, took hours of tinkering to get two non-working results.

Overall: 7/10

The lack of chording is a big omission, but the strong presentation and Power Mode options give this effort a passable final score.

Agent 4: Google Gemini CLI

Play it for yourself

So… where’s the game? Credit: Benj Edwards

Implementation, presentation, etc.

Gemini CLI did give us a few gray boxes you can click, but the playfields are missing. While interactive troubleshooting with the agent may have fixed the issue, as a “one-shot” test, the model completely failed.

Coding experience

Of the four coding agents we tested, Gemini CLI gave Benj the most trouble. After developing a plan, it was very, very slow at generating any usable code (about an hour per attempt). The model seemed to get hung up attempting to manually create WAV file sound effects and insisted on requiring React external libraries and a few other overcomplicated dependencies. The result simply did not work.

Benj actually bent the rules and gave Gemini a second chance, specifying that the game should use HTML5. When the model started writing code again, it also got hung up trying to make sound effects. Benj suggested using the WebAudio framework (which the other AI coding agents seemed to be able to use), but the result didn’t work, which you can see at the link above.

Unlike the other models tested, Gemini CLI apparently uses a hybrid system of three different LLMs for different tasks (Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite, 2.5 Flash, and 2.5 Pro were available at the level of the Google account Benj paid for). When you’ve completed your coding session and quit the CLI interface, it gives you a readout of which model did what.

In this case, it didn’t matter because the results didn’t work. But it’s worth noting that Gemini 3 coding models are available for other subscription plans that were not tested here. For that reason, this portion of the test could be considered “incomplete” for Google CLI.

Overall: 0/10 (Incomplete)

Final verdict

OpenAI Codex wins this one on points, in no small part because it was the only model to include chording as a gameplay option. But Claude Code also distinguished itself with strong presentational flourishes and quick generation time. Mistral Vibe was a significant step down, and Google CLI based on Gemini 2.5 was a complete failure on our one-shot test.

While experienced coders can definitely get better results via an interactive, back-and-forth code editing conversation with an agent, these results show how capable some of these models can be, even with a very short prompt on a relatively straightforward task. Still, we feel that our overall experience with coding agents on other projects (more on that in a future article) generally reinforces the idea that they currently function best as interactive tools that augment human skill rather than replace it.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive Read More »

Neural DSP models John Mayer’s entire amp and effects rig—and it sounds great

amp simulations, culture, guitar, John mayer, neuralDSP / Mike M. / December 18, 2025

Mayer gets the “Archetype” treatment.

Guitarists today are spoiled for choice, and that goes doubly true for players who use computer-based amp modeling software. I’m one such player, and I don’t miss the size, weight, deafening volume, or cost of owning an amp and cabinet collection, to say nothing of all those pedals and cables. For clean to mid-gain tones alone, I already have more terrific options than I need, including Neural DSP’s Tone King and Cory Wong and Mateus Asato, Polychrome DSP’s Lumos, and Universal Audio’s new Paradise Guitar Studio. All work slightly differently, but they can each output record-ready tones that are really, really close to the (often incredibly expensive) hardware that they model, and they each give you plenty of great-sounding presets to start from.

So do we really need one amp sim package?

Neural DSP thinks we do, because the Finnish company just dropped a major new release yesterday called Archetype: John Mayer X. It doesn’t model Mayer’s type of gear but his actual hardware units, along with all the actual settings he uses in the studio and on stage. It even has some presets that he designed. Which is great if you want to sound like John Mayer—but what does the software offer for those of us not trying to cover Continuum?

To find out, I spent a few hours playing with Mayer X, and I came away impressed. Neural DSP has released so many metal amp sims in the last few years that I’ve come to associate the company with downtuned chugga-chugga. Don’t get me wrong: I like long hair, skulls, and palm-muted riffs as much as the next person, but it’s nice to have some variety.

Mayer X brings that variety by modeling three of Mayer’s amps: a 1964 Fender Vibroverb, a Dumble Steel String Singer #002, and a not-yet-released prototype Two-Rock. Each amp also comes with a model of its associated speaker cabinet, in front of which you can freely position zero, one, or two microphones to shape the recorded sound and to control the room tone as desired.

This is standard practice for Neural DSP’s “Archetypes” line, but one wrinkle is the new “three-in-one amp” mode that blends the sounds from all amps at once. Here’s the marketing speak: “It merges all three amps and their matching cabinets with Mayer’s exact settings, mic placements, and EQ decisions, creating a unified, dimensional sound that reflects his full signal path without requiring individual amp balancing.” In this mode, each amp gets a single knob, but you are always free to turn this off and use one particular amp instead, which exposes more controls for that unit.

Also new here is an effect that Neural calls the “Gravity Tank.” This effects unit combines Mayer’s “favorite spring reverb” with the harmonic tremolo found in the Victoria Reverberato. It sounds great; while I like spring reverbs for character, especially on guitar parts, some are a bit too “drippy” for me. And although this one definitely sounds like a spring, it’s subtle and spacious rather than clangy or overly metallic, and the tremolo—which you can sync to your DAW’s tempo—sounds terrific too.

Instead of a compressor pedal at the front of the amp, as in many Neural DSP plugins, the Mayer X Archetype features a rack-mounted compressor (this one is modeled off the famous Distressor) that comes after the amp. The controls are much simpler than a real Distressor, but under the hood, Neural says that it is using “Mayer’s exact attack, release, and sidechain settings”; users, however, only need to spin the Input and Output dials.

Above the compressor is an EQ, but unlike Neural’s usual practice, this is not a multiband graphic EQ. Instead, it’s a four-band semi-parametric EQ with knobs rather than sliders, plus a high-pass and low-pass filter. The EQ is said to “balance the naturally full low end of [Mayer’s] amplifiers.”

There are effects pedals here, too—five are up front, before the amps. You get a volume boost pedal meant especially to thicken the tone of single-coil pickups like those found on Fender Stratocasters or PRS Silver Sky guitars (which Mayer also helped design). Then you get an “antelope filter” that provides a sort of auto-wah effect; usually, I hate these sorts of things, but this one sounds good enough that I could see myself using it on lead lines without feeling like I’m some kind of ’70s funk refugee.

After that come two drive pedals that are modeled on the Klon Centaur, the Ibanez TS-10, and the Marshall Bluesbreaker MK1. That’s right: You get three effects units jammed into two virtual pedals, because one of the pedals has a toggle switch to offer two different tones.

Finally, there’s a bucket brigade delay meant largely for slapback echoes, while a separate post-amp effects section offers more traditional delay and reverb (both hall and plate) for space.

While you won’t find this exact gear and these exact settings elsewhere, several of the amp simulation suites mentioned at the top of this piece provide plenty of “ballpark” options. (Paradise Guitar Studio, for instance, also models a Klon Centaur pedal and offers boost pedals and even more overdrive pedal options, along with spring reverb and bucket brigade delays.)

Whether you need (or “need”) Mayer X depends on just what other gear you have and what kind of tone you’re chasing. To me, the presets in Mayer X sound just slightly more modern than Paradise Guitar Studio, which especially emphasizes “classic” rock sounds from the ’60s to the ’90s. And Mayer X offers so many more amps and effects than Neural DSP’s Tone King, which I previously used for some of these sorts of sounds.

One of the best things about this package is that it is not “hyped” to sound over the top in standalone guitar demos, which is why its sounds fit so well into mixes. Reverb, delay, tremolo, boost, and drive are subtle and judicious, as is compression. Nearly everything is usable if you play anywhere in the pop/blues/rock/funk landscape. Even effects like freeze delay and the antelope filter—two types of effects that generally feel irrelevant or gimmicky to me—here inspire actual creativity. This is my personal taste talking—yours may differ—but the entire Mayer X package offers tone colors I would actually use in projects rather than garish neons that sound “impressive” but are unlikely to work as-is in any given song.

So if you’re looking for Mayer’s brand of smooth-but-full blues-inspired leads or his edge of breakup rhythm tones, John Mayer X is certainly a good way to get it in one package. This doesn’t feel like a cash-in, either; the quality and variety is immediately apparent, especially in new or custom bits like the boost pedal, the antelope filter, the Gravity Tank, and the “three-in-one” amp.

Just to see what I could do with almost no tweaking, I played around with presets for a couple of hours and came up with this short demo that features rhythm, double-tracked rhythm, filtered, overdriven rhythm, and delayed lead sounds. I even laid down a little bass (Mayer X does include a few bass-specific presets to get you started). To me, everything works well right out of the box, and the sounds blend well with each other (and with bass/drum tracks) in the mix, something not always true of presets. A little EQ and some mild master bus processing, and I ended up with the demo below:

Redditors who have played with the plugin so far seem impressed. “Absolutely blown away. Every single amp, mic, cab and pedal option is usable and sounds amazing,” wrote one.

“I’m a mostly clean-to-slight-crunch player, and this is by FAR the most plug-in-and-get-great-sounds-out-of-it NDSP plugin for that style that I’ve tried,” wrote another.

But they also echo my chief complaint. The downside of all these guitar sim plugins is that they are getting increasingly expensive. Universal Audio’s recent Paradise Guitar Studio claims a full price of $199 (I say “claims” because most of the company’s products are on sale most of the time). John Mayer X is going for €169 + tax in the US ($198 at current currency rates), and even more in Europe, while Neural DSP’s previous Archetype, the Misha Mansoor X, is only €125 ($146). Perhaps in this Archetype, the “X” stands for “expensive”?

That’s a lot of scratch for a plugin, though of course this one models gear worth many thousands of dollars and is far cheaper than buying modeling hardware like Neural DSP’s own Quad Cortex. (Those inclined to wait may be able to pick up Mayer X during one of Neural DSP’s biannual sales, often at 50 percent off.) And this one certainly sounds great.

If you’re one of those who suffer from gear acquisition syndrome (GAS), potent in both its physical and digital forms, these $150–$200 plugins add up quickly. Buy four or five and you’re into some real money! So if you already have other clean to mid-gain amp sims that work well for you, wisdom might suggest making your peace with what you have rather than looking for incremental improvements every time a new plugin appears. (There’s always a 14-day trial if you want to test Mayer X first.)

But if you’re newer to the amp sim market or have money to blow on your hobby or just love Mayer’s tones, Mayer X is certainly a wonderful place to start. Will you sound like Mayer? Probably not, given how much “tone” actually resides in the fingers, but you will get a great creative toolkit for bringing out the best in your own sound.

The real takeaway here is that technology has made it an amazing time to be a guitar player. We’re blessed for choices, and those choices get better every day.

Neural DSP models John Mayer’s entire amp and effects rig—and it sounds great Read More »

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says

Accenture, AI, Digital Services Act, Donald Trump, elon musk, European Commission, Mistral, Policy, Spotify, trump administration, X / Mike M. / December 17, 2025

Spotify and Accenture caught in crossfire as Trump attacks EU tech regulations.

The US threatened to restrict some of the largest service providers in the European Union as retaliation for EU tech regulations and investigations are increasingly drawing Donald Trump’s ire.

On Tuesday, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) issued a warning on X, naming Spotify, Accenture, Amadeus, Mistral, Publicis, and DHL among nine firms suddenly yanked into the middle of the US-EU tech fight.

“The European Union and certain EU Member States have persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against US service providers,” USTR’s post said.

The clash comes after Elon Musk’s X became the first tech company fined for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, which is widely considered among the world’s strictest tech regulations. Trump was not appeased by the European Commission (EC) noting that X was not ordered to pay the maximum possible fine. Instead, the $140 million fine sparked backlash within the Trump administration, including from Vice President JD Vance, who slammed the fine as “censorship” of X and its users.

Asked for comment on the USTR’s post, an EC spokesperson told Ars that the EU intends to defend its tech regulations while implementing commitments from a Trump trade deal that the EU struck in August.

“The EU is an open and rules-based market, where companies from all over the world do business successfully and profitably,” the EC’s spokesperson said. “As we have made clear many times, our rules apply equally and fairly to all companies operating in the EU,” ensuring “a safe, fair and level playing field in the EU, in line with the expectations of our citizens. We will continue to enforce our rules fairly, and without discrimination.”

Trump on shaky ground due to “AI bubble”

On X, the USTR account suggested that the EU was overlooking that US companies “provide substantial free services to EU citizens and reliable enterprise services to EU companies,” while supporting “millions of jobs and more than $100 billion in direct investment in Europe.”

To stop what Trump views as “overseas extortion” of American tech companies, the USTR said the US was prepared to go after EU service providers, which “have been able to operate freely in the United States for decades, benefitting from access to our market and consumers on a level playing field.”

“If the EU and EU Member States insist on continuing to restrict, limit, and deter the competitiveness of US service providers through discriminatory means, the United States will have no choice but to begin using every tool at its disposal to counter these unreasonable measures,” USTR’s post said. “Should responsive measures be necessary, US law permits the assessment of fees or restrictions on foreign services, among other actions.”

The pushback comes after the Trump administration released a November national security report that questioned how long the EU could remain a “reliable” ally as overregulation of its tech industry could hobble both its economy and military strength. Claiming that the EU was only “doubling down” on such regulations, the EU “will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less,” the report predicted.

“We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation,” the report said.

However, the report acknowledged that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.”

“Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity,” the report said. “European sectors from manufacturing to technology to energy remain among the world’s most robust. Europe is home to cutting-edge scientific research and world-leading cultural institutions. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

At least one expert in the EU has suggested that the EU can use this acknowledgement as leverage, while perhaps even using the looming threat of the supposed American “AI bubble” bursting to pressure Trump into backing off EU tech laws.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, Johnny Ryan, the director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, suggested that the EU could even throw Trump’s presidency into “crisis” by taking bold steps that Trump may not see coming.

EU can take steps to burst “AI bubble”

According to Ryan, the national security report made clear that the EU must fight the US or else “perish.” However, the EU has two “strong cards” to play if it wants to win the fight, he suggested.

Right now, market analysts are fretting about an “AI bubble,” with US investment in AI far outpacing potential gains until perhaps 2030. A Harvard University business professor focused on helping businesses implement cutting-edge technology like generative AI, Andy Wu, recently explained that AI’s big problem is that “everyone can imagine how useful the technology will be, but no one has figured out yet how to make money.”

“If the market can keep the faith to persist, it buys the necessary time for the technology to mature, for the costs to come down, and for companies to figure out the business model,” Wu said. But US “companies can end up underwater if AI grows fast but less rapidly than they hope for,” he suggested.

During this moment, Ryan wrote, it’s not just AI firms with skin in the game, but potentially all of Trump’s supporters. The US is currently on “shaky economic ground” with AI investment accounting “for virtually all (92 percent) GDP growth in the first half of this year.”

“The US’s bet on AI is now so gigantic that every MAGA voter’s pension is bound to the bubble’s precarious survival,” Ryan said.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, could exploit this apparent weakness first by messing with one of the biggest players in America’s AI industry, Nvidia, then by ramping up enforcement of the tech laws Trump loathes.

According to Ryan, “Dutch company ASML commands a global monopoly on the microchip-etching machines that use light to carve patterns on silicon,” and Nvidia needs those machines if it wants to remain the world’s most valuable company. Should the US GDP remain reliant on AI investment for growth, von der Leyen could use export curbs on that technology like a “lever,” Ryan said, controlling “whether and by how much the US economy expands or contracts.”

Withholding those machines “would be difficult for Europe” and “extremely painful for the Dutch economy,” Ryan noted, but “it would be far more painful for Trump.”

Another step the EU could take is even “easier,” Ryan suggested. It could go even harder on the enforcement of tech regulations based on evidence of mismanaged data surfaced in lawsuits against giants like Google and Meta. For example, it seems clear that Meta may have violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), after the Facebook owner was “unable to tell a US court that what its internal systems do with your data, or who can access it, or for what purpose.”

“This data free-for-all lets big tech companies train their AI models on masses of everyone’s data, but it is illegal in Europe, where companies are required to carefully control and account for how they use personal data,” Ryan wrote. “All Brussels has to do is crack down on Ireland, which for years has been a wild west of lax data enforcement, and the repercussions will be felt far beyond.”

Taking that step would also arguably make it harder for tech companies to secure AI investments, since firms would have to disclose that their “AI tools are barred from accessing Europe’s valuable markets,” Ryan said.

Calling the reaction to the X fine “extreme,” Ryan pushed for von der Leyen to advance on both fronts, forecasting that “the AI bubble would be unlikely to survive this double shock” and likely neither could Trump’s approval ratings. There’s also a possibility that tech firms could pressure Trump to back down if coping with any increased enforcement threatens AI progress.

Although Wu suggested that Big Tech firms like Google and Meta would likely be “insulated” from the AI bubble bursting, Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t seem so sure. In November, Pichai told the BBC that if AI investments didn’t pay off quickly enough, he thinks “no company is going to be immune, including us.”

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.

Bursting AI bubble may be EU’s “secret weapon” in clash with Trump, expert says Read More »

Google releases Gemini 3 Flash, promising improved intelligence and efficiency

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Gemini 3, generative ai, Google, search / Mike M. / December 17, 2025

Google began its transition to Gemini 3 a few weeks ago with the launch of the Pro model, and the arrival of Gemini 3 Flash kicks it into high gear. The new, faster Gemini 3 model is coming to the Gemini app and search, and developers will be able to access it immediately via the Gemini API, Vertex AI, AI Studio, and Antigravity. Google’s bigger gen AI model is also picking up steam, with both Gemini 3 Pro and its image component (Nano Banana Pro) expanding in search.

This may come as a shock, but Google says Gemini 3 Flash is faster and more capable than its previous base model. As usual, Google has a raft of benchmark numbers that show modest improvements for the new model. It bests the old 2.5 Flash in basic academic and reasoning tests like GPQA Diamond and MMMU Pro (where it even beats 3 Pro). It gets a larger boost in Humanity’s Last Exam (HLE), which tests advanced domain-specific knowledge. Gemini 3 Flash has tripled the old models’ score in HLE, landing at 33.7 percent without tool use. That’s just a few points behind the Gemini 3 Pro model.

Google is talking up Gemini 3 Flash’s coding skills, and the provided benchmarks seem to back that talk up. Over the past year, Google has mostly pushed its Pro models as the best for generating code, but 3 Flash has done a lot of catching up. In the popular SWE-Bench Verified test, Gemini 3 Flash has gained almost 20 points on the 2.5 branch.

The new model is also a lot less likely to get general-knowledge questions wrong. In the Simple QA Verified test, Gemini 3 Flash scored 68.7 percent, which is only a little below Gemini 3 Pro. The last Flash model scored just 28.1 percent on that test. At least as far as the evaluation scores go, Gemini 3 Flash performs much closer to Google’s Pro model versus the older 2.5 family. At the same time, it’s considerably more efficient, according to Google.

One of Gemini 3 Pro’s defining advances was its ability to generate interactive simulations and multimodal content. Gemini 3 Flash reportedly retains that underlying capability. Gemini 3 Flash offers better performance than Gemini 2.5 Pro did, but it runs workloads three times faster. It’s also a lot cheaper than the Pro models if you’re paying per token. One million input tokens for 3 Flash will run devs $0.50, and a million output tokens will cost $3. However, that’s an increase compared to Gemini 2.5 Flash input and output at $0.30 and $2.50, respectively. The Pro model’s tokens are $2 (1M input) and $12 (1M output).

Google releases Gemini 3 Flash, promising improved intelligence and efficiency Read More »

Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations

AI, ai bot, Biz & IT, browser extensions, chrome, EDGE, privacy, Security / Mike M. / December 17, 2025

Besides ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the extensions harvest all conversations from Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI. Koi said the full description of the data captured includes:

Every prompt a user sends to the AI
Every response received
Conversation identifiers and timestamps
Session metadata
The specific AI platform and model used

The executor script runs independently from the VPN networking, ad blocking, or other core functionality. That means that even when a user toggles off VPN networking, AI protection, ad blocking, or other functions, the conversation collection continues. The only way to stop the harvesting is to disable the extension in the browser settings or to uninstall it.

Koi said it first discovered the conversation harvesting in Urban VPN Proxy, a VPN routing extension that lists “AI protection” as one of its benefits. The data collection began in early July with the release of version 5.5.0.

“Anyone who used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or the other targeted platforms while Urban VPN was installed after July 9, 2025 should assume those conversations are now on Urban VPN’s servers and have been shared with third parties,” the company said. “Medical questions, financial details, proprietary code, personal dilemmas—all of it, sold for ‘marketing analytics purposes.’”

Following that discovery, the security firm uncovered seven additional extensions with identical AI harvesting functionality. Four of the extensions are available in the Chrome Web Store. The other four are on the Edge add-ons page. Collectively, they have been installed more than 8 million times.

They are:

Chrome Store

Urban VPN Proxy: 6 million users
1ClickVPN Proxy: 600,000 users
Urban Browser Guard: 40,000 users
Urban Ad Blocker: 10,000 users

Edge Add-ons:

Urban VPN Proxy: 1,32 million users
1ClickVPN Proxy: 36,459 users
Urban Browser Guard – 12,624 users
Urban Ad Blocker – 6,476 users

Read the fine print

The extensions come with conflicting messages about how they handle bot conversations, which often contain deeply personal information about users’ physical and mental health, finances, personal relationships, and other sensitive information that could be a gold mine for marketers and data brokers. The Urban VPN Proxy in the Chrome Web Store, for instance, lists “AI protection” as a benefit. It goes on to say:

Browser extensions with 8 million users collect extended AI conversations Read More »

The $4.3 billion space telescope Trump tried to cancel is now complete

astronomy, dark energy, exoplanets, goddard space flight center, NASA, roman space telescope, Science, Space / Mike M. / December 16, 2025

“We’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy.”

Artist’s concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

A few weeks ago, technicians inside a cavernous clean room in Maryland made the final connection to complete assembly of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Parts of this new observatory, named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, recently completed a spate of tests to ensure it can survive the shaking and intense sound of a rocket launch. Engineers placed the core of the telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber, where it withstood the airless conditions and extreme temperature swings it will see in space.

Then, on November 25, teams at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, joined the inner and outer portions of the Roman Space Telescope. With this milestone, NASA declared the observatory complete and on track for launch as soon as fall 2026.

“The team is ecstatic,” said Jackie Townsend, the observatory’s deputy project manager at Goddard, in a recent interview with Ars. “It has been a long road, but filled with lots of successes and an ordinary amount of challenges, I would say. It’s just so rewarding to get to this spot.”

An ordinary amount of challenges is not something you usually hear a NASA official say about a one-of-a-kind space mission. NASA does hard things, and they usually take more time than originally predicted. Astronomers endured more than 10 years of delays, fixes, and setbacks before the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched in 2021.

Webb is the largest telescope ever put into space. After launch, Webb had to perform a sequence of more than 50 major deployment steps, with 178 release mechanisms that had to work perfectly. Any one of the more than 300 single points of failure could have doomed the mission. In the end, Webb unfolded its giant segmented mirror and delicate sunshield without issue. After a quarter-century of development and more than $11 billion spent, the observatory is finally delivering images and science results. And they’re undeniably spectacular.

The completed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, seen here with its solar panels deployed inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

Seeing far and wide

Roman is far less complex, with a 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirror that is nearly three times smaller than Webb’s. While it lacks Webb’s deep vision, Roman will see wider swaths of the sky, enabling a cosmic census of billions of stars and galaxies near and far (on the scale of the Universe). This broad vision will support research into dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up about 95 percent of the Universe. The rest of the Universe is made of regular atoms and molecules that we can see and touch.

It is also illustrative to compare Roman with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has primary mirrors of the same size. This means Roman will produce images with similar resolution to Hubble. The distinction lies deep inside Roman, where technicians have delicately laid an array of detectors to register the faint infrared light coming through the telescope’s aperture.

“Things like night vision goggles will use the same basic detector device, just tuned to a different wavelength,” Townsend said.

These detectors are located in Roman’s Wide Field Instrument, the mission’s primary imaging camera. There are 18 of them, each 4,096×4,096 pixels wide, combining to form a roughly 300-megapixel camera sensitive to visible and near-infrared light. Teledyne, the company that produced the detectors, says this is the largest infrared focal plane ever made.

The near-infrared channel on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which covers much the same part of the spectrum as Roman, has a single 1,024-pixel detector.

“That’s how you get to a much higher field-of-view for the Roman Space Telescope, and it was one of the key enabling technologies,” Townsend told Ars. “That was one place where Roman invested significant dollars, even before we started as a mission, to mature that technology so that it was ready to infuse into this mission.”

With these detectors in its bag, Roman will cover much more cosmic real estate than Hubble. For example, Roman will be able to re-create Hubble’s famous Ultra Deep Field image with the same sharpness, but expand it to show countless stars and galaxies over an area of the sky at least 100 times larger.

This infographic illustrates the differences between the sizes of the primary mirrors and detectors on the Hubble, Roman, and Webb telescopes. Credit: NASA

Roman has a second instrument, the Roman Coronagraph, with masks, filters, and adaptive optics to block out the glare from stars and reveal the faint glow from objects around them. It is designed to photograph planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, or 100 to 1,000 times better than similar instruments on Webb and Hubble. Roman can also detect exoplanets using the tried-and-true transit method, but scientists expect the new telescope will find a lot more than past space missions, thanks to its wider vision.

“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard, in a press release. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”

Big numbers are crucial for learning how the Universe works, and Roman will feed vast volumes of data down to astronomers on Earth. “So much of what physics is trying to understand about the nature of the Universe today needs large number statistics in order to understand,” Townsend said.

In one of Roman’s planned sky surveys, the telescope will cover in nine months what would take Hubble between 1,000 and 2,000 years. In another survey, Roman will cover an area equivalent to 3,455 full moons in about three weeks, then go back and observe a smaller portion of that area repeatedly over five-and-a-half days—jobs that Hubble and Webb can’t do.

“We will do fundamentally different science,” Townsend said. “In some subset of our observations, we’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy and in distant galaxies. That is just something that’s never happened before.”

Getting here and getting there

Roman’s promised scientific bounty will come at a cost of $4.3 billion, including expenses for development, manufacturing, launch, and five years of operations.

This is about $300 million more than NASA expected when it formally approved Roman for development in 2020, an overrun the agency blamed on complications related to the coronavirus pandemic. Otherwise, Roman’s budget has been stable since NASA officials finalized the mission’s architecture in 2017, when it was still known by a bulky acronym: WFIRST, the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope.

At that time, the agency reclassified the Roman Coronagraph as a technology demonstration, allowing managers to relax their requirements for the instrument and stave off concerns about cost growth.

Roman survived multiple attempts by the first Trump administration to cancel the mission. Each time, Congress restored funding to keep the observatory on track for launch in the mid-2020s. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the administration’s budget office earlier this year again wanted to cancel Roman. Eventually, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2026 budget request in May, calling for a drastic cut to Roman, but not total cancellation.

Once again, both houses of Congress signaled their opposition to the cuts, and the mission remains on track for launch next year, perhaps as soon as September. This is eight months ahead of the schedule NASA has publicized for Roman for the last few years.

Townsend told Ars the mission escaped the kind of crippling cost overruns and delays that afflicted Webb through careful planning and execution. “Roman was under a cost cap, and we operated to that,” she said. “We went through reasonable efforts to preclude those kinds of highly complex deployments that lead you to having trouble in integration and test.”

The outer barrel section of the Roman Space Telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde

There are only a handful of mechanisms that must work after Roman’s launch. They include a deployable cover designed to shield the telescope’s mirror during launch and solar array wings that will unfold once Roman is in space. The observatory will head to an observing post about a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

“We don’t have moments of terror for the deployment,” Townsend said. “Obviously, launch is always a risk, the tip-off rates that you have when you separate from the launch vehicle… Then, obviously, getting the aperture door open so that it’s deployed is another one. But these feel like normal aerospace risks, not unusual, harrowing moments for Roman.”

It also helps that Roman will use a primary mirror gifted to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency. The NRO originally ordered the mirror for a telescope that would peer down on the Earth, but the spy agency no longer needed it. Before NASA got its hands on the surplus mirror in 2012, scientists working on the preliminary design for what became Roman were thinking of a smaller telescope.

The larger telescope will make Roman a more powerful tool for science, and the NRO’s donation eliminated the risk of a problem or delay manufacturing a new mirror. But the upside meant NASA had to build a more massive spacecraft and use a bigger rocket to accommodate it, adding to the observatory’s cost.

Tests of Roman’s components have gone well this year. Work on Roman continued at Goddard through the government shutdown in the fall. On Webb, engineers uncovered one problem after another as they tried to verify the observatory would perform as intended in space. There were leaky valves, tears in the Webb’s sunshield, a damaged transducer, and loose screws. With Roman, engineers so far have found no “significant surprises” during ground testing, Townsend said.

“What we always hope when you’re doing this final round of environmental tests is that you’ve wrung out the hardware at lower levels of assembly, and it looks like, in Roman’s case, we did a spectacular job at the lower level,” she said.

With Roman now fully assembled, attention at Goddard will turn to an end-to-end functional test of the observatory early next year, followed by electromagnetic interference testing, and another round of acoustic and vibration tests. Then, perhaps around June of next year, NASA will ship the observatory to Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to prepare for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

“We’re really down to the last stretch of environmental testing for the system,” Townsend said. “It’s definitely already seen the worst environment until we get to launch.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

The $4.3 billion space telescope Trump tried to cancel is now complete Read More »

Microsoft will finally kill obsolete cipher that has wreaked decades of havoc

Biz & IT, Encryption, rc4, Security, Windows Server / Mike M. / December 15, 2025

Microsoft said it has steadily worked over the past decade to deprecate RC4, but that the task wasn’t easy.

No salt, no iteration? Really?

“The problem though is that it’s hard to kill off a cryptographic algorithm that is present in every OS that’s shipped for the last 25 years and was the default algorithm for so long, Steve Syfuhs, who runs Microsoft’s Windows Authentication team, wrote on Bluesky. “See,” he continued, “the problem is not that the algorithm exists. The problem is how the algorithm is chosen, and the rules governing that spanned 20 years of code changes.”

Over those two decades, developers discovered a raft of critical RC4 vulnerabilities that required “surgical” fixes. Microsoft considered deprecating RC4 by this year, but ultimately “punted” after discovering vulnerabilities that required still more fixes. During that time Microsoft introduced some “minor improvements” that favored the use of AES, and as a result, usage dropped by “orders of magnitude.”

“Within a year we had observed RC4 usage drop to basically nil. This is not a bad thing and in fact gave us a lot more flexibility to kill it outright because we knew it genuinely wasn’t going to break folks, because folks weren’t using it.”

Syfuhs went on to document additional challenges Microsoft encountered and the approach it took to solving them.

While RC4 has known cipher weaknesses that make it insecure, Kerberoasting exploits a separate weakness. As implemented in Active Directory authentication, it uses no cryptographic salt and a single round of the MD4 hashing function. Salt is a technique that adds random input to each password before it is hashed. That requires hackers to invest considerable time and resources into cracking the hash. MD4, meanwhile, is a fast algorithm that requires modest resources. Microsoft’s implementation of AES-SHA1 is much slower and iterates the hash to further slow down cracking efforts. Taken together, AES-Sha1-hashed passwords require about 1,000 times the time and resources to be cracked.

Windows admins would do well to audit their networks for any usage of RC4. Given its wide adoption and continued use industry-wide, it may still be active, much to the surprise and chagrin of those charged with defending against hackers.

Microsoft will finally kill obsolete cipher that has wreaked decades of havoc Read More »

Ford ends F-150 Lightning production, starts battery storage business

Cars, electric F-150, EV adoption, F-150, F-150 Lightning / Mike M. / December 15, 2025

We learned then that Ford would keep the Kentucky plant and SK On gets the one in Tennessee, which would focus on the energy storage business instead. Now, we know that something similar will happen at the Kentucky plant—Ford says it’s spending $2 billion to convert the factory to make prismatic lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells.

Those aren’t destined for EVs, but they are the preferred cell format for data centers, Ford says. The company says that it will bring the factory online in the next 18 months, reaching an annual output of 20 GWh.

Other Ford plants are also being repurposed. With no full-size BEV pickup in the product plans, the assembly plant in Tennessee that was to produce it—the one near the battery factory that SK On is keeping—will instead build new gas-powered trucks, although not for another four years. Around that same time, its Ohio assembly plant will begin building new commercial vehicles.

All of this will impact Ford’s bottom line, to the tune of $19.5 billion over the next few years, $5.5 billion of which will be in cash. Most of that will hit in the final quarter of 2025, but will extend until 2027, Ford said.

Ford ends F-150 Lightning production, starts battery storage business Read More »

Google will end dark web reports that alerted users to leaked data

dark web, data leaks, Google, privacy, Security, Tech / Mike M. / December 15, 2025

As Google admits in the email alert, its dark web scans didn’t offer much help. “Feedback showed that it did not provide helpful next steps,” Google said of the service. Here’s the full text of the email.

With other types of personal data alerts provided by the company, it has the power to do something. For example, you can have Google remove pages from search that list your personal data. Google doesn’t run anything on the dark web, though, so all it can do is remind you that your data is being passed around in one of the shadier corners of the Internet.

The shutdown begins on January 15, when Google will stop conducting new scans for user data on the dark web. Past data will no longer be available as of February 16, 2026. Google says it will delete all past reports at that time. However, users can remove their monitoring profile earlier in the account settings. This change does not impact any of Google’s other privacy reports.

The good news is that the best ways to protect your personal data from being shuffled around the dark web are the same ones that keep you safe on the open web. Google suggests always using two-step verification, and tools like Passkeys and Google’s password checkup can ensure you don’t accidentally reuse a compromised password. Stay safe out there.

Google will end dark web reports that alerted users to leaked data Read More »

Author name: Mike M.

Giving up control

Power of the collective

Expendable servants

Some people don’t want chatbots in their TVs

Agent 1: Mistral Vibe

Agent 2: OpenAI Codex

Agent 3: Anthropic Claude Code

Agent 4: Google Gemini CLI

Final verdict

Trump on shaky ground due to “AI bubble”

EU can take steps to burst “AI bubble”

Read the fine print

Seeing far and wide

Getting here and getting there

No salt, no iteration? Really?