Featured
A big boom
The inside story of SpaceX’s historic rocket landing that changed launch forever
“It’s hard to describe how epic this comeback was after our first Falcon 9 launch failure.”
Eric Berger – | 166
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How Europe’s new carbon tax on imported goods will change global trade
The new regulation arrives on New Year’s Day.
The Conversation – | 92
Google lobs lawsuit at search result scraping firm SerpApi
Google says the lawsuit is its last resort.
Ryan Whitwam – | 37
The evolution of expendability: Why some ants traded armor for numbers
Ants with lots of workers tend to put less energy into making them armored.
Jacek Krywko – | 26
Switch 2 pub backs off Game Key Cards after leaking lower-cost cartridge options
Inin suggests new low-cost options allowed it to “recalculate production” for full cartridge.
Kyle Orland – | 43
How Europe’s new carbon tax on imported goods will change global trade
The new regulation arrives on New Year’s Day.
The Conversation – | 92
Google lobs lawsuit at search result scraping firm SerpApi
Google says the lawsuit is its last resort.
Ryan Whitwam – | 37
The evolution of expendability: Why some ants traded armor for numbers
Ants with lots of workers tend to put less energy into making them armored.
Jacek Krywko – | 26
Switch 2 pub backs off Game Key Cards after leaking lower-cost cartridge options
Inin suggests new low-cost options allowed it to “recalculate production” for full cartridge.
Kyle Orland – | 43
LG TVs’ unremovable Copilot shortcut is the least of smart TVs’ AI problems
LG says it’ll let people delete the Copilot icon. But TV chatbots aren’t going away.
Scharon Harding – | 141
Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs
BIOS checks will only affect a limited subset of Valorant players for now.
Andrew Cunningham – | 67
Not too big, not too expensive: The Chevrolet Equinox EV
You get quite a lot of EV for the Equinox’s sub-$35,000 starting price.
Jonathan M. Gitlin – | 123
Trump’s energy secretary orders a Washington state coal plant to remain open
Chris Wright declared an energy “emergency” in the Pacific Northwest.
Blaine Harden, Inside Climate News – | 116
Instacart agrees to refund subscribers $60 million in FTC settlement
The grocery app will also stop hiding refund options and obscuring delivery costs.
Ashley Belanger – | 27
Strava puts popular “Year in Sport” recap behind an $80 paywall
Strava’s most viral feature is suddenly locked away.
Cyrus Farivar – | 90
Featured
“Tremendous ignorance”
“A Band-Aid on a giant gash”: Trump’s attacks on science may ruin his AI moonshot
Trump’s AI “Manhattan Project” will fail if DOGE cuts are kept, critics say.
Ashley Belanger – | 95
We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive
How do four modern LLMs do at re-creating a simple Windows gaming classic?
Kyle Orland and Benj Edwards – | 139
Most Read
Russia is about to do the most Russia thing ever with its next space station
“Russia, meanwhile, will be left to carry on the legacy of the ISS, with all its problems.”
Eric Berger – | 170
Rocket Report: Russia pledges quick fix for Soyuz launch pad; Ariane 6 aims high
South Korean rocket startup Innospace is poised to debut a new nano-launcher.
Stephen Clark – | 65
ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners
Closing TikTok deal avoids 2026 ban, but app may be buggy, “100% MAGA.”
Ashley Belanger – | 81
Two space startups prove you don’t need to break the bank to rendezvous in space
“We had to push the envelope a little bit here.”
Eric Berger – | 15
These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about
DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites.”
Stephen Clark – | 83
Parasites plagued Roman soldiers at Hadrian’s Wall
They were infected by roundworm, whipworm, and microscopic protozoans called Giardia duodenalis.
Jennifer Ouellette – | 100
Trump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later
Also, the Trump administration wants to put some nuclear power reactors there, too.
Eric Berger – | 212
YouTube bans two popular channels that created fake AI movie trailers
Google loves AI content, except when it doesn’t.
Ryan Whitwam – | 94
Peacock showing ads upon launch opens the door for more disruptive streaming ads
Subscribers will start seeing ads when selecting a user next year.
Scharon Harding – | 130
Reminder: Donate to win swag in our annual Charity Drive sweepstakes
Help increase our charity haul of nearly $18,000 in just over a week.
Kyle Orland – | 2
RAM and SSD prices are still climbing—here’s our best advice for PC builders
I would avoid building a PC right now, but if you can’t, here’s our best advice.
Andrew Cunningham – | 110
School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn’t an error.
Human review didn’t stop AI from triggering lockdown at panicked middle school.
Ashley Belanger – | 228
LLMs’ impact on science: Booming publications, stagnating quality
Once researchers turn to LLMs, paper counts go up, quality does not.
John Timmer – | 53
Neural DSP models John Mayer’s entire amp and effects rig—and it sounds great
Mayer gets the “Archetype” treatment.
Nate Anderson – | 55
NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars
Engineers at JPL are certifying the Perseverance rover to drive up to 100 kilometers.
Stephen Clark – | 65
For the lazy techie: These are Ars staff’s last-minute holiday gift picks
Two wireless mice, two external hard drives, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Samuel Axon – | 51
Does swearing make you stronger? Science says yes.
“A calorie-neutral, drug-free, low-cost, readily available tool for when we need a boost in performance.”
Jennifer Ouellette – | 120
Formula 1 is deploying new jargon for 2026
Forget DRS, now it’s all about corner mode, straight mode, and overtake mode.
Jonathan M. Gitlin – | 87
NASA finally—and we really do mean it this time—has a full-time leader
A long and winding road to reach NASA’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
Eric Berger – | 154
Physicists 3D-printed a Christmas tree of ice
New method uses no freezing technology or refrigeration equipment—just water and a vacuum.
Jennifer Ouellette – | 40
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT image generator makes faking photos easy
New GPT Image 1.5 allows more detailed conversational image editing, for better or worse.
Benj Edwards – | 111
Man sues cops who jailed him for 37 days for trolling a Charlie Kirk vigil
Cops may be fined for jailing a man over his Facebook posts.
Ashley Belanger – | 195
FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency”
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz wants to restrict FCC’s power to intimidate broadcasters.
Jon Brodkin – | 85
