Gamers of a certain age will remember a period roughly 15 years ago when the industry collectively decided stereoscopic 3D was going to be the next big thing in gaming . From Nvidia's "3D Vision" glasses system to Nintendo's glasses-free 3DS to Sony's 3D TV aimed specifically at gamers , major gaming companies put a lot of effort into bringing a sense of real depth to the flat video game scenes of the day.

Unfortunately for those companies, the stereoscopic 3D gaming hype faded almost as quickly as it rose; by 2012, most companies were scaling back their stereoscopic investments in light of underwhelming public demand (case in point: Nintendo's pivot to the 3D-free 2DS line of portables). And while some stray upstarts have tried to revive the stereoscopic gaming dream in the years since , the idea seemed destined to be a footnote in gaming tech history.

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The premiere of Alien: Earth is just weeks away, and FX/Hulu dropped one last trailer to pique our interest, along with a much more detailed synopsis. It's meditative and existential in tone, with a haunting tune playing over footage of mysterious alien craft, dead bodies, blood-spattered humans fleeing through futuristic corridors, and, of course, a spooky silhouette of a xenomorph in the distance.

As previously reported , the eight-episode series is set in 2120, two years before the events of the first film, Alien (1979), in a world where corporate interests are competing to unlock the key to human longevity—maybe even immortality. Showrunner Noah Hawley has said that the style and mythology will be closer to that film than Prometheus (2012) or Alien: Covenant , both of which were also prequels.

Per the official premise:

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The US Senate voted to rescind two years' worth of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), delivering a blow to public radio and television stations around the country. The CPB is a publicly funded nonprofit corporation that supports NPR and PBS stations.

The 51-48 vote today on President Trump's rescissions package would eliminate $1.1 billion that was allocated to public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. All 51 yes votes came from Republicans, while Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted against. The $1.1 billion includes $60 million for "costs associated with replacing and upgrading the public broadcasting interconnection system" and other back-end infrastructure for public media.

"Without federal funding, many local public radio and television stations will be forced to shut down. Parents will have fewer high quality learning resources available for their children," CPB CEO Patricia Harrison said . "Millions of Americans will have less trustworthy information about their communities, states, country, and world with which to make decisions about the quality of their lives. Cutting federal funding could also put Americans at risk of losing national and local emergency alerts that serve as a lifeline to many Americans in times of severe need."

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How many Google AI researchers does it take to screw in a lightbulb ? A recent research paper detailing the technical core behind Google's Gemini AI assistant may suggest an answer, listing an eye-popping 3,295 authors.

It's a number that recently caught the attention of machine learning researcher David Ha (known as "hardmaru" online), who revealed on X that the first 43 names also contain a hidden message. "There’s a secret code if you observe the authors’ first initials in the order of authorship," Ha wrote , relaying the Easter egg: "GEMINI MODELS CAN THINK AND GET BACK TO YOU IN A FLASH."

The paper, titled "Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities," describes Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash AI models, which were released in March. These large language models, which power Google's chatbot AI assistant, feature simulated reasoning capabilities that produce a string of "thinking out loud" text before generating responses in an attempt to help them solve more difficult problems. That explains "think" and "flash" in the hidden text.

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It's widely accepted conventional wisdom that when it comes to creative works—TV shows, films , music , books—consumers crave an optimal balance between novelty and familiarity. What we choose to consume and share with others, in turn, drives cultural evolution.

But what if that conventional wisdom is wrong? An analysis based on data from a massive online fan fiction (fanfic) archive contradicts this so-called "balance theory," according to a paper published in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. The fanfic community seems to overwhelmingly prefer more of the same, consistently choosing familiarity over novelty; however, they reported greater overall enjoyment when they took a chance and read something more novel. In short: "Sameness entices, but novelty enchants."

Strictly speaking, authors have always copied characters and plots from other works (cf. many of William Shakespeare's plays), although the advent of copyright law complicated matters. Modern fan fiction as we currently think of it arguably emerged with the 1967 publication of the first Star Trek fanzine (Spockanalia), which included spinoff fiction based on the series. Star Trek also spawned the subgenre of slash fiction , when writers began creating stories featuring Kirk and Spock (Kirk/Spock, or K/S) in a romantic (often sexual) relationship.

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Delta has become the first airline to announce that it is using AI to boost profits by personalizing pricing through a pilot program that for months has caused customers to pay different prices for the same flights based on their data profile.

Critics have warned that this use of AI goes beyond airline practices that charge people who book flights ahead less than people who book flights at the last minute—and could ultimately mean the end of cheap flights across the board if other airlines follow.

On an earnings call last week, Delta Air Lines President Glen William Hauenstein confirmed that seats on about 3 percent of domestic flights were sold using the AI pricing system over the past six months. By the end of the year, Delta's goal is to boost that to 20 percent of tickets.

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Automakers selling cars in the United States now have even less incentive to care about fuel economy. As Ars has noted before , the current administration and its Republican allies in Congress have been working hard to undermine federal regulations meant to make our vehicle fleet more efficient.

Some measures have been aimed at decreasing adoption of electric vehicles—for example the IRS clean vehicle tax credit will be eliminated at the end of September. Others have targeted federal fuel economy regulations that require automakers to meet specific fleet efficiency averages or face punishing fines for polluting too much. At least, they used to.

According to a letter seen by Reuters , sent to automakers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal government has decided it will not levy any fines on companies that have exceeded the corporate average fuel economy limits dating back to model year 2022.

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The European Commission has stalled one of its investigations into Elon Musk’s X for breaking the bloc’s digital transparency rules, while it seeks to conclude trade talks with the US.

Brussels was expected to finalise its probe into the social media platform before the EU’s summer recess but will miss this deadline, according to three officials familiar with the matter. They noted that a decision was likely to follow after clarity emerged in the EU-US trade negotiations. “It’s all tied up,” one of the officials added.

The EU has several investigations into X under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, a set of rules for large online players to police their platforms more aggressively.

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For the 2025 model year, Aston Martin's user interface took a major step forward across the lineup, with improvements to the physical controls and digital infotainment, as well as updated gauge cluster layouts. However, the big news dropped in the spring, when Aston and Apple announced the launch of CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of Apple's nearly ubiquitous automotive operating system.

Ultra extends beyond the strictly “phone” functions of traditional CarPlay to now encompass more robust vehicular integration, including climate control, drive modes, and the entire gauge cluster readout. Running Ultra, therefore, requires a digital gauge cluster. So far, not many automakers other than Aston have signaled their intent to join the revolution: Kia/Hyundai/Genesis will adopt Ultra next, and Porsche may come after that.

Before future partnerships come to fruition, I spent a week with a DB12 Volante to test Ultra's use cases and conceptual failure points, most critically to discover whether this generational leap actually enhances or detracts from an otherwise stellar driving experience.

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