Amid the chaos of the Trump administration’s haphazard job cuts and a mass exodus of leadership, the Food and Drug Administration is experiencing a slowdown of drug reviews and approvals, according to an analysis reported by Stat News .

An assessment of metrics by RBC Capital Markets analysts found that FDA drug approvals dropped 14 percentage points in the third quarter compared to the average of the six previous quarters—falling from an average of 87 percent to 73 percent this past quarter. In line with that finding, analysts noted that the delay rate in meeting deadlines for drug application reviews rose from an average of 4 percent to 11 percent.

The FDA also rejected more applications than normal, going from a historical average of 10 percent to 15 percent in the third quarter. A growing number of rejections relate to problems at manufacturing plants, which in turn could suggest problems with the FDA’s inspection and auditing processes.

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Netflix’s international offerings include some entertaining Norwegian fare, such as the series Ragnarok (2020–2023), a surprisingly engaging reworking of Norse mythology brought into the 21st century that ran for three seasons . Another enjoyable offering was a 2022 monster movie called Troll , essentially a Norwegian take on the classic Godzilla formula. Netflix just dropped a trailer for the sequel, Troll 2, which looks to be very much in the same vein as its predecessor.

(Spoilers for the first Troll movie below.)

Don’t confuse the Netflix franchise with 2010’s Trollhunter , shot in the style of a found footage mockumentary. A group of college students sets off into the wilds of the fjordland to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher named Hans. They discover that Hans is actually hunting down trolls and decide to document those endeavors instead, but soon realize they are very much out of their depth.

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The clock just ticked past noon here in Houston, Texas, so it’s acceptable to have a drink, right?

Because after another turbulent morning of closely following the rough-and-tumble contest to become the next NASA administrator, I sure could use one.

What has happened now? Why, it was only SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is NASA’s most important contractor, referring to the interim head of the space agency, Sean Duffy, as “Sean Dummy,” and suggesting he was trying to kill NASA. Musk later added, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

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Apple’s new Liquid Glass user interface design was one of the most noticeable and divisive features of its major software updates this year. It added additional fluidity and translucency throughout iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Apple’s other operating systems, and as we noted in our reviews , the default settings weren’t always great for readability.

The upcoming 26.1 update for all of those OSes is taking a step toward addressing some of the complaints, though not by changing things about the default look of Liquid Glass. Rather, the update is adding a new toggle that will let users choose between a Clear and Tinted look for Liquid Glass, with Clear representing the default look and Tinted cranking up the opacity and contrast.

The new toggle adds a half-step in between the default visual settings and the “reduce transparency” setting, which aside from changing a bunch of other things about the look and feel of the operating system is buried further down inside the Accessibility options. The Tinted toggle does make colors and vague shapes visible beneath the glass panes, preserving the general look of Liquid Glass while also erring on the side of contrast and visibility, where the “reduce transparency” setting is more of an all-or-nothing blunt instrument.

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Back in 2008, Google launched the Chrome browser to help better integrate its industry-leading search engine into the web-browsing experience. Today, OpenAI announced the Atlas browser that it hopes will do something similar for its ChatGPT Large Language Model, answering the question “What if I could chat with a browser?” as the OpenAI team put it.

OpenAI Founder and CEO Sam Altman said in a livestreamed announcement that Atlas will let users “chat with a page,” helping ChatGPT become a core way that users interact with the place where “a ton of work and life happens” online. “The way that we hope people will use the Internet in the future… is that the chat experience and a web browser can be a great analogue,” he said.

The new browser is available for download now on MacOS , and Altman promised Windows and mobile versions would be rolled out “as quick as we can.”

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AI content has proliferated across the Internet over the past few years, but those early confabulations with mutated hands have evolved into synthetic images and videos that can be hard to differentiate from reality. Having helped to create this problem, Google has some responsibility to keep AI video in check on YouTube. To that end, the company has started rolling out its promised likeness detection system for creators.

Google’s powerful and freely available AI models have helped fuel the rise of AI content, some of which is aimed at spreading misinformation and harassing individuals. Creators and influencers fear their brands could be tainted by a flood of AI videos that show them saying and doing things that never happened—even lawmakers are fretting about this . Google has placed a large bet on the value of AI content, so banning AI from YouTube, as many want, simply isn’t happening.

Earlier this year, YouTube promised tools that would flag face-stealing AI content on the platform. The likeness detection tool, which is similar to the site’s copyright detection system, has now expanded beyond the initial small group of testers. YouTube says the first batch of eligible creators have been notified they can use likeness detection, but interested parties will need to hand Google even more personal information to get protection from AI fakes.

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A little over a year ago, one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft flew a team of four private astronauts to orbit on a mission that made history with the first fully commercial spacewalk.

Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis briefly floated out the door of the Dragon capsule , wearing SpaceX-built pressure suits to protect them against the hostile environment of space. It was the first time anyone ventured outside of their spacecraft without the involvement of a government space agency.

The mission, named Polaris Dawn, made an important contribution in another area. It was the first space mission to connect with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, using laser links between the Dragon spacecraft and Starlink satellites to communicate with the Earth.

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Last year, a group of researchers won the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize in Physiology for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus. But as with many Ig Nobel awards, there is a serious side to the seeming silliness. The same group has conducted a new study on the feasibility of adapting this method to treat people with blocked airways or clogged lungs, with promising results that bring rectal oxygen delivery one step closer to medical reality.

As previously reported , this is perhaps one of the more unusual research developments to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated shortages of ventilators and artificial lungs to assist patients’ breathing and prevent respiratory failure. The Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center team took their inspiration from the humble loach , a freshwater bottom-dwelling fish found throughout Eurasia and northern Africa. The loach (along with sea cucumbers) employs intestinal breathing (i.e., through the anus) rather than gills to survive under hypoxic conditions, thanks to having lots of capillary vessels in its intestine. The technical term is enteral ventilation via anus (EVA).

Would such a novel breathing method work in mammals? The team thought it might be possible and undertook experiments with mice and micro-pigs to test that hypothesis. They drew upon earlier research by Leland Clark, also of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who invented a perfluorocarbon liquid called Oxycyte as a possible form of artificial blood. That vision never materialized, although it did provide a handy plot point for the 1989 film The Abyss , in which a rat is able to “breathe” in a similar liquid.

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A year after suing SpaceX for “invading” a plot of land on the US/Mexico border, Cards Against Humanity says it has obtained a settlement and will provide supporters with a new pack of cards about Elon Musk.

The party-game company bought the land in 2017 in an attempt to stymie President Trump’s wall-building project, but alleged that SpaceX illegally took over the land and filled it with construction equipment and materials. A September 2024 lawsuit filed against SpaceX in Cameron County District Court in Texas sought up to $15 million to cover the cost of restoring the property and other damages.

Cards Against Humanity, which bought the property with donations from supporters, told Ars today that “we’ve been in negotiations with SpaceX for much of the last year. We held out for the best settlement we could get—almost until the trial was supposed to start—and unfortunately part of that negotiation was that we’re not allowed to discuss specific settlement terms. They did admit to trespassing during the discovery phase, which was very validating.”

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