The EU is set to scrutinize if Apple, Google and Microsoft are failing to adequately police financial fraud online, as it steps up efforts to police how Big Tech operates online.

The EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen told the Financial Times that on Tuesday the bloc’s regulators would send formal requests for information to the three US Big Tech groups as well as global accommodation platform Booking Holdings, under powers granted under the Digital Services Act to tackle financial scams.

“We see that more and more criminal actions are taking place online,” Virkkunen said. “We have to make sure that online platforms really take all their efforts to detect and prevent that kind of illegal content.”

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Volvo is undergoing something of a restructuring. The automaker wants to be fully electric by 2040, but for that to happen, it needs to remain in business until then. Earlier this year, that meant layoffs, but today, Volvo announced it has big plans for its North American factory in Ridgeville, South Carolina.

Volvo has been making cars in South Carolina since 2017, starting with the S60 sedan —a decision I always found slightly curious given that US car buyers had already given up on sedans by that point in favor of crossovers and SUVs. S60 production ended last summer, and these days, the plant builds the large electric EX90 SUV and the related Polestar 3 .

The company is far from fully utilizing the Ridgeville plant, though, which has an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles. When the turnaround plan was first announced this July, Volvo revealed it would start building the next midsize XC60 in South Carolina—a wise move given the Trump tariffs and the importance of this model to Volvo's sales figures here.

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SpaceX scored its 500th landing of a Falcon 9 first stage booster on an otherwise routine flight earlier this month, sending 28 Starlink communications satellites into orbit. Barring any unforeseen problems, SpaceX will mark the 500th re-flight of a Falcon first stage later this year.

A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX's achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.

But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX's dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.

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In 2024, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled to defend a pretty obvious idea about free speech: viz., that the government cannot punish people or companies simply for saying things that government officials dislike or disagree with. Being a media organization, this principle is of fundamental importance to Ars Technica.

Unfortunately, nearly one year on, the government is routinely trying to censor voices it doesn't like. The recent blow-up surrounding late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel is just one of the most obvious examples of the new censorship regime. But the case also shows that, even where courts do not act, the public can still successfully push for change.

Disfavored speech

Here's how Justice Sonia Sotomayor put the basic free speech principle last year:

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NASA has named its new group of astronaut candidates, including the first person to have orbited Earth before joining the agency's corps.

The space agency on Monday introduced the four men and six women who comprise its 2025 trainee class during a ceremony held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Following two years of basic training, the new candidates will be eligible for mission assignments in low-Earth orbit and on the Moon, as NASA's Artemis program works toward sending the first humans to Mars.

"We picked the best and the brightest, the most skilled, the best looking, the best personalities to take these 10 spots," said Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator and secretary of transportation. "You are America's best and brightest, and we're going to need America's best and brightest because we have a bold exploration plans for the future."

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As is now a long-standing custom, iFixit performed a full teardown of the latest iPhone—this time, the newly launched iPhone Air. These teardowns got pretty routine for a while, as Apple settled into a fairly consistent design for iPhones, but the new design of the iPhone Air offered an opportunity for compelling observations.

Many of the important components—including the entire logic board—are clustered up at the top of the phone, while the majority of its middle and body house a battery.

iFixit found that this battery is identical to the one included in Apple's iPhone Air MagSafe battery pack—you can even swap the batteries between the pack and the phone with no problems.

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Jimmy Kimmel is going back on the air. ABC owner Disney today issued a statement saying that Jimmy Kimmel Live will return on Tuesday.

"Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country," Disney said in a statement today. "It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday."

Disney suspended the show after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened the company with license revocations for broadcast stations affiliated with ABC. After caving to the FCC, Disney faced a public backlash, and many users said they were protesting by canceling subscriptions to Disney-owned services.

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Google is back in court, hoping to avoid a painful breakup of its advertising business. US District Judge Leonie Brinkema has already ruled that Google operated an illegal monopoly in digital advertising, and now it's time to learn the consequences of that behavior. Google's had mixed luck with antitrust rulings lately, but it's not a great sign that Google has so many legal woes that it can be hard to keep them all straight.

The case that just got underway is the remedy phase of the AdTech trial, in which the DOJ secured a ruling against Google several months ago. The remedy phase of the search trial wrapped up recently, which ended with Google holding on to Chrome but pledging an appeal to overturn the verdict. There's also the Google Play antitrust case, which was brought by Epic Games. In this case, Google has already lost its appeal, putting some major app changes on the table as it plans yet another appeal.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Google are squaring off in Virginia federal court for the next two weeks or so, and there are no surprises in opening arguments. The government says the only way to deal with a monopolist like this is to break it up, but Google says it has already made numerous changes, and there's no way to excise it from online advertising without breaking the market.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) slammed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr for policing speech after the FCC chair pressured ABC into suspending Jimmy Kimmel.

Carr's statement that ABC must take action against Kimmel was "absolutely inappropriate," Paul said on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday. "Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this."

Paul went on to say that employees can be fired for "despicable comments" and that broadcast station owners like Sinclair have the right to object to content distributed by networks. But he said "the FCC should have nothing to do with it... you can be fired for not being popular, this is television for goodness sakes. You have to sell sponsorships, you have to sell commercials, and if you're losing money, you can be fired. But the government's got no business in it and the FCC was wrong to weigh in, and I'll fight any attempt by the government to get involved with speech."

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