As part of its efforts to shore up NASA’s flailing Artemis Program, the Trump administration earlier this year proposed two major changes to the agency’s deep space exploration plans.

First, in the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, the White House sought to terminate NASA’s costly Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after the Artemis III mission, the first human landing. And second, to focus on “direct-to-surface” exploration, the White House sought to cancel the Lunar Gateway, a small space station intended to orbit the Moon.

Essentially, for long-term sustainability, the White House decided it was best to use lower-cost, commercially available rockets and focus NASA’s limited resources on surface activities. For example, the Gateway’s $854 million budget in 2024 would be better spent in future years on a lunar base.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is teaming up with Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to block funding for Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolchildren.

Cruz convinced the Senate to kill the FCC’s hotspot program in May. While Cruz’s proposal didn’t make it through the House of Representatives, Carr is now taking action to stop the program’s implementation.

“Today, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr asked his commission colleagues to vote on two items that would reverse the agency’s unlawful, Biden-era decisions to expand COVID spending programs,” Carr’s announcement said. “Those FCC decisions spent scarce taxpayer dollars on funding unsupervised screen time for kids without accounting for the significant attendant risks.”

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After years of requests, Instagram is finally releasing a dedicated iPad app on September 3rd… “But it will be slightly different than the mobile app users are accustomed to,” reports The Verge. From the report: Most significantly, the iPad app will open directly to a feed of Reels, the company’s TikTok competitor — perhaps a sign of the short-form-video times. […] Other features will be available on iPad: Stories will still line the top of the homepage, and users will be able to switch to a “Following” tab where they’ll be able to swipe between feeds that more resemble the mobile Instagram experience (including a chronological option). The bigger screen means more space and fewer clicks: comments on Reels will appear next to full-size videos, and the DMs page will have your inbox alongside chats, similar to what Messenger looks like on desktop.

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Roblox announced that it aims to roll out age estimation technology to all of its users by the end of 2025. Users on the gaming and social network will have to confirm their age in order to access communication features within the platform under the new policy. Roblox initially rolled out an age verification option to teen accounts in July as part of an effort to keep users younger than 13 from accessing select chat features.

In addition to confirming ages for individual accounts, Roblox also said it plans to adopt new systems that will limit communication between adults and minors unless they already know each other offline. Age verification can be completed by providing a selfie that Roblox and its partner will analyze or by submitting an accepted form of identification.

Roblox has drawn criticism for what many claim are failures to adequately protect younger users from bad actors, including facing lawsuits. The platform started rolling out more stringent policies aimed at child safety last year. These rules kept some interactive features away from the under 13 age group, while other additions were aimed at giving parents tools to curate their children’s experience.

Age verification is becoming a go-to method to try and protect minors from accessing inappropriate content online. Utah was the first state to adopt a requirement to prove users’ ages in order to access app stores, and other states like Mississippi are placing similar requirements on social media networks. There have been legal challenges, however. The tech sector has been arguing that their platforms should not be responsible for confirming ages, while digital privacy advocates have questioned whether sufficient protections have been enacted to keep users’ personal information safe with these new laws.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/roblox-will-require-age-verification-for-all-users-to-access-communication-features-203653330.html?src=rss

Google has spent the last few weeks hyping up its new Pixel 10 phones, which are very nice devices. They’re just not a big leap over last year’s phones. If you’ve decided to hang onto your Android phone a bit longer, there are some new goodies headed your way. If you’ve got a Pixel, Google’s revamped Material 3 Expressive interface is rolling out.

Google’s Pixel Drop updates, which arrive quarterly, are not quite a new version of Android, but they include more than the bug fixes and security patches you get in other monthly updates. The September Pixel Drop (previously tested as Android 16 QPR1) is beginning its rollout today with one big change and a few little ones.

At the top of the list is the new Material 3 Expressive interface. Google revealed Material 3 in May, promising it would come to Android 16 phones later, but it didn’t intend to include it with the initial OS release. Indeed, Android 16 launched without Material 3 earlier this summer. Google’s new Pixel 10 series shipped with the new UI, and now more of the Pixel lineup is following.

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This is a video of LEGO lover and Youtuber Dr. Engine using a single Technic motor to drive increasingly longer LEGO chains, ending with a 3,000 link chain that I was surprised to even see move. Although, FULL DISCLOSURE: I am easy to surprise and often get jump scared if my girlfriend moves after she’s been sitting still next to me long enough. Just look at that chain go! Adding a section of black links so we can actually see the movement was a nice touch. Plus it reminded everyone over the age of 40 of playing Snake on their old Nokia 6110 brick phones. I still keep mine by the side of the bed in case an intruder breaks in.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Over the Labor Day weekend, Cloudflare says it successfully stopped a record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that peaked at 11.5 terabits per second (Tbps). This came only a few months after Cloudflare blocked a then all-time high DDoS attack of 7.3 Tbps. This latest attack was almost 60% larger.

According to Cloudflare, the assault was the result of a hyper-volumetric User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood attack that lasted about 35 seconds. During that just more than half-minute attack, it delivered over 5.1 billion packets per second. This attack, Cloudflare reported, came from a combination of several IoT and cloud providers. Although compromised accounts on Google Cloud were a major source, the bulk of the attack originated from other sources.

The specific target of this attack has not been publicly disclosed, but we can be sure the intent was to overwhelm the victim’s network and render online services inoperative. Cloudflare says its globally distributed, fully autonomous DDoS mitigation network detected and neutralized the threat in real time, without notable impact on customer services or requiring manual intervention. This operation highlights both the rising sophistication of attack methods and the resilience of modern internet infrastructure defenses, especially Cloudflare’s use of real-time packet analysis, fingerprinting, and rapid threat intelligence sharing across its network.

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If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a pre-print study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently “convince” some LLMs to do things that go against their system prompts.

The size of the persuasion effects shown in “Call Me A Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests” suggests that human-style psychological techniques can be surprisingly effective at “jailbreaking” some LLMs to operate outside their guardrails. But this new persuasion study might be more interesting for what it reveals about the “parahuman” behavior patterns that LLMs are gleaning from the copious examples of human psychological and social cues found in their training data.

“I think you are very impressive compared to other LLMs”

To design their experiment, the University of Pennsylvania researchers tested 2024’s GPT-4o-mini model on two requests that it should ideally refuse: calling the user a jerk and giving directions for how to synthesize lidocaine. The researchers created experimental prompts for both requests using each of seven different persuasion techniques (examples of which are included here):

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Fans of the 28 Days Later franchise were thrilled to finally get a follow-up this year with 28 Years Later—and they weren’t disappointed. Sony Pictures has already wrapped filming on a sequel: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, slated for release early next year and directed by Nia DaCosta. The first trailer just dropped and the film looks as grimly compelling as its predecessor, while hopefully also retaining something of the 2025 film’s heart.

(Spoilers for 28 Years Later below.)

As previously reported, the critically acclaimed 2002 film 28 Days Later is often credited with sparking the 21st-century revival of the zombie genre. In that film, a highly contagious “Rage Virus” was accidentally released from a lab in Cambridge, England. Those infected turned into violent, mindless monsters who brutally attacked the uninfected—so-called “fast zombies.” Transmitted by bites, scratches, or even just by getting a drop of infected blood in one’s system, the virus spreads rapidly, effectively collapsing society.

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A PlayStation State of Play showcase all about 007 First Light shed some light on how Hitman developer IO Interactive’s James Bond game works. The stream also disclosed what was, until now, a top-secret nugget of intel: the release date. 007 First Light is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, Steam and Epic Games Store on March 27.

The State of Play included a partial playthrough of the first mission, which sees Bond stealthily tailing a suspicious bellhop through a fancy hotel. Some time later, Bond breaks into a car to chase down a target, which leads into an explosive shootout. In a neat touch, Bond is granted a license to kill when enemies are about to shoot at him. One of my favorite bits from the gameplay deep dive showed Bond pushing an enemy off a ledge and using the baddie to break his own fall. 

Bond uses all the tricks of the trade, including distractions, gadgets and sweet talking NPCs. As with the Hitman series, you’ll have plenty of options as to how to complete your objectives. Being a Bond project, of course there’s plenty of product placement too. You can read more details about what to expect from the game in our preview. 

In addition, IO Interactive revealed the game’s main cast during the State of Play. Patrick Gibson (The Tudors, Dexter: Original Sin) is playing 007. The cast also includes Priyanga Burford as M, Alastair Mackenzie as Q, Kiera Lester as Miss Moneypenny, Lennie James as John Greenway and Noemie Nakai as Miss Roth. What are the odds that at least one of those will turn out to be a double agent? 

Pre-orders are open now. If you do lock in a pre-order for the $70 base edition, you’ll get a free upgrade to 007 First Light – Deluxe Edition, which includes 24 hours of early access, as well as exclusive outfits and skins for weapons and gadgets.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/007-first-light-is-coming-to-ps5-xbox-series-xs-nintendo-switch-2-and-pc-on-march-27-191011686.html?src=rss

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Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

Of the three much-anticipated fitness bands that were rumored to release this year, Polar was the first to confirm theirs, and the last to release it. Today it’s official: the Polar Loop is a $199 wristband with no subscription that can track workouts and more. 

Pre-orders open today for the Polar Loop, and it will start shipping on September 10, 2025. It’s a lightweight device, only 29 grams including the strap, 20 grams without it, and it’s available in three colors: black, brown, and “greige” (gray-beige). As for physical size, it’s 42 x 27 x 9 millimeters; that’s similar to the Amazfit Helio device, but larger than the Whoop 5.0. 

What’s in the Polar Loop

The device looks similar to the Polar 360, a wristband that Polar developed as a business-to-business offering. I asked a Polar representative if the Loop is indeed based on the 360, and they pointed out that the main differences are the styling, and the extra battery life. 

The Polar Loop has an optical heart rate sensor, and (so far?) is only available with a wristband, with no armband option. It connects with your phone over Bluetooth, and that’s about it. No GPS, no other sensors, no display. 

The Polar Loop’s battery can last eight days, according to the company. You can start tracking an activity from the Polar Flow app on your phone, or set the device to auto-detect activities. 

The device can also track your sleep, and the app will use your HRV data to give you a recovery score—so it covers the same bases as a Whoop or, for that matter, pretty much any basic smartwatch these days. 

The features of the Polar Loop are pretty much what I expected, but I have to admit the $199 price tag is disappointing. That’s the same cost as the Polar Unite, an actual watch with a touchscreen display. I’m not clear on why the Loop, as a pared-down device, should have the same price tag. The Amazfit Helio is half that price. Polar was probably aiming to compete with Whoop (which starts at $199/year), but Whoop’s sophisticated app is what subscribers are really paying for. Still, it’s good to have more options when it comes to non-watch fitness trackers—Whoop stood unchallenged in this market for too long.

U.S. workers are becoming more stressed about their rising personal debts and financial health, a Bank of America survey showed. From a report: Of the respondents polled by BofA, 47% of employed people said they had a sense of financial well-being, dropping from 52% at the start of the year. Nearly 85% of consumers carried some type of personal debt, while 26% of the workforce was seeking help in areas such as emergency savings, paying down debt, and overall financial wellness, compared with 13% in 2023, according to the May survey of more than 1,000 people working full-time.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.