When I switched to a Mac about a decade ago, I immediately fell in love with my MacBook’s menu bar, and especially the various icons in its top-right corner. I’ve always enjoyed keeping useful menu bar apps there, such as clipboard managers, app launchers, or apps that update other apps. But unfortunately, if you’ve installed more than a few third-party apps on your MacBook, your menu bar might be pretty cluttered. It’s nothing a quick clean-up can’t fix, though, and now macOS ships with a few ways to help fix your messy menu bar.
Just as you’d remove unwanted items from your desk, you should periodically declutter the menu bar by removing apps that don’t need to be there. This doesn’t uninstall those apps, but it does free up some space in your menu bar. I do this for menu bar icons I never end up clicking. macOS 26 Tahoe has an easy way to remove apps from the menu bar. Follow these steps to do it:
Click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your Mac’s screen.
Go to System Settings > Menu Bar.
In the right pane, navigate to the section called Allow in the Menu Bar.
You’ll see a list of apps that have a menu bar icon. You can uncheck any app you want to remove.
Some apps also offer a way to remove their icons from the menu bar. Try checking your apps’ settings to see if they let you remove their menu bar icons.
Note that removing a menu bar icon for an app can sometimes cause the app to become “headless,” which means that it’ll be running in the background but its icon won’t show up in either the menu bar or the dock. This is fine for apps that you only need to configure once, but it can become a problem if you want to use the app regularly. In such cases, you can use a Spotlight search (Cmd + Space, or the magnifying glass icon in the menu bar) or alternatives such as Alfred or Raycast to search for the app’s name and open it.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the menu bar has more than just app icons. It’s also home to the clock, wifi, volume controls, and more. You can easily add or remove these controls from the menu bar, as long as you’re running macOS Tahoe. Here’s how:
Go to System Settings > Menu Bar.
Head over to the Menu Bar Controls section.
Uncheck any control you want to remove from the menu bar.
You cannot entirely remove the clock from the menu bar, but you can click Clock Options… and switch to Analog to make its icon a lot smaller.
You also have the option of dragging and dropping your app icons around the menu bar, or using drag-and-drop to remove them from the menu bar. Just hold the Command key and drag any menu bar icon to a different position within the menu bar to rearrange it. To remove icons from the menu bar using drag-and-drop, hold Command and drag-and-drop them outside the menu bar.
To tame the chaos at the top of your Mac’s screen, I strongly recommend using a menu bar manager app. These apps will automatically show or hide menu bar icons based on triggers (eg: the battery icon will only show up when your MacBook’s charge is below 25%), or add a second row of icons that’s visible only when you click the menu bar. You’ll need to try a couple of menu bar managers to decide which one works best for you. I’ve been using Barbee for some time, and its my current favorite.
Ball x Pit is a fiendishly good time. The frenetic blend of Breakout and Vampire Survivors is easily one of the best games of the year. It’s immensely replayable. However, one reaches a point (after 36 hours in my case) where there isn’t much left to do other than run through New Game+ modes and so it becomes time to step away.
But this darned game is about to dig its hooks into me again in 2026, as developer Kenny Sun and his collaborators have lined up three free updates for Ball x Pit. The updates will drop in January, April and July and each will add fresh balls, evolutions, buildings, characters and “more” — which hopefully includes new levels and lore.
The trailer didn’t reveal too many specifics for each update, though more info on the first one is coming soon. I’m excited to discover more killer combos of characters and balls, and to unleash extra chaos. I’m glad there will be more buildings as well, because there’s a lot of empty space to fill in my version of New Ballbylon.
Publisher Devolver Digital said the game has now sold more than 1 million copies (Ball x Pit is on Game Pass too). According to the narrator of a video announcing that milestone and the updates, “if we want to keep this ball rolling, we need more people to buy Ball x Pit, so it sells another ‘balljillion’ copies, so Kenny has to make more Ball x Pit, so more people buy Ball x Pit, so he has to make more more more Ball x Pit.” Be right back, I’m gonna go buy Ball x Pit on the platforms where I don’t already have it so I can have even more Ball x Pit in the future. Ball x Pit is available on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, the Xbox PC app, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ball-x-pit-is-evolving-with-a-string-of-free-updates-in-2026-181947946.html?src=rss
A Google Antigravity user says the AI-driven “vibe coding” tool accidentally wiped his entire D: drive while trying to clear a project cache. Google says it’s investigating, but the episode adds to a growing list of AI tools behaving in ways that “would get a junior developer fired,” suggests The Register. From the report: We reached out to the user, a photographer and graphic designer from Greece, who asked we only identify him as Tassos M because he doesn’t want to be permanently linked online to what could “become a controversy or conspiracy against Google.” […] Tassos told Antigravity to help him develop software that’s useful for any photographer who has to choose a few prime shots from a mountain of snaps. He wanted the software to let him rate images, then automatically sort them into folders based on that rating.
According to his Reddit post, when Tassos figured out the AI agent had wiped his drive, he asked, “Did I ever give you permission to delete all the files in my D drive?”. “No, you absolutely did not give me permission to do that,” Antigravity responded. “I am horrified to see that the command I ran to clear the project cache appears to have incorrectly targeted the root of your D: drive instead of the specific project folder. I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part.”
Redditors, as they are wont to do, were quick to pounce on Tassos for his own errors, which included running Antigravity in Turbo mode, which lets the Antigravity agent execute commands without user input, and Tassos accepted responsibility. “If the tool is capable of issuing a catastrophic, irreversible command, then the responsibility is shared — the user for trusting it and the creator for designing a system with zero guardrails against obviously dangerous commands,” he opined on Reddit.
As noted earlier, Tassos was unable to recover the files that Antigravity deleted. Luckily, as he explained on Reddit, most of what he lost had already been backed up on another drive. Phew. “I don’t think I’m going to be using that again,” Tassos noted in a YouTube video he published showing additional details of his Antigravity console and the AI’s response to its mistake. Tassos isn’t alone in his experience. Multiple Antigravity users have posted on Reddit to explain that the platform had wiped out parts of their projects without permission.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Merged as part of the objtool changes for the Linux 6.19 kernel is introducing the “klp-build” script as a new solution to generate livepatch modules using a source .patch file as the input. This klp-build effort was spearheaded by Josh Poimboeuf with ideas learned from the out-of-tree Kpatch project over the past decade…
When the federal vaccine committee hand-picked by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets again this week, it will have yet another new chairperson to lead its ongoing work of dismantling the evidence-based vaccine recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the chairperson who has been in place since June—when Kennedy fired all 17 expert advisors on the committee and replaced them with questionably qualified allies—is moving to a senior role in the department. Biostatistician Martin Kulldorff will now be the chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), HHS said. As such, he’s stepping down from the vaccine committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Kulldorff gained prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing public health responses to the crisis, particularly lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines. He was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration that advocated for letting the deadly virus spread unchecked through the population, which was called unethical by health experts.
We’ve known there was a film adaptation of Helldivers coming for a while, but we now have a director and writer. Justin Lin will helm the movie and Gary Dauberman is writing the script, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Justin Lin is a great choice here. He directed many of the more beloved Fast & Furious entries and helmed the criminally underrated Star Trek Beyond. Helldivers is kind of a mix of both. It has outer space stuff, but also stylish action that occasionally borders on satire. Lin hasn’t made that many movies in recent years, but did sign on to adapt the Keanu Reeves comic BRZRKR for Netflix.
However, he’s been all over TV screens. Lin has become a prolific TV producer, with credits on shows like S.W.A.T., Scorpion, Magnum P.I. and Warrior.
As for the script, Dauberman penned both It and It Chapter Two. He also wrote Annabelle and both of its follow-ups, along with The Nun and a recent adaptation of Salem’s Lot. He’s mostly a horror guy, so we’ll have to see how he does with over-the-top action.
For the uninitiated, Helldivers is a co-op shooter franchise that’s heavily inspired by the movie Starship Troopers. The games are set in a hyper-patriotic dystopia called Super Earth. Helldivers 2 dropped in 2024, but just came out for Xbox earlier this year. Sony has yet to announce a release date for the film adaptation, so it might be a while.
As an aside, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios just dropped a nifty update for the PC build. It brings the file size down to 23GB from 154GB. That’s a massive reduction of 131GB. We aren’t sure what kind of compression wizardry went into that.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/fast–furious-director-justin-lin-is-making-the-helldivers-movie-173429140.html?src=rss
TornadoVM 2.0 is out today as the newest feature release for this OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that allows Java programs to run on heterogeneous hardware. TornadoVM targets continue to be OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V compatible devices for a range of accelerator support for use from conventional Java code…
Zillow has removed climate risk scores from over a million home listings after real estate agents argued the data was scaring off buyers. TechCrunch reports: Zillow first added the data to the site in September 2024, saying that more than 80% of buyers consider climate risks when purchasing a new home. But last month, following objections from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS), Zillow removed the listings’ climate scores. In their place is a subtle link to their records at First Street, the climate risk analytic startup that provides the data.
“When buyers lack access to clear climate-risk information, they make the biggest financial decision of their lives while flying blind,” First Street spokesperson Matthew Eby told TechCrunch via email. “The risk doesn’t go away; it just moves from a pre-purchase decision into a post-purchase liability.” First Street’s climate risk scores first appeared on Realtor.com in 2020, where they remain. They also still appear on Redfin and and Homes.com. The New York-based startup has raised more than $50 million from investors including General Catalyst, Congruent Ventures, and Galvanize Climate Solutions, according to PitchBook.
Art Carter, the CRMLS CEO, told The New York Times that “displaying the probability of a specific home flooding this year or within the next five years can have a significant impact on the perceived desirability of that property.” He also questioned the accuracy of First Street’s data, saying he didn’t think that areas which haven’t flooded in the last 40 to 50 years were likely to flood in the next five.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Taking a cue from YouTube Music and YouTube Gaming, YouTube as a whole is now finally introducing a Spotify Wrapped-style annual recap. Simply called YouTube Recap, this feature will break down your watching habits across all categories in 2025.
According to YouTube, YouTube Recap will show “a set of up to 12 different cards,” with spotlights on “your top channels, interests, and even the evolution of your viewing habits.” It’ll draw its data from both long-form and short-form videos as well as downloaded videos, but it’ll only track videos you watched while signed in to your account.
The company is also dividing its viewers into “personality types” based on what they watch, such as “the Trailblazer” or “the Skill Builder.” There’s a whole breakdown of what these mean over on a support page, but as an example, if you’re a “Sunshiner,” that means “You’re drawn to content that spreads positivity and good vibes.” Google says that the most common personality types this year were “the Sunshiner,” “the Wonder Seeker,” and “the Connector,” and that personalities like “the Philosopher” and “the Dreamer” were more rare. So I guess you can brag about that if you get one of those.
If you listen to a lot of music on YouTube, meanwhile, YouTube Recap will also pull some data from YouTube Music, and can show you your top artists and songs of the year. For more detail, you’ll need to visit the YouTube Music app and look at your YouTube Music recap proper.
YouTube Recap should be available in North America starting today, although it might take some time until you see it—I can’t seem to access mine yet. For global viewers, YouTube says it will “roll out to the rest of the world this week.” You’ll be able to view it in 17 languages, with a full list available here.
I’ll keep checking for mine throughout the day, but for now, here’s how to find your YouTube Recap once it goes live.
According to YouTube’s instructions, YouTube Recap is available on both desktop and in the mobile app, and will show up as a banner either on your homepage or in your “You” tab.
On mobile, you can get to your “You” tab by tapping the button in the bottom-right corner with your profile picture on it, while on desktop, you’ll need to click the “You” subheading in the pane on the left-hand side of your screen. Or, you can just navigate to youtube.com/recap and let your browser do the work for you (if on mobile, it’ll direct you to the appropriate section of the app).
Note that you’ll need to be signed in for any of this to work. You might also need to update your YouTube app if you’re still having trouble. Google says you need version 18.43 or newer to see your Recap.
Once you’ve viewed your recap, you’ll also be able to share it, by tapping or clicking the Share button in any of your recap cards. Or, you can save it by tapping the download button to the left of the Share button.
Alongside YouTube Recap, YouTube has also released a more general look at trending topics, creators, and songs in 2025. The most popular topic in 2025 was apparently Squid Game, while MrBeast was the top creator (I have a feeling those might be connected).
The Joe Rogan Experience is at the top of the podcast list, and interestingly, there are separate trending lists for shorts and full-length videos, with Forrest Frank’s YOUR WAY’S BETTER topping Shorts and Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s Die With a Smile taking the crown for full-length videos. KPop Demon Hunters is the only topic where you’ll see overlap between the Shorts and full-length lists, with Soda Pop appearing on both.
Samsung has a new foldable smartphone, and it’s not just another Z Flip or Z Fold. The Galaxy Z TriFold has three articulating sections that house a massive 10-inch tablet-style screen, along with a traditional smartphone screen on the outside. The lavish new smartphone is launching this month in South Korea with a hefty price tag, and it will eventually make its way to the US in early 2026.
Samsung says it refined its Armor FlexHinge design for the TriFold. The device’s two hinges are slightly different sizes because the phone’s three panels have distinct shapes. The center panel is the thickest at 4.2 mm, and the other two are fractions of a millimeter thinner. The phone has apparently been designed to account for the varying sizes and weights, allowing the frame to fold up tight in a pocketable form factor.
Huawei’s impressive Mate XT tri-fold phones have been making the rounds online, but they’re not available in Western markets. Samsung’s new foldable looks similar at a glance, but the way the three panels fit together is different. The Mate XT folds in a Z-shaped configuration, using part of the main screen as the cover display. On Samsung’s phone, the left and right segments fold inward behind the separate cover screen. Samsung claims it has tested the design extensively to verify that the hinges will hold up to daily use for years.
The Sonic the Hedgehog movies have been a success for Paramount and Sega, and the pair are looking to build on that with a spin-off movie. An expansion of the Sonic cinematic universe, if you will. The companies haven’t revealed more details about this “Sonic universe feature,” as Deadline described it, but the flick is set to hit theaters on December 22, 2028.
There have been rumors for a while that a film focused on Shadow the Hedgehog is in development, so that might be the direction Paramount and Sega take here. Keanu Reeves voices Shadow in the film series. There have also been suggestions that a movie starring Amy Rose is in the pipeline. I’m hoping there’s one centered on my fave, Tails, in the works too, even though it took me decades to realize that his full name, Miles Prower, is a pun on “miles per hour”.
This Sonic universe film will arrive after Sonic the Hedgehog 4, which is scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 19, 2027. A Knuckles spin-off series arrived on Paramount+ last year. Meanwhile, just before the Sonic spin-off movie, Paramount will bring a hybrid live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film to theaters on November 17, 2028.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/a-sonic-universe-movie-will-hit-theaters-in-2028-163424265.html?src=rss
Zwift version 1.103 begins its phased rollout today. This is a minor update containing visual improvements and bug fixes.
Discuss this update in Zwift’s forum > (link coming soon)
If you spotted any other changes or bugs in the update, please comment below!
2025 was another big year for music. We had new albums from Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Tyler the Creator, and, of course, Huntrix (of KPop Demon Hunters fame), just to name a few. You may have listened to any number of new albums that came out this year, mixed in with music that released any time over the last century. You might not even remember what you were listening to back in January. But Apple Music remembers, and will serve in up to you in your 2025 Apple Music Replay.
Like last year, your Replay is available in your Apple Music app. If you’re relatively new to the streaming service, that might sound obvious—especially if you’ve previously used a service like Spotify that offers a similar annual wrap-up. But this wasn’t always the case: For much of Apple Music Replay’s brief history, you had to visit a separate website, music.apple.com/us/replay, and log into your Apple Music account in order to access your recap. It seemed silly, considering Spotify Wrapped is very much an in-app experience, but it took Apple until 2024 to get with the program.
That said, it seems Apple has made additional improvements this year. In 2024, the experience was essentially contained in an in-app browser, where it loaded your Apple Music Replay with the same UI as the website. This year, Replay is a native function of the Apple Music app, at least on iOS.
You can still access your Replay from the official website, but the easiest way to review it is from the app on your iPhone or iPad. Open the app on your device of choice. Make your way to the Home tab if the app doesn’t open there automatically, then tap or click on the large Replay option, which should appear at the top left. (This option also shows up in the Music app for Mac, but it will automatically direct you to the website in your browser.) Whichever way you access it, you’ll be able to see all of your Replay months here (excluding December, of course, since the month just started), but let’s focus on 2025 as a whole.
At the top, you’ll find a Replay your year in music tile. Tap Play Your Highlight Reel and Apple Music will walk you through your year. Here’s what you can expect, at least based on my results:
First, you’ll see your total listening minutes, complete with both a collage of the albums you listened to most, and one of your top-played songs playing in the background.
Next, you’ll see your top artist of the year, with a collage of their images and a relevant song playing in the background.
The following slide is a breakdown of your top artist by month
The next will show if any artist was your number one for multiple months.
Next, you’ll see the number of songs you listened to, complete with your top song of the year.
Then you’ll see the number of albums you listened to, and which one was your top choice.
Second to last, Apple Music tells you your top genres of the year, including the one you listened to most
One final slide summarizes the whole year.
You don’t have to watch the highlight reel to see these stats: Once out of the reel, you can scroll through the Replay page to see everything covered in the slides, plus additional stats. Mine shows top artists, songs, and albums by month—so I can see which artist defined March (Will Stratton), which song I listened to most in August (“The Subway” by Chappel Roan), and which album I played on repeat in May (“Tunnel Vision” by Beach Bunny). I also see top playlists of the year; different listening milestones, like Minutes Listened, Artists Played, and Songs Played; stats from last year’s Replay; and a playlist of my top songs of the year.
Many of these stats, both in and out of the highlight reel, are easily sharable. You’ll see a share icon next to any stat you can export, which makes it simple to share fun graphics with friends or on social media. I’ve already blown up the group chat with some of my stats here, and I expect many of you to do the same.
Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago. The volcanic rock used for the moai came from a quarry site called Rano Raraku. Archaeologists have created a high-resolution interactive 3D model of the quarry site to learn more about the processes used to create the moai. (You can explore the full interactive model here.) According to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, the model shows that there were numerous independent groups, probably family clans, that created the moai, rather than a centralized management system.
“You can see things that you couldn’t actually see on the ground. You can see tops and sides and all kinds of areas that just would never be able to walk to,” said co-author Carl Lipo of Binghamton University. “We can say, ‘Here, go look at it.’ If you want to see the different kinds of carving, fly around and see stuff there. We’re documenting something that really has needed to be documented, but in a way that’s really comprehensive and shareable.”
Lipo is one of the foremost experts on the Easter Island moai. In October, we reported on Lipo’s experimental confirmation—based on 3D modeling of the physics and new field tests to re-create that motion—that Easter Island’s people transported the statues in a vertical position, with workers using ropes to essentially “walk” the moai onto their platforms. To explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: The Trump administration has agreed to inject up to $150 million into a startup (source paywalled; alternative source) trying to develop more advanced semiconductor manufacturing techniques in the U.S., its latest bid to support strategically important domestic industries with government incentives. Under the arrangement, the Commerce Department would give the incentives to xLight, a startup trying to improve the critical chip-making process known as extreme ultraviolet lithography, the agency said in a Monday release. In return, the government would get an equity stake that would likely make it xLight’s largest shareholder.
The Dutch firm ASML is currently the only global producer of EUV machines, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars each. XLight is seeking to improve on just one component of the EUV process: the crucially important lasers that etch complex microscopic patterns onto chemical-treated silicon wafers. The startup is hoping to integrate its light sources into ASML’s machines. XLight represents a second act for Pat Gelsinger, the former chief executive of Intel who was fired by the board late last year after the chip maker suffered from weak financial performance and a stalled manufacturing expansion. Gelsinger serves as executive chairman of xLight’s board.
[…] The xLight deal uses funding from the 2022 Chips and Science Act allocated for earlier stage companies with promising technologies. It is the first Chips Act award in President Trump’s second term and is a preliminary agreement, meaning it isn’t finalized and could change. “This partnership would back a technology that can fundamentally rewrite the limits of chipmaking,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in the release.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
It’s that time of the month again. Xbox just announced some new games that are heading to Game Pass in December. Let’s take a look.
The most renowned of the bunch is absolutely Mortal Kombat 1, which drops on December 10 for Ultimate and Premium subscribers. This is the latest game in the long-running fighting franchise that cut its teeth in darkened arcades throughout the 1990s.
Mortal Kombat 1 boasts an updated fighting system and plenty of new game modes. However, it’s still basically the same gorefest we grew up with. Players can still access bloodsoaked fatalities and turn their opponents into cute little babies.
The long-gestating sci-fi horror game Routine is finally coming out on December 4, and it’s a Game Pass day one release for Ultimate subscribers. This was first announced all the way back in 2012. It looks pretty fun, with a distinctly retro vibe.
Dome Keeper drops on December 9 for Premium and Ultimate Subscribers. This is a fun little roguelike that I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time on. It’s a fast-paced mining simulator with some light tower defense mechanics. You’ll be saying “just one more run” long into the night with this one.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is available right now for Premium and Ultimate subscribers. This is the latest narrative adventure from the folks behind Life is Strange. It’s set in the 1990s, so throw on some plaid or whatever.
A bunch of cool games are also spreading their wings and becoming available for Premium subscribers after being Ultimate exclusives. There are some real blockbusters here, like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Monster Train 2, 33 Immortals and Spray Paint Simulator.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/december-game-pass-additions-include-mortal-kombat-1-and-dome-keeper-161232292.html?src=rss
The Trump administration has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, now calling it the National Laboratory of the Rockies, marking an identity shift for the Colorado institution that has been a global leader in wind, solar and other renewable energy research.
“The new name reflects the Trump administration’s broader vision for the lab’s applied energy research, which historically emphasized alternative and renewable sources of generation, and honors the natural splendor of the lab’s surroundings in Golden, Colorado,” said Jud Virden, laboratory director, in a statement.
He did not specify what this “broader vision” would mean for the lab’s programs or its staff of about 4,000.