All you need is an Xbox 360, a USB drive and two specific games to access homebrews or previously region-locked titles.

I never enjoyed the experience of reading long threads on Twitter (the same goes for X), and I don’t think any of its successors have done a particularly great job making them easier to read. Since Bluesky is the preferred home of X-pats, I’ve been reading a number of lengthy threads there, and after I encountered multiple threads with 10+ posts, I went looking for a tool that would make it easier to follow along. That’s when I came across Skywriter, a utility that unrolls long threads and converts them into an article format.

Skywriter turns Bluesky threads into articles

The next time you encounter a long thread on Bluesky, drop the link to the first post on Skywriter’s website and it’ll convert the entire thread into an article for you. Or, even better, just tag @unroll.skywriter.blue in the replies and use the word “unroll” without quotes in your post. You don’t need to create an account with Skywriter, but if you do, you’ll be able to keep a list of all the threads you’ve saved. (That said, you can achieve the same thing by saving the URLs of the pages Skywriter generates too, so there really is no need to create an account at this point.) This tool is quite similar to the excellent Thread Reader bot that would convert Twitter threads into articles.

Skywriter is quite fast at doing its job and the webpage it generates is reader-friendly. It’ll even match your device’s current theme—if you’re using dark mode, your Skywriter article will use dark mode, too. On the webpage, you can see the author’s profile picture, Bluesky username, and display name. Below that is the number of likes the post has received, a link to the original thread, and a button to save it to your Skywriter account. You can see a sample of a Bluesky post turned Skywriter article here. (If you’re curious about the original, check this link.)

With some threads on Bluesky, I was unable to see individual posts because they contained keywords that I muted. Skywriter was able to find and save even these posts, which allowed me to read the entire thread. I’d muted those keywords to avoid reactionary takes, but in the context of an insightful, long thread, I actually wanted to see those posts. Skywriter fills that gap and allows me to read the things I’m interested in, even if those posts are hidden from my Bluesky feed.

Skywriter isn’t perfect

My only complaint is that Skywriter is fairly literal in its task. Quite often, the thread creator is forced to stop a post mid-sentence or add numbers to the end of each post. When you’re reading it on Bluesky, it makes sense because of the 300-character limit on each post. On Skywriter’s website, these gaps look quite odd. It starts every post in a new paragraph, and, due to its literal conversion, you’ll see paragraphs that start in the middle of a sentence, or numbers appearing in between posts. 

This isn’t Skywriter’s fault per se, because its job is to make posts easier to read, without changing the original content, but it does make the reading experience less than ideal at times. Otherwise, it does a stellar job at loading text and media content in the right places, and is a useful tool to add to your Bluesky collection.

I try to write about emerging trends in this column, but this week I’m flipping the script, as they say, and taking a look at the end of four popular things: Neo-medievalism, Kendrick Lamar, memes, and movies are all in the process of being thrown into the garbage heap by young people.

Lady Gaga and the death of neo-medievalism

If you watched Lady Gaga’s appearance on Saturday Night Live on March 8, you might not have known you were witnessing the end of a youth trend, the moment when neo-medievalism went from cool to commodity.

Along with hosting, Gaga played her new single “Abracadabra” for the SNL audience, and she was doing a lot. The song’s pure pop hooks mixed with hard dance beats would have been at home on Gaga’s 2008 release The Fame, so this is Lady Gaga reheating her own nachos. But there are much older nachos being reheated too: From the Gregorian chants of the background singers to Gaga’s dancers rocking corpse paint and plague-doctor outfits, Gaga is dabbling in neo-medievalism, an aesthetic born in cutting-edge art and fashion circles that has been slowly oozing toward the mainstream over the last few years.

Maybe in response to the world devolving from globalism to warring regional powers, just like the Middle Ages, fashion designers like Hedi Slimane started dressing models in ren-faire style outfits made of leather to make them look like “moody princes.” Meanwhile, outside-of-the-mainstream musicians like Dandelion Wine began adding drum machines and synths to Middle Ages-style melodies. The neo-medieval style is based on people’s ideas of history, not the real article (I doubt a 13th century peasant from Hungary would know what to make of “Abracadabra”) so it owes a debt to RPG video games, fantasy movies, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Over the last few years, neo-medievalism has become a whole thing. But the 1990s swing revival was a whole thing too, and all whole things die the way Big Bad Voodoo Daddy did: Too many people started paying attention, and what was once cool and underground becomes ridiculous and embarrassing.

You could see the cracks forming when Chappell Roan showed up at the Grammys looking like this:

But Roan is at least in her 20s. Lady Gaga is nearly 40 years old. She’s still great, but she’s a last-gen artist for moms driving small SUVs now, and her copping the neo-medieval style on a stage big enough for you and I to see it is a death knell for the movement. For a historical pop-culture equivalent, ask yourself who was “voguing” or dressing in a neo-Renaissance style after Madonna appeared on the VMAs in 1990.

So look for the mass-market-friendly version of the Middle Ages to hit the back-to-school clothing racks at Target this summer, for “Abracadbra” to be played at weddings, and for the cool kids to ditch the fairy wings and clown makeup for whatever the next thing is.

Has Kendrick Lamar jumped the shark?

Speaking of things that were once cool… Kendrick Lamar!

Drake didn’t have many good bars during the famous Drake vs. Kendrick rap war, but he had one punchline that ended up landing hard. On “Family Matters,” Drake raps, “Kendrick just opened his mouth; somebody hand him a Grammy right now,” a line that plays on the oversized adulation Kendrick had started receiving. Since then, Kendrick performed at the Super Bowl, guested on Playboi Carti’s album, and has been handed five Grammys. It wouldn’t be weird to hear “Not Like Us” played in the same small SUV that just bumped “Abracadabra.” As Drake’s line suggests: You can’t get this popular without the hardcore saying, “Wait, is this guy actually corny?”

Case-in-point: the T-shirts. On Lamar’s “TV off,” he shouts out the name of producer Mustard in a way that seemed designed to be meme-ified. As you could have predicted, people started making and selling T-shirts of the moment, like this early and popular version featuring Kendrick as a Peanuts character saying “Mustarddddddd!”

Or this one from Etsy, that plays on Heinz logo:

Credit: Etsy

Then other people started noticing how cornball all this gear is and posting responses like this:

And this:

Whether it’s normal or brain-rot, the question is the same: “Who is buying this shit?” The answer: Lame people.

It’s not Kendrick’s fault that Etsy entrepreneurs are making a quick buck off his work, but in the pitiless court of public pop culture opinion, K.Dot seems to be strapping on the water skis and heading for the ramp.

What is the great meme drought of 2025?

For my third “thing that might be over,” I’m looking at memes themselves. TikToker @goofangel started the ball rolling by proclaiming that there were no new, original memes in March of 2025.

Others picked up on the trend and started posting picture of the Great Depression to illustrate the supposed lack of memes:

Or expressing how the meme depression makes them feel:

Others have pointed out that the Great Meme Depression is an original meme that was created in March, identifying an important paradox in the meme-verse:

Still others looked to the future with a sense of hope:

The “death of memes” is mostly ironic, but maybe memes themselves have reached their logical conclusion and younger people will start doing something else with their time. It’s a pipe dream, sure, but you never know.

Viral video of the week: I accidentally got way too invested in this TikTok movie

My final entry in the list of dead culture things: cinema.

That kids don’t really care about movies any more isn’t a new thing, but in this week’s viral video, YouTuber Danny Gonzalez takes a look at what’s replacing traditional films for more and more young people: long-form stories designed to be watched like TikToks or Instagram reels. Movies like “True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee,” an 85-part(!) series that tells the story of a high school heiress’s feud with a popular girl.

Gonzalez wonders at one point whether the “movie” was actually written by AI. So, as an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to write a movie with a similar idea, and I think it did at least as good a job as the actual “True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee” script. Here’s part of the first scene:

Lily walks past a group of students who pause and stare at her. One whispers to another.

Student 1: Wait, who is that?

Student 2: I think… she’s, like, an heiress or something. Some big family with loads of money.

Student 3 (skeptical): An heiress? To what, like… a candy store?

Lily (overhearing, with a smile): Actually, it’s a global luxury fashion brand. Just inherited a stake last month. But thank you for noticing.

Microsoft’s latest Patch Tuesday update is an important one, patching 57 security vulnerabilities (including seven zero-day flaws). It’s an update I’d encourage all Windows users to install as soon as possible, especially as those zero-day vulnerabilities pose a serious security risk to anyone using a PC.

As it happens, this update comes with an extra patch that Microsoft didn’t initially disclose, or, for that matter, intend: removing Copilot from Windows.

Copilot disappears in the latest Windows update

Some users, after installing KB5053598 (Windows 11) or KB5053606 (Windows 10) on their PCs, will notice the update not only unpinned Copilot from the taskbar, but uninstalled the Copilot app as well. Microsoft hasn’t disclosed why this issue is present in the latest Windows updates, but says it hasn’t seen the bug in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, the version of Copilot directly integrated into Microsoft’s office suite.

The company says it is working on a new update to fix the problem, and, presumably, restore Copilot access to affected Windows users. If you’re missing Copilot and want it back before Microsoft issues a new update, you can reinstall the app from the Microsoft Store and pin it back to your taskbar yourself.

However, it’s possible you don’t want to reinstall Copilot. After all, there are a number of users out there who are searching for ways to disable Copilot, and there are even tools out there that help you remove it from Windows. Perhaps Microsoft actually did you a favor here. There is an irony to the situation, that the company pushing its AI tools so hard—whether you want them or not—just removed them on your behalf as part of a software patch.

That’s not to say Copilot is useless: There are a number of potential benefits the AI tool offers Windows users (and, now, even Mac users). But if you haven’t found any benefits to these tools in your work or personal life in the two-and-a-half years since ChatGPT launched this generative AI revolution, you might be content with Microsoft’s inadvertent decision to remove its flagship assistant.

Gemini 2.0 Flash’s image model is very good, though not perfect, at erasing objects in an image.

Owners of smart TVs and streaming sticks running Roku OS are already subject to video advertisements on the home screen. Now, Roku is testing what it might look like if it took things a step further and forced people to watch a video ad play before getting to the Roku OS home screen.

Reports of Roku customers seeing video ads automatically play before they could view the OS’ home screen started appearing online this week. A Reddit user, for example, posted yesterday: “I just turned on my Roku and got an unskippable ad for a movie, before I got to the regular Roku home screen.” Multiple apparent users reported seeing an ad for the movie Moana 2.

When reached for comment, a Roku spokesperson shared a company statement that confirms that the autoplaying ads are expected behavior but not a permanent part of Roku OS currently. Instead, Roku claimed, it was just trying the ad capability out.

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As rumors swirl that Bong Joon Ho’s Robert Pattinson-starring sci-fi film is hitting streaming soon, the superior source material is still your best choice.

The trek—from the North American desert to Fiji—now represents the longest known migration of any terrestrial animal.

Huawei will no longer be able to produce or sell Windows-based PCs as Microsoft’s supply license to the Chinese tech company expires this month, according to Chinese tech site MyDrivers. The restriction comes as Huawei remains on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List, requiring American companies to obtain special export licenses to conduct business with the firm.

Richard Yu, executive director of Huawei’s consumer business unit, said the company is preparing to pivot to alternative operating systems. Huawei had previously announced plans to abandon Windows for future PC generations. The Chinese tech giant will introduce a new “AI PC” laptop in April running its own Kunpeng CPU and HarmonyOS, alongside a MateBook D16 Linux Edition, its first Linux-based laptop.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Save 42% on the Insignia 32″ F20 Fire TV, bringing the price down to just $75.

Just in time for March Madness.

The original Looney Tunes animated shorts that aired between the 1930 and 1969 are no longer available to stream on Max, Deadline reports. Warner Bros. Discovery removed them from the streaming service as part of its ongoing shift away from children’s shows and towards adult and family programming.

For now, newer Looney Tunes series and spin-offs remain, like New Looney Tunes and Baby Looney Tunes, but the decision still feels odd because Warner Bros. Discovery just released The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Story in theaters on March 14. Of course, the company is no stranger to ill-conceived (frequently anti-art) decision making.

The original Looney Tunes were last on the chopping block in 2023, when a press release covering shows and movies that were being added and removed from Max included the iconic animated shorts. Warner Bros. Discovery walked back that announcement, saying it was an error, but apparently plans change. While it seems strange to remove something Warner Bros. Discovery owns and doesn’t have to pay an exorbitant licensing fee to offer, pulling shows and scrapping the release of movies has been the company’s recent strategy to save money and earn tax breaks — see another Looney Tunes-related release, Coyote vs. Acme, or Batgirl.

As far as this recent deprioritization of children’s programming on Max goes, Warner Bros. Discovery has been working on it for a while. The company shutdown Boomerang, Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service for classic cartoons, in 2024. Warner Bros. Discovery decided to not renew its distribution deal for Sesame Street last year, too, but removing around 200 old episodes of the show in 2022 was probably a good sign the company had lost interest way earlier.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/warner-bros-discovery-pulled-the-original-looney-tunes-shorts-off-max-190500556.html?src=rss

Those stranded Starliner astronauts are finally coming back to Earth, with a touchdown expected on Tuesday evening. Coverage begins on Monday night at around 10:45PM ET, with streams available on NASA’s website and via the NASA+ app.

Monday night’s stream will focus on the hatch closing and the undocking procedure. The stream will go dark until 4:45PM ET on Tuesday as the crew approaches splashdown. The arrival is scheduled for around 5:57PM ET and a live press conference is set for 7:30PM ET.

The two NASA astronauts returning (Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore) were part of Boeing’s Starliner crew to the ISS. This was supposed to be a one-week stay but, just like Gilligan and the rest, was extended to nine months when the ship was deemed unfit for a crewed return to Earth. Five of the thrusters failed enroute. This is forcing the pair to hitch a ride on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX also ran into a delay, as this mission was originally scheduled for February. 

The Starliner returned, but without the crew. NASA planned to retrieve Williams and Wilmore back in September via a crewed mission with two empty seats. However, that launch faced technical issues and was delayed until April. This partnership with SpaceX will bring the pair home a couple of weeks early.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/you-can-watch-the-starliner-astronauts-return-to-earth-after-an-unplanned-nine-month-visit-185308418.html?src=rss

Eight days. That’s how long Boeing Starliner’s mission — its first flight test with crew aboard — was supposed to last. But this mission has been singular in almost every way, and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have instead spent the past nine and a half months aboard the International Space Station.

Now, finally, they’re headed home. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is slated to begin undocking from the ISS at 1:05 am ET Tuesday and is scheduled for splashdown at 5:57 pm ET, according to NASA’s timetable. (Portions of the mission will stream live on the agency’s website.)

The Starliner crew was never truly stranded, to be clear. They always had a way off the space station in an emergency. But if this mission’s foibles taught us one thing, it was to expect the unexpected. Even now, six months after the troubled spacecraft autonomously undocked from the ISS and landed at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, leaving its crew behind and effectively ending the flight test, the mission is still making headlines. Boeing Starliner CFT went from a symbol of the myriad struggles in Boeing’s aviation business to a political punching bag, courtesy of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Why did it take so long to bring the astronauts home? And did NASA cave to political pressure in setting the return date? Lets take a look at how we got here and what the evidence suggests.

Starliner was floundering well before liftoff

Boeing Starliner had a long, troubled history before it even got off the ground. Back in 2014, the Space Shuttle era had ended, and the United States was dependent on Russian Soyuz capsules to fly its astronauts. To remedy this, NASA awarded two companies — Boeing and SpaceX — Commercial Crew contracts to build new spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS.

The official target date for a crewed flight test for these two companies was flexible. But, according to a 2016 report from William Gerstenmaier, the agency’s head of human spaceflight at the time, it was clear NASA expected these demonstration flights to occur in 2017. (Gerst now works for SpaceX.)

Obviously, that did not happen. SpaceX’s uncrewed orbital test occurred in 2019, while the crewed demonstration flight was in 2020. Boeing also finally launched its Starliner capsule to the ISS for an uncrewed test in December 2019. However, that flight went so badly (the capsule did not reach its intended orbit or dock with the station) that NASA required Boeing to implement fixes and perform a second test in May 2022. That test went mostly well, though two of the capsule’s thrusters failed during the orbital insertion burn, and post-flight inspections revealed nearly a mile of flammable tape in the capsule wiring which required removal.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The May 2024 launch was delayed a few times due to rocket issues and problems with ground systems. NASA and Boeing also detected a helium leak in the propellant system (helium is used to push propellant to the thrusters). They attributed it to a defective seal, but after the spacecraft launched on June 5, it sprung a total of five helium leaks. What’s more, five thrusters failed on approach to the ISS.

Astronauts Wilmore and Williams were able to successfully dock with the ISS, but their mission changed significantly in those few hours; they had to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with the spacecraft and whether it was safe to bring them home.

It’s important to remember that NASA has only tested six total new crewed spacecraft (Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Space Shuttle, SpaceX Crew Dragon, and Boeing Starliner). It’s a very difficult process, and everyone expects there to be problems — that’s why NASA does these tests. But even for a test flight, this was bad.

Eight days to nine months

Over the summer of 2024, NASA quietly tested and re-tested Starliner’s thrusters, both in orbit and on the ground, to find out why the thrusters failed. In the absence of meaningful updates from NASA, people started to seriously question whether the agency thought Starliner was safe to bring the astronauts home.

In mid-July, NASA paid SpaceX to study bringing more than four astronauts home on a single Crew Dragon capsule, as well as launching two astronauts on a Crew Dragon instead of the usual four. The agency insisted this was related to Frank Rubio’s extended stay on the ISS the year before. However, at a press conference in early August, Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich confirmed that, in July, NASA had started working with SpaceX on contingency scenarios for Butch and Suni’s possible return, as they continued to troubleshoot Starliner’s faulty thrusters.

Finally on August 24, NASA announced that Starliner would return to Earth uncrewed. There were serious issues with Starliner’s propulsion system. NASA was concerned about a worst-case scenario in which the thrusters failed and, at the same time, the helium leak rates increased. This could have left the astronauts in orbit, unable to perform a re-entry burn. Butch and Suni would become part of SpaceX’s ninth Commercial Crew flight (aptly named Crew-9), which would launch on September 28 with just two astronauts. They would serve out the remainder of this mission, which would keep them on the ISS through mid- to late-February.

But why leave them in space until 2025? The bottom line is that the agency chose the least risky option. An extra return mission would have added unnecessary complexity. “Relative to sending up a new Dragon so that Butch and Sunny didn’t have to stay up until February, we really never considered that option,” Steve Stich, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, explained at a press conference on August 7. Plus, it takes around four months to prepare a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for launch, and the extra cost would have been too much for NASA to absorb.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Astronauts are accustomed to mission delays and extensions; Frank Rubio had his ISS long-duration stay extended from 6 months to over one year because of a leaky Soyuz capsule, finally returning to Earth after a record-breaking 371 days in space. NASA astronauts can handle a year in space.

“While it’s not great to stay up there longer, the ISS has the appropriate countermeasures to maintain their health out to a year at least,” Dr. Dan Buckland, a space medicine researcher at Duke University explained to Engadget in an email. “Put another way, the expected recovery time on Earth might get longer the longer they stay, but the health plateau they are currently at is probably sustainable for the next few months at least.”

This was NASA’s return plan for the Starliner astronauts, which it began working on in July 2024 and announced to the public that August. Fast forward to March of 2025 and almost nothing has changed, except that the mission has become a political punching bag.

Delays and political posturing

The story got even more complicated in mid-December, when NASA announced that Crew-9’s return would be delayed because of a problem with the Crew-10 SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. When a relief crew arrives at the International Space Station, NASA schedules their missions to overlap for a few days. These are called handovers, and they typically run about five days long.

Crew-10 was scheduled to fly on the brand new Crew Dragon, but problems with the batteries on the spacecraft meant that it wouldn’t be ready for a mid-February launch. As a result, Crew-10 wouldn’t launch until late March, and Crew-9 wouldn’t return until after the in-person handover.

Delays with space missions are extremely common, so no one expected that on January 28 Boeing Starliner would come roaring back into the headlines. On Truth Social, President Trump posted the following:

“I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. They have been waiting for many months on @Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!”

The same day, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, published a post on X claiming that the Biden administration had left the astronauts aboard the ISS. He later said in a Fox News interview on February 18 that the decision to leave Wilmore and Williams in orbit until the end of the Crew-9 mission had been politically motivated.

However, Steve Stich confirmed in a March 7 press briefing that the decision to return Butch and Suni as a part of Crew-9 was made between himself and ISS program manager Dana Weigel, after which it was run up to the administrator. This was not a top-down decision.

What about the return date for Crew-9, though? After this political kerfuffle with Trump and Musk, NASA announced February 11 it was swapping the Crew Dragon capsule for Crew-10 to a previously flown spacecraft. This meant that they could move up Butch and Suni’s return date by two weeks, to mid-March.

Well, as far as anyone can tell, this was also not the result of political pressure.

At a Crew-10 media briefing on Friday, March 7, Stich made it clear that the capsule swap was driven by other motivations, including needing to fit the Crew-10 launch in between the Intuitive Machines mission which launched on February 27 from the same pad (RIP Athena) and the Soyuz handover on the ISS in April. Officials were discussing swapping the capsules a month before the president’s Truth Social post (though it’s possible the President was aware of the discussion when it was happening.)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

“The president’s interest sure added energy to the conversation,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, during that media teleconference. In the end, it’s hard to believe any narrative in which the timeline of Butch and Suni’s return was politically motivated, whether by the Biden administration or the Trump administration.

It’s incorrect to say that NASA isn’t subject to political whims, because it’s a government agency, with a budget proposed by the president and determined by Congress. The agency is bracing itself for drastic budget cuts to its science operations this year. Generally speaking, that means it’s likely that if NASA can safely and reasonably do something that the president asks for, it will try.

But changing around mission timelines and sending up “rescue” missions for astronauts who aren’t in danger? A NASA spokesperson refused to comment on this directly.. But it’s unlikely this was the case, especially considering they stuck with a flight plan that’s been in place since August 2024.

“They simply make the best decisions based on the evidence that they have at the moment, taking into account that their top priority is the lives of the astronauts,” Laura Forczyk, founder of the space consulting firm Astralytical, explained. “NASA makes the best decisions that it can in the moment, regardless of what the popular opinion is.”

What’s next for NASA and Boeing?

Once the Crew-9 capsule splashes down, that will truly bring an end to the Boeing Starliner mission, but its ramifications will be felt for a very long time. There are serious questions about the direction of the agency going forward, given the political climate and the new administration’s priorities.

NASA acting administrator Janet Petro has already eliminated the Office of the Chief Scientist, in compliance with the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force order. More cuts are likely; rumors suggest that as much as half of NASA’s science budget will be slashed. This raises questions about whether NASA will be able to operate iconic observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.

And NASA’s incoming administrator, Jared Isaacman, is a friend of Elon Musk and works closely with SpaceX. Isaacman conducted the first private spacewalk with Sarah Gillis on Polaris Dawn, a flight he paid SpaceX for, last year. Isaacman still hasn’t been confirmed as administrator, but if he is, he will likely change NASA’s human spaceflight program, starting with the return to the moon: The Artemis III moon landing is currently scheduled for no earlier than mid-2027).

What’s more, we still don’t know the fate of the Starliner program. While NASA continues to work with Boeing to close out in-flight anomaly investigations, it’s uncertain when (or if) the next flight of Starliner might occur. There are also questions surrounding whether Boeing even wants to fly another mission. Back in October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing — which also built many modules for the ISS — was considering selling off its space business altogether. As of February 2025, Boeing’s total losses on Starliner had reached $2 billion.

Whatever happens with Boeing Starliner, the massively disproportionate political backlash to a routine NASA decision that prioritized the health and safety of their astronauts is a troubling indicator of what’s to come for the agency.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/boeing-starliner-astronauts-finally-head-home-nine-months-later-184546850.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: Xbox 360 modders have discovered a new way to get homebrew apps and games running on the console. A new software-only exploit known as BadUpdate allows you to use a USB key to hack past Microsoft’s Hypervisor protections and run unsigned code and games.

Modern Vintage Gamer has tested BadUpdate and found that you don’t even have to open up your Xbox 360 console to get it running. Unlike the RGH or JTAG exploits for the Xbox 360, this BadUpdate method just requires a USB key. If you have the time and patience to get this running successfully, you’ll be able to run the Xbox 360 homebrew store which includes games, apps, emulators, utilities, and even custom dashboards.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New lands inspired by Super Mario, the Universal Monsters, and more raise the bar for what to expect at the new park.

When you buy a new home, it’s natural to get excited about wanting to move in and settle in as quickly as possible, putting off potential renovations—even the ones that will make you happier in the space—and other home projects until later. And sure, some renovations, like kitchen remodels or additions, require a lot of planning and are best scheduled when your bank account and stress levels have recovered from the home-buying process.

That said, there are some home projects that are best tackled right away—because they come with a lot of disruption, take a long time to pay off on the investment, or both.

Planting trees

If your property has outdoor space but no trees, the time to plant some is right away. Trees offer a lot of benefits—they beautify the property, provide shade that helps keep your house cool in the warmer months, and add serious value to your house.

But trees take decades to mature—20 to 30 years on average, thought some species will mature in just a few years. Depending on where you live and the variety of tree, waiting to plant might mean that the people who get to enjoy your lush, leafy outdoor space (and the added value it brings) will be the folks who buy the house from you.

Refinishing the floors

If your new house has old floors, don’t wait to refinish or replace them. The ideal time to sand, stain, and seal hardwood, tear out worn old planks, or remove ancient carpet is before you have all your furniture in place and you’ve transplanted your busy schedule to the new house. Even if you’re willing to move everything out of some rooms (or an entire floor), the dust and noise of refinishing flooring will probably drive you to move out for a few days or weeks. If you know you’ll need to redo those floors eventually, rip off the bandage and get it done before you move in. Then you can arrange your furniture with the knowledge that you won’t have to move it any time soon.

If you’re not going to replace or refinish old flooring, you should at least have a deep clean done before you move, especially if we’re talking about carpeting. Carpets trap dust, dirt, mold spores, and a host of other stuff—and this can all be deep down in the pile, so even a carpet that looks clean might not be. The easiest time to have the floors in your home cleaned is before you and your family are living on it.

Removing popcorn ceilings

If your home has popcorn ceilings you probably know you’re going to get rid of them eventually. There are two compelling reasons to do so right away, before you move in. One, removing popcorn ceilings is a dust nightmare, so getting the work done before your furniture, clothes, and everything else you own can be coated in a layer of grime will be the better option.

Two, you might need to worry about asbestos, depending on when your home was built and when those ceilings were installed. You’re well advised to test for it before scraping those ceilings off. If asbestos is present, the removal and remediation will be more complex, and you will have to vacate the house while it’s being done.

Painting your home’s interior

Painting the interior of your home before you move in is one of the smartest home improvement projects you can do. First of all, a coat of paint will make even a new build home feel fresh and inviting. And painting the walls and ceilings of your house will be a lot easier when you don’t have to move or cover a ton of furniture, window treatments, or possessions.

Changing locks and codes

This is one project a lot of homeowners overlook—but it’s crucial: Change (or rekey) the locks and any security codes associated with the house. Homeowners tend to hand out keys to their home over the years—to contractors, neighbors, house cleaners, even dog walkers. And they’re not always great about remembering to collect them, so it’s possible a lot of people have keys to your house when you move in, or the codes to the alarm system you inherited. The time to change those keys and codes is before you move in and get caught up in everyday life and forget to do it.

And, yes, you should have the locks changed even if the house is a new build. The builder probably has master keys to those locks or a record of the alarm system codes, and you don’t want to rely on their discretion or competence when it comes to your security.

Replacing the windows

Replacement windows are expensive, so it’s no wonder people tend to put this project off. If the windows in your house are in decent shape (even if they’re old) delaying their replacement feels like money in your pocket.

But old windows, even if they’re functional, are going to be an eyesore, and they’re not going to be very effective in terms of soundproofing, nor are they very energy efficient. Delaying this project will doom you to years of drafts, water leaks, and being able to hear every car that drives past the house all too clearly. If you’d prefer more peace and quiet and lower utility bills, bite the bullet and replace those windows right away.

Air sealing

“Air sealing” a house is a process of identifying and eliminating gaps and openings that let your climate-controlled air escape and let the outdoor cold, heat, and/or humidity in. If your house is porous and lacks proper insulation, you’ll constantly lose the battle to keep its interior comfortable—and you’ll pay a lot for a losing cause, too.

Sealing up a house is a process of identifying air leaks (a process you can do yourself), then caulking and otherwise plugging up the gaps you identify. While you’re at it, take a look at the insulation in your attic, crawl space, or basement and consider having it upgraded (or added, if it’s missing) to make the house as snug as possible. Getting this done is a lot easier before you’ve moved in, and getting it done as soon as possible reduces the time you’ll be overpaying to heat or cool the place.

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