Analyst Ben Thompson, commenting on Apple’s outlook following the launch of the iPhone 17 lineup: Apple, to be fair, isn’t selling the same sugar water year-after-year in a zero sum war with other sugar water companies. Their sugar water is getting better, and I think this year’s seasonal concoction is particularly tasty. What is inescapable, however, is that while the company does still make new products — I definitely plan on getting new AirPod Pro 3s! — the company has, in the pursuit of easy profits, constrained the space in which it innovates.

That didn’t matter for a long time: smartphones were the center of innovation, and Apple was consequently the center of the tech universe. Now, however, Apple is increasingly on the periphery, and I think that, more than anything, is what bums people out: no, Apple may not be a sugar water purveyor, but they are farther than they have been in years from changing the world.

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With web publishers in crisis, a new open standard lets them set the ground rules for AI scrapers. (Or, at least it will try.) The new Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard creates terms that participants expect AI companies to abide by. Although enforcement is an open question, it can’t hurt that some heavy hitters back it. Among others, the list includes Reddit, Yahoo (Engadget’s parent company), Medium and People Inc.

RSL adds licensing terms to the robots.txt protocol, the simple file that provides instructions for web crawlers. Supported licensing options include free, attribution, subscription, pay-per-crawl and pay-per-inference. (The latter means AI companies only pay publishers when the content is used to generate a response.)

Launching alongside the standard is a new managing nonprofit, the RSL Collective. It views itself as an equivalent of nonprofits like ASCAP and BMI, which manage music industry royalties. The new group says its standard can “establish fair market prices and strengthen negotiation leverage for all publishers.”

Participating brands include plenty of internet old-schoolers. Reddit, People Inc., Yahoo, Internet Brands, Ziff Davis, wikiHow, O’Reilly Media, Medium, The Daily Beast, Miso.AI, Raptive, Ranker and Evolve Media are all on board. Former Ask.com CEO Doug Leeds and RSS co-creator Eckart Walther lead the group.

“The RSL Standard gives publishers and platforms a clear, scalable way to set licensing terms in the AI era,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman wrote in a press release. “The RSL Collective offers a path to do it together. Reddit supports both as important steps toward protecting the open web and the communities that make it thrive.” (It’s worth noting that Reddit has licensing deals with OpenAI and Google.)

It’s unclear whether AI companies will honor the standard. After all, they’ve been known to simply ignore robots.txt instructions. But the group believes its terms will be legally enforceable.

In an interview with Ars Technica, Leeds pointed to Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion settlement, suggesting “there’s real money at stake” for AI companies that don’t train “legitimately.” (However, that settlement is up in the air after a judge rejected it.) Leeds told The Verge that the standard’s collective nature could also help spread legal costs, making challenges to violations more feasible.

As for technical enforcement, the RSL standard can’t block bots on its own. For that, the group is partnering with the cloud company Fastly, which can act as a sort of gatekeeper. (Perhaps Cloudflare, which recently launched a pay-per-crawl system, could eventually play a part, too.) Leeds said Fastly could serve as “the bouncer at the door to the club.”

Leeds suggested to Ars that there are incentives for AI companies, too. Financially, it could be simpler for them than inking individual licensing deals. It could prevent a problem in AI content: using multiple sources for an answer to avoid using too much from any one. If content is legally licensed, the AI app can simply use the best source, which provides the user with a higher-quality answer and minimizes the risk of hallucinations.

He also referenced complaints from AI companies that there’s no effective means of licensing web-wide content. “We have listened to them, and what we’ve heard them say is… we need a new protocol,” Leeds told Ars Technica. “With the RSL standard, AI firms get a “scalable way to get all the content” they want, while setting an incentive that they’ll only have to pay for the best content that their models actually reference. If they’re using it, they pay for it, and if they’re not using it, they don’t pay for it.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/reddit-yahoo-medium-and-more-are-adopting-a-new-licensing-standard-to-get-compensated-for-ai-scraping-180946671.html?src=rss

On Wednesday afternoon, Anthropic experienced a brief but complete service outage that took down its AI infrastructure, leaving developers unable to access Claude.ai, the API, Claude Code, or the management console for around half an hour. The outage affected all three of Anthropic’s main services simultaneously, with the company posting at 12:28 pm Eastern that “APIs, Console, and Claude.ai are down. Services will be restored as soon as possible.” As of press time, the services appear to be restored.

The disruption, though lasting only about 30 minutes, quickly took the top spot on tech link-sharing site Hacker News for a short time and inspired immediate reactions from developers who have become increasingly reliant on AI coding tools for their daily work. “Everyone will just have to learn how to do it like we did in the old days, and blindly copy and paste from Stack Overflow,” joked one Hacker News commenter. Another user recalled a joke from a previous AI outage: “Nooooo I’m going to have to use my brain again and write 100% of my code like a caveman from December 2024.”

The most recent outage came at an inopportune time, affecting developers across the US who have integrated Claude into their workflows. One Hacker News user observed: “It’s like every other day, the moment US working hours start, AI (in my case I mostly use Anthropic, others may be better) starts dying or at least getting intermittent errors. In EU working hours there’s rarely any outages.” Another user also noted this pattern, saying that “early morning here in the UK everything is fine, as soon as most of the US is up and at it, then it slowly turns to treacle.”

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Since its debut in 2009, Grammarly has only been available in one language: English. Sure, you could switch between dialects, including Canadian and Indian English, but if you wrote in any other language, you were out of luck. That’s changing today with Grammarly rolling out beta support for five additional languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

The update is available to all Grammarly customers — whether you live in a country that speaks the language you want to write in or not — with support for the platform’s signature features included. As you write in any one of the new languages, you’ll see Grammarly highlight spelling and grammatical errors, as well offer suggestions for how you might rewrite certain paragraphs to refine their tone, style and flow. Additionally, with any of the six primary languages Grammarly now supports, the app offers in-line translation, with the ability to convert your text into 19 different languages.    

“The new features are Grammarly’s first step toward more comprehensive multilingual writing assistance,” said Grammarly. “In the coming year, the company plans to launch more advanced clarity suggestions in the supported languages, similar to what it offers in English.”

If you want to start writing in French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish, you don’t need to tweak any settings in Grammarly. Provided you’re using the Windows or Mac app or Chrome extension, you can simply start writing in one of the new languages. In addition to being available to Pro, Enterprise and Education customers, free users can also take advantage of the expanded support — though with some limitations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/grammarlys-ai-writing-assistance-tools-now-work-in-five-new-languages-180432231.html?src=rss

Charleston’s planned $1.3 billion sea wall will protect the city’s historic downtown peninsula while leaving lower-income neighborhoods like Rosemont exposed to rising waters. The eight-mile barrier, with Charleston contributing $455 million, excludes historically Black communities already experiencing regular flooding.

Meanwhile, developers have received approval for thousands of new homes in flood-prone areas, including Long Savannah’s 4,500 units and Cainhoy’s 9,000-home development on filled wetlands. Charleston’s sea level rose 13 inches over the past century and faces another four-foot rise by 2100. Climate Central projects 8,000 residents and 4,700 homes will face annual flooding risk by 2050. The Bridge Pointe neighborhood already underwent FEMA buyouts after successive floods, while coastal South Carolina zip codes report among the nation’s highest insurance non-renewal rates.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: The Darwin Awards are being extended to include examples of misadventures involving overzealous applications of AI. Nominations are open for the 2025 AI Darwin Awards and the list of contenders is growing, fueled by a tech world weary of AI and evangelists eager to shove it somewhere inappropriate.

There’s the Taco Bell drive-thru incident, where the chain catastrophically overestimated AI’s ability to understand customer orders. Or the Replit moment, where a spot of vibe coding nuked a production database, despite instructions from the user not to fiddle with code without permission. Then there’s the woeful security surrounding an AI chatbot used to screen applicants at McDonald’s, where feeding in a password of 123456 gave access to the details of 64 million job applicants.

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Dozens of polar scientists have warned that geoengineering schemes to manipulate the Arctic and Antarctic are dangerous, impractical, and risk distracting from the urgent need to cut fossil fuel emissions. The BBC reports: These polar “geoengineering” techniques aim to cool the planet in unconventional ways, such as artificially thickening sea-ice or releasing tiny, reflective particles into the atmosphere. They have gained attention as potential future tools to combat global warming, alongside cutting carbon emissions. But more than 40 researchers say they could bring “severe environmental damage” and urged countries to simply focus on reaching net zero, the only established way to limit global warming.

The scientists behind the new assessment, published in the journal Frontiers in Science, reviewed the evidence for five of the most widely discussed polar geoengineering ideas. All fail to meet basic criteria for their feasibility and potential environmental risks, they say. One such suggestion is releasing tiny, reflective particles called aerosols high into the atmosphere to cool the planet. This often attracts attention among online conspiracy theorists, who falsely claim that condensation trails in the sky — water vapour created from aircraft jet engines — is evidence of sinister large-scale geoengineering today. But many scientists have more legitimate concerns, including disruption to weather patterns around the world.

With those potential knock-on effects, that also raises the question of who decides to use it — especially in the Arctic and Antarctic, where governance is not straightforward. If a country were to deploy geoengineering against the wishes of others, it could “increase geopolitical tensions in polar regions,” according to Dr Valerie Masson-Delmotte, senior scientist at the Universite Paris Saclay in France. Another fear is that while some of the ideas may be theoretically possible, the enormous costs and time to scale-up mean they are extremely unlikely to make a difference, according to the review. […]

A more fundamental concern is that these types of projects could create the illusion of an alternative to cutting humanity’s emissions of planet-warming gases. “If they are promoted… then they are a distraction because to some people they will be a solution to the climate crisis that doesn’t require decarbonising,” said Prof Siegert. “Of course that would not be true and that’s why we think they can be potentially damaging.” Even supporters of geoengineering research agree that it is, at best, a supplement to net zero, not a substitution.

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A U.S. congressional hearing today on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs) featured testimony from military veterans and witnesses describing encounters with mysterious craft, including glowing red squares, tic-tac-shaped objects emerging from the ocean, and videos of missiles striking unidentified orbs. While NASA maintains there’s no evidence of extraterrestrial life, lawmakers stressed the need for transparency, whistleblower protections, and further investigation.

There were four witnesses at today’s hearing:
Jeffrey Nuccetelli: U.S. Air Force veteran and self-described UAP witness who investigated the reported “red square” sighting above Vandenberg Air Force Base.
George Knapp: Award-winning journalist and chief reporter at KLAS-TV, known for his decades of UFO coverage and multiple Peabody Awards.
Alexandro Wiggins: Navy veteran of 23 years who reported witnessing a “Tic Tac” UAP aboard the USS Jackson in 2023 and noted his father’s work at Area 51.
Dylan Borland: Air Force veteran and UAP witness with little public information or media exposure available.

“The public senses that it’s real and the people in authority dismiss them,” said Knapp, arguing that the public can handle the truth. One of the clips he showed lawmakers was of a drone operator tracking a glowing orb off the coast of Yemen before a missile struck the object. “That’s a Hellfire missile smacking into that UFO and just bouncing right off,” he said. “What the hell is that?” Knapp said the clip is not unique, claiming multiple video servers with similar UAP footage are being kept from Congress. Borland testified: “This craft interfered with my telephone, did not have any sound and the material it was made of appeared fluid or dynamic.”

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Some people are simply mosquito magnets while others emerge relatively unscathed. But why is this so? One explanation, according to scientists from the Netherlands, is beer. To find out why the blood-sucking critters prefer some people over others, a research team led by Felix Hol of Radboud University Nijmegen took thousands of female Anopheles mosquitoes to Lowlands, an annual music festival held in the Netherlands.

Researchers set up a pop-up lab in connected shipping containers in 2023, and around 500 volunteers took part. First, they filled out a questionnaire about their hygiene, diet and behavior at the festival. Then, to see how attractive they are to mosquitoes, they placed their arm into a custom-designed cage filled with the pesky insects. The cage had tiny holes so the mosquitoes could smell the person’s arm but couldn’t bite them. A video camera recorded how many insects landed on a volunteer’s arm compared to a sugar feeder on the other side of the cage. By comparing the video footage and questionnaire answers, researchers saw some clear results emerge.

Participants who drank beer were 1.35 times more attractive to mosquitoes than those who didn’t. The tiny vampires were also more likely to target people who had slept with someone the previous night. The study also revealed that recent showering and sunscreen make people less attractive to the buzzing menace. “We found that mosquitoes are drawn to those who avoid sunscreen, drink beer, and share their bed,” the researchers wrote in a paper uploaded to the bioRxiv preprint server. “They simply have a taste for the hedonists among us.”

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Amazon might be developing its own augmented reality smart glasses to compete with Meta, according to Amazon insiders who worked on the project. Codenamed “Jayhawk,” the smart specs will reportedly feature a camera, microphones, speakers, and a full-color display in one eye, all packed in a sleek frame. If the rumors, as reported by The Information, turn out to be true, Amazon’s smart glasses will hit the market in late 2026 or early 2027.

The goal, presumably, is to not cede the entire smart glasses market to industry leader Meta and newcomers like Google (we’ll pretend Google Glass never happened). Whether Amazon can compete on that field remains to be seen, but the company’s last stab at tech glasses, the audio-and-Alexa-focused Echo Frames line of smart glasses, didn’t exactly set the world on fire when they were released back in 2019, despite being generally regarded as adequate (though uninspiring).

Amazon drivers may get their own AR smart glasses, too

Amazon is also reportedly developing smart glasses specifically for its delivery drivers. These will feature the same technology as the consumer devices in a sturdier package, and give drivers turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen. According to a report from Reuters in late 2024, the delivery driver glasses are designed to provide extremely precise, location-based directions, in order to “shave valuable seconds off each delivery by providing left or right directions off elevators and around obstacles such as gates or aggressive dogs.”

It’s hard to avoid considering the nightmarish possibilities of an employer being able to literally look through the eyes of its workers—imagine your boss yelling at you through your eyeballs. Smart glasses could easily track eye movements, pauses, or even monitor employees’ emotions through facial expressions and voice analysis. Whether Amazon, a company sued for enforcing a schedule so strict that drivers were forced to urinate in bottles, would use the technology in these, or other exploitative ways, remains to be seen.

NASA just announced that its Perseverance rover recently found some promising signs of ancient life on Mars. The rover obtained a sample of rock formed billions of years ago from sediment and there are biomarkers indicating the potential presence of microbes once upon a time.

Basically, the rocks contain minerals that typically form as a result of a chemical reaction between mud and organic matter. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mars once had life, as the minerals can form due to nonbiological processors. However, it’s certainly one of the best pieces of evidence we have to point toward our neighbor planet once housing life of some kind.

“On Earth, reactions like these, which combine organic matter and chemical compounds in mud to form new minerals like vivianite and greigite, are often driven by the activity of microbes,” said Stony Brook University planetary scientist Joel Hurowitz, who led the study published in the journal Nature. “The microbes are consuming the organic matter in these settings and producing these new minerals as a byproduct of their metabolism.”

Hurowitz does caution that this is just a potential biosignature and not actual proof of ancient life. Many scientists believe, however, that Mars wasn’t always quite as inhospitable as it is today.

The planet likely held plenty of water in its distant past. Researchers suggest that the area in which Persevere found these samples was once a river valley that led to a lake, though this was more than 3.5 billion years ago.

The samples were collected last year, but researchers needed time for analysis. Perseverance has been roaming around the Martian surface since 2021. The six-wheeled rover has been collecting rock samples and regolith, using its onboard instruments for this analysis. This is also just the beginning of the research required here.

“Ultimately, follow-on research will provide us with a suite of testable hypotheses for how to determine whether biology is responsible for the generation of these features,” Hurowitz added.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-perseverance-rover-finds-potential-signs-of-ancient-life-on-mars-173457976.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.

Most of us are familiar with the post-workout massage gun ritual. You finish your session, grab your percussive massager, and pound away at sore muscles hoping to speed recovery. But after spending a few weeks with the Rally orbital massager (which I reviewed), I think the real magic happens before you even start sweating.

Instead of relying solely on static stretching (scary!) or basic warm-up movements, I now spend 5 to 10 minutes using the Rally on major muscle groups before every workout, and it has quickly become a permanent fixture in my pre-run routine.

Rally Orbital Massager

$499.00
at Rally

$499.00
at Rally

A true massage gun alternative

I love massage guns. The traditional ones use a hammering, percussive motion that can be effective for breaking up knots and addressing specific problem areas. But for pre-workout preparation, the Rally’s orbital motion offers distinct advantages.

First, there’s the difference in gentle muscle activation versus sudden, aggressive impact. The orbital motion provides a smoother, more controlled stimulation that wakes up my muscles without the jarring impact of percussion. This is crucial when you’re preparing muscles for work, not trying to beat them into submission after they’re already fatigued.

Plus, rather than hitting the same spot repeatedly, the orbital motion covers more surface area and promotes broader circulation patterns throughout the muscle tissue. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed how much better my movements feel when I use the Rally before a workout compared to traditional warm-up methods.

However, the Rally does cost more than most massage guns on the market. Quality percussion massagers can cost between $100 and $300, making the Rally’s $499 price tag a tough pill to swallow initially. My argument is that while the Rally can be turned on the side and used for percussion, you simply can’t replicate the orbital massage motion with traditional percussion guns. This isn’t just a more expensive version of the same thing—it’s genuinely different technology. If the Rally prevents even one injury that would sideline me for weeks or require physical therapy, it’s more than paid for itself.

How to use the Rally before your workout

Here’s how I’ve integrated the Rally into my pre-workout routine:

Legs (3-4 minutes): As a runner, this is the main attraction for me. I start with my quads, spending about 45 seconds per leg with the Rally on its middle-intensity setting. Then I move to hamstrings and calves. The orbital motion seems to “wake up” the entire leg more effectively than foam rolling or static stretching ever did.

Upper body (2-3 minutes): For anything like bench press or shoulder days, I use the Rally on my pecs, front delts, and upper traps. The warming effect is immediate and noticeable—I can feel the muscles becoming more pliable and ready for movement.

Specific problem areas (1-2 minutes): I have a chronically tight IT band and some shoulder mobility issues. A quick 30-45 seconds with the Rally on these areas before training has reduced my warm-up time while improving my range of motion.

The bottom line

The Rally isn’t just another massage gun—it’s a tool that’s genuinely improving my training quality and consistency. While most people focus on what to do after their workout for recovery, I think that the real breakthrough is what this device can do before your workout for performance. For anyone looking to optimize their muscle care routine, the Rally deserves serious consideration, so long as you can justify the price point.

The narrative podcast industry that exploded after Serial’s 2014 debut has largely collapsed. Pineapple Street Studios shut down in June after producing hits like Missing Richard Simmons. Amazon dismantled Wondery in August, laying off 110 employees less than five years after acquiring the studio for $300 million. Spotify terminated Gimlet in 2023 despite paying $230 million for the company in 2019. Major outlets including Pushkin Industries and This American Life have conducted layoffs. Talk shows and celebrity podcasts continue growing while investigative audio series struggle to find funding. Edison Research reports 55% of Americans consumed podcasts last month, but advertising dollars are flowing to cheaper chat formats rather than resource-intensive narrative productions.

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Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has a simple request for the Trump administration: Don’t take our broadband money away.

Trump’s Commerce Department rewrote the rules of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program, forcing states to change how they spend money earmarked for expanding broadband access. The overhaul led states to reduce spending on fiber networks and increase spending on satellite—although not to the extent sought by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is demanding more money for his Starlink network.

Since states are spending less on deployment, and the program still has the $42 billion allocated by Congress, what happens to the leftover amount after money is spent on deploying broadband networks? Amid speculation that the Trump administration wants to return that money to the US Treasury, Louisiana’s Republican governor is worried that states won’t be able to use the full $42 billion. It’s possible that half or more of the $42 billion won’t be used to expand broadband.

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Since Apple’s iPhone 17 launch event ended, I’ve been thinking about which of its non-Pro phones I’d like to buy. The choice isn’t very straightforward this year, because both the iPhone 17 and the iPhone Air have a few trade-offs, and even if the iPhone Air is a little more expensive, it’s not necessarily better at everything. Here are the most important differences between the iPhone 17 and iPhone Air, and why I think the former is probably the better choice, at least for me.

iPhone 17 is available in more colors

Credit: Apple

I do care about my iPhone’s looks, even if my previous, less colorful iPhones suggest otherwise. I’ve usually opted for subtle, dark shades, but this time around, I feel like switching things up a bit and going for a colorful option. The iPhone 17 gives me lots of great choices, with five different finishes. You can get this phone in Lavender, Sage (a green hue), and Mist Blue, apart from the usual white and black. That gives it five different colorways overall, many of which are the type of vibrant I’m looking for.

On the other hand, the iPhone Air is only available in four color variants: Sky Blue, Light Gold, Cloud White, and Space Black. Of these, I like the black and white color variants, but the others are a bit too subtle for me this year.

iPhone Air promises better build quality

Credit: Apple

If you compare the displays of the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17, you’ll notice that they’re identical in everything except size. The iPhone Air gets a slightly larger 6.5-inch screen, as opposed to the iPhone 17’s 6.3-inch display. As for overall size, the iPhone Air is 6.5 inches tall, 2.94 inches wide, and 0.22 inches thick. Yes, this means that it’s the thinnest iPhone yet, but the iPhone 17 isn’t withouts charms. Because of that smaller screen, it’s a little more compact, at 5.89 inches tall and 2.81 inches wide. You just have to be willing to put up with it being slightly thicker, at 0.34 inches.

Then there’s weight. Even though the iPhone Air is larger, it is lighter than the iPhone 17. The iPhone Air weighs 5.82 ounces (165 grams), while the iPhone 17 weighs 6.24 ounces (177 grams).

To me, the big difference in build quality is that the iPhone Air gets a Ceramic Shield on the back of the phone as well. The iPhone 17 still has glass on the back, which means that it’s more likely to crack if you drop it. Both smartphones use Ceramic Shield 2 to protect the display.

iPhone Air has a faster processor, but worse battery life

Credit: Apple

The iPhone Air ships with the same A19 Pro chip that the iPhone 17 Pro models have. It has a 5-core GPU instead of the 6-core one on the 17 Pro, but otherwise, you should get similar performance benefits from the iPhone Air. The iPhone 17, meanwhile, ships with the A19 chip. If you don’t use your iPhone for heavy workloads like editing videos, shooting lots of videos, or playing graphics intensive games, you probably won’t notice much of a difference between the A19 Pro and the A19. But for people with heavy usage, the additional processing power will be nice to have. 

It’s not a pure upgrade, though. The side effect of being thinner and lighter is worse battery life, which is one big con to the iPhone Air. Apple says you’ll get up to 27 hours of video playback on a single charge on the iPhone Air, but 30 hours on the iPhone 17. This means that you might want to consider buying Apple’s MagSafe battery pack to boost the Air’s battery life to 40 hours of video playback, but then you end up with a bulkier and heavier phone, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Plus, the iPhone 17 also charges faster than the iPhone Air. Apple says the iPhone Air supports MagSafe wireless charging up to 20W with a 30W adapter, whereas the iPhone 17 supports up to 25W with a 30W charging adapter. This means that the iPhone 17 will charge faster wirelessly. It’s a similar story for wired charging, with one caveat. According the Apple’s specs, an iPhone Air can charge from zero to 50% in 30 minutes with a 20W adapter or higher, while the iPhone 17 can do that in 20 minutes with a 40W adapter. That is faster, although we don’t currently have charge time claims for the base iPhone 17 using a 20W charger, so this isn’t an exact comparison to the Air.

iPhone 17 is better for photography

Credit: Apple

For me, the iPhone Air’s single camera is a dealbreaker for a phone that costs $1,000. The 48-megapixel sensor on the camera is probably good on its own (Lifehacker has yet to go hands-on with it), but in getting the Air, you miss out on the ultrawide lens available on all other iPhone 17 models. That means no 0.5x shooting mode. The iPhone 17 also supports macro photography/video recording and Spatial photos/videos, which is missing in the iPhone Air. Fortunately, the Center Stage front camera is exactly the same on the iPhone 17 and the iPhone Air, so you’ll be able to take horizontal videos with it even while holding your phone vertically.

iPhone 17 is cheaper than the iPhone Air

Credit: Apple

Having looked at all the specs for the two phones, I’m leaning towards the iPhone 17 over the iPhone Air. I’m not really obsessed with the thinness and lightness of my phone so much as what it can do. I’d rather have more camera options and better battery life, and the iPhone 17 is better in both aspects, according to Apple’s own specs pages. The biggest positive, though, is the price of the iPhone 17, which is a full $200 cheaper than the iPhone Air. 

The 256GB iPhone 17 is priced at $799, and the 512GB variant costs $999. The iPhone Air has three storage variants, with the 256GB option at $999, 512GB at $1,199, and 1TB at $1,399. If I were to pre-order an iPhone today, I’d most probably choose the iPhone 17 512GB. That keeps the price around the $1,000 mark and gives me more than enough storage to handle all my photos, videos, apps, and games for years to come. As nice as the iPhone Air looks, I think most people would be better off either spending a little more for the better cameras of the iPhone 17 Pro, or just saving money and going with the well-rounded iPhone 17 instead. 

Bluesky is expanding its age verification features stateside. The service will require users in South Dakota and Wyoming to verify their ages in order to access direct messaging and adult content on the site.

The update comes after both states have enacted laws requiring online platforms that host “harmful” content to verify the ages of their users. Bluesky’s approach will mirror its actions in the UK, which also requires age checks following the passage of its Online Safety Act. The company has opted to use Epic Games’ Kids Web Services to conduct the checks and users can choose between several methods,including face scans, ID scans or using a credit card.

The service will still be available to people in the states that don’t verify their age, but specific features will be restricted. In an update, the company said “we believe this approach currently strikes the right balance.” Last month, the service opted to go dark in the state of Mississippi rather than comply with a more restrictive age verification law that would have required it to block anyone whose age hadn’t been confirmed.

“To implement this change, we would have had to invest substantial resources in a solution that we believe limits free speech and disproportionately harms smaller platforms,” Bluesky explains. “We chose not to offer our service there at this time while legal challenges continue.”

The update comes as age verification laws have been ramping up in the US. So far, 25 states have passed laws requiring some form of age verification to access adult content, and numerous others have similar legislation in the works. In its post, Bluesky notes that it expects more regulations in other states and countries in the near term.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-is-rolling-out-age-verification-in-south-dakota-and-wyoming-165753460.html?src=rss

NASA: After a year’s worth of scientific scrutiny, the ‘Sapphire Canyon’ rock sample remains the mission’s best candidate for containing signs of ancient microbial life processes. A sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken from a rock named “Cheyava Falls” last year, the sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” contains potential biosignatures, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life. “This finding by Perseverance, launched under President Trump in his first term, is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars. The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “NASA’s commitment to conducting Gold Standard Science will continue as we pursue our goal of putting American boots on Mars’ rocky soil.”

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