The Amazon Spring Sale might be over, but there are still lots of great deals to shop. For instance, there’s a 33 percent discount on one of our favorite portable Bluetooth speakers for 2025. The Beats Pill is down to $100 from $150 — a record-low price for the speaker.
Let’s be honest, that first glimpse of warm weather is here and it’s making us dream of sitting by the beach or picnics with friends. The Beats Pill is a solid option to provide the soundtrack to your summer. We gave it in 83 in our review thanks, in part, to its durability. The speaker has an IP67 waterproof rating, so you shouldn’t have to worry at all if it gets a bit wet.
The Beats Pill also offers 24-hour battery life and improved sound quality from its predecessor. However, we have found that the audio does hurt a bit when at loud volumes and it can have an inconsistent bass tone.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/pick-up-the-beats-pill-speaker-while-its-on-sale-for-a-record-low-price-140306981.html?src=rss
Web browsers collect a lot of data and share it with the sites we visit, so if you’re concerned about your privacy, it’s worth wondering which browsers are best for keeping our online habits to ourselves. Whether you’re an activist concerned about surveillance, someone doing research in a country where your topic can get you in trouble, or simply a person who doesn’t want spying eyes on their search history, using a more private browser can be one of the simplest steps you can take towards less worry. I spoke to William Budington, a Senior Staff Technologist on The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Public Interest Team, and Janet Vertesi, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Princeton University who publishes extensive work on human-computer interaction and online privacy. They had subtly different opinions on which browsers are best for your privacy, but they definitively agreed on one thing: It’s not Chrome.
“There is no perfect choice here in the array of browsers that protect your privacy, but certainly Chrome is not one of them,” Budington says.
Vertesi agrees: “If you’re on Chrome, you have to get off Chrome.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that the most private browser is not the one made by a company that generates the majority of its revenue by collecting data. But which browsers are more private?
Tor is the ultimate private browser, but it comes with trade-offs
Credit: Justin Pot
Tor is built with privacy in mind. The browser disables all cookies, masks fingerprinting, and routes all traffic through at least three different nodes. That level of privacy is unparalleled, but it comes at a price: a lot of websites simply don’t work.
“Because it’s aimed to be ephemeral, not leaving traces, and turning off cookies by default, it’s going to be the gold standard when it comes to privacy and anonymity,” Budington says, “but there’s a tradeoff in usability.” The problem, according to Budington, is that Tor’s privacy means it’s a common tool for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which in turn means many services block it.
“Tor is probably the safest in that it’s totally untraceable, but it’s not usable for everything,” Vertesi says. “You can’t use Tor exclusively.”
Both experts recommended using Tor for those moments when you really want to make sure no one is watching.
“If you’re someone who wants to look up a medical condition, use Tor because it won’t leak your browsing,” Budington adds. “You might want to use Tor browser in those specific situations, but there are browsers that do a pretty good job at protecting your privacy but will be much more usable.”
Brave is a good option for private browsing but also comes with caveats
Credit: Justin Pot
Brave is a Chromium-based browser made for privacy. It offers built-in ad and tracking blocking, fingerprint randomizing, and various other privacy features. Both experts acknowledged the various controversies about the company but still feel it’s a solid out-of-the-box option for private browsing.
“It’s clear that they are taking reasonable and good steps in order to protect users’ privacy,” according to Budington. He particularly emphasized the length Brave goes in order to randomize your browser’s fingerprint, which can protect against canvas fingerprinting in which sites render an unnecessary vector image to detect subtle differences in hardware configuration. The other browsers on this list don’t do that, which might be worth keeping in mind.
Brave is also built on the Chromium code base, meaning sites that break on Firefox and Tor generally open without problems. “Brave is an option if you need a Chrome compliant thing around,” according to Vertesi.
Firefox is still great with the right extensions
Credit: Justin Pot
You already know about Firefox—once among the most popular browsers on the planet—and it’s still a solid option for security conscious users if you don’t mind a bit of setting up.
“With the right add-ons installed, Firefox can be just as private as Brave,” Budington says, recommending EFF’s own Privacy Badger alongside the ad-blocker uBlock Origin. “There’s no reason not to use these in combination,” he adds, mentioning there are also add-ons for randomizing fingerprinting.
And there’s more to discover if you dig around. “The thing I like about Firefox is you can really lock it down in the settings,” Vertesi says. She emphasized the fact that Firefox is built by a nonprofit instead of a commercial entity. “Their job is not to satisfy investors,” she notes. “That’s important, because it means that you’re not the product.” Both experts acknowledged that, like Brave, Firefox has its share of recent controversies that are worth keeping in mind, but they still recommend the browser.
Why you should use different browsers for different uses
Vertesi emphasized that a core part of her privacy strategy is to use multiple browsers. “Don’t just choose one best browser, use many,” she said. “It’s a way of cordoning off different parts of your life, so your browser doesn’t know about other accounts.” Vertesi, for example, generally has a single browser for occasionally browsing Facebook products and nothing else—that way Facebook can’t track her other browsing. She said there are many good options out there including Opera, Vivaldi, DuckDuckGo Browser, and even Apple’s Safari, which has a few privacy-specific features. Budington mentioned that because Apple devices are all so close in terms of hardware configuration, Safari has incidental fingerprint protection.
Ultimately, privacy isn’t something we can get by installing a particular browser—it’s more of a mindset, and it includes strategies that come with compromises to our convenience. Tor, Brave, and Firefox all strike a different balance in privacy and usability—along with smaller options like Opera, Vivaldi, and DuckDuckGo Browser. The right one will depend on how you’re balancing those factors at any given time.
But, again, if you care about your privacy, a good place to start is simply not using Chrome. “If you have an amazing VPN but you’re doing everything in Chrome…why bother?” Vertesi says.
Economic models have systematically underestimated how global heating will affect people’s wealth, according to a new study that finds 4C warming will make the average person 40% poorer — an almost four-fold increase on some estimates. The Guardian: The study by Australian scientists suggests average per person GDP across the globe will be reduced by 16% even if warming is kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels. This is a much greater reduction than previous estimates, which found the reduction would be 1.4%.
Scientists now estimate global temperatures will rise by 2.1C even if countries hit short-term and long-term climate targets. Criticisms have mounted in recent years that a set of economic tools known as integrated assessment models (IAM) — used to guide how much governments should invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions — have failed to capture major risks from climate change, particularly extreme weather events. The new study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, took one of the most popular economic models and enhanced it with climate change forecasts to capture the impacts of extreme weather events across global supply chains.
When we reviewed the iPhone 16 Pro last year, Apple Intelligence was barely available. Since then, the iPhone 16 series has benefitted from several new features, apps and improvements. Some (or most) of them were Apple Intelligence features that were teased back at WWDC 2024, months before the iPhone 16 Pro launched.
AI features weren’t the only changes this time around, with the iPhone 16 getting an entirely new button. The so-called Camera Control wasn’t just a simple app shortcut, but an elaborate multifunction button that offered a haptic half-press and the ability to swipe across to adjust camera settings and options.
Managing Editor Cherlynn Low said we were still ”waiting on Apple Intelligence” in our initial review. Now, as we hit iOS 18.4, was it worth the wait?
iOS 18 and Apple Intelligence so far
Mat Smith for Engadget
Apple Intelligence was late, arriving as part of iOS 18.1 back in October 2024. Initial generative AI features included writing tools like proofreading and rewriting, as well as text summaries and live transcription for phone calls and voice notes in the Notes app. A few months later, iOS 18.2 gave us the Apple Intelligence features that made most of the headlines when first announced at WWDC. That included ChatGPT integration, AI image generation in Image Playgrounds and Genmoji.
Starting with iOS 18.1, one of the most controversial Apple Intelligence features is actually my favorite: Notification Summaries. It’s a good attempt at taming the wild west of countless group chats across multiple messaging apps, calendar reminders, Substack pings and everything else.
You don’t need to update every individual app for Notification Summaries to kick in. As soon as iOS 18.1 landed, my messy WhatsApp chats were streamlined. I thought it cute when my iPhone told me a friend had laughed at my comment, and suggested where we could meet and a date. That was distilled from a ten-message barrage they’d sent.
Mat Smith for Engadget
It’s not perfect, though. Apple had to clarify that notification summaries are AI-generated, and make that clearer beyond a small Apple Intelligence icon. This was after the BBC complained about multiple summaries that twisted the content of some of its headlines. I’ve also had notification summaries that incorrectly guessed the subject of a sentence or entire topic of a thread, but on the whole, it’s a useful utilization of AI smarts.
There are more natural language hooks across most of iOS 18, too. You can now search for images in the Photos app with descriptions, dates, location and more. Those natural-language smarts take on a different function with writing tools, courtesy of Apple Intelligence. Even though I’m not a particularly clean writer (hey, Cher), these writing tools are not all that useful. I haven’t used them much beyond quick email responses to work requests and events, but the ability to proofread, rewrite or check tone may prove useful to some.
The writing tools also work inside the Voice Memos app, which can now transcribe conversations, meetings and more. Here, it helps make things more concise, with options to turn transcripts into summaries, key points, lists and even tables. If the recording is clear enough and they’re not too long, iOS 18 does well on these transcriptions. Several times, the iPhone 16 Pro straight-up declined to summarize a transcript. Why? All I got was a notification that the tools “aren’t designed to work with this type of content.”
Elsewhere, Apple struggles to catch up with AI innovations on rival devices. Like Google Pixel’s Magic Eraser (and all the other Android riffs), Clean Up now allows you to scrub out distracting elements and photo bombers from your pics. However, the results aren’t quite up to the standard of the competition. Sometimes, however, it nails it.
Some Apple Intelligence features have faded into the background after an initial buzz. Image Playground offers the ability to AI-generate your own images and had plenty of users itching to get off the beta waitlist to play around with the app. After a bit of testing, however, I haven’t used it in the months since it launched.
There might be a future for Playgrounds within iOS, though. For instance, Apple’s Invites app lets you embed Image Playground results within your events, which is helpful if you don’t have a photo to illustrate the invitation. As a standalone app, however, it doesn’t quite deliver enough to live on my home screen. It’s gone the way of GarageBand, Pages and Apple Maps on my iPhone.
Genmoji, on the other hand, is easier to use, and I use it often. With it, you can create your own emoji reactions with specific people, objects and backgrounds. I already have several established favorites, like me eating cereal and a chronically late friend with clocks in the background, and I’ll probably continue to make emoji as life demands it. For example, a passenger behind me on a flight to Barcelona last month had three cats with her. So, I made a cats-on-a-plane Genmoji. Exactly what Tim Cook intended.
Mat Smith for Engadget
Some software features are also specific to the iPhone 16 Pro series (and the 15 Pro). Camera Control aside, the new button also offers access to Visual Intelligence with a long press. Visual Intelligence is Apple’s take on Google Lens, tapping visual AI smarts to analyze what your iPhone is pointing at. It can recognize text, like words on menus, and even translate for you. If you get lucky, it’ll even identify the outside of a restaurant and (with some ChatGPT power) tell you the opening hours and what kind of cuisine it offers. It’s particularly effective in identifying landmarks, but busy scenes can quickly derail it. Unfortunately, you can’t tap on a particular object in the frame to clarify specifics. However, the ability to create calendar events from a poster is pretty cool — even if I usually forget to use it.
That’s Apple Intelligence, for now. There are a lot of smart touches, but so far, it isn’t remarkable. I credit Apple’s attempts to make most of its AI features either processed on device, or connected to the company’s Private Cloud Compute, which uses larger server-based models. Apple has reiterated that your data is never stored during these requests. Even with ChatGPT integration, if you don’t use an account with OpenAI, only your request and attachments are sent to ChatGPT. Your Apple Account and IP address are not shared with OpenAI. Apple’s deal with OpenAI means the latter can’t use your request to improve or train its models, either.
The patchy arrival of iOS features, especially Apple Intelligence, isn’t a good look for the company.
However, the rest of iOS 18 continues to deliver valuable new features and upgrades to the iPhone experience, like the aforementioned Invites app, additional content (and games) for News+ subscribers and my favorite feature since the AirPods introduced noise-cancellation, the ability to nod or shake your head to halt Siri announcements, Fitness prompts and even decline calls. I’m a busy guy!
Cameras and Camera Control
Mat Smith for Engadget
With Camera Control, Apple has introduced its most intriguing interface change since the short-lived 3D Touch.” That tech, if you forgot, offered haptic feedback on your screen tapping during the iPhone 6 era. Camera Control acts like a proper manual camera button, even when I know it combines a physical button with elaborate touch sensors. This enables deeper controls by swiping across it or semi-pressing.
Instantly, it works as a basic camera app launcher, just like the iPhone’s Action button has done in recent years. Already, it’s better placed, though, lower on the right edge of the phone, ready for your thumb if held vertically, or index finger when held horizontally. It goes beyond being a launcher, though. Swiping across it lets you adjust zoom, exposure and even toggle the new Photographic Style options. Then, a half-press works as a way to confirm your settings.
Depending on how you use the iPhone’s camera, a lot of the settings might not deserve their place within the Camera Control’s menus. While I often tinkered with Exposure and Zoom, Photographic styles are easier to adjust from the iPhone in the normal touchscreen way. I’m also not going to meddle with simulated f-stops when taking candid shots of my friends and family.
Like Apple Intelligence, Camera Control launched incomplete. When the iPhone 16 Pro first went on sale, it lacked a half-press focus like ye olde traditional cameras, and it took till January 2025 for an AF-AE lock to arrive through iOS 18.3. The feature, however, remains buried in settings and has to be toggled on.
It works well though. You tap on an object you’d like the iPhone to focus on, hold the button halfway, and it’ll lock exposure and focus for as long as you keep your finger down – like a camera. It’s frustrating that we had to wait this long for what seems like a core function of Camera Control.
To be devil’s advocate – and it’s an argument regularly leveled at AI features, both Apple Intelligence and elsewhere – did you need Camera Control? Given how much I use my phone’s cameras, I’d argue that a camera launcher is worth factoring into the hardware. But the Action Button covered that.
Camera Control also seemed like a ‘pro’ iPhone feature, so it’s surprising to see it across the entire device lineup, barring the more recent iPhone 16e.
Another change worth noting is that the iPhone 16 Pro got camera parity with the larger Pro Max this year, with a 5x optical zoom I use most of the time. Of course, this isn’t a remarkable feature if you were already using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. But if you prefer the smaller of the two Pro options, aside from battery life, there’s no reason to stop you getting the cheaper iPhone 16 Pro.
Repairability and longevity
I haven’t had to repair my iPhone 16 Pro so far, and there are no pronounced scratches on the 6.3-inch screen or body. While I am also a case dweeb, I don’t use screen protectors — I haven’t needed to. The latest iPhones do come with even more repair-friendly hardware and policies if the worst were to happen. Anecdotally, according to my experience the titanium body and Apple’s Ceramic Shield treatment on the display do seem to make this generation of ‘pro’ iPhones tougher than its predecessors
Apple’s new Repair Assistant, designed to address parts pairing issues, lets both you and repair professionals configure new and used Apple parts directly on the device, with no need to contact Apple personnel on the phone to ensure iOS plays with new parts.
Another improvement, while not part of the 16 Pro, is battery removal. On both the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, the battery can be released from its enclosure by running a low-voltage current through the iPhone’s battery adhesive. However, the iPhone 16 Pro’s battery is now encased in aluminum, making repairs less fraught, and protecting the battery more when exposed to repair tools. I haven’t had to put it to use yet, but the company’s increased willingness to embrace right-to-repair is headed in the right direction, especially after its sluggish response in the past.
Six months on, the 16 Pro’s slightly bigger battery is holding up, with the one I have still showing it’s at full health. I am a heavy phone user, and 256 charge cycles later, iOS says it’s still at 100 percent capacity, which I found impressive. If I need to replace the battery, I’m heartened that it’s easier than ever on an iPhone.
Wrap-up
Mat Smith for Engadget
The iPhone 16 Pro is one of the best smartphones available. But if there’s a particular area where Apple’s phones are lacking compared to the flagship competition, it might be the messaging and the marketing. It took too long for Apple Intelligence to land on devices. If Apple Intelligence hadn’t been so key to Apple’s presentation both at WWDC and the iPhone 16 launch event, the delay wouldn’t look so bad.
Intriguingly, we’re at a time when the likes of the Galaxy and Pixel series have never felt more like iPhones. Or do iPhones feel like Android phones? I’m not sure anymore. Either way, we haven’t seen rival devices mimic the Camera Control button.
I appreciate that a lot of the new features and additions don’t seem to clog up the iPhone experience. Don’t care for camera filters? You’ll rarely see them. Want to swap the Camera Control button for another function? Go ahead. Want to prioritize Messages notifications, but not WhatsApp messages? Go wild.
With a light, strong titanium build, there’s still a tangible premium feel to the iPhone 16 Pro, compared to the aluminum iPhone 16. The same can be said about the cameras, with a 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor and 5x optical zoom, which the base iPhone cannot match. Functionality-twise, the base iPhone 16 now delivers the Dynamic Island and Camera Control, which makes a ‘pro’ iPhone a little harder to define. For the iPhone 16 series, it boils down to more premium materials and a powerful zoom camera.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/iphone-16-pro-longterm-review-apple-intelligence-134517480.html?src=rss
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If you’re someone who reads every night before bed and doesn’t mind a few scuffs, this refurbished 2019 Kindle Oasis deal might be worth a look. It’s going for $129.99 on Woot (for the next 30 days or until it sells out), which is a steal for the 32GB model—especially considering a refurbished 8GB model is going for $119.99 on Amazon (and brand-new ones usually push past $250). Just a heads-up, since this is a scratch and dent unit, it’s not going to look fresh out of the box (expect light scuffs and small dings). That said, it’s been tested and certified to work fine, and Woot throws in a 90-day Amazon warranty just in case. Additionally, this version is ad-supported, meaning you’ll see sponsored content on the lockscreen, but it won’t get in the way while you’re reading. Shipping’s free if you’ve got Prime, otherwise it’s $6, and it only ships within the lower 48 states.
What you’re getting, functionally, is still solid. The 7-inch, 300ppi display is crisp, sharp, and front-lit with 25 LEDs. It has an adjustable warm light setting, which makes late-night reading easier on the eyes. Unlike the cheaper Kindles, the Oasis still has those physical page-turn buttons on the side, which makes it easy to flip pages when you’re holding it one-handed. This model is also IPX8 waterproof rated, so you can dunk it in the tub or spill coffee on it without panicking. For what it’s worth, the screen is sharp and evenly lit—PCMag called it “the most luxurious Kindle,” and they weren’t wrong—but this model doesn’t support USB-C, so you’re stuck with micro-USB. That might be a dealbreaker if you’ve fully phased out the old cables in your house. And it doesn’t have wireless charging either, if that’s a priority.
Google’s artificial intelligence arm DeepMind has been holding back the release of its world-renowned research, as it seeks to retain a competitive edge in the race to dominate the burgeoning AI industry.
The group, led by Nobel Prize-winner Sir Demis Hassabis, has introduced a tougher vetting process and more bureaucracy that made it harder to publish studies about its work on AI, according to seven current and former research scientists at Google DeepMind.
Three former researchers said the group was most reluctant to share papers that reveal innovations that could be exploited by competitors, or cast Google’s own Gemini AI model in a negative light compared with others.
ASUS ROG has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to tease an upcoming Xbox-branded game console in a short 34-second animated/rendered trailer. The actual console only appears in a few seconds (see the screenshot above), but it’s enough to give us an idea of the design language. Assuming this is representative of the final design, we’re basically
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If you’re a Mac user who just wants the classic Microsoft Office experience without the whole subscription situation, this $42.99 deal on Microsoft Office Home & Business 2019 for Mac might be worth your attention. Normally priced at $229, it’s a one-time purchase that gives you lifetime access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Teams Classic on just one Mac. That’s it—no monthly fees, renewals, or ongoing charges. You’ll get an instant email with your redemption code and download link, so you can be up and running within minutes.
This is Office 2019—not 365 or 2021. Microsoft has already ended support for Office 2019 on Mac, which means you won’t receive any more security updates or bug fixes. If you like staying fully up-to-date, this isn’t for you, but if your needs are simple—writing reports, sending email, managing budgets, making presentations—it still holds up just fine. It’s designed to work with macOS 13 through 15 and takes advantage of Mac features like Retina display support and full-screen mode. You’ll need at least 4GB of RAM and 10GB of hard disk space, so make sure your setup can handle it. Just one key step: once you install it, turn off auto-update. Otherwise, it might upgrade you to 2021, making this lifetime license pointless.
There are no frills here—just full access to the essential Office suite for a one-time price. This is a solid deal if you’re a student, freelancer, or small business owner who doesn’t need cloud syncing or the newest version every year. You won’t get ongoing support and can’t use it on multiple devices simultaneously, though you can switch devices (the license is tied to your Microsoft account, not your Mac). But for everyday productivity on a single Mac, it’s a straightforward, affordable solution—especially if you’re tired of renting your software.
SpaceX has successfully launched the Fram2 private crewed mission on March 31 at 9:46 PM Eastern time on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. Fram2 is the first human spaceflight to explore the Earth’s polar regions, which are not visible to the astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The crew will observe the Earth’s poles through a panoramic cupola attachment from an altitude of 430 km (267 miles). SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule can fly from the North to the South Pole in around 46 minutes and Fram2 is a three-to-five day mission, so it’s expected to provide scientists with a healthy amount of footage capturing the polar regions. In fact, SpaceX has already released the mission’s first views of the Earth’s poles from space.
The crew will observe unusual light emissions resembling auroras in the regions, including STEVEs, which appear as purple and green light ribbons in the night sky. They will also conduct 22 experiments designed to better understand human health in space for the sake of long-duration missions in the future. The crew will capture the first human X-rays in space, study exercises meant to preserve muscle and bone mass, explore sleep and stress patterns using wearable tech, monitor their glucose and observe the female crew members’ hormonal health. They also won’t get the typical medical and mobility assistance upon landing to see how they re-acclimate to gravity on their own, and they will get an MRI immediately after they arrive. NASA called Fram2’s launch a “significant step” in humanity’s understanding of how our bodies will fare in outer space.
Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency investor who now lives in Norway, paid for the trip and is one of the astronauts currently on board. Jannicke Mikkelsen, a filmmaker working on technology for movies shot in remote and hazardous environments, serves as the mission’s vehicle commander. Rabea Rogge, a robotics researcher from Norway, is the pilot. Finally, Eric Philips, a professional polar adventurer and guide, is the mission’s medical officer.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/spacex-launches-fram2-the-first-crewed-spaceflight-to-explore-earths-polar-regions-130006166.html?src=rss
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: China’s Xiaomi said on Tuesday that it was actively cooperating with police after a fatal accident involving a SU7 electric vehicle on March 29 and that it had handed over driving and system data. The incident marks the first major accident involving the SU7 sedan, which Xiaomi launched in March last year and since December has outsold Tesla’s Model 3 on a monthly basis. Xiaomi’s shares, which had risen by 34.8% year to date, closed down 5.5% on Wednesday, underperforming a 0.2% gain in the Hang Seng Tech index. Xiaomi did not disclose the number of casualties but said initial information showed the car was in the Navigate on Autopilot intelligent-assisted driving mode before the accident and was moving at 116 kph (72 mph).
A driver inside the car took over and tried to slow it down but then collided with a cement pole at a speed of 97 kph, Xiaomi said. The accident in Tongling in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui killed the driver and two passengers, Chinese financial publication Caixin reported on Tuesday citing friends of the victims. In a rundown of the data submitted to local police posted on a Weibo account of the company, Xiaomi said NOA issued a risk warning of obstacles ahead and its subsequent immediate takeover only happened seconds before the collision. Local media reported that the car caught fire after the collision. Xiaomi did not mention the fire in the statement. The report notes that the car was a “so-called standard version of the SU7, which has the less-advanced smart driving technology without LiDAR.”
For April Fools’ Day, I thought I’d look into the fascinating story of a major source of one of the longest-lasting and widely believed conspiracy theories in American history. According to a 2023 YouGov poll, 54% of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone when he gunned down president John F. Kennedy in 1963—so most Americans are wrong about this, and they’re wrong about it partly due to a work of fiction published in the late 1960s.
The granddaddy of all modern conspiracy theories
Widespread disbelief in the “official story” of the Kennedy assassination has inspired a library of books, congressional hearings, major motion pictures, and most recently, the declassification of thousands of documents (none of which, by the way, support the idea of a conspiracy). But more importantly, Kennedy assassination conspiracies normalized and mainstreamed conspiracy theories in general, bolstering every piece of fake news that followed, from Obama’s birth certificate to vaccine skepticism—if the government could cover up a political assassination, the argument goes, they could be up to anything.
Oliver Stone’s JFK and the “CIA did it” conspiracy
While there are hundreds of theories about who was really behind Kennedy’s assassination and why they did it, probably the most widely accepted version of the story, the one you may believe, is the theory Oliver Stone went with in his 1991 film JFK: The CIA killed Kennedy because he was about to withdraw troops from Vietnam and end the Cold War.
Main character Jim Garrison lays it out like this in the film: “What took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d’état … The war is the biggest business in America worth $80 billion a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy that was planned and advanced at the highest levels of our government, and was carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA’s covert-operation apparatus.”
But where did Stone’s protagonist get this idea? As Tinline’s book details, the CIA theory is laid out in JFK by “X,” a character based on real-life former air-force colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. Prouty’s source is what he believed was a “suppressed think-tank paper” called Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. And Report from Iron Mountain is a literary hoax dreamed up by the editors of the short-lived, left-wing satirical journal The Monocle.
The birth of Report from Iron Mountain
Back in 1966, Victor Navasky, editor of The Monocle, read a news item about a dip in the stock market caused by a cutback in military spending; Wall Street called it a”peace scare.” This inspired Navasky to commission writer Leonard Lewin, with help from economist John Kenneth Galbraith and others, to write Report from Iron Mountain, supposedly the leaked findings of “Special Study Group” tasked by the Kennedy Administration to plan the transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy. Its conclusion: Peace would likely bring about the collapse of the USA.
Iron Mountain was edited by H.L. Mencken, and published as a work of non-fiction in 1967, but most reviewers and literary types recognized it as social commentary. Members of the general public were divided, however, so author Lewin dispelled all doubt by confirming Iron Mountain was a hoax in 1974. And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t.
The strange afterlife of Report from Iron Mountain
The real point of Iron Mountain wasto highlight the absurdity of the Cold War through exaggeration and satire—the book tips its hand fairly heavily by suggesting UFO hoaxes, “blood games,” and bringing back slavery as possible replacement for war—but its ideas, shorn of their satirical context, spun outside the control of the literary types who dreamed it up. Iron Mountain started percolating in the poisonous coffee pot of fringe thinkers, combining and metastasizing with other seminal, fictional, conspiracy texts like Alternative 3 and The Protocols of the Brotherhood of Zion, until Iron Mountain became a foundational text for cranks, part of the ideological framework they can hang anything on.
It wasn’t just Oliver Stone’s source who mistook Report from Iron Mountain as truth. Much to the author’s dismay, the book was also rediscovered by the burgeoning-right wing militia movement of the 1980s, and reprinted as non-fiction by the anti-semitic Noontide Press. Milton William Cooper excerpted Iron Mountain in seminal conspiracy theory text Behold a Pale Horse, said to be a favorite of Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh. From there, it’s a straight shot to “The Deep State,” Q-anon, Alex Jones, Covid cover-ups, and whatever else loonies are on about this week on X.
We’re back! A long-time reader and subscriber recently mentioned in the Ars Forums that they “kind of” missed the Daily Telescope posts that I used to write in 2023 and 2024. Although I would have preferred that everyone desperately missed the Daily Telescope, I appreciate the sentiment. I really do.
I initially stopped writing these posts about a year ago because it just became too much to commit to writing one thing every day. I mean, I could have done it. But doing so on the daily crossed over the line from enjoyable to drudgery, and one of the best things about working for Ars is that it tends very much toward the enjoyable side. Anyway, writing one of these posts on a weekly basis feels more sustainable. I guess we’ll find out!
Today’s image comes to you all the way from Mars. One of the most powerful tools on NASA’s Perseverance rover is the WATSON camera attached to the end of the rover’s robotic arm. In the fine tradition of tortured acronyms at the space agency, WATSON stands for Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering. And because of course it is, WATSON is located on the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument. Seriously, NASA must stand for Not Another Screwball Acronym.
ChatGPT’s built-in image generation feature is now available to everyone. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last week that the company is delaying its rollout to free tier “for a while,” because the tool was way more popular than they had expected. But the company made the feature available to free users over the weekend, allowing them to generate images from within ChatGPT and without having to switch to OpenAI’s DALL-E generator. Prior to its rollout to the free tier, the tool was only available to Plus, Pro and Team subscribers.
Altman previously said that free users will get a limit of three images per day. Based on our experience trying it out, some accounts are limited to just one a day. Those who find themselves able to generate more than one will still have to wait anywhere between a few minutes and a few hours. One of the tool’s most popular uses that we’ve seen so far is the creation of Ghibli-style images using real-life photos. Users simply have to upload the photo they want to use and then instruct ChatGPT in natural language to create a Ghibli-style version of it. The trend had raised concerns, yet again, about the legality of using copyrighted work as training data for artificial intelligence. It also resurfaced the reaction of Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli’s founder, upon being shown AI-generated animation years ago. “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself,” the director said.
In a tweet, Altman said that the tool could still exhibit erratic behavior and could refuse some generations that should be allowed. OpenAI is still fixing the issue. The company also told TechCrunch that it “takes action” if a generated image violates company guidelines, though it didn’t exactly detail about what those actions are.
Creating and customizing images is as simple as chatting using GPT‑4o—just describe what you need, including any specifics like aspect ratio, exact colors using hex codes, or a transparent background. pic.twitter.com/fnen1aDjNZ
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openais-built-in-image-generator-for-chatgpt-is-now-available-to-free-users-120003146.html?src=rss
Creatives in the UK are once again speaking out against AI developers accessing copyrighted material. The Society of Authors have published an open letter calling for UK Secretary of State Lisa Nandy to hold Meta accountable for possible copyright infringement regarding its LLM, Llama 3. Signatories of the letter include successful British authors Richard Osman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Val McDermid and Sarah Waters.
A March 20 article in The Atlantic served as the letter’s impetus. It reported that Meta had used LibGen, a pirated collection of over 7.5 million books, to train its AI models. Anyone on the internet over the last few weeks has likely seen videos of distraught authors learning that their work is available on the database (and potentially used by Meta without their permission). A lawsuit in the US alleges Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the use of LibGen’s data to train its AI. The lawsuit’s plaintiffs include writers Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
“These cases are shining a light on the unscrupulous behaviour exhibited by global tech companies which seemingly exploit copyright-protected material, safe in the knowledge that they will not be held to account,” the Society of Authors’ letter stated. “This must change, and global tech companies must now be held accountable and pay for the use they make of authors’ works.”
The authors implore Nandy to bring Meta senior executives before Parliament and make them commit to respecting copyrights and compensating authors for any previous infringements.
“Authors are almost powerless given the enormous cost and complexities of pursuing litigation against corporate defendants with such deep pockets,” the letter continued. “We call upon you and the UK Government to take all action available to ensure that the rights, interests and livelihoods of authors are adequately protected. Failure to act without further delay will unquestionably have a catastrophic and irreversible impact on all UK authors given that from development through to output, creators’ rights are being systematically and repeatedly ignored.”
Artists across the creative industries have also recently protested the UK government’s December 2024 proposal to change copyright law. The shift would provide AI developers with a copyright exemption and require creatives to “opt out” or allow access to their materials.
In February, over 1,000 musicians released an album called Is This What We Want?, with 12 songs spelling out, “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.” It coincided with the UK News Media Association’s Make It Fair campaign calling on the government to support creative industries and compensate those individuals if allowing AI to train on their work.
That same week creatives, from Paul McCartney to Helen Fielding, also shared an open letter against the proposal. Published in The Times, it stated, “There is no moral or economic argument for stealing our copyright. Taking it away will devastate the industry and steal the future of the next generation.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/british-authors-want-meta-to-answer-for-alleged-copyright-infringement-114501800.html?src=rss
What does it take to get OpenAI and Anthropic—two competitors in the AI assistant market—to get along? Despite a fundamental difference in direction that led Anthropic’s founders to quit OpenAI in 2020 and later create the Claude AI assistant, a shared technical hurdle has now brought them together: How to easily connect their AI models to external data sources.
The solution comes from Anthropic, which developed and released an open specification called Model Context Protocol (MCP) in November 2024. MCP establishes a royalty-free protocol that allows AI models to connect with outside data sources and services without requiring unique integrations for each service.
“Think of MCP as a USB-C port for AI applications,” wrote Anthropic in MCP’s documentation. The analogy is imperfect, but it represents the idea that, similar to how USB-C unified various cables and ports (with admittedly a debatable level of success), MCP aims to standardize how AI models connect to the infoscape around them.
I’m sidestepping the desperate attempts at April 1 shenanigans and focusing on the imminent Nintendo Direct broadcast, which is likely to confirm rumors and sink others.
The last few Switch 1 games have been revealed, meaning tomorrow’s Nintendo Direct: Switch 2 presentation, kicking off at 9AM ET / 6AM PT will be all about the new console — no distractions. (Although, I’d be cool with a Silksong release date, finally.)
We already know the Switch 2 will be a bigger console, with a bigger screen and Joy-Cons. There also may be some sort-of-mouse functionality baked into the controllers this time, but Nintendo’s focus is on tech specs — and the games. What does the company have cooking?
The company behind several minimalist handsets has just released the Light Phone III. It may be the perfect device for folks who brag about giving up smartphones and have the money to experiment with stripped-down phones that are the ultimate step back from modern convenience. Whoops, sorry, I let my mask slip there. Hey, at least there’s no AI nonsense.
There is a cool, crisp B&W OLED display, new for this third iteration, instead of e-ink paper. There’s still no internet, no apps, no email. There is, however, a place for your podcasts and a simple camera with a physical button. There’s also a Maps app, powered by Here, but it’s private, so there’s no info shared on where you’re trying to get to. Privacy like that, however, costs a heady $799, unless you can get the pre-order price of $599 at launch, with estimated delivery in July.
Yes, xAI has purchased X, according to a post shared by Musk. Besides their owner and similar names, the companies are already connected through xAI’s chatbot, Grok, so it makes some sense. The biggest surprise may be that X is still valued at $33 billion — according to Musk and his companies, at least. X, once Twitter, was acquired by Musk in 2022 for $43 billion. xAI, like many leading AI companies, has been raising money as often and as quickly as possible. Combining the two companies may ease some of the debt Musk took on.
The companies’ futures are “intertwined,” according to Musk. Financially, now, that’s very true.
It adds new emoji, Apple News+ Food and priority notifications.
iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4 include a new Apple News+ Food section in the News app that collects recipes and food-oriented articles, including exclusive recipes for Apple News+ subscribers. The updates also introduce new emoji, AI-sorted Priority Notifications in the Notification Center and a new Ambient Music tool in the Control Center.
After a bit of a delay, Apple Intelligence will be available in the European Union for the first time on iPhone and iPad. The suite of AI features will now also work in several new languages “including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (simplified) — as well as localized English for Singapore and India.”
Britain’s flagship AI agency will slash the number of projects it backs and prioritize work on defense, environment and health as it seeks to respond to technological advances and criticism of its record. From a report: The Alan Turing Institute — named after the pioneering British computer scientist — will shut or offload almost a quarter of its 101 current initiatives and is considering job cuts as part of a change programme that led scores of staff to write a letter expressing their loss of confidence in the leadership in December.
Jean Innes, appointed chief executive in July 2023, argued that huge advances in AI meant the Turing needed to modernise after being founded as a national data science institute by David Cameron’s government a decade ago this month. “The Turing has chalked up some really great achievements,” Innes said in an interview. “[But we need] a big strategic shift to a much more focused agenda on a small number of problems that have an impact in the real world.” A review last year by UK Research and Innovation, the government funding body, found “a clear need for the governance and leadership structure of the Institute to evolve.” It called for a move away from the dominance of universities to a structure more representative of AI in UK.
Anthropic said it will start sweeping physical offices for hidden devices as part of a ramped-up security effort as the AI race intensifies. From a report: The company, backed by Amazon and Google, published safety and security updates in a blog post on Monday, and said it also plans to establish an executive risk council and build an in-house security team. Anthropic closed its latest funding round earlier this month at a $61.5 billion valuation, which makes it one of the highest-valued AI startups.
In addition to high-growth startups, tech giants including Google, Amazon and Microsoft are racing to announce new products and features. Competition is also coming from China, a risk that became more evident earlier this year when DeepSeek’s AI model went viral in the U.S. Anthropic said in the post that it will introduce “physical” safety processes, such as technical surveillance countermeasures — or the process of finding and identifying surveillance devices that are used to spy on organizations. The sweeps will be conducted “using advanced detection equipment and techniques” and will look for “intruders.”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket didn’t last long on Sunday. The booster’s nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea. If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn’t be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion. “Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch,” Daniel Metzler, Isar’s co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. “Can’t beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now.”
Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar’s Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andoya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit. But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. […] Isar declared the launch a success in its public statements, but was it? […] Metzler, Isar’s chief executive, was asked last year what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. “For me, the first flight will be a success if we don’t blow up the launch site,” he said at the Handelsblatt innovation conference. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.”
This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX’s first flight of the Starship rocket in 2023. By this measure, Isar officials can be content with Sunday’s result. The company is modeling its test strategy on SpaceX’s iterative development cycle, where engineers test early, make fixes, and fly again. This is in stark contrast to the way Europe has traditionally developed rockets. The alternative to Isar’s approach could be to “spend 15 years researching, doing simulations, and then getting it right the first time,” Metzler said. With the first launch of Spectrum, Isar has tested the rocket. Now, it’s time to make fixes and fly again. That, Isar’s leaders argue, will be the real measure of success. “We’re super happy,” Metzler said in a press call after Sunday’s flight. “It’s a time for people to be proud of, and for Europe, frankly, also to be proud of.” You can watch a replay of the live launch webcast on YouTube.
Software engineer Sergey Tselovalnikov weighs in on the new hype: The term caught on and Twitter quickly flooded with posts about how AI has radically transformed coding and will soon replace all software engineers. While AI undeniably impacts the way we write code, it hasn’t fundamentally changed our role as engineers. Allow me to explain.
[…] Vibe coding is interacting with the codebase via prompts. As the implementation is hidden from the “vibe coder”, all the engineering concerns will inevitably get ignored. Many of the concerns are hard to express in a prompt, and many of them are hard to verify by only inspecting the final artifact. Historically, all engineering practices have tried to shift all those concerns left — to the earlier stages of development when they’re cheap to address. Yet with vibe coding, they’re shifted very far to the right — when addressing them is expensive.
The question of whether an AI system can perform the complete engineering cycle and build and evolve software the same way a human can remains open. However, there are no signs of it being able to do so at this point, and if it one day happens, it won’t have anything to do with vibe coding — at least the way it’s defined today.
[…] It is possible that there’ll be a future where software is built from vibe-coded blocks, but the work of designing software able to evolve and scale doesn’t go away. That’s not vibe engineering — that’s just engineering, even if the coding part of it will look a bit different.
