The US military mistakenly shot down a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) drone near the Mexican border in a strike that reportedly used a laser-based anti-drone system. The CBP uses drones to track people crossing the border.

“Congressional aides told Reuters the Pentagon used the high-energy laser system to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone near the Mexican border, in an area that often has incursions from Mexican drones used by drug cartels,” Reuters reported last night.

The FAA closed some airspace along the border with Mexico in Fort Hancock, Texas, on Thursday with a notice announcing temporary flight restrictions for special security reasons. The restrictions are in place until June 24 but could be lifted earlier. There are conflicting reports on which day the strike happened, with The New York Times reporting that the strike occurred Thursday and Bloomberg writing that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “was notified Wednesday after the event occurred.”

Read full article

Comments

We haven’t had a new film from Gore Verbinski for nine years. But the director who brought us the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, the nightmare-inducing horror of The Ring (2002), and the Oscar-winning hijinks of Rango (2011) is back in peak form with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. It’s a darkly satirical, inventive, and hugely entertaining time-loop adventure that also serves as a cautionary tale about our widespread online technology addiction.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

Sam Rockwell stars as an otherwise unnamed man who shows up at a Norms diner in Los Angeles looking like a homeless person but claiming to be a time traveler from an apocalyptic future. He’s there to recruit the locals into his war against a rogue AI, although the diner patrons are understandably dubious about his sanity. (“I come from a nightmare apocalypse,” he assures the crowd about his grubby appearance. “This is the height of f*@ing fashion!”)

Read full article

Comments

Ever since I deleted my Facebook account, Instagram has taken its place as the social network I visit most often to check what my friends are up to. I’ve been on the app for something like 15 years now, and during this time, I’ve learned a trick or two that improve the experience (or at least make it less annoying). Here are 10 Instagram hacks that will enhance your privacy, reduce the amount of junk in your feed, help you reset your algorithm, and more.

Use Instagram filters to block spam messages and comments and clean up your feed

On every social media app, I like to set up filters to mute offensive keywords, but you can use keywords to block almost anything you don’t want to see. On Instagram, you can use filters to easily block spammy comments and offensive messages. While you can customize your filter list, I just looked up a list of offensive phrases, and quickly added it to my IG account, then added a few additional terms.

You can do the same thing by going to your Instagram profile page, and tapping the three-lines menu in the top-right corner in Instagram. This opens the Settings and activity page, where you can select Hidden Words. It lets you add multiple words, as long as you separate them with a comma. Once added, Instagram will block comments and messages containing those terms.

You can also add mute keywords for posts appearing in your feed. Go to Instagram Settings > Content preferences > Specific words and phrases. On the Content preferences page, go to Sensitive content and Political content, and you can limit those types of posts and videos from showing up on your feed too.

Reset your Instagram algorithm

Every once in a while, my Instagram algorithm goes haywire and I’m forced to reset it. After all, I mostly open this app to see my friends’ updates and cat videos, and once my feed starts showing me too much Hyrox content (a “sport” I couldn’t care less about), I know I’m in trouble. If something like this happens to you, there are two ways to reprogram your feed. The easy option is to just look for a reel you enjoy (such as a cat video), and swipe upwards a few times till you reach a non-cat video, then navigate away. Repeat this process a few times and your feed will be back to more cat videos and less Hyrox (or anything else).

If that doesn’t work, or if your feed is too far gone in the wrong direction, then you can go to Instagram Settings > Content preferences > Reset suggested content to reboot it entirely.

Remove tracking links from Instagram

When you share any post, reel, story, or other type of content on Instagram, the app tracks who you’re sharing it with, even if you send the link outside Instagram. You can see this by tapping the Share button on any post, and selecting Copy link: Paste this link in any text editor, such as Apple Notes or Google Keep, and you’ll see that the link has tracking parameters at the end, such as “?igsh=…” or “?utm…”. That helps Instagram identify that you’ve shared the link.

There’s no way to disable this tracking, but you can manually remove it from each link before you send it to someone. Just paste the URL it as usual, then delete everything after the question mark.

Force Instagram to open DM links in your preferred browser

Credit: Pranay Parab

Whenever you open a link in Instagram, the app opens it in an in-app browser. This is the least privacy friendly option, as Instagram can then track which websites you’re visiting quite easily. You can partially stop this by tapping the three-dots button in the top-right corner of Instagram’s in-app browser and selecting Open in external browser.

There’s no way to make this the default setting for all links, but you can set it as default for links you receive via DM. To do this, go to Instagram Settings > App website permissions > Message links and turn on Open in external browser.

Limit your Instagram notifications

After you post something, Instagram loves to spam you with notifications every time a few people interact with the post. Even if you don’t use Instagram for a day or two, you’ll still get a deluge of notifications from the app. I don’t face this problem because I never allow Instagram permission to send any notifications on my devices, but that’s not an option for everyone. If you don’t want to turn off notifications entire, you can choose to receive only the useful notifications from Instagram. To do this, go to Instagram Settings > Notifications and review all the options available to you. I particularly like the Messages only option, which only sends me an alert when someone DMs viaon the app.

To further limit notifications, go to the Following and followers section on this page, and disable Account suggestions. Similarly, you can go to Messages and disable Message reminders and all varieties of channel notification settings. You can also go to the Calls section and turn off Video chats, which has the added bonus of disabling video calls on Instagram, which I’ve never wanted to use.

Hide your online status and disable read receipts on Instagram

For some reason, Instagram shows other people when you’re online. If you want to be more discreet, go to Instagram Settings > Messages and story replies > Show activity status and turn the setting off. (On the previous page, you can select Show read receipts and turn it off to stop people seeing if you’ve read their messages too.)

Hide the “typing” indicator in Instagram messages

When someone is messaging you on Instagram, the app shows you an animation to tell you that the other person is typing. More often than not, this feature only makes me keep the app open longer while the other person types their message, which is probably why Instagram’s added it in the first place. If you don’t want to see the typing indicator in a chat, you can disable it: Open any chat in Instagram and tap the contact’s name up top. Go to Privacy and safety and turn off Typing indicator. Sadly, you’ll need to do this manually for each of your Instagram chats.

Enable end-to-end encryption to make Instagram more secure

Credit: Pranay Parab

Instagram chats are not encrypted by default, which means that the company can read all your messages. If you want to beef up your security, consider using end-to-end encryption for your chats. Just like Telegram, Instagram hides its end-to-end encrypted chat feature, and makes you enable it manually for each chat. You can do so by opening any chat in Instagram, tapping the contact’s name up top, selecting Privacy and safety > Use end-to-end encryption.

Automatically clear your Instagram search history

Your Instagram search history shows up whenever you try to search for anything on Instagram. This can be embarrassing if you’ve looked up something really silly (or slightly naughty), and someone else sees it. to prevent this, you can clear your searches by tapping the search bar in Instagram, and selecting Clear all, or tapping the x next to each search term.

However, there’s also a way to automatically clear your search history on Instagram: Go to Instagram Settings > Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Search history > Keep searches for, and select 3 days, which is the minimum time for automatically deleting your searches.

Reset your Instagram ad preferences to protect your data

There’s no way to block ads on Instagram, but you can reduce the amount of your data that Instagram uses to show you those ads. Just go to Instagram Settings > Accounts Center > Ad preferences > Manage info. You can go through each option on this page and turn off everything you can. Under Categories used to reach you, select Remove on every option.

You can choose Don’t allow us… in these two categories: Ads in other apps and Ads about Meta. Finally, you can select Activity information from ad partners > Review setting, and pick No, don’t make my ads more relevant.

Nasa announced on Friday radical changes to its delayed Artemis III mission to land humans back on the moon, as the US space agency grapples with technical glitches and criticism that it is trying to do too much too soon. From a report: The abrupt shift in strategy was laid out by the space agency’s recently confirmed administrator, Jared Isaacman. Announcing the changes on Friday, he said that Nasa would introduce at least one new moon flight before attempting to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time in more than half a century, in 2028.

The new, more incremental approach would give the Nasa team a chance to test flight and refine its technology. As part of the changes, the Artemis II mission to fly humans around the moon this year, without landing, would also be pushed back from its latest scheduled launch on 6 March to 1 April at the earliest.

“Everybody agrees this is the only way forward,” Isaacman told reporters at a news conference. “I know this is how Nasa changed the world, and this is how Nasa is going to do it again.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dan Simmons, the author of more than three dozen books, including the famed Hyperion Cantos, has died from a stroke. He was 77.

Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction. Often his books included elements of all of these. This obituary will focus on what is generally considered his greatest work, and what I believe is possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Hyperion.

Published in 1989, Hyperion is set in a far-flung future in which human settlement spans hundreds of planets. The novel feels both familiar, in that its structure follows Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and utterly unfamiliar in its strange, far-flung setting.

Read full article

Comments

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.

Samsung just announced its new earbuds during the Samsung Unpacked 2026 event earlier this week, and Amazon is already offering a pretty sweet deal to preorder them. The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 are $179.99 and come with a $20 Amazon gift card, and the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro go for $249.99 and come with a $30 Amazon gift card. Both will be released on March 11, but you can pre-order them now. Considering these will be their flagship earbuds for some time, it’s a great opportunity for any Samsung fan or anyone curious about Samsung’s new earbuds to snatch them up.

$30 Amazon Gift Card

Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro

$179.99
at Amazon

$199.99
Save $20.00

$179.99
at Amazon

$199.99
Save $20.00

$30 Amazon Gift Card

Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro

$249.99
at Amazon

$279.99
Save $30.00

$249.99
at Amazon

$279.99
Save $30.00

Samsung wants to compete with Apple, with a similar design, features, and even price point. The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 are strikingly similar to the Apple AirPods 4 in their design, with noise cancellation and the absence of silicone eartips that go inside your ears. They come with Hi-Res audio, IP54 for water-resistance, a Live Translation feature similar to Apple’s, a new design, improvements in call quality, and direct access to ask questions to AI and receive responses through the earbuds. The controls are swipe and pinch, and the charging case comes in black or white.

It’s also easy to draw the similarities between the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro and the Apple AirPods Pro 3. Apart from both being $249, the most obvious similarity is the in-ear silicone tip design that helps seal the noise and improve ANC. The Pros have all of the same features as the Buds 4, and are supposed to be more comfortable, have better ANC which Samsung calls ANC 2.0, have a better water resistance with an IP57 rating, which handles immersion in water up to 1 meter, and perhaps more importantly, a two-way speaker (as opposed to a one-way on the Buds 4) that is meant to delivers better, high-fidelity sound, superior separation of frequencies, and reduced distortion. But we will only know if these claims are true when we get our hands on them for a review.

Amazon’s Wish List feature is a versatile way to tell other people what gifts you’re interested in. That might be a gift registry for a baby shower, or letting your friends and family know what you want for your birthday. But it’s also commonly used for online creators to receive gifts from fans or for someone in need to receive donated items from strangers online who want to help. Up until now, we could rely on Wish List as a secure way for strangers to send items, without worrying about setting up a post office box. But going forward, Wish List now runs the risk of telling fans exactly where the creator lives—unless the creator takes action.

Amazon is putting addresses at risk with changes to Wish List

As reported by 404 Media, Amazon is recommending customers that use Wish Lists to change their shipping addresses to either P.O. boxes or non-residential delivery addresses. The company is making changes to Wish Lists, which could reveal the address you have on file for the feature. By leaving it as your home address, you are putting yourself at risk of doxxing—or revealing your personal address to strangers on the internet.

That’s because Amazon is now removing the option to block purchases from third-party sellers for Wish List items. As such, anyone who buys items off your Wish List to send to you will be able to buy them from third-party sellers, and those sellers will have access to your delivery address. From Amazon’s point of view, these changes give buyers more flexibility over the items they can buy from your list, but that unfortunately comes with an impact on your personal privacy. But it’s not just sellers who will have access to this address: Buyers will, too, as they may see your address in shipping updates they receive throughout the buying process.

As 404 Media highlights, major shippers don’t usually reveal addresses in these situations. But Amazon’s changes mean that third-party sellers have it in their power to share this information themselves. What’s more, if the delivery person ends up taking photos of the package to confirm delivery, that could leak even more of your personal details than you’d want—such as what your front door or driveway look like.

These changes aren’t effective immediately, so if you use Amazon’s Wish Lists, you don’t have to worry about your home address leaking on the internet just yet. However, the company has set a deadline for March 25, so it’s important to act fast if you want to protect yourself.

Below, you can read the email Amazon is sending the following email to Wish List users:

“We’re writing to inform you about an upcoming change to Amazon Lists. Starting March 25, 2026, we will remove the option to restrict purchases from third-party sellers for list items. When this change takes effect, gift purchasers will be able to purchase items sold by third-party sellers from your lists and your delivery address will be shared with the seller for fulfillment. This change will provide gift purchasers with access to a wider selection of items when shopping from your lists…Important note: When gifts are purchased from your shared or public lists, Amazon needs to provide your shipping address to sellers and delivery partners to fulfill these orders. During the delivery process, your address may become visible to gift purchasers through delivery updates and tracking information. To help protect your privacy, we recommend using a PO Box or non-residential address for any list you share with public audiences.”

How to prevent buyers from seeing your address from your Amazon Wish List

If you have an online presence and want to protect your address, you’ll need to update your address in Wish List settings. Head to this link, then choose “manage list.” Here, you can adjust your Wish List settings to make it private, or to choose specific users to share it with. Otherwise, you can adjust your address if you have a P.O. box or alternative address to select.

A sprawling Chinese influence operation — accidentally revealed by a Chinese law enforcement official’s use of ChatGPT — focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, according to a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. From a report: The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident’s social media account taken down.

The report offers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. The influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms, according to OpenAI.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: While some see AI as a tool to be used, its specific use and how it is deployed responsibly is being heavily debated online across a wide range of industries. In terms of journalistic content, and in this particular instance, reviews, review aggregator Metacritic has taken a firm stance on content published and submitted to their platform, that have been generated by artificial intelligence in some way.

In a statement by co-founder Marc Doyle, sent to Gamereactor, he says this: “Metacritic has been a reputable review source for a quarter century and has maintained a rigorous vetting process when adding new publications to our slate of critics. However, in certain instances such as a publication being sold or a writing staff having turned over, problems can arise such as plagiarism, theft, or other forms of fraud including AI-generated reviews. Metacritic’s policy is to never include an AI-generated critic review on Metacritic and if we discover that one has been posted, we’ll remove it immediately and sever ties with that publication indefinitely pending a thorough investigation.”

So, what is this about specifically? Well, it’s probably a sound guess, that this pertains to Videogamer’s review of Resident Evil 9: Requiem, which was removed from the platform after a barrage of comments accusing the review of being AI-written, and for the author of being made up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the likes of The Last of Us and Fallout out of the way for a bit, Amazon has seized its opportunity to put the spotlight on the next big video game adaptation, its currently-in-production God of War show. Today we got our first look at Ryan Hurst and Callum Vinson as Kratos and Atreus.

The image released by Amazon shows the eponymous God of War standing next to a tree as he watches his son — who notably looks a bit younger than the video game version of 11-year-old Atreus we first met in 2018’s God of War — take aim with his bow. Exactly what they’re hunting is unclear, but we know that the developing relationship between father and son that was such a big part of the PS4 game is also going to be at the heart of the show.

Whether Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios have nailed the looks of its central characters is a matter of opinion. Personally I think Hurst’s Kratos in particular looks a little bit off here, but there’s every chance it all comes together later in production. Or when we first hear him angrily exclaim “boy!”

The Sons of Anarchy star was cast as Kratos back in January, and earlier this week we learned that Deadpool’s Ed Skrein will play Baldur in the Amazon show. The rest of the cast includes Mandy Patinkin as Odin, Max Parker and Heimfall, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Thor, Teresa Palmer as Sif, Alastair Duncan as Mimir, Jeff Gulka as Sindri and Danny Woodburn as Brok.

No release date has been announced yet, but a second season of God of War has already been confirmed.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/heres-your-first-look-at-kratos-and-atreus-in-amazons-upcoming-god-of-war-tv-adaptation-172251366.html?src=rss