Financial extortion doesn’t seem to be the group’s goal this time.
The First Ace Combat Game In Seven Years Is Playing For Keeps
The franchise’s ambitions are bigger than ever in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve
Here’s the Torcal, the first fully electric Bentley
A few weeks ago, Bentley gave Ars a ride in a new camouflaged electric vehicle. Named after a Spanish rock formation, the Torcal is the brand’s first battery EV, and today the production car had its formal unveiling. That camo was effective: The real car is less bulbous and more blocky than its disguise would suggest. And it’s fair to say it brings some of the ideas of the EXP 15 concept to the road—even if that didn’t include that show car’s elegant, stretched proportions. It’s smaller than the Bentayga, and it should slot beneath that model in pricing (or the PHEV version of it, at least), though Bentley has yet to reveal exactly how much US buyers can expect to pay.
Underneath the bodywork are some relatively familiar underpinnings; Bentley shares technology with Porsche as both are part of the greater Volkswagen Group empire. The power output might not be as prodigious as the electric Porsche Cayenne but should be sufficient nonetheless. The standard car will offer peak outputs of 810 hp (604 kW) and 880 lb-ft (1,194 Nm), enough for a 3.3-second 0–60 mph time (0–100 km/h takes 3.4 seconds).
The EXP 15’s influence is stronger at the rear.
Credit:
Bentley
The more powerful Torcal S boasts 875 hp (653 kW) and 995 lb-ft (1,350 Nm) at its most potent; this is capable of 60 mph from a standing start in a mere 2.8 seconds (2.9 to 100 km/h) and an increased top speed of 162 mph (260 km/h), up from 155 mph (250 km/h) for the standard version, either of which are academic outside certain stretches of German highway.
Here’s the Torcal, the first fully electric Bentley
A few weeks ago, Bentley gave Ars a ride in a new camouflaged electric vehicle. Named after a Spanish rock formation, the Torcal is the brand’s first battery EV, and today the production car had its formal unveiling. That camo was effective: The real car is less bulbous and more blocky than its disguise would suggest. And it’s fair to say it brings some of the ideas of the EXP 15 concept to the road—even if that didn’t include that show car’s elegant, stretched proportions. It’s smaller than the Bentayga, and it should slot beneath that model in pricing (or the PHEV version of it, at least), though Bentley has yet to reveal exactly how much US buyers can expect to pay.
Underneath the bodywork are some relatively familiar underpinnings; Bentley shares technology with Porsche as both are part of the greater Volkswagen Group empire. The power output might not be as prodigious as the electric Porsche Cayenne but should be sufficient nonetheless. The standard car will offer peak outputs of 810 hp (604 kW) and 880 lb-ft (1,194 Nm), enough for a 3.3-second 0–60 mph time (0–100 km/h takes 3.4 seconds).
The EXP 15’s influence is stronger at the rear.
Credit:
Bentley
The more powerful Torcal S boasts 875 hp (653 kW) and 995 lb-ft (1,350 Nm) at its most potent; this is capable of 60 mph from a standing start in a mere 2.8 seconds (2.9 to 100 km/h) and an increased top speed of 162 mph (260 km/h), up from 155 mph (250 km/h) for the standard version, either of which are academic outside certain stretches of German highway.
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 Launches On Quest 3 In November
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 launches on November 12 for Quest 3 with pre-orders now open at a ten percent discount. The PC VR version will follow in the second half of 2027.
Developer Anton Hand made the announcement in a new video on his YouTube channel with an updated trailer:
0:00
/0:54
We first heard about Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 (H3VR2), the sequel to the award-winning VR sandbox FPS, during the Creature Feature & Friends Showcase in May, with plans for a PC VR and Quest 3 launch. Per Hand’s video, the Quest version drops this November and the Steam version will follow in the second half of 2027 with enhanced graphics, ‘comprehensive’ hardware and a dedicated framework for modding. Rust Ltd. will be assembling a testing team from its community to ensure all PC VR-compatible devices are properly verified.
H3VR2 expands on its predecessor with multiple gameplay modes to be more accessible to a wider variety of players. Its primary mode, ‘Facility’, is an extraction-style campaign where you battle enemies and loot resources in a procedurally generated megastructure. Hand said the game will run as a “pseudo-live service” with biomes planned to be added at a rate of two new ones per year. New game modes, sandbox packs, and licensed content will be sold as paid DLC.
Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 can be pre-ordered now for Quest 3 at a 10% discount. The Steam version can be wishlisted now ahead of its 2027 launch.
Trump’s China rivalry and “AI race” delusion may endanger US, experts say
This week, the US and China, the two world leaders on AI, finally started talks meant to keep the whole world safe from emerging safety risks. But whether meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can lead to a reliable global governance framework for AI depends on how much the fierce rivals are actually willing to cooperate.
It’s clear Trump wants it to seem like discussions are going well. Before Trump and Xi meet on Thursday and Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that both sides had already discussed setting up a new AI safety notification mechanism. If China agrees to participate, that would create an open line for either side to send alerts when their country’s AI systems pose threats or behave unpredictably. The same channel, Bessent said, could allow the countries to share their “vision of common goals.”
However, the proposal comes at a time when China may not be ready to trust the US to have AI safety conversations that aren’t about limiting China’s capabilities. Not only has Trump steadily increased export controls that explicitly seek to block China from accessing technology to advance AI, but Congress is mulling bills that would cut the country off from more chips and hardware. Adding to tensions, just two weeks ago, Trump’s Justice Department accused six of China’s leading AI makers of stealing from US frontier labs, which China has strongly disputed.
Trump’s China rivalry and “AI race” delusion may endanger US, experts say
This week, the US and China, the two world leaders on AI, finally started talks meant to keep the whole world safe from emerging safety risks. But whether meetings between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can lead to a reliable global governance framework for AI depends on how much the fierce rivals are actually willing to cooperate.
It’s clear Trump wants it to seem like discussions are going well. Before Trump and Xi meet on Thursday and Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that both sides had already discussed setting up a new AI safety notification mechanism. If China agrees to participate, that would create an open line for either side to send alerts when their country’s AI systems pose threats or behave unpredictably. The same channel, Bessent said, could allow the countries to share their “vision of common goals.”
However, the proposal comes at a time when China may not be ready to trust the US to have AI safety conversations that aren’t about limiting China’s capabilities. Not only has Trump steadily increased export controls that explicitly seek to block China from accessing technology to advance AI, but Congress is mulling bills that would cut the country off from more chips and hardware. Adding to tensions, just two weeks ago, Trump’s Justice Department accused six of China’s leading AI makers of stealing from US frontier labs, which China has strongly disputed.
Snap Specs Hands-On: Minimum Viable Consumer True AR Glasses
I briefly went hands-on with Snap’s Specs at the “launch” event in Los Angeles. Here’s what I thought.
If you’re unfamiliar: Snap Specs are standalone true AR glasses, meaning they have physically transparent see-through optics and can position virtual objects and interfaces in real space, while having no tether or external computing hardware. Revealed back in June, when the company opened preorders, the $2195 Specs are set to be the first fully standalone true AR glasses outside China, and the most advanced on the planet that you can actually buy, beating companies like Meta and Apple to market.
For disclosure, Snap paid for my flights and accommodation for its “launch” event, which I put in scare quotes because it didn’t actually launch the glasses. It did announce that Specs will have a built-in cross-platform agentic AI assistant, and an optional cellular case for on-the-go connectivity. CEO Evan Spiegel also demoed the glasses live on stage, a welcome respite compared to the usual prerecorded tech launches.
But while Spiegel’s demo was inarguably impressive, the problem with Specs is that, through the lenses, it simply doesn’t actually look like the casted and recorded views.
Watch Snap’s CEO Demo Specs True AR Glasses Live On Stage
Snap’s CEO demoed the soon-to-launch Specs standalone true AR glasses live on stage, including an official Harry Potter experience from HBO.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
As soon as you put on Specs, you’ll notice a number of optical artifacts. There is a rainbow pattern over the display area, which has poor color uniformity in general, as well as blue streaks from reflections of real-world light. This is not the crisp image you’ll be used to in a VR headset, nor is it even anywhere near as clear and uniform as the Meta Ray-Ban Display HUD.
The bigger problem though, as with every optically transparent AR device to ever ship, is the field of view. At 51 degrees diagonal, it’s roughly the same as HoloLens 2. What’s strange (and misleading) is that Specs renders and records a larger field of view than what it can actually display, so what you see in Snap’s promotional videos, and any recorded Specs content shared on social media, is very different to what you see in the device.
(For comparison, passthrough VR-style headsets like Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro have a diagonal field of view of over 110°)
In practice, what you see as you look around is a rectangular slice of the virtual content that should be surrounding you. As I’ve written about many times before, this breaks object permanence, and leaves you constantly searching for where each virtual object went.
Specs recording vs UploadVR mockup of what Specs really looks like.
Spectacles recording vs UploadVR mockup of what Specs really looks like.
This is not a dealbreaker for all use cases. And it’s not Snap’s fault – it’s essentially impossible today to build a glasses-size transparent AR device with a field of view much larger than this. Meta’s Orion prototype famously used an exotic expensive material with no existing non-military supply chain to achieve 70 degrees, for example. But it’s something I sorely wish that companies building transparent AR devices had been more honest about for the past decade of this industry. Because the inevitable result is that people are disappointed when they put the thing on their face and see only a slice of the content.
Some experiences cleverly design around the field of view, and for others it doesn’t matter at all. This is where Specs shines. But many experiences seem to ignore it, to the detriment of usability, as if building for a future device that doesn’t yet exist.
And while it’s impressive that Specs is able to be a fully standalone device in glasses form factor, no pucks or tethers required, this feat does not come without tradeoffs. While I do describe Specs as glasses form factor, at 134 grams it sits right at the very boundary of earning that description. It is comfortable, thanks to its outwards-flexing arms (an ergonomic feature of all good recent smart glasses), but the bulk looks somewhat comical to regular bystanders. Even Spiegel admitted as much by acknowledging the memes around the form factor.
Specs also seems to render at a far lower frame rate compared to other VR devices. While Snap wouldn’t say the exact rate, rendering in many experiences felt to be nowhere near the 72FPS minimum of other XR systems. Fitting a higher-performance spatial computer into a glasses arm is simply beyond the technology of 2026.
The lack of eye tracking on Specs is also a major miss, as it quickly became tiring to raise my hand to point-and-pinch. Apple Vision Pro has established eye tracking as absolutely essential for any serious XR device interaction other than active gaming. I am convinced that Specs will be one of the last major devices in this space without eye tracking.
My description of Specs so far has been rather negative, but what I’ve really been trying to do is just establish a realistic picture of what to expect, beyond the hype and expectations that have built up around true AR glasses and Snap’s marketing. But that’s not to say that Specs isn’t a viable first-generation product for early adopters.
What’s most impressive about Specs is its computer vision tech. Even in low light when the sun went down, with dozens of people walking nearby, Specs’ positional tracking and hand tracking remained rock solid. It even features real-time continuous scene meshing with occlusion, so real-world geometry will block virtual content. To do this at such a low power envelope, in the arm of glasses, is groundbreaking. Not even Quest 3 does this!
I was also struck by how much better having 6DoF augmented reality makes key use cases I already use on Meta Ray-Ban Display feel, such as translation and navigation. It’s significantly more comfortable to have translated captions anchored to the person speaking to you rather than awkwardly on a fixed display in the lower-right of your view, and to have a huge map at chest height in front of you rather than a tiny one to the right.
Specs’ core software is also well-made, with relatively fast loading times for both interfaces and apps. While it’s not high refresh rate, it never feels sluggish. This is thanks to Snap’s years of work on a highly optimized software stack that runs from the OS to the “Lenses” (apps) built in the highly managed Lens Studio development software on PC. This is a mature well-crafted software stack, not some lazy Android fork.
0:00
/0:17
The Snap OS real-world navigation Lens.
Snap OS real-time translation Lens.
Snap is also pushing Specs as a computer for virtual monitors and browser interfaces. While I can definitely see a device like Specs being a highly portable way to privately watch YouTube on a bus, train, or plane without holding up your phone, the display artifacts and limited field of view make me highly skeptical of its use for serious productivity. The coming wave of ultralight passthrough VR headsets will likely be strongly preferable for this, and even prism optic devices like Xreal Aura will offer a wider field of view and clearer image.
Snap Specs is exactly what I expected from first-generation standalone true AR glasses in 2026. It’s as if a company tried to make an iPhone in the late 90s. The idea is there, and for what tech it has to work with, Snap’s implementation of the idea is actually excellent. But the fundamental display tech is the problem. Even with well-designed software, an iPhone in 1999 just wouldn’t be the iPhone of 2007. If you’re a tech enthusiast who understands that, and can temper your expectations, Specs is like nothing else out there, and delivers an experience absolutely no other device can match. But if you’re a general consumer hoping for a highly refined consumer true AR experience, you’ll need to wait for the 2030s like everyone else.
Apple Has a Fix for Your New Apple Watch’s Restart Bug
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Apple’s latest Apple Watches, the Series 12 and the Ultra 4, should be the “best” smartwatches the company has to offer. While they’re minor upgrades over the Series 11 and Ultra 3, there are some key improvements, including the new S11 chip and a heart rate monitor that checks your pulse every five seconds. If you picked up one of these watches, you might have put these new upgrades to the test—that is, if your watch didn’t restart on you.
As reported by MacRumors, Apple’s latest smartwatches appear prone to unexpected restarts. That’s according to numerous posts on the site’s forums, with users saying their watches abruptly show a blank screen with the Apple logo. There doesn’t appear to be any particular action that triggers it: Users say their watches rebooted when recording a workout, using Siri AI, editing watch faces, or using the Maps app. Many users on this Reddit thread share similar experiences with their new watches. Some users dug deeper, pulling their Apple Watches’ diagnostics at the time of rebooting. Rather than a specific function, the culprit appears to be a timeout with the Neural Engine, the hardware that processes Apple’s AI features.
Users tried multiple workarounds themselves: One Redditor simply turned the watch off and on themself, and the issue never returned; others tried resetting the watch as new, but experienced rebooting again. MacRumors highlighted one case where a user received a replacement from Apple, and it, too, rebooted unexpectedly. It does appear to be an issue with the Series 12 and Ultra 4, and, luckily, Apple figured it out.
watchOS 27.0.1 fixes unexpected reboots with Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4
On Wednesday, Apple unexpectedly released watchOS 27.0.1. The update has a brief changelog, with only one new addition: “This update provides bug fixes for your Apple Watch, including fixing an issue where Apple Watch may restart unexpectedly.” Apple didn’t clarify exactly what it changed to fix the issue, but at least the reboots should be over.
This update is only for Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 users, so don’t expect to see it unless you have one of Apple’s newest wearables. If you do, make sure to install it as soon as possible to avoid dealing with these unexpected restarts. To install watchOS 27.0.1, head to the Apple Watch app, then tap My Watch and go to General > Software Update.
Whatever Happened to the 150,000 Tons of Radioactive Waste Stored Under the Atlantic Ocean?
More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between 1949 and 1982, reports ScienceAlert.
Whatever happened to those barrels?
Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor. Surprisingly, this isn’t necessarily a subversion of the original plan… The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that low-level waste be disposed of in robust containment in isolation for at least a few hundred years — but back in the mid-20th century, the recommendations were a little different. The contemporaneous guidelines recommended that containers needed to reach the seafloor intact and remain sealed only long enough for the short-lived radionuclides to decay. After that, the remaining waste was expected to slowly escape and disperse through the surrounding ocean. Not everything in the barrels would conveniently decay away, however. They contained a radioactive hodgepodge, including cesium-137, plutonium isotopes, and tritium, some of which can persist for thousands of years…
[A] few years ago, nuclear engineer Patrick Chardon and marine geologist Javier Escartín of the French National Center for Scientific Research started to wonder what had become of the dumped waste. That question eventually became NODSSUM — Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring — an interdisciplinary project bringing together nuclear physics, geology, oceanography, biology, and marine chemistry to find the barrels and investigate what, if anything, they were doing to the surrounding environment…. [T]he barrels also appeared to function as tiny oases on the otherwise sparsely populated sandy seafloor. Anemones had attached themselves to the barrels. Sponges, sea cucumbers, fish, and crustaceans lived around them, with crabs apparently particularly fond of the artificial shelters…
Instruments aboard the ship detected significant signals of cobalt-60 and niobium-94, which the researchers could specifically link to the dumped waste… [Samples are now being analyzed] There is precedent, however, to suggest that even striking levels of radioactivity around a source don’t necessarily spread very far. A recent study of the sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets found radionuclide levels hundreds of thousands of times above background immediately around the leaking reactor — but those levels dropped sharply within just a few meters as the material dispersed through the seawater. The NODSSUM team similarly found that, despite the significant radioactive signals around the barrels, activity levels weren’t high enough to pose major radiation-protection problems for the scientists handling the samples. [Their three-person submersible] Nautile and the instruments it carried showed no signs of contamination.
The real achievement was mapping the exact location of the barrels. “None of this means the waste is harmless,” the article concludes — but it also doesn’t mean we’re about to be overrun by radioactive crabs.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The 10 New Fall 2026 Anime You Should Be Most Excited For
Suikoden: The Anime, a remake of Magic Knight Rayearth, and Fool Night are likely to be among the season’s highlights
Can Everybody In Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave Please Shut The Hell Up A Little Bit?
That goes double for the game itself
Dressmaker Is The Dream Indie For People (Me) Who Spend Hours On Outfits In The Character Creator
Seamless
Xbox’s New ‘Mythic’ Achievement Features An Unlock Noise That Goes On For 15 Seconds
Mythic achievements will serve as Xbox’s take on PlayStation’s platinum trophies
Barbie Rewind Threatens To Bring Out My Inner Horse Girl
Think pink
McDonald’s Cramming Ads For Other Brands Into The Drive-Thru While You Wait To Pull Forward
Oh nice, more of my life will be filled with ads trying to sell me stuff
Xbox’s Restructuring Is A ‘Reverse Acquisition In Slow Motion,’ Analysts Say
Experts call Halo under Activision a ‘demotion’ and worry that ‘Project Helix absolutely must hit’
Lollipop Chainsaw 2: Back2Back Has No Idea What It Wants To Be
An early demo at Tokyo Game Show lacked the soul that made the original a cult hit
Former Halo Devs React To Mass Layoffs And The Activision Takeover: ‘Absolutely Brutal To See That Studio Reduced To A Shell’
Bonnie Ross, Kiki Wolfkill, and Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto were among the many former Halo devs reacting to the news
Dragon Age Director Finally Says What Fans Have Been Thinking For Years: The Fade Needs To Go
Mark Darrah also shared what he’d change about the other games in the series