Nissan has a new version of its best-selling Rogue SUV, and it’s launching the model here with the latest version of its e-Power hybrid system, which Ars tested back in February. Most of the hybrid cars you can buy today are parallel hybrids, which means that they have an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, both of which drive some or all of the wheels—everything works in parallel. But there’s another approach. Instead of connecting the engine to the wheels via a transmission, it can act as a generator and charge the traction battery, which in turn powers the electric motor. Since the engine and motor work in series, this is known as a series hybrid.

That’s mostly how the Chevrolet Volt worked. As does Honda’s hybrid CR-V. Well, mostly; engineers worked out it was more efficient for those cars' gasoline engines to directly drive the wheels at highway speeds, something that to this day makes a certain subset of hybrid car enthusiast irrationally angry. If you know anyone like that in your life, send them to wherever the nearest Nissan dealership is, because the 2027 Rogue Hybrid is exactly what they’ve been asking for.

Series hybrids

Under the hood, with its crisp shut line and slim horizontal lights that give me something of a Range Rover vibe, there’s a 1.5 L, three-cylinder turbocharged direct-injection engine that generates 148 hp (110 kW). It only revs to 5,200 rpm because it’s optimized to charge the battery, not cope with the various loads of an engine connected to a gearbox and the wheels. That also allows the engine to operate at a rather impressive 42 percent thermal efficiency—we would need to look at Formula 1 engines to find higher.

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In 2015, biomedical entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was Silicon Valley's golden girl, lauded as the youngest and richest self-made female billionaire thanks to the company she founded, Theranos, which was valued at $9 billion at the height of its success. Then it all came crashing down when accusations of fraud surfaced about the company's signature blood-testing device, culminating in a sensational trial. Holmes was convicted on four counts and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Holmes is back in the headlines thanks to a new film, You Can See Everything, which depicts the final days before Holmes, having exhausted her appeals, went to prison. Co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, it's a surreal, absurdist piece that has largely been received with gushing enthusiasm and no small amount of hype, with some declaring it the best film of the year. A few contrarian voices have emerged over the past week with much-needed reality checks, but there's no denying the film is destined to be an awards-season darling.

Pardon me for joining the buzzkills, but I cannot in good conscience jump on the You Can See Everything bandwagon. Sure, it has its moments, and the second half is highly entertaining, but there's nothing here to warrant all the breathless hyperbole. For all their much-touted access, Oppenheim and Fielder have produced a surprisingly shallow film that runs in circles, yielding very little fresh or novel insight—into Holmes, personally, or much else.

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As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Virgin's new rocket plane reaches home port. The first of Virgin Galactic's new Delta-class rocket planes left its Arizona factory Wednesday for a trip to Spaceport America in neighboring New Mexico, where it will undergo preparations for a test campaign culminating in suborbital flights to the edge of space, Ars reports. Virgin Galactic expects the craft's first commercial spaceflight to take place "early" in the second quarter of 2027, but like every other projected date in aerospace, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Virgin Galactic halted commercial flights of its previous vehicle, VSS Unity, in 2024.

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman confirmed the impending change in a letter (PDF) to shareholders today about Q3 performance. He said that Reddit is shifting “to a logged-in-only experience," adding:

Moving to primarily logged-in will ensure our users have the best Reddit experience possible, and can find the content and communities most relevant to them. It is better for our business because we will have more signals for ads targeting, and being logged-in leads to higher engagement generally. It also allows us to protect access to Reddit’s extremely valuable corpus of data, and helps us better adapt to emerging regulations around the world.

Huffman also said that the login requirement will help Reddit better retain new users.

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The preview update, KB5127936, is cumulative for Windows 11 versions 26H2 and 25H2. The update will be a gradual rollout before eventually moving on to a normal rollout for all Windows 11 devices once it reaches general availability. The highlight of the new update should calm annoyed users who have spent years with custom scripts and services in an attempt to shape Windows the way they would prefer it. Users will get a "customize menu" button that controls what commands appear when they right-click their mouse. Users can toggle built-in commands such as Send To or Create Shortcut on or off, rearrange what appears on the main menu, and control which third-party extensions show up in either the main or submenus. The gripe with the right-click menu had been that Microsoft hid familiar command locations behind a top row of icons while moving other familiar commands under the "Show more options" submenu. Now, Windows users can customize the whole thing around their habits.

The new preview also highlights a new Windows feature called Cloud Rebuild, a recovery option that can reinstall Windows 11 directly from the cloud, even when an existing Windows 11 fails to boot. Cloud Rebuild will pull the Windows 11 image and needed system drivers directly from Windows Update. Users will not need a custom recovery image or external media to reinstall Windows. There is an important distinction to note, however. Microsoft classifies Cloud Rebuild as a recovery option, but it behaves more like a fresh Windows install than a repair, as existing applications and files will not be included. Those worried about data security can sanitize entire system drives prior to reinstalling. For a full list of improvements coming to Windows 11, including changes to Xbox mode and settings, you can view the official Microsoft release announcement.

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Ukraine, which uses SpaceX's Starlink service and the military version known as Starshield, said earlier this month that military drones lost satellite connectivity when traveling above 161 kilometers per hour (100 miles per hour). The limit was removed after about 10 days.

Five Democratic and four Republican senators sent an October 15 letter to Department of Defense Inspector General Platte Moring, asking for a probe into the reported disruptions of Starlink and Starshield. The letter asked, among other things, "whether any restrictions on Starlink or Starshield services were directed, authorized, or implemented by SpaceX, the Department of Defense, or other US government entities; whether such restrictions were consistent with applicable US government contracts, and what actions, if any, the Department of Defense took in response."

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Issued on October 28, Trump’s presidential proclamation represents heightened government scrutiny of foreign-made industrial robots that could complicate the manufacturing operations of major US corporations that rely on such robots. Those companies include Detroit automakers General Motors and Ford, electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, and aerospace and defense giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Trump’s proclamation describes industrial robots and machinery as being crucial for producing US military weapon systems along with representing a “driving force” behind all critical infrastructure sectors within the US economy. The proclamation cites an investigation under US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as having found that US imports of such robots “pose[] risks to the United States industrial base and threatens the long-term competitiveness of the United States in a sector that is increasingly vital to national security.”

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The New York Times spoke with people briefed on US intelligence agencies’ surveillance and granted them anonymity to discuss findings drawn from “classified intelligence.” According to sources, about a year ago, Trump was briefed that “Beijing was getting reports from someone with direct access” to Huang. That “someone” was Alice Huang, or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen and former top executive at a Singapore cloud company called Megaspeed.

According to sources, the US had already suspected that Alice Huang—who is not related to Jensen Huang—was helping China evade export controls to gain access to high-end Nvidia chips through Megaspeed. But it alarmed investigators to discover that she may have used her role at Megaspeed to gain direct access to Jensen Huang. It’s now believed she may have leveraged that closeness to feed China intel not only on one of America’s leading AI companies, but also to influence Trump’s thinking on AI. As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noted last month ahead of Trump’s AI talks with China President Xi Jinping, “the president is completely aligned with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.”

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It wasn't to be. While concentrated solar costs fell enough to compete with nuclear power, the price of photovoltaics plunged, making solar panels the cheapest source of power in most locations. Currently, if you have a good site to generate solar power, then the economics of PV panels are hard to beat.

That has left us needing to build a mixture of other facilities—typically batteries and natural gas facilities—to handle overnight needs or weather-driven shortfalls. But a small company is promising that it can help avoid the need to build a separate facility. Its version of concentrated solar is designed so that a fossil-fueled backup system shares most of the generating hardware with the solar side.

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Meanwhile, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown filed criminal charges in a state court against Kalshi and its founders on Wednesday. The attorney general's office provided us with court filings listing charges against KalshiEX, LLC, Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour, and Kalshi co-founder and COO Luana Lopes Lara.

The company and two co-founders each face 13 felony charges and one misdemeanor for violating gambling laws. The charges are based on sports bets offered on Kalshi between September 13 and September 24. "The state did not issue arrest warrants for Monsour and Lopes Lara. Instead, they have been issued summons to respond to the charges in Third District Court in Salt Lake County," The Salt Lake Tribune wrote.

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The company took in almost $128 billion in Q3 2026, earning more than $26 billion in net income. These may sound like good numbers, but financial markets are not impressed. While revenue is up 25 percent versus last year, net income is almost $9 billion lower. As of this story's publication, the stock price is down almost 12 percent, and it was down about 13 percent earlier in the day.

While revenue was up 25 percent year over year, analysts expected more. Google reported earnings per share of $2.12, but the consensus projection ahead of Wednesday was $3.02. Google's Cloud products actually beat expectations, crossing $30 billion in revenue. That's about a billion more than analyst guesses.

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The records, which span DHS itself as well as seven component agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Customs and Border Protection, were last updated on August 19, 2026. The transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets and cybersecurity researcher and journalist maia arson crimew previewed the data for WIRED, which they say they obtained from a group calling itself the Department of Peace.

DDoSecrets published the archive, which it calls “Icepick,” on Wednesday. In a press release, DDoSecrets says the data is from DHS's Okta login system. In a note with the files, the hackers wrote, “They have our information, so it’s only fair that we have theirs.”

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Like machete-wielding treasure hunters, Musk and Shotwell hacked through a tangled jungle filled with lurking carnivores such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as bean counters and regulators. Over time, against long odds, the pair cleared a path for SpaceX to contracts at NASA and the US military. They sued when things did not go their way. They hollered about unfair playing fields. Most importantly, they delivered quality space products to the US government for less.

And so, after a while, SpaceX found El Dorado and a city of contracts.

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The return-to-flight mission will launch 40 satellites for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation, the first of 38 Vulcan flights Amazon has booked to deploy the bulk of its network. The mission will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and ULA said the launch date is pending range approval.

The launch is critical for ULA after its new flagship rocket suffered nozzle failures on its solid rocket boosters on two of its first four missions, most recently during a flight in February. In both cases, the rocket overcame the nozzle failure and completed its mission, but officials at the US Space Force, ULA's primary customer, lost confidence in Vulcan.

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The Pan-Arctic Cable is described as a European Union flagship project in a European Commission joint communication published on October 20, 2026. The policy document describes a new European strategy for the Arctic that supports “a sovereign, secure and resilient submarine cable connection linking Greenland directly to the EU,” while also suggesting that “like-minded partners like Canada” could provide a stepping stone for future cable expansion toward Asia.

“It is interesting that this project is even being considered, because five years ago it would have seemed like not a particularly commercially attractive proposition,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who leads the Threats to the Global Maritime Order Initiative, told Ars. “But the fact that it's being considered is very much on trend and a sign of our times.”

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The peptides are popular among members of Kennedy's Make America Health Again movement, and many prominent MAHA figures and Kennedy allies sell them. Kennedy said he uses some of the peptides and called himself a "big fan." But FDA scientists continue to say there is insufficient evidence to show if they're effective, and they are potentially dangerous. In 2023, the safety concerns led the FDA to remove the six peptides from a list of drugs that can be made by specialty pharmacies called compounding pharmacies—which make customized formulations of drugs for patients, or, in cases such as this, specialty drugs in bulk.

Kennedy's new rule sidesteps the need to formally undo that FDA action. The rule is titled "Enforcement Discretion Policy Regarding 503A Compounding Using Certain Peptide Bulk Drug Substances" and was made available Wednesday on the Federal Register, with the final publication date set for October 30. The rule does not change the regulatory status of the peptide; instead, it states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer take enforcement action against compounding pharmacies for making the peptides, essentially giving them a green light to freely produce and sell them. Kennedy had quietly proposed this rule earlier this month.

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But that was then. Consider the state of play today:

• It has been 10 months since Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft flew its last mission in January. The program was subsequently "paused," but let's be real. Blue Origin has moved on. New Shepard's engineering teams are now supporting the New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander programs.
• SpaceX flew its final free-flyer mission on Dragon, Fram2, in April 2025. A handful of non-NASA missions bound for space stations remain on the spacecraft's manifest, but all are likely to carry at least one government astronaut. Then Dragon will be retired. There is no credible timeline for SpaceX's Starship to fly humans into space from Earth.
• As for Virgin Galactic, the company flew its final suborbital mission on the VSS Unity spacecraft more than two years ago, in June 2024.

So we are now 10 months, and counting, without a space tourism mission in the United States.

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LOS ANGELES—For about five minutes on an extremely crowded showroom floor, I got to take pictures of the new MacBook Pro and test out some of its new features. First impressions: It's not as much of a departure from the previous design as I expected, but the outstanding OLED display steals the show regardless.

The first thing I noticed was that it's lighter. My daily driver is a 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Max), and it's a bit weighty for a 14-incher. Picking up the new model, I could immediately tell it was lighter. It's not like it's in a different general weight class, but it's a noticeable difference.

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Stop me if you've heard this one before: Google says its latest AI model reaches a new threshold in coding, agentic tasks, and scientific analysis. It's so capable, in fact, that Google can't let you use it just yet.

Gemini 4 Carbon reportedly makes big gains in cybersecurity applications. Google says the model shows a "significant leap" in vulnerability detection, validation, and remediation. Carbon is also apparently twice as likely to generate code that is free of vulnerabilities versus Argon. Meanwhile, the Chrome team claims that Carbon is 10 times better at generating "high-quality" patches compared to non-Google models. Google also notes that Carbon has increased its score by 89 points on WebDev Arena, now ranking at number four on the leaderboard.

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The Echo Studio with Home Camera, released alongside a pile of other Alexa devices today, doesn’t have many audio upgrades over the standard Echo Studio. Each speaker has one 3.75-inch high-excursion woofer and three full-range drivers. They both support Dolby Atmos and Amazon’s proprietary algorithm for adding a surround sound-like effect to stereo audio. Per the devices’ product pages, the speakers have lossless HD audio, Advanced Room Adaptation, and features for fighting noise distortion. Amazon announced the Advanced Room Adaptaion today, saying that the feature “continuously tunes the sound to your space, automatically adapting to the room's acoustics.”

Both speakers have four-microphone arrays and the same AZ3 Pro processor that Amazon introduced a year ago. The processor has an AI accelerator for using Amazon's Alexa+ generative AI chatbot.

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