No doubt buoyed by all the positive advance reviews on social media, Amazon MGM Studios has released one last trailer for Masters of the Universe, and it comes in strong with the 1980s nostalgia, chock-full of Easter eggs to delight Ars readers of a certain age.

Directed by Travis Knight (Bumblebee, Kubo and the Two Strings), the film is a reboot of sorts of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, its spinoff, She-Ra: Princess of Powers, and the many, many other offshoots of this hugely popular Mattel franchise. Per the official premise:

In Masters of the Universe, Director Travis Knight brings the legendary franchise back to the big screen in this epic live-action adventure. After being separated for 15 years, the Sword of Power leads Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) back to Eternia where he discovers his home shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor (Jared Leto). To save his family and his world, Adam must join forces with his closest allies, Teela (Camila Mendes) and Duncan/Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), and embrace his true destiny as He-Man — the most powerful man in the universe.

In addition to Galitzine, Mendes, Elba, and Leto, the cast includes Alison Brie as Professor Evelyn Powers (aka Evil-Lyn); Morena Baccarin as the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull; Jóhannes Haukur as Malcolm/Fisto; James Purefoy and Charlotte Riley as King Randor and Queen Marlena; Sasheer Zamata as Suzie, Adam/He-Man’s BFF on Earth; Kristen Wiig as Roboto; James Wilkinson as Mekaneck; Jon Xue Zhang as Ram-Man; Kojo Attah as the bounty hunter Tri-Klops; Sam C. Wilson as cyborg/weapons expert Kronis/Trap-Jaw; Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Goat Man; Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as Malcolm / Fisto; Robert Towers as Karg; and Christian Vunipola as Adam's roommate on Earth, Hussein.

Read full article

Comments

Fittingly, then, Mercedes brought out its F1 team’s personnel, as George Russell presented the new car while Toto Wolff and Kimi Antonelli watched from the makeshift grandstands. Hollywood celebs ran the gamut, from Brad Pitt—who drove one GT onto the bridge—to Jacob Elordi and Kevin Hart, while Blink 182 played a surprisingly sarcastic mini set. All of the above may mean less to potential GT buyers than performance metrics and pricing when the 2027 model year comes along, but it only serves to prove just how big a deal Mercedes-AMG believes this will be.

A new look

In person, the new GT bears almost no resemblance to any of Benz’s prior EVs. No more bulbous, nautical EQS shapes or minorly smoothed over boxy G-Wagen aesthetic. The new design is more aided by digital renderings and iterative algorithms, especially the jutting front grille, reclined headlights, and Kamm-tail rear end—a bit of Aston Martin fore and aft. From the profile view, the proportions fit somewhere between a Porsche Panamera or Taycan, low-slung and slippery for ideal aerodynamic efficiency.

Read full article

Comments

AMD may have something on the horizon for people who are looking to stretch their current PC (and its DDR4 RAM kit) just a little further. Leaks spotted by Tom's Hardware point to the existence of an "AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition," a re-release of a 4-year-old out-of-circulation CPU that might nevertheless be an upgrade for people with older Ryzen CPUs in Socket AM4 motherboards.

The "X3D" in the chip's name signifies that it comes with 64MB of extra L3 cache stacked on top of the main CPU die, bringing the total amount of L3 cache to 96MB. Workloads that benefit from extra cache—including most games—will perform much better on the 5800X3D than they do on the vanilla Ryzen 7 5800X.

Read full article

Comments

The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of a user’s browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. Depending on the browser, the connections either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted.

Unfixed for 29 months (and counting)

The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices.

Read full article

Comments

The remarks came on May 19 as Trump gave reporters a personal tour of the ballroom project that has already involved the demolition of the White House mansion’s East Wing. The president spoke of installing a rooftop drone base “for unlimited numbers of drones” operated by the US military as a “drone port that would protect all of Washington,” according to Reuters. He also highlighted a ballroom roof made from “impenetrable steel” that would supposedly be “drone-proof” against potential drone strikes.

To pay for such measures, Trump has been urging Republican lawmakers in the US Congress to approve $1 billion in taxpayer funding to provide a wide variety of “security adjustments and upgrades” for his ballroom project. The taxpayer-backed security enhancements would be separate from the $400 million construction cost for the ballroom project that has been funded by private donors, including companies such as Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Comcast, Google, HP Inc., Lockheed Martin, Meta, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Palantir, Ripple, and T-Mobile.

Read full article

Comments

In a report from Variety today, the spokesperson said that Disney, which took total ownership of Hulu in June 2025, will continue to sell subscriptions to Hulu in the US and that “there are no current plans to sunset the Hulu app.”

Disney owned two-thirds of Hulu before closing its acquisition of the streaming service’s remaining third from Comcast last year. Since then, some reports have suggested that the Hulu app would be phased out in 2026, while others have speculated that Disney would likely, but not definitely, shutter Hulu. Disney’s statement today means that people should be able to continue watching stuff on Hulu without having to pay for Disney+ for the foreseeable future; although, Disney is free to change its mind at any point.

Read full article

Comments

Beyond its potential utility for Colossal's intended efforts, the work is personally interesting to me because it may solve a problem I faced in my research days. I'm going to start by describing the research problem that Colossal may have solved, before coming back to what it hopes to use its technology to do—and why the company still has a few key hurdles left to overcome.

Watching development

For part of my career, I studied the development of vertebrates using chickens. While they're less closely related to us than something like mice, the basics of their development are largely the same. And, unlike mice, they develop outside of their mother's body. If you're careful, you can chip away a hole in the egg, perform manipulations on the developing embryo, and then seal it back up with some tape. The chicken embryo will keep developing, allowing you to see the impact of what you've done on normal development.

Read full article

Comments

While other states imposed restrictions on prediction markets, Minnesota banned them outright in a law signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Monday. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced a lawsuit against the state, saying that Minnesota's "new legislation represents the most aggressive move by a state to shut down CFTC-regulated markets and undermine the federal regulatory regime set up by Congress more than 50 years ago."

“This Minnesota law turns lawful operators and participants in prediction markets into felons overnight,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said. “Minnesota farmers have relied on critical hedging products on weather and crop-related events for decades to mitigate their risks. Governor Walz chose to put special interests first and American farmers and innovators last.”

Read full article

Comments

Google started testing AI Mode for search just over a year ago, making the shift official at I/O 2025. You hear a lot of complaints around the Internet about how AI is changing Google's search products, but Google is getting what it wants: more searches. Reid revealed at I/O 2026 that AI Mode usage has been doubling every quarter. There are now more than 1 billion people using AI Mode every month.

It's not hard to see how that could be true. AI Mode invites a conversational experience—it asks you questions—and each of those follow-up queries counts as searches. Google has also pushed AI Mode very hard, including prominent links and nudges to get people to use its search chatbot instead of the traditional product. And unlike many of Google's other AI experiences, you don't have to pay anything to AI search. Everyone who uses Google search gets the full AI experience.

Read full article

Comments

In a press release, Bushart's legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) confirmed that Bushart agreed to dismiss his lawsuit in exchange for the "substantial settlement."

"I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated," Bushart said. "The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family."

Read full article

Comments

This week, Sweden's minister of foreign affairs, Maria Malmer Stenergard, shared her country's assessment that the Russian economy has likely contracted over the last five years amid the war in Ukraine. Inflation is also high, and international sanctions have cost Russia $450 billion since the onset of the war in February 2022. Russia's economy is currently smaller than that of Texas, Stenergard said.

By most measures, then, the economy is not in tip-top shape. Moreover, the war is draining a large amount of the country's financial resources, with defense spending reaching a post-Soviet record of about 7 percent of government spending.

Read full article

Comments

The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC), a US nonprofit that promotes and provides legal support for free and open source software projects, isn't happy about that—so much so that it has spent eight years trying to force the release of the complete source code for Vizio's Linux-based smart TV operating system.

Now, after numerous delays since the SFC filed suit in 2021, a California jury will decide in August whether Vizio must provide that code in executable form to SFC and any Vizio TV owner who wants it.

Read full article

Comments

The chip was added to a list of banned goods at China’s customs checkpoints last Friday, according to a copy of the document seen by the FT and two people with knowledge of the matter.

The move highlights Beijing’s determination to keep out Nvidia’s chips, especially the degraded versions made to comply with US export controls. The Chinese government wants to support domestic chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon as they catch up to their US rivals.

Read full article

Comments

The promotional robot demo has become a viral sensation among tech enthusiasts, spurring YouTube commenters to name the robots and the company to rapidly roll out related robot merchandise in response. Users on X have described the livestream in glowing terms, such as “the greatest product demo since Steve Jobs’ ‘one more thing.’” But despite such sentiments, it’s worth bearing in mind that even the most impressive robot demos represent narrow windows for understanding real-world robot capabilities.

Figure’s event began on May 13 as a planned eight-hour robot demonstration featuring the company’s latest Figure 03 robots. The chosen robotic task involved inspecting the bar codes on various small packages—including cardboard boxes and soft padded envelopes or bags—and then placing the packages on a conveyor belt with the bar codes facing downward. The demo would feature the robots performing the task autonomously without any human intervention, according to Figure CEO Brett Adcock.

Read full article

Comments

BARCELONA, Spain—Volvo unveiled its new all-electric EX60 in January with a slew of distinctions. The EX60 is the first model on the company's all-EV SPA3 platform, a scalable base upon which Volvo plans to build a range of other vehicles.

With up to 400 miles (643 km) of range and faster charging than any other Volvo vehicle, this EV carries a lot of hopes and dreams. Volvo says it completely changed how it builds cars for the EX60, refining every stage of production. Part of the building process is called megacasting, a technique that converts molten aluminum into one lightweight piece. The model also boasts 800 V charging and cell-to-body integration, a structural load-bearing battery design that integrates battery cells directly into the vehicle’s floor and walls.

While the market may seem wishy-washy on EVs right now, at least in the United States, most automakers with EVs already in the works are plowing forward. Volvo launched the compact EX30 at the end of 2023 and discontinued it this year due to shifting conditions and tariffs, but the three-row EX90 continues the lineup alongside the new EX60. Priced at $59,795 for the entry-level P6 Plus, the 2027 EX60 ranges up to $68,745 for the P10 AWD Ultra, which is more powerful and has a longer range. Volvo says the P12, which will have even more power and range, is on the horizon.

Read full article

Comments

"To evaluate and manage threats to personal safety, property, and law enforcement, the FBI requires professional service firms that can provide License Plate Readers (LPRs) for tracking subjects on roads and highways over the US and its territories," the FBI said in a Request for Proposals (RFP) published on May 14. The FBI said the winning bidder or bidders "must provide law enforcement and/or commercial license plate reader data provided through the Contractor’s existing platform." The system must cover 75 percent of locations, the FBI said.

The system must offer the ability to search for license plate information "and other descriptive data such as vehicle description information, time/date criteria, and geo-location criteria," the FBI said. "Additionally, the system must provide search result notifications. The Contractor system must have the ability to access and/or query cameras across the United States and its territories. The Contractor system must be capable of providing this data in near real time."

Read full article

Comments

Prime Video has released one last trailer for its upcoming live action series, Spider-Noir, starring Nicolas Cage, and once again it has been released in two formats: one in black and white (below) and another in color (above), which the showrunners are calling “True Hue.” Seriously, the more footage we see of this series, the more eager we are to find out if it lives up to its marketing. And the final trailer—which really plays up the deadpan humor and is set to Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black"—is very promising.

As previously reported, Marvel Comics created its “noir” line in 2009, reinterpreting familiar Marvel characters in an alternate universe, usually set during the Great Depression in the US. A version of the Spider-Noir character, voiced by Cage, briefly appeared in the animated masterpieces Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Across the Spider-Verse (2023). (He is set to reprise that role in the upcoming Beyond the Spider-Verse.)

Cage is playing Ben Reilly, a hard-boiled PI with a secret superhero identity, The Spider. Per the official premise: “Spider-Noir tells the story of Ben Reilly, a seasoned, down on his luck private investigator in 1930s New York, who is forced to grapple with his past life, following a deeply personal tragedy, as the city’s one and only superhero.”

Read full article

Comments

The answer is complex. It is not necessarily the money. The space agency's science budget this year is $7.25 billion, roughly the same as it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation. This is despite attempts by the Trump administration to drastically reduce NASA science funding.

In the early months of his tenure, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's focus has been on human spaceflight and the Moon. This isn't terribly surprising given NASA's wildly successful Artemis II mission carrying four astronauts around the Moon last month. Since taking office in December, Isaacman has announced an overhaul of the Artemis program, canceling a space station to be built in orbit around the Moon in favor of construction of a base on the lunar surface.

Read full article

Comments

The new price will not affect current Lifetime Plex Pass holders.

A Lifetime Plex Pass allows you to stream from your own Plex Media Server to a device connected to your own network, to stream from the server remotely, and to allow others to stream remotely from your server.

Read full article

Comments

While Google says its system will also work for physics, both groups exclusively present biological data, and largely straightforward hypotheses—this drug will work for that. So, this is not an attempt to replace either scientists or the scientific process. Instead, it's meant to help with what current AIs are best at: chewing through massive amounts of information that humans would struggle to come to grips with.

What's this good for?

There are some distinctions between the two systems, but both are what is termed agentic; they operate in the background by calling out to separate tools. (Microsoft has taken a similar approach with its science assistant as well; OpenAI seems to be an exception in that it simply tuned an LLM for biology.) And, while there are differences between them that we'll highlight, they are both focused on the same general issue: the utter profusion of scientific information.

Read full article

Comments