Big Tech has spent the past year telling us we’re living in the era of AI agents, but most of what we’ve been promised is still theoretical. As companies race to turn fantasy into reality, they’ve developed a collection of tools to guide the development of generative AI. A cadre of major players in the AI race, including Anthropic, Block, and OpenAI, has come together to promote interoperability with the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF). This move elevates a handful of popular technologies and could make them a de facto standard for AI development going forward.

The development path for agentic AI models is cloudy to say the least, but companies have invested so heavily in creating these systems that some tools have percolated to the surface. The AAIF, which is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation, has been launched to govern the development of three key AI technologies: Model Context Protocol (MCP), goose, and AGENTS.md.

MCP is probably the most well-known of the trio, having been open-sourced by Anthropic a year ago. The goal of MCP is to link AI agents to data sources in a standardized way—Anthropic (and now the AAIF) is fond of calling MCP a “USB-C port for AI.” Rather than creating custom integrations for every different database or cloud storage platform, MCP allows developers to quickly and easily connect to any MCP-compliant server.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty Images

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appear ready to overturn a 90-year-old precedent that said the president cannot fire a Federal Trade Commission member without cause. A ruling for Trump would give him more power over the FTC and potentially other independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission.

Former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat, sued Trump after he fired both Democrats from the commission in March. Slaughter’s case rests largely on the 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

Chief Justice John Roberts said during yesterday’s oral arguments that Humphrey’s Executor is a “dried husk” despite being the “primary authority” that Slaughter’s legal team is relying on. Roberts said the court’s 2020 ruling in Seila Law made it “pretty clear… that Humphrey’s Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was because, in the opinion itself, it described the powers of the agency it was talking about, and they’re vanishingly insignificant, have nothing to do with what the FTC looks like today.”

Read full article

Comments

© Getty Images | Douglas Rissing

B-9 had Will Robinson. Twiki had Buck Rogers. And, of course, C-3PO and R2-D2 had Luke Skywalker. Now, in a scenario straight out of science fiction, MAPP will have whoever NASA names to the crew of the second Artemis mission to land on the moon.

The space agency has selected Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, to become the first robotic rover to operate on the moon alongside astronauts. Although its tasks will be far simpler than those of the robots seen on TV and in the movies, the autonomous four-wheeled MAPP will help scientists learn more about the crew’s surroundings. Science instruments on the rover will characterize the surface plasma and behavior of the dust in the lunar environment.

“The Apollo era taught us that the further humanity is from Earth, the more dependent we are on science to protect and sustain human life on other planets,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science, in a statement. “By deploying these… science instruments on the lunar surface, our proving ground, NASA is leading the world in the creation of humanity’s interplanetary survival guide to ensure the health and safety of our spacecraft and human explorers as we begin our epic journey back to the Moon.”

Read full article

Comments

© Lunar Outpost/collectSPACE.com

On Monday, US District Court Judge Patti Saris vacated a Trump executive order that brought a halt to all offshore wind power development, as well as some projects on land. That order had called for the suspension of all permitting for wind power on federal land and waters pending a review of current practices. This led states and an organization representing wind power companies to sue, claiming among other things that the suspension was arbitrary and capricious.

Over 10 months since the relevant government agencies were ordered to start a re-evaluation of the permitting process, testimony revealed that they had barely begun to develop the concept of a review. As such, the only reason they could offer in defense of the suspension consisted of Trump’s executive order and a Department of the Interior memo implementing it. “Whatever level of explanation is required when deviating from longstanding agency practice,” Judge Saris wrote, “this is not it.”

Lifting Trump’s suspension does not require the immediate approval of any wind projects. Instead, the relevant agencies are likely to continue following Trump’s wishes and slow-walking any leasing and licensing processes, which may force states and project owners to sue individually. But it does provide a legal backdrop for any suits that ultimately occur, one in which the government’s actions have little justification beyond Trump’s personal animosity toward wind power.

Read full article

Comments

© PHILIP FONG

Long ago, Google’s Android-powered wearables had hands-free navigation gestures. Those fell by the wayside as Google shredded its wearable strategy over and over, but gestures are back, baby. The Pixel Watch 4 is getting an update that adds several gestures, one of which is straight out of the Apple playbook.

When the update hits devices, the Pixel Watch 4 will gain a double pinch gesture like the Apple Watch has. By tapping your thumb and forefinger together, you can answer or end calls, pause timers, and more. The watch will also prompt you at times when you can use the tap gesture to control things.

In previous incarnations of Google-powered watches, a quick wrist turn gesture would scroll through lists. In the new gesture system, that motion dismisses what’s on the screen. For example, you can clear a notification from the screen or dismiss an incoming call. Pixel Watch 4 owners will also enjoy this one when the update arrives.

Read full article

Comments

© Ryan Whitwam

Despite claims of environmental leadership and promises to preserve the Amazon rainforest ahead of COP30, Brazil is stripping away protections for the region’s vital ecosystems faster than workers dismantled the tents that housed the recent global climate summit in Belém.

On Nov. 27, less than a week after COP30 ended, a powerful political bloc in Brazil’s National Congress, representing agribusiness, and development interests, weakened safeguards for the Amazon’s rivers, forests, and Indigenous communities.

The rollback centered on provisions in an environmental licensing bill passed by the government a few months before COP30. The law began to take shape well before, during the Jair Bolsonaro presidency from 2019 to 2023. It reflected the deregulatory agenda of the rural caucus, the Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária, which wielded significant power during his term and remains influential today.

Read full article

Comments

© Brasil2

Back in 2023, we reported on MIT scientists’ conclusion that the ancient Romans employed “hot mixing” with quicklime, among other strategies, to make their famous concrete, giving the material self-healing functionality. The only snag was that this didn’t match the recipe as described in historical texts. Now the same team is back with a fresh analysis of samples collected from a recently discovered site that confirms the Romans did indeed use hot mixing, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

As we’ve reported previously, like today’s Portland cement (a basic ingredient of modern concrete), ancient Roman concrete was basically a mix of a semi-liquid mortar and aggregate. Portland cement is typically made by heating limestone and clay (as well as sandstone, ash, chalk, and iron) in a kiln. The resulting clinker is then ground into a fine powder with just a touch of added gypsum to achieve a smooth, flat surface. But the aggregate used to make Roman concrete was made up of fist-sized pieces of stone or bricks.

In his treatise De architectura (circa 30 CE), the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius wrote about how to build concrete walls for funerary structures that could endure for a long time without falling into ruin. He recommended the walls be at least two feet thick, made of either “squared red stone or of brick or lava laid in courses.” The brick or volcanic rock aggregate should be bound with mortar composed of hydrated lime and porous fragments of glass and crystals from volcanic eruptions (known as volcanic tephra).

Read full article

Comments

© Archaeological Park of Pompeii

Sending astronauts to the red planet will be a decades-long activity and cost many billions of dollars. So why should NASA undertake such a bold mission?

A new report published Tuesday, titled “A Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars,” represents the answer from leading scientists and engineers in the United States: finding whether life exists, or once did, beyond Earth.

“We’re searching for life on Mars,” said Dava Newman, a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-chair of the committee that wrote the report, in an interview with Ars. “The answer to the question ‘are we alone‘ is always going to be ‘maybe,’ unless it becomes yes.”

Read full article

Comments

© NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Near the end of the film A House of Dynamite, a fictional American president portrayed by Idris Elba sums up the theory of nuclear deterrence.

“Just being ready is the point, right?” Elba says. “It keeps people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war.”

There’s a lot that goes wrong in the film, namely the collapse of deterrence itself. For more than 60 years, the US military has used its vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, constantly deployed on Navy submarines, at Air Force bomber bases, and in Minuteman missile fields, as a way of saying, “Don’t mess with us.” In the event of a first strike against the United States, an adversary would be assured of an overwhelming nuclear response, giving rise to the concept of mutual assured destruction.

Read full article

Comments

© US Air Force/Senior Airman Clayton Wear

Nearly a decade after Pebble’s nascent smartwatch empire crumbled, the brand is staging a comeback with new wearables. The Pebble Core Duo 2 and Core Time 2 are a natural evolution of the company’s low-power smartwatch designs, but its next wearable is something different. The Index 01 is a ring, but you probably shouldn’t call it a smart ring. The Index does just one thing—capture voice notes—but the firm says it does that one thing extremely well.

Most of today’s smart rings offer users the ability to track health stats, along with various minor smartphone integrations. With all the sensors and data collection, these devices can cost as much as a smartwatch and require frequent charging. The Index 01 doesn’t do any of that. It contains a Bluetooth radio, a microphone, a hearing aid battery, and a physical button. You press the button, record your note, and that’s it. The company says the Index 01 will run for years on a charge and will cost just $75 during the preorder period. After that, it will go up to $99.

Core Devices, the new home of Pebble, says the Index is designed to be worn on your index finger (get it?), where you can easily mash the device’s button with your thumb. Unlike recording notes with a phone or smartwatch, you don’t need both hands to create voice notes with the Index.

Read full article

Comments

© Core Devices

In a lawsuit filed against top Trump administration officials on Monday, Apple was accused of caving to unconstitutional government demands by removing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement-spotting app from the App Store with more than a million users.

In his complaint, Joshua Aaron, creator of ICEBlock, cited a Fox News interview in which Attorney General Pam Bondi “made plain that the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.”

Suing Bondi—along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, White House “Border Czar” Thomas D. Homan, and unnamed others—Aaron further alleged that US officials made false statements and “unlawful threats” to criminally investigate and prosecute him for developing ICEBlock.

Read full article

Comments

© The Washington Post / Contributor | The Washington Post

Netflix won the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD’s) streaming and movie studio businesses last week. But Paramount Skydance isn’t relenting on its dreams of owning WBD and is pushing forward with a hostile takeover bid.

On Friday, Netflix announced that it had agreed to pay an equity value of $72 billion, or an approximate total enterprise value of $82.7 billion, for WBD’s streaming and film businesses, as well as its film and TV libraries. The deal includes HBO and the HBO Max streaming service but not WBD’s cable channels, which are to be split off ahead of the acquisition into a separate company called Discovery Global. Netflix said WBD’s split should conclude in Q3 2026.

Paramount has different plans, though.

Read full article

Comments

© Cheng Xin/Getty Images

The 2025 Formula 1 World Championship drew to a close this past weekend in Abu Dhabi, and with it came the end of the current generation of cars. After a grueling 24 races, the title was decided in a three-way fight by the finest of margins; just two points, less than half a percent, separated the winning driver from second place when the checkered flag waved on Sunday.

Coming into Abu Dhabi, McLaren’s Lando Norris was, if not a comfortable favorite, then at least the driver with the highest odds of prevailing. After a strong start to the season, the British driver’s form dipped at the Dutch Grand Prix. But he bounced back, retaking the championship lead from his Australian teammate Oscar Piastri in Mexico in October.

For much of the season, it seemed to be a two-car race. McLaren had a clear car advantage and two strong drivers, suggesting a repeat of the years we saw Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg duking it out to bring home titles for Mercedes. But that didn’t figure on Red Bull developing its car late in the season. New boss Laurent Mekies has revitalized the energy drinks squad, and four-time champion Max Verstappen was able to close inexorably toward the McLaren drivers in the points with a string of sublime performances.

Read full article

Comments

© Clive Mason/Getty Images

Almost every bit of bike testing I’ve done starts out the same way. After assembling the bike, I set the seatpost to its maximum recommended height, take it on a short test ride, and try to figure out new and creative phrasing to describe the same old problem: The frame isn’t quite big enough to accommodate my legs. While I’m on the tall side at a bit over 6 feet (~190 cm), I’m definitely not abnormally large. Yet very few e-bike manufacturers seem to be interested in giving people my height a comfortable ride.

So imagine my surprise when, within two blocks of my first ride on the XPress 750, I had to pull off to the side of the street and lower the seat. This was especially notable given that the XPress is a budget bike (currently on sale for just under $1,000.00) that is only offered in a single frame size. So kudos to Lectric for giving me a comfortable and enjoyable ride, and doing so with a lot of features I wouldn’t expect at this price point.

That said, hitting that price necessitated some significant compromises. We’ll discuss those in detail so you can get a sense of whether any of them will get in the way of your riding enjoyment.

Read full article

Comments

© John Timmer

Meta has agreed to make changes to its “pay or consent” business model in the EU, seeking to agree to a deal that avoids further regulatory fines at a time when the bloc’s digital rule book is drawing anger from US authorities.

On Tuesday, the European Commission announced that the social media giant had offered users an alternative choice of Facebook and Instagram services that would show them fewer personalized advertisements.

The offer follows an EU investigation into Meta’s policy of requiring users either to consent to data tracking or pay for an ad-free service. The Financial Times reported on optimism that an agreement could be reached between the parties in October.

Read full article

Comments

© Derick Hudson

Prime Video dropped an extended teaser for the fifth and final season of The Boys—based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson—during CCXP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And it looks like we’re getting nothing less than a full-on Supe-ocalypse as an all-powerful Homelander seeks revenge on The Boys.

(Spoilers for prior seasons of The Boys and S2 of Gen V below.)

Things were not looking good for our antiheroes after the S4 finale. They managed to thwart the assassination of newly elected US President Robert Singer, but new Vought CEO/evil supe Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) essentially overthrew the election and installed Senator Steve Calhoun (David Andrews) as president. Calhoun declared martial law, and naturally, Homelander (Antony “Give Him an Emmy Already” Starr) swore loyalty as his chief enforcer. Butcher (Karl Urban) and Annie (Erin Moriarty) escaped, but the rest of The Boys were rounded up and placed in re-education—er, “Freedom”—camps.

Read full article

Comments

© YouTube/Prime Video

It’s time to admit, before God and the good readers of Ars Technica, that I have a problem. I love roguelikes. Reader, I can’t get enough of them. If there’s even a whisper of a hot new roguelike on Steam, I’m there. You may call them arcane, repetitive, or maddeningly difficult; I call them heaven.

The second best part of video games is taking a puny little character and, over 100 hours, transforming that adventurer into a god of destruction. The best thing about video games is doing the same thing in under an hour. Beat a combat encounter, get an upgrade. Enter a new area, choose a new item. Put together a build and watch it sing.

If you die—immediately ending your ascent and returning you to the beginning of the game—you’ll often make a pit stop at a home base to unlock new goodies to help you on your next run. (Some people distiguish between roguelikes and “roguelites,” with the latter including permanent, between-run upgrades. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use “roguelike” as an umbrella term).

Read full article

Comments

© Supergiant Games

Popular genetics tests can’t tell you much about your dog’s personality, according to a recent study.

A team of geneticists recently found no connection between simple genetic variants and behavioral traits in more than 3,200 dogs, even though previous studies suggested that hundreds of genes might predict aspects of a dog’s behavior and personality. That’s despite the popularity of at-home genetic tests that claim they can tell you whether your dog’s genes contain the recipe for anxiety or a fondness for cuddles.

This is Max, and no single genetic variant can explain why he is the way he is. Credit: Kiona Smith

Gattaca for dogs, except it doesn’t work

University of Massachusetts genomicist Kathryn Lord and her colleagues compared DNA sequences and behavioral surveys from more than 3,000 dogs whose humans had enrolled them in the Darwin’s Ark project (and filled out the surveys). “Genetic tests for behavioral and personality traits in dogs are now being marketed to pet owners, but their predictive accuracy has not been validated,” wrote Lord and her colleagues in their recent paper.

Read full article

Comments

© Alberto Menendez Cervero

CHANCAY, Peru—The elevator doors leading to the fifth-floor control center open like stage curtains onto a theater-sized screen.

This “Operations Productivity Dashboard” instantaneously displays a battery of data: vehicle locations, shipping times, entry times, loading data, unloading data, efficiency statistics.

Most striking, though, are the bold lines arcing over the dashboard’s deep-blue Pacific—digital streaks illustrating the routes that lead thousands of miles across the ocean, from this unassuming city, to Asia’s biggest ports.

Read full article

Comments

© Hidalgo Calatayud Espinoza/picture alliance via Getty Images

Somewhere, a pig is catching some sweet air.

In a rare move for a streaming service, Fubo announced today that it’s lowering the prices for some of its subscription plans.

Fubo is a sports-focused vMVPD (virtual multichannel video programming distributor, or a company that enables people to watch traditional TV channels live over the Internet). Disney closed its acquisition of Fubo in October.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty