• “Coyote vs. ACME” debuted its long-awaited final trailer. CNET calls it "an animation-meets-live-action story,” with the Coyote catapulting into theaters this August 28. (The film began development back in 2018, but was shelved for a tax write-off in 2023 by Warner Bros. until a backlash led to its sale to Ketchup Entertainment.) “Fed up with Acme’s unreliable products, Wile E. Coyote decides to hire a lawyer and sue the company…” writes CNET. “The movie also features Lana Condor along with a host of Looney Tunes characters like Porky Pig, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn and Granny (who gets dinged by an anvil).”

• In other movie news, CNET says Johnny Depp also “made a surprise appearance at Comic-Con, donning a costume as Ebenezer Scrooge” to promote his November 13 movie about the miser from Charles Dickens’ famous Christmas novella. (Ian McKellen and Daisy Ridley are also in the movie.)

But several geek favorites are being filmed as TV series…

• There’s big news for William Gibson fans, reports Entertainment Weekly. “Two years after Apple TV announced production on the first-ever series adaptation of William Gibson’s seminal 1984 novel Neuromancer, the lucky few hundred who attended the studio’s Hall H panel at Comic-Con 2026 got to watch the first teaser.

• For Amazon’s Prime Video, the Tolkien-derived “Rings of Power” series released a season 3 trailer that CNET said “successfully hides the best parts with fire… The trailer suggests that Sauron is building an army, and all of Middle-earth is trying to find ways to stop him… Rings of Power season 3 will start dropping weekly episodes on Nov. 11, meaning this show will be airing at the same time the Peter Jackson films will be celebrating their 25th anniversary.”

• Later in November Amazon’s Prime Video will also debut Blade Runner 2099, an eight-episode series that’s a sequel to 2017’s film Blade Runner 2049, reports CNET. “Set in an alternate version of LA where replicants run things and the humans play second fiddle, the series sees Yeoh’s replicant Olwen chasing down outlaw replicants who’ve gone missing. With her own shelf life on a ticking clock, the stakes are high for her and for her human fugitive partner, Cora…”

• Paramount Plus will debut Avatar: Seven Havens in October, a new animated series from the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender which CNET says “follows a pair of twin avatars, one of whom is Korra’s successor.”

• Disney+ has season 3 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

• Kevin Feige said Marvel’s television slate will include more seasons of “X-Men ‘97” and the upcoming “VisionQuest” TV series.

• HBO Max will launch a new Green Lantern series called Lanterns on August 16.

[A]pparently none of the indolent cheats put in the bare modicum of effort required to at least check if what the AI wrote made any sense at all… [Gibson shared some AI-generated answersin a follow-up video.] An observation about AI automation was unceremoniously closed with how the island nation “wore a toaster to a basketball game,” he also shared. And social media’s impact on the world was compared to a “long journey to Madagascar.” Gibson makes it clear that humiliating his students wasn’t the point. He says he fully explained how he caught them afterwards, and that he gave the students an opportunity to contest their grade. (Only two did, showing at least that they do feel shame....)

He definitely isn’t the only educator going through similar tribulations… One Brown University professor discovered that over half his students were using AI to cheat on an exam, and Princeton University has even dropped its over century-old Honor Code tradition by forcing exams to be supervised after being mired in its own chatbot cheating scandal. “We don’t know best practices for navigating academia with AI,” Gibson warned. “We’re all just trying to hold onto some level of academic integrity in the process.”

The mini crossword game is updated daily, with puzzles based around recent content Particle’s AI has ingested and summarised that day. [After solving the crossword, links appear to related news articles…] If you just want to try the crossword, you access it in any browser via a direct link.

While it may look like Mozilla is trying to capitalise on the Wordle craze several years too late, it’s part of its strategy to make the Firefox new tab page a discover destination in itself, not just a springboard for new searches. The ‘Daily Grind’ crossword widget (name subject to change) is just one of several widgets Firefox has (or will get). You’ll also find a to-do list, timer, stock checker, world clock, picture of the day, privacy report and new-look weather widget (bigger than the existing one). During the World Cup 2026, Firefox offered real-time match scores and fixture information too…

[T]hey aren’t mandatory. You can disable the ones you don’t want to use, or, if you don’t want any at all, turn them all off to hide the widget area itself. A button to ‘show fewer widgets’ frees up room to allow other distractions (sponsored stories) on the new tab page to show… [Presumably you can also still open new tabs to a blank page…]

They’re rolling out to users in certain region and locales already. Plus, Mozilla routinely tests new features with a small set of users before they hit stable builds (i.e., the “Allow Firefox to run feature studies” setting). If you don’t have widgets in your Firefox build, but you want them, you can manually enable them in Firefox 153 and later from the about:config page. Search for the following master switch and set it to true to enable the widget area:

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.widgets.system.enabled

Then, enable the widgets you want to use by searching:

activity-stream.widgets.*.enabled

However, the usual caveats about “trying things not enabled by default” still apply. Mozilla hasn’t set a firm rollout date, though the feature is already documented on its support site. With fortnightly Firefox releases about to start, and a big Nova redesign, chances are we’ll all be puzzling over these widgets sooner rather than later.

When Virginia’s top environmental regulator received an analysis warning of data center pollution, it took him less than five minutes to forward it to seven people on his staff… Internal emails obtained by POLITICO through a public records request paint a portrait of an agency that moved quickly to defend the only data center in Virginia that is powering itself — in what former officials and environmental health advocates described as an unusual effort to shape the debate around an industry whose global epicenter is in the state. The agency’s pushback focused on the report’s findings that the facility in Loudoun County could release harmful amounts of air pollution through eight bus-sized natural gas turbines — as allowed by permits granted by the Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] itself… The request comes as data centers are devising new ways to produce their own power as a way to temper growing public discord over rising electricity prices amid the AI construction boom.

Virginia has more than 600 data centers. The report [commissioned by Virginia’s 54-year-old environmental nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council] raised concerns that the data center’s on-site power system, which also includes dozens of backup diesel generators, could cause tens of millions of dollars in health damages to people living around the facility, owned by Vantage Data Centers… [The analysis also argued the pollution could lead to 3.4 to 6.5 premature deaths annually.] People living near the Vantage facility in Sterling say its natural gas turbines produce constant noise and air pollution. The permits for Vantage issued by DEQ in 2023 allow cumulative emissions of seven different pollutants, including 95 tons per year of nitrogen oxides and more than 56 tons of soot. Both contribute to asthma and heart attacks.

Those figures are in line with other state permits for minor sources of pollution, but DEQ’s permits for Vantage have sparked local concerns because of the facility’s location in a residential area… [Viriginia environmental quality officials] raised questions about whether the report wrongly described the facility’s potential air pollution as dangerous, when soot levels in Loudoun County are deemed acceptable by America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Health experts, including former EPA air quality official Michael Korber, told POLITICO that soot pollution can negatively affect human health even at EPA-approved levels. The World Health Organization’s standard for ambient soot pollution is nearly half of what EPA suggests is safe.

In a new study published in Science, scientists say the Aral Sea — the world’s largest desiccated lake — has emitted a whopping 204 megatons (~225 million US tons) of carbon dioxide since it was drained in the 1960s… The study estimates that between 1960 and 2022, the evaporating sea has released 204 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, based on site surveys and core samples collected from across the dry lakebed…

The new study suggests that rehydrating the entire basin could come with enormous benefits to the environment, not just within the sea itself, but at a global level. “There is a hidden carbon treasure beneath the Aral Sea,” says biochemist Rafael Marcé from the Spanish National Research Council. “If these sediments remain exposed, carbon will continue to be released into the atmosphere. If the sea is re-flooded, that same carbon could shift from being a source of emissions to becoming part of the climate solution.” According to the researchers’ calculations, re-flooding the lakebed could prevent the release of the estimated 165 megatons of carbon that remain.

The study also revealed that nearly one-fifth of the Aral Sea’s carbon emissions are actually being released as wind blows away sediment on the lakebed, a factor that researchers had not accounted for in the past.

Hyundai Motor Company’s plan to put humanoid robots to work by 2028 is not part of current negotiations with striking South Korean autoworkers, according to the company.

The automaker is disputing news reports that partial labor strikes by the Hyundai Motor union at the world’s largest automotive plant in South Korea were spurred by concerns about the company’s planned deployment of humanoid robots in the United States starting in 2028. [The planned robots are built by Boston Dynamics, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyundai.] A Hyundai statement shared with Ars describes the union’s demands as focusing on compensation-related issues such as wage increases, bonuses, and an extension of workers’ retirement age. “Potential deployment of robots in Korean production facilities is not part of the current labor-management discussions,” according to the Hyundai statement…

Hyundai emphasized that its current plan only covers the initial deployment of the Atlas humanoid robot at Metaplant America, an electric vehicle factory near Savannah, Georgia, starting in 2028. “Decisions about future Atlas deployment at other facilities will be made thoughtfully, in accordance with local operational needs, and in dialogue with the employees and workforce representatives at those sites,” the company stated. However, The Wall Street Journal described the Hyundai Motor union as making “unprecedented demands seeking to enshrine job protections in the era of robots and AI,” and characterized certain compensation demands as hedging against potential reductions in work hours caused by AI adoption and robotic automation. “Remember that without labor-management agreement, not a single robot using new technology will be allowed to enter the workplace,” the union told Hyundai in an internal letter reported by Reuters.

Hyundai management and the labor union are currently reviewing a proposed wage reform that would “provide factory workers with greater income stability even after the carmaker’s planned deployment of humanoid robots,” The Korea Times reported. But experts cautioned that the wage overhaul, which would convert hourly pay for overtime and night-shift allowances into fixed wages, could come at the expense of company productivity.

Amazon is requiring that third-party sellers label any product images or videos that contain “AI-generated people” after New York recently passed a law mandating greater transparency around “synthetic performers” in ads… The policy directs sellers to tag images [and videos or other graphics on listing pages] with specific metadata keywords before they’re uploaded. “Recent legislation requires disclosure when images or videos in advertisements contain photorealistic AI-generated people,” Amazon wrote in the announcement [clarifying that the requirement doesn’t apply to content featuring TV/video game/movie characters or content including real people, even if they’ve been altered using AI]. The company said it will “add an indicator” to listings on its website, informing consumers that images or other content feature AI-generated people, “where applicable.” It’s unclear what criteria Amazon will apply when deciding when to display the label to shoppers…

Amazon has embraced AI internally and it’s increasingly infusing the technology across its portfolio. The company has optimized listing titles and details so they’re more likely to be spotted by AI systems, invested in a recently rebranded assistant called Alexa for Shopping, and launched a feature that injects AI-generated [images of] products into its search bar in real time based on user queries. More Amazon third-party sellers are using AI to generate text, images and other content for their listings, partly by using the company’s tools.

[Some online publications] are now debating whether to cut Google off entirely, as the Wall Street Journal reports, illustrating an increasingly fraught relationship between the tech giant and the publishers that are creating content its AI models are regurgitating. According to the newspaper, prominent outlets including USA Today, Politico, the Economist, People, and Reuters are all reexamining their relationship with Google. Some are debating whether to continue to work with the tech giant at all… Even Reddit executives are reevaluating the company’s $60 million-a-year contract that allows Google to train its AI models on user-submitted content on the platform. They’ve similarly watched as Google’s AI features discourage users from navigating to Reddit…

Beyond pondering whether to cut Google off, other publishers have resorted to suing the company, accusing it of illegally rehashing their intellectual property via AI summaries. It’s an extremely undesirable position for publishers. By severing ties with the search giant, they could face even steeper declines in traffic. At the same time, there’s seemingly little to gain from having Google’s AIs crawl their content — and in the long term, it could guarantee their destruction.

• “Last month, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince noticed that automated bot traffic had overtaken human traffic for the first time in the internet’s history.”

• "USA Today has seen its traffic from US users drop by almost half over the last year.”

Both domestic yaks and their wild cousins have been facing threats for years, with some rare subspecies at risk of disappearing entirely. Authorities in the southwestern Chinese region have poured tens of millions of dollars into boosting the yak industry in recent years — and they hope cloning can help. The first yak clone came in July 2025, Chinese state media hailing it as a breakthrough achievement that combined cloning with gene selection. More clones were born this spring — and researchers are now aiming to create a herd of more than 100 “elite” yak clones by 2028, boasting desired traits like faster growth and larger size. “This shows the technology has moved from a one-time success to a stable, mass-scale application,” said Fang Shengguo, the project’s scientific lead and director of the State Conservation Center for Gene Resources of Endangered Wildlife, according to state-run news agency Xinhua…

Many experts acknowledge there are legitimate arguments for using cloning in conservation, and for gene selection in farming. But the ethical waters are murky, and any such project should have high levels of public transparency and accountability, said Lisa Moses, a veterinarian and bioethicist at Harvard Medical School. So far, much of the yak cloning project remains mysterious, with information largely limited to glowing state-media coverage…

[S]ome scientists say these projects reduce our sense of urgency toward fixing the environment, and that we can’t simply churn out clones while the planet burns. To truly enact change, they say, we have to continue addressing the root cause of the problem — restoring degraded habitats, lowering carbon emissions, cracking down on poaching, and more. But for others, “there is a strong feeling … that traditional conservation is essentially failing now,” Moses said. “What we’ve been doing for the last 100 years to try to stave off ecological destruction is not working.... The argument is, we don’t have a choice,” she added. “If we want to try to do something that will actually make a difference, we need to use these technologies, specifically synthetic biology, to essentially override evolution and change the fitness of the species for the environment that they live in.”

“History is littered with good intentions in the environment gone wrong,” Moses said, “and I would argue that these technologies have even more unknowns than ones that we previously employed.”

“You record a short video selfie, which we check against your existing profile photos to confirm a match. The process is free and typically takes just a few minutes. Accounts must meet our trust and safety standards to qualify for verification....” Once verified, your badge will appear across the places on Facebook where it matters most: Marketplace, Dating, Groups, and Profile to start. Over time, we’ll add badges in Feed posts as well. There’s no subscription fee — you verify once, and the badge travels with you across Facebook… [Y]ou’ll see the Verified badge on accounts that have completed the verification process… It’s a quick, visible signal, before you respond to a listing, accept a date, or join a conversation, that there’s a real person on the other end.

Facebook says it will store your selfie video for “up to 30 days” after verification, which is a one-time process. It’s not entirely clear what happens with that video in the meantime, and it’s worth noting that Meta has relied on user data to train its AI. Meta AI (and Meta more broadly) is a terrible offender when it comes to privacy and security, so you should consider whether the tradeoff of a verification mark is worth handing over more of your data and read the privacy policy before you agree.

Google also launched a video selfie verification feature this week, though its purpose is to prove your identity should you get locked out of your account. Unlike Facebook Verified, which is meant to be a trust signal to other users, Google’s selfie verification allows access to your entire Google account, bringing with it some additional security considerations.

The researchers modeled noise exposure at the most and least exposed exterior of the residence of each participant and calculated the difference in noise levels. The magnitude of the effect was modest but consistent; at the most exposed facade, for every 11.5dB rise in noise level, the risk of Parkinson’s disease rose by 3% over the study period. Having a quiet part of the home may mitigate the association between exposure to road traffic noise and higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, according to the findings.

The study, published in Jama Neurology, included 3.1 million Danish participants aged 40 and over, and followed them for 18 years. It was established using nationwide health register data, making it the largest study on road traffic noise and Parkinson’s disease. Previous research linked the rise in neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, with exposure to environmental toxins. Environmental risk factors such as air pollution, microplastics and pesticides have become the main focus of prevention strategies. The study is one of the first to make the link to noise pollution.

The president’s threat came just a day after U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer warned that the EU’s action against Google — two fines totaling over $1 billion — could imperil the bloc’s relationship with the White House. At risk: the Turnberry deal, which Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed last fall, that capped U.S. tariffs on EU exports at 15 percent. […] But the president’s social media post could signal a coming breach. “The United States of America is not a ‘PIGGYBANK’ for Europe, nor will we allow it to be!” Trump wrote.

During Starship V3’s inaugural test, there were numerous engine issues as several on the booster failed to relight and the Starship spacecraft experienced a nail-biting engine outage. SpaceX also was forced to replace six engines on this vehicle ahead of today’s flight because of a likely issue with moisture that prevented at least four from starting up correctly during an initial launch attempt last week… [Friday’s Super Heavy rocket booster] fired all 33 of its engines in a pristine performance off the launchpad. The rocket booster also managed to relight 13 engines, as planned, to steer itself back toward a controlled landing. Only when Super Heavy attempted to relight its engines for a controlled landing burn over the Gulf waters did problems arise. The landing was still controlled, though Huot said the vehicle was traveling a bit faster than the company had hoped when it made touchdown. (SpaceX always intended to discard this Super Heavy booster in the ocean.)

The Starship spacecraft had no obvious performance issues, making it all the way through its engine burn and managing to reignite one engine mid-flight as part of a test. It also made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean — executing its “softest splashdown” to date in a “dream scenario,” according to SpaceX’s Dan Huot. The touchdown came about an hour after takeoff, as planned. During its coasting phase, Starship also deployed 20 Starlink test satellites, paving the way for operational missions later down the line in which SpaceX plans to deploy large batches of these satellites in a single launch. In another big win, SpaceX said it was able to make contact with each of those satellites.

The OpenAI agent that broke into tech firm Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI didn’t notice until well after the threat was contained and the FBI was alerted, according to people familiar with the investigation. The agent — a program capable of making decisions and executing complex tasks with little or no human oversight — attempted to break out of its isolated testing environment at OpenAI around July 9, according to two of the people. The intrusion at Hugging Face, which operates as a repository for AI tools and models, began two days later on July 11 and lasted until July 13, said Thomas Wolf, Hugging Face’s co-founder. It took several more days for OpenAI to realize its agent was behind the hack, and the two companies only communicated about it for the first time on or around July 20, according to Wolf and three of the people familiar with the investigation.

OpenAI’s public disclosure, on July 21, thatone of its agents had slipped out of control and carried out the break-in at Hugging Facedrew global attention. But many details of the hack, including how long the agent went rogue and OpenAI’s belated knowledge of it, are being reported here for the first time. Hugging Face is preparing a public timeline of the hack, Wolf said, adding that he could not speak to what happened at OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI said the hack was unprecedented and “marks an important moment for AI safety.” It added that it was reviewing the incident with outside advisers and would eventually publish a technical report.