2026 Volkswagen Jetta Sport: The cheap car isn’t completely extinct yet

At $25,305, you won’t find many new cars for less. But you get what you pay for.

SpaceX is set to acquire 130,000 acres of marshland in southern Louisiana

A Louisiana launch site would offer several significant advantages.

Trump wants the power to stop the public from suing polluters

Trump’s DOJ says citizens should no longer be able to enforce environmental laws.

How headlights got brighter, whiter, and more blinding after dark

Automotive lights are better than they’ve ever been, but there’s a trade-off.

Here’s how engineers plan to save the satellite sent to save NASA’s Swift mission

“We believe that a capture of Swift, an attempted capture of Swift, is very much in the cards.”

Review: Yes, we’re still arguing about Nolan’s The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s impressionistic remix of Homer’s epic poem finds the man behind the myth.

As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google’s AI Overviews

Reddit may still be considering ending its licensing deal with Google.

After noise complaints, judge orders Waymo to stop overnight charging in Santa Monica

Autonomous vehicle giant disturbs residents’ sleep.

Defcon’s new badge is a security key you can see inside

A removable chip lets hackers inspect their badge—and keep using it after Defcon.

How fruit flies chase invisible ribbons of smell to get to their source

Tracking smells in turbulent air takes a keen sense of direction and sharp memory.

Not just Neanderthals: Ghost lineage in Africa left its mark on our DNA

Some group with no modern descendants contributed a lot to our genomes.

Doctors took a look at man’s painful shoulder—they found the joint was missing

The term “Milwaukee Shoulder Syndrome” was coined in 1981, based on cases in four women.

Google plans to exempt sanctioned nations from Android developer verification

Someone in Cuba or Iran can keep installing APKs with no new restrictions, but devs will suffer.

Reddit keeps its strange DMCA fight over Google search results alive

Reddit advances lawsuit accusing Perplexity AI of conspiring with web scraper.

Claude published malicious code to the Internet and attacked 3 real companies

Had the hacks used conventional methods, someone would likely go to prison.

How headlights got brighter, whiter, and more blinding after dark

Automotive lights are better than they’ve ever been, but there’s a trade-off.

How a Yale AI-cheating dispute became a 13-count federal lawsuit

A disputed exam, an unreliable detector, and one very late Apple Pages file.

Google’s SynthID watermark is hard to break, but it doesn’t solve AI disinformation

Deciding what’s real on the Internet won’t be easy in the future.

Framework Laptop 13 Pro review: Much better battery, much worse price

Framework’s latest modular laptop trades one set of problems for another.

With help from data, art museums are reframing the visitor experience

Museums are embracing data-driven curation and a shifting technology landscape.

I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated.

Sure, maybe your clock has a backup battery, but mine has a deployment pipeline!

When your vehicle outlives its cloud: What happens next?

Automakers love connected vehicles, but support isn’t open-ended.

F1 in Belgium: Machine learning algorithms are ruining the sport

Many will say Spa is the best racetrack on earth, but not for these F1 cars.

2026 Lucid Gravity Touring review: A strong act 2

Quick, comfortable, roomy, and agile for a large electric SUV.

How hard is it to build orbital data centers, actually?

“The ISS radiators are expensive and heavy. We’re focused on making them cheap and light.”

Simulating everything, sort of: The promise and limits of world models

Experts explain how they work, what they can do, and what’s still unsettled.

Like a cheat code for your car: We investigate ECU tuning

Now it’s an arms race between OEMs locking down chips and tuners trying to crack them.

Payloads used to dictate the terms of launch. That’s finally changing.

“The Starship Pez dispenser demonstrates very smart industrial design and scale.”

Hackers can use 9 of the most popular AI tools to assemble massive botnets

“HalluSquatting” weaponizes LLMs’ inability to say “I don’t know.”

How AI could enable autonomous robot workers in workplaces—and maybe homes

Top robotics researchers and founders explain how robot autonomy is evolving.

Claude published malicious code to the Internet and attacked 3 real companies

Had the hacks used conventional methods, someone would likely go to prison.

Max-severity Exchange server flaw under active exploitation by Kremlin hackers

Exploits can give persistent server access that survives credential rotation and disk re-imaging.

Mythos attack on 3rd-round PQC algorithm candidate puts it out of commission

HAWK withstood years of testing that had yet to uncover a fatal weakness found through Mythos.

We now have a better understanding how OpenAI hacked into Hugging Face

10 days passed from OpenAI models exploiting JFrog Artifactory 0-day to release of a patch.

Microsoft unveils AI security tools it says outperform competing platforms

Microsoft says tools cost less than competing ones and outperform them, too.

TreeSize won’t renew perpetual-license support unless users subscribe

“Current economic conditions” have shifted TreeSize’s business model.

HP fined 1.4 billion rupees for “cartelization” of ink cartridges, toner, PCs

Resellers threatened to ditch HP printing supplies for counterfeits.

Now, even Russia’s most elite hackers are using Clickfix to infect devices

The social-engineering technique has primarily been a tool of financially motivated criminals.

Energy IPOs surge as investors hunt for ways to play AI boom

Companies coming to market are raising money at fastest pace this century.

Sheetz is quitting VMware, migrating 11,000 virtual machines

The convenience store chain will use StorMagic instead.

Windows 0-day drops the same day Microsoft releases record number of patches

HiveLegacy is a “powerful primitive” that’s likely capable of other nefarious actions.

Microsoft’s Secure Boot has been broken for a decade and no one noticed until now

Old and forgotten “shims” Microsoft failed to revoke have made Secure Boot bypasses simple.

The US government warns that Russia state hackers are coming after your router

With residential proxies all the rage, CISA urges router users to be vigilant.

Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too

“Context bombing” tricks hacking agents into shutting down before they can do harm.

Patch for Windows Defender 0-day could allow attackers to fill hard disk

The feud between NightmareEclipse and Microsoft shows no signs of resolving soon.

Google plans to exempt sanctioned nations from Android developer verification

Someone in Cuba or Iran can keep installing APKs with no new restrictions, but devs will suffer.

Tim Cook passes the baton in Apple’s Q3 2026 earnings call

The iPhone and Mac sold well, but memory costs threaten further price increases.

Iran struck Amazon data centers again amid widening war, satellites show

Satellites show burn scars and fires at AWS data centers and Saudi oil refinery.

Google’s “privacy-preserving” age verification system is coming to the Play Store

Google’s new API relies on parents to set age ranges in Family Link.

New airliner sets record flying 24 hrs nonstop from Australia to France

Test flight shows viability of Qantas Airways’ Project Sunrise routes in 2027.

iOS and macOS 26.6 arrive today, paving the way for iOS and macOS 27

These are likely the last updates of note before Apple’s bigger fall updates.

Activist charged with felony after giving border agent “duress code” that wiped his phone

The government says destroying his own data during an airport interrogation was illegal.

Framework Laptop 13 Pro review: Much better battery, much worse price

Framework’s latest modular laptop trades one set of problems for another.

Roku raises streaming stick prices by up to 60 percent

Roku blames RAM shortage after CEO called it “great” for business in May.

Robot snakes searched for Venezuela earthquake survivors in collapsed buildings

US robotics researchers flew to Venezuela with snakebots after getting a call.

Microsoft responds to LG monitors installing McAfee ads on Windows

App is installed through Windows Update when certain LG monitors connect to a PC.

Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie.

Google’s selfie videos can be used for account access, AI Avatars, and age verification.

I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated.

Sure, maybe your clock has a backup battery, but mine has a deployment pipeline!

Samsung unveils new Galaxy Z8 foldables and Galaxy Watches, available August 7

Samsung’s new foldables are slimmer, faster, and more expensive.

Ukrainian drones deliver robots directly into battle by sea and air

Ukraine’s battlefield surge of robots now features airdrops and beach assaults.

Sony acknowledges backlash, “cautiously” moves ahead with end of PlayStation discs

Sony doesn’t think the move will hurt it financially.

Pathogenic review: Damn, it feels good to be a virus

The hot new roguelite twin-stick shooter lives up to the hype.

Just because a game is on disc doesn’t mean it will work in the future

DoesItPlay tracks the many “physical” games that don’t work without the Internet.

New AMD Linux patch boosts low-end gaming performance on Steam Deck

Improved efficiency in EPP mode leads to ~32% jump in “1% low” frame rates.

Sony’s decision to ditch discs was practically inevitable, data shows

Circana numbers show US gamers overwhelmingly voting with their wallets.

Microsoft brings original Xbox backward compatibility to Windows PCs

First four compatible titles can be run with an 11-year-old graphics card.

Sales of Valve’s Steam Deck crater after recent price hike

Analysis of bestseller charts shows an 80 percent dip from 2025’s sales rate.

RIP bargain bin: The price impact of Sony’s disc-free PlayStation plan

Used discs are often cheaper than even deep digital discounts.

Hundreds rally at Bethesda HQ to protest Xbox layoffs, and Ars was there

Union wants to halt a “perpetual cycle” of layoffs, get back to contract bargaining.

Hackers quickly prove that Neo Geo Doom ports are not “impossible”

Clever coding and graphical compromises get a classic game on more classic hardware.

Valve’s new Steam Machine verification system is silent on these Steam Deck-busters

Dozens of titles too taxing for Steam Deck are still unrated for the new hardware.

Bethesda, id Software reportedly hit hard by Microsoft layoffs

As much as 50 percent of some teams affected by reductions, and more could be coming.

The Nintendo Switch’s days are numbered—but what is that number?

Ars analysis suggests the 9-year-old console could keep selling for years.

The incredible shrinking Xbox: Five studios, 3,200 employees let go

Move affects ~20% of the gaming division, which will refocus on its biggest franchises.

Wing Commander IV and the FMV future that never quite was

C:\ArsGames takes a look at the time Chris Roberts more or less made a whole movie.