It's been five long years since director Bong Joon-ho's film Parasite topped Ars' list for best films of the year, whose prior work on Snowpiercer and Okja are also staff favorites. We're finally getting a new film from this gifted director: the sci-fi comedy Mickey 17 , based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Judging by the trailer that recently dropped, it feels a bit like a darkly comic version of Duncan Jones' 2009 film Moon , with a bit of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. And the visuals are terrific.

Ashton's inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox —a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called "a crappy immortality" and expanded from there into a full-length novel.

Ashton told Nerdist last year that Bong's adaptation would "change a lot of the book," but he considered the director a "genius" and wasn't concerned about those changes. The basic premise remains the same. Robert Pattinson plays the space colonist named Mickey Barnes, who is so eager to escape Earth that he signs up to be an "expendable" without reading the fine print.

Enlarge / A promotional image for Amazon's 4-Series Fire TVs. (credit: Amazon )

A lawsuit is seeking to penalize Amazon for allegedly providing "fake list prices and purported discounts" to mislead people into buying Fire TVs.

As reported by Seattle news organization KIRO 7 , a lawsuit seeking class-action certification and filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington on September 12 [ PDF ] claims that Amazon has been listing Fire TV and Fire TV bundles with "List Prices" that are higher than what the TVs have recently sold for, thus creating "misleading representation that customers are getting a 'Limited time deal.'" The lawsuit accuses Amazon of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act.

The plaintiff, David Ramirez, reportedly bought a 50-inch 4-Series Fire TV in February for $299.99. The lawsuit claims the price was listed as 33 percent off and a "Limited time deal" and that Amazon "advertised a List Price of $449.99, with the $449.99 in strikethrough text.” As of this writing, the 50-inch 4-Series 4K TV on Amazon is marked as having a "Limited time deal" of $299.98.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of a dark matter filament containing a galaxy with large jets. (Caltech noted that some details of this image were created using AI.) (credit: Martijn Oei (Caltech) / Dylan Nelson (IllustrisTNG Collaboration).)

The supermassive black holes that sit at the center of galaxies aren't just decorative. The intense radiation they emit when feeding helps drive away gas and dust that would otherwise form stars, providing feedback that limits the growth of the galaxy. But their influence may extend beyond the galaxy they inhabit. Many black holes produce jets and, in the case of supermassive versions, these jets can eject material entirely out of the galaxy.

Now, researchers are getting a clearer picture of just how far outside of the galaxy their influence can reach. A new study describes the largest ever jets observed, extending across a total distance of 23 million light-years (seven megaparsecs). At those distances, the jets could easily send material into other galaxies and across the cosmic web of dark matter that structures the Universe.

Extreme jets

Jets are formed in the complex environment near a black hole. The intense heating of infalling material ionizes and heats it, creating electromagnetic fields that act as a natural particle accelerator. This creates jets of particles that travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. These will ultimately slam into nearby material, creating shockwaves that heat and accelerate that, too. Over time, this leads to large-scale, coordinated outflows of material, with the scale of the jet being proportional to a combination of the size of the black hole and the amount of material it is feeding on.

Enlarge / The Kalalau Valley between sheer cliffs in the Na Pali Coast State Park on the western shore of the island of Kauai in Hawaii, United States. This view is from the Pihea Trail in the Kokee State Park. (credit: Getty | Jon G. Fuller )

The Hawaiian island of Kauai may not have any spewing lava, but hikers along the magnificent Napali coast have brought their own volcanic action recently, violently hollowing their innards amid the gushing waterfalls and deeply carved valleys.

Between August and early September, at least 50 hikers fell ill with norovirus along the famed Kalalau Trail , which has been closed since September 4 for a deep cleaning. The rugged 11-mile trail runs along the northwest coast of the island, giving adventurers breathtaking views of stunning sea cliffs and Kauai's lush valleys. It's situated just north of Waimea Canyon State Park, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

"It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. I feel really fortunate to be able to be there, and appreciate and respect that land,” one hiker who fell ill in late August told The Washington Post . "My guts exploding all over that land was not what I wanted to do at all."

Enlarge / NASA officials inside SpaceX's launch control center at Hangar X watch the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket a few miles away on March 3, 2024. (credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

The Federal Aviation Administration alleged Tuesday that SpaceX violated its launch license requirements on two occasions last year by using an unauthorized launch control center and fuel farm at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The regulator seeks to fine SpaceX $633,009 for the alleged violations, which occurred during a Falcon 9 launch and a Falcon Heavy launch last year. Combined, the proposed fines make up the largest civil penalty ever imposed by the FAA's commercial spaceflight division.

“Safety drives everything we do at the FAA, including a legal responsibility for the safety oversight of companies with commercial space transportation licenses,” said Marc Nichols, the FAA's chief counsel, in a statement. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.”

Enlarge / The iPhone 16. (credit: Apple)

If you've ever had an iPhone update go bad, you may have used recovery mode to resuscitate your device. A device booted into recovery mode can't do anything by itself, but it can be connected to a working Mac or PC with a cable, and that Mac or PC can download a fresh copy of iOS and all of your phone's related firmware to restore it to a factory-default state. You'll need a backup to recover your personal data, but it beats having to take a trip to an Apple Store or send your phone in for repairs.

The new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro models launching this week apparently add a new option for phones that are in recovery mode: rudimentary wireless communication, so phones that need to be recovered can be placed near another iPhone or an iPad and be restored without using a cable, a PC, or Mac.

The new system was tested by 9to5Mac , which says it uses "the same RecoveryOS that lets users restore Apple Watch and Apple TV firmware from an iPhone." When you place an iPhone 16 in recovery mode near another device, the functioning device will download the software and firmware files and then transfer them to the broken phone, where they can be installed.

(credit: Shutterstock)

Google has won an appeal against a €1.5 billion competition fine from the European Commission in a victory for the Big Tech group as it comes under growing scrutiny from Brussels regulators.

The EU’s General Court said on Wednesday that while it accepted “most of the commission’s assessments” that the company had used its dominant position to block rival online advertisers, it annulled the hefty fine levied against Google in the case.

When launching the action against Google in 2019, Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition chief, said that the search giant had imposed anti-competitive restrictions on third-party websites for a decade between 2006 and 2016. She justified the €1.5 billion fine by arguing that it reflected the “serious and sustained nature” of the infringement.

Enlarge / The Hummer EV and its gargantuan 205 kWh pack is among the GM EVs that gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network today. (credit: GMC)

Starting today, electric vehicles made by General Motors gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network for the first time. GM signed a deal with Tesla last June to allow its customers access to more than 17,000 DC fast chargers around North America, following a similar deal by archrival Ford.

"Enabling access to even more publicly available fast chargers represents yet another way GM is focused on further improving the customer experience and making the transition to electric more seamless," said Wade Shaffer, VP of GM Energy.

GM's EVs, which include the bestselling Chevrolet Bolt as well as more recent Ultium-based EVs from Chevy, Cadillac, and GMC, will require an adapter to connect the Tesla J3400 (originally NACS) plug to their CCS1 charge ports.

Enlarge / The fossil in question, oriented with its head to the left. (credit: Yang Jie / Zhang Xiguang)

Around half a billion years ago, in what is now the Yunnan Province of China, a tiny larva was trapped in mud. Hundreds of millions of years later, after the mud had long since become the black shales of the Yuan’shan formation, the larva surfaced again, a meticulously preserved time capsule that would unearth more about the evolution of arthropods.

Youti yuanshi is barely visible to the naked eye. Roughly the size of a poppy seed, it is preserved so well that its exoskeleton is almost completely intact, and even the outlines of what were once its internal organs can be seen through the lens of a microscope. Durham University researchers who examined it were able to see features of both ancient and modern arthropods. Some of these features told them how the simpler, more wormlike ancestors of living arthropods evolved into more complex organisms.

The research team also found that Y. yuanshi, which existed during the Cambrian Explosion (when most of the main animal groups started to appear on the fossil record), has certain features in common with extant arthropods, such as crabs, velvet worms, and tardigrades. “The deep evolutionary position of Youti yuanshi… illuminat[es] the internal anatomical changes that propelled the rise and diversification of [arthropods],” they said in a study recently published in Nature.