As President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders Tuesday aimed at keeping coal power alive in the United States, he repeatedly blamed his predecessor, Democrats, and environmental regulations for the industry’s dramatic contraction over the past two decades.

But across the country, state and local officials and electric grid operators have been confronting a factor in coal’s demise that is not easily addressed with the stroke of a pen: its cost.

For example, Maryland’s only remaining coal generating station, Talen Energy’s 1.3-gigawatt Brandon Shores plant, will be staying open beyond its previously planned June 1 shutdown, under a deal that regional grid operator PJM brokered earlier this year with the company, state officials and the Sierra Club.

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Are you a millennial parent who has made cycling your entire personality but have found it socially unacceptable to abandon your family for six hours on a Saturday? Or are you a bike-curious urban dweller who hasn’t owned a bicycle since middle school? Do you stare at the gridlock on your commute, longing for a bike-based alternative, but curse the errands you need to run on the way home?

I have a solution for you: invest in a cargo bike.

Cargo bikes aren't for everyone, but they're great if you enjoy biking and occasionally need to haul more than a bag or basket can carry (including kids and pets). In this guide, we'll give you some parameters for your search—and provide some good talking points to get a spouse on board.

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© Aurich Lawson | John Timmer

Last week, Nintendo made waves across the game industry by announcing that Mario Kart World would sell for a suggested price of $80 in the US. That nominal price represents a new high-water mark both for Nintendo and for the game industry at large, which has generally reserved prices above $70 for fancy, trinket-laden collectors' editions or Digital Deluxe Editions that include all variety of downloadable bonuses.

When you adjust historical game prices for inflation, though, you find that asking $80 for a baseline game in 2025 is broadly in line with the prices big games were commanding 10 to 15 years ago. And given the faster-than-normal inflation rates of the last five years, even the $70 nominal game prices that set a new standard in 2020 don't have the same purchasing oomph they once did.

The data

To judge Mario Kart World's $80 price against historical trends, we first needed to figure out how much games cost in the past. To do that, we built off of our similar 2020 analysis, which relied on scanned catalogs and retail advertising fliers for real examples of nominal console game pricing going back to the Atari era. For more recent years, we relied more on press reports and archived digital storefronts to show what prices new games were actually selling for at the time.

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A leak of 190,000 chat messages traded among members of the Black Basta ransomware group shows that it’s a highly structured and mostly efficient organization staffed by personnel with expertise in various specialties, including exploit development, infrastructure optimization, social engineering, and more.

The trove of records was first posted to file-sharing site MEGA. The messages, which were sent from September 2023 to September 2024, were later posted to Telegram in February 2025. ExploitWhispers, the online persona who took credit for the leak, also provided commentary and context for understanding the communications. The identity of the person or persons behind ExploitWhispers remains unknown. Last month’s leak coincided with the unexplained outage of the Black Basta site on the dark web, which has remained down ever since.

“We need to exploit as soon as possible”

Researchers from security firm Trustwave’s SpiderLabs pored through the messages, which were written in Russian, and published a brief blog summary and a more detailed review of the messages on Tuesday.

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Coffee is one of the most popular beverages in the world, counting many scientists among its fans. Naturally those scientists are sometimes drawn to study their beloved beverage from various angles with an eye toward achieving the perfect cup.

While espresso has received the lion's share of such attention, physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have investigated the physics behind brewing so-called "pour-over" coffee, in which hot water is poured over coffee grounds in a filter within a funnel-shaped cone and allowed to percolate and drip into a cup below. The trick is to pour the water from as high as possible without letting the jet of water break up upon impact with the grounds, according to their new paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

In 2020, we reported on a mathematical model for brewing the perfect cup of espresso with minimal waste. Many variables can affect the quality of a steaming cup of espresso, including so-called "channeling" during the brewing process, in which the water doesn't seep uniformly through the grounds but branches off in various preferential paths instead. This significantly reduces the extraction yield (EY)—the fraction of coffee that dissolves into the final beverage—and thus the quality of the final brew. That, in turn, depends on controlling water flow and pressure as the liquid percolates through the coffee grounds.

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© Ernest Park

Twitch has struck a deal with Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) to eject itself from a lawsuit over an ad boycott shortly following Musk's takeover of Twitter in October 2022.

In a court filing Monday, X lawyers provided no details on the deal but explained that "X and Twitch have entered into a memorandum of understanding resolving the action as to Twitch," so long as "certain conditions" are met by December 31.

Musk has called for "criminal prosecution" of anyone involved in the ad boycott. But while Twitch was one of about a dozen companies that X directly accused of conspiring to withhold billions in ad revenue from then-Twitter, it was not part of X's initial complaint. The livestreaming service was only added to the lawsuit after X amended its complaint in November to pull in more advertisers, and since then, Twitch has never responded to any of X's accusations. Instead, in its filing, X speaks for Twitch.

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A US appeals court ruled yesterday that DOGE can access personal data held by the US Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM), overturning an order issued by a lower-court judge.

The US government has "met its burden of a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of their appeal," said yesterday's ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges granted the Trump administration's motion to stay the lower-court ruling pending appeal.

"The Supreme Court has told us that, unlike a private party, the government suffers an irreparable harm when it cannot carry out the orders of its elected representatives... Judicial management of agency operations offends the Executive Branch's exclusive authority to enforce federal law," wrote Court of Appeals Judge Steven Agee, a George W. Bush appointee.

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On Monday, John Carmack, co-creator of id Software's Quake franchise, defended Microsoft's recent AI-generated Quake II demo against criticism from a fan about the technology's impact on industry jobs, calling it "impressive research work."

Last Friday, Microsoft released a new playable tech demo of a generative AI game engine called WHAMM (World and Human Action MaskGIT Model) that generates each simulated frame of Quake II in real time using an AI world model instead of traditional game engine techniques. However, Microsoft is up front about the limitations: "We do not intend for this to fully replicate the actual experience of playing the original Quake II game," the researchers wrote on the project's announcement page.

Carmack's comments came after an X user with the handle "Quake Dad" called the new demo "disgusting" and claimed it "spits on the work of every developer everywhere." The critic expressed concern that such technology would eliminate jobs in an industry already facing layoffs, writing: "A fully generative game cuts out the number of jobs necessary for such a project which in turn makes it harder for devs to get jobs."

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© Benj Edwards

Enthusiasm was understandably high for Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel's revival of the hugely popular series in the Netflix Defenders universe. Not only was Charlie Cox returning to the title role as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, but Vincent D'Onofrio was also coming back as his nemesis, crime lord Wilson Fisk/Kingpin. Their dynamic has always been electric, and that on-screen magic is as powerful as ever in Born Again, which quickly earned critical raves and a second season that is currently filming.

(Some spoilers for the series below, but no major reveals beyond the opening events of the first episode.)

Born Again was initially envisioned as more of an episodic reset rather than a straight continuation of the serialized Netflix series. But during the 2023 Hollywood strikes, with production halted, the studio gave the show a creative overhaul more in line with the Netflix tone, even though six episodes had been largely completed by then. The pilot was reshot completely, and new footage was added to subsequent episodes to ensure narrative continuity with the original Daredevil—with a few well-placed nods to other characters in the MCU for good measure.

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Hatsushima is not a particularly busy station, relative to Japanese rail commuting as a whole. It serves a town (Arida) of about 25,000, known for mandarin oranges and scabbardfish, that is shrinking in population, like most of Japan. Its station sees between one to three trains per hour at its stop, helping about 530 riders find their way. Its wooden station was due for replacement, and the replacement could be smaller.

The replacement, it turned out, could also be a trial for industrial-scale 3D-printing of custom rail shelters. Serendix, a construction firm that previously 3D-printed 538-square-foot homes for about $38,000, built a shelter for Hatsushima in about seven days, as shown at The New York Times. The fabricated shelter was shipped in four parts by rail, then pieced together in a span that the site Futurism says is "just under three hours," but which the Times, seemingly present at the scene, pegs at six. It was in place by the first train's arrival at 5:45 am.

Either number of hours is a marked decrease from the days or weeks you might expect for a new rail station to be constructed. In one overnight, teams assembled a shelter that is 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) tall and 10 square meters (32 square feet) in area. It's not actually in use yet, as it needs ticket machines and finishing, but is expected to operate by July, according to the Japan Times.

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© West Japan Railway Company

Imagine having a well-designed payment app for your car's infotainment system that let you effortlessly pay for parking, road tolls, EV charging, or refueling. Such a concept found universal appeal among US drivers, according to a study by a market research company. But simplicity is key: The moment it gets difficult to register or use such an app, interest wanes and people prefer to pay for things the older-fashioned ways, DriveResearch found.

For instance, there was a high level of desire to be guided through the process of entering one's billing or credit card info into an in-car payment app. Seven in 10 participants said that they'd want such a thing to happen when the car is being delivered and while they're still in the "new car" mindset.

But most don't want to do that at a dealership: 77 percent also said they would prefer to register for in-car payments at home, via the phone or a computer, with only 67 percent wanting to use the car's infotainment screen and just over half (53 percent) saying it would be OK to use the automaker's connected car app.

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Windows 11 has become so synonymous with Microsoft's push into generative AI that it's easy to forget that it originally launched as a mostly cosmetic overhaul of Windows 10. But Microsoft continues to work on fundamental elements of the operating system's design. Case in point, Windows tester phantomofearth enabled an overhauled version of the Start menu from a recent Windows 11 beta build, the menu's first substantial rethink since Windows 11 launched a little over three years ago (via The Verge).

The new, larger Start menu displays up to two rows of eight pinned apps—you can't see more than two rows by default, but you can expand this section to show more apps—and then shows the scrollable list of apps installed on your PC. This list is hidden behind an "All" button on the current Start menu. These apps can be displayed as a vertically scrollable list, in a horizontal grid, or sorted by category (which does appear to be the most space-efficient display option).

Perhaps most interestingly for people who are tired of Windows' constant reminders and recommendations, the new Start menu looks like it lets you turn that "Recommended" section off entirely, replacing it with a full list of all apps installed on your PC. I find the Recommended area inoffensive when it sticks to showing me recently installed apps or opened files, but recent Windows 11 builds have also used it to advertise apps from the Microsoft Store.

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© Microsoft

Two years ago, at a Stop & Shop in Rhode Island, the Danish neuroscientist and physician Henriette Edemann-Callesen visited an aisle stocked with sleep aids containing melatonin. She looked around in amazement. Then she took out her phone and snapped a photo to send to colleagues back home.

“It was really pretty astonishing,” she recalled recently.

In Denmark, as in many countries, the hormone melatonin is a prescription drug for treating sleep problems, mostly in adults. Doctors are supposed to prescribe it to children only if they have certain developmental disorders that make it difficult to sleep—and only after the family has tried other methods to address the problem.

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There aren't many phones these days that come with a stylus, and those that do tend to be very expensive. If you can't swing a Galaxy S25 Ultra, Motorola's G Stylus lineup could be just what you need. The new 2025 Moto G Stylus is now official, featuring several key upgrades while maintaining the same $400 price tag.

The Moto G Stylus 2025 sticks with the style Motorola has cultivated over recent years, with a contoured vegan leather back. It comes in two Pantone colors called Gibraltar Sea and Surf the Web—one is dark blue and the other is a lighter, more vibrant blue. They look like fun colors. Moto's language makes it sound like there could be more colors down the road, too.

The spec sheet paints a picture of a solid mobile device, but it won't exceed expectations. Motorola moved to a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 processor, which runs at a slightly higher clock speed than the Gen 1 it used in the 2024 model. It also has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage in the base model. An upgraded version with 256GB of storage and the same 8GB of RAM will be available, too.

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The skies around Dallas are about to get a lot more interesting. No, DFW airport isn't planning any more expansions, nor does American Airlines have any more retro liveries to debut. This will be something different, something liable to make all the excitement around the supposed New Jersey drones look a bit quaint.

Zipline is launching its airborne delivery service for real, rolling it out in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Mesquite ahead of a gradual spread that, if all goes according to plan, will also see its craft landing in Seattle before the end of the year. These automated drones can be loaded in seconds, carry small packages for miles, and deposit them with pinpoint accuracy at the end of a retractable tether.

It looks and sounds like the future, but this launch has been a decade in the making. Zipline has already flown more than 1.4 million deliveries and covered over 100 million miles, yet it feels like things are just getting started.

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© Tim Stevens

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Powers of 10 video, which came out in the 1970s. Perhaps you remember it, with the narrator taking us both outward toward the fathomless end of the Universe and then, reversing course, guiding us back to Earth and inside a proton. The film gave a younger me a good sense of just how large the Universe around us really is.

What I did not know until much later is that the short film was made by the Eames Office, which was founded by the noted designers Charles Eames and Ray Kaiser. It's the same organization that produced the Eames Lounge Chair. It goes to show you the value of good design across genres (shoutout to Ars' resident designer, Aurich Lawson).

Anyway, I say all that because the Power of 10 film continues to live in my head, rent-free, decades later. It was the first thing I thought of when looking at today's image of the Milky Way Galaxy's center. The main image showcases huge vertical filaments, with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core clearly visible. This image, captured by a South African radio telescope named MeerKAT, also shows the ghostly, bubble-like remnants of supernovas that exploded over millennia.

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© NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO

For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance's launch schedule.

Space Systems Command, which oversees the military's launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA's Vulcan rocket to SpaceX's Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force's fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world.

The Space Force booked the Vulcan rocket to launch this spacecraft in 2023, when ULA hoped to begin flying military satellites on its new rocket by mid-2024. The Vulcan rocket is now scheduled to launch its first national security mission around the middle of this year, following the Space Force's certification of ULA's new launcher last month.

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Framework, the designers and sellers of the modular and repairable Framework Laptop 13 and other products, announced today that it would be "temporarily pausing US sales" on some of its laptop configurations as a result of new tariffs put on Taiwanese imports by the Trump administration. The affected models will be removed from Framework's online store for now, and there's no word on when buyers can expect them to come back.

"We priced our laptops when tariffs on imports from Taiwan were 0 percent," the company responded to a post asking why it was pausing sales. "At a 10 percent tariff, we would have to sell the lowest-end SKUs at a loss."

"Other consumer goods makers have performed the same calculations and taken the same actions, though most have not been open about it," Framework said. Nintendo also paused US preorders for its upcoming Switch 2 console last week after the tariffs were announced.

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© Andrew Cunningham

Among the many surprises during last week's wider unveiling of the Nintendo Switch 2 was the pricing: $450 for the console itself and $70 to $80 for many first-party games. Now, in a set of interviews posted today (but conducted during last week's unveiling event), Nintendo executives are explaining and defending those prices, even as Trump's tariffs are apparently forcing the company to pause and reassess its whole launch strategy.

Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser was speaking to CNBC just as Trump's tariffs were being announced and said in the moment that "we're still all trying to really understand [the tariffs] better and understand what possible impacts may arise from that." At the same time, he said that the company "didn't consider tariffs into that equation" when choosing the Switch 2's $450 price and instead went with what "we felt that was going to be the right price point for our consumers and the right value proposition, if you will, for the device that we're creating."

Elsewhere in that CNBC interview, Bowser suggested that Nintendo isn't following the Wii U example of selling hardware at a loss in order to gain more potential software customers. Instead, Bowser said the company is "trying to find a way to maintain... margins on the hardware even though they may be more slim than they are on software," and then "to make sure that they're seeing the value in their investment in one of our devices" through software.

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We're used to updating Windows, macOS, and Linux systems at least once a month (and usually more), but people with ancient DOS-based PCs still get to join in the fun every once in a while. Over the weekend, the team that maintains FreeDOS officially released version 1.4 of the operating system, containing a list of fixes and updates that have been in the works since the last time a stable update was released in 2022.

FreeDOS creator and maintainer Jim Hall goes into more detail about the FreeDOS 1.4 changes here, and full release notes for the changes are here. The release has "a focus on stability" and includes an updated installer, new versions of common tools like fdisk, and format and the edlin text editor. The release also includes updated HTML Help files.

Hall talked with Ars about several of these changes when we interviewed him about FreeDOS in 2024. The team issued the first release candidate for FreeDOS 1.4 back in January.

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© Andrew Cunningham