The latest Alien movie is making its way to digital releases just in time for spooky season.

Toyota’s Prius had its full glow-up redesign for 2023, and now the automaker is switching up what it’s called, too. The 2025 Prius Prime will now go by a more straightforward name: the Prius Plug-in Hybrid. The same goes for the Rav4 Prime, which is now called the Rav4 Plug-in Hybrid. Toyota says the name change “is intended to help consumers more easily identify the powertrain choices” among Prius and Rav4 models. The 2025 versions of the Prius Plug-in will also have an updated “PHEV” (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) badge on the rear. The Rav4, meanwhile, will no longer have a blue halo in the Toyota logo on both the front and rear. The specs for the new 2025 Prius models seem unchanged otherwise — the plug-in version still has a...

From left to right: iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. With the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro, it has never been clearer that the cycle of radical invention has given way to iterative updates—not just on an annual basis, but a monthly one, due to delayed features coming in later software updates during the iOS 18 cycle. The final form of the smartphone as we know it has been reached and nearly perfected. Nothing fundamental is changing anymore. But if you take the long view of just a few years, you can still see some impressive progress. Year after year, the iPhone 16 is Apple’s most lightly iterative flagship phone release ever. But if you’re upgrading from an iPhone 13 or earlier, you’ll still feel like you’re graduating to a whole new experience.

This pricey smart system sets up an anti-skeeter ring around your home.

LG’s smart TVs are starting to display full-screen ads before the conventional screensaver kicks in when entering idle mode. The native screensaver ads started rolling out to LG’s smart TVs earlier this month, including OLEDs like the new G4 model, and will appear across the homescreen, content store, and LG Channels. The feature will advertise both LG’s own products — with FlatpanelsHD reporting it saw a muted ad for the LG Channels streaming service — and those from third parties that may be unrelated to TV or entertainment entirely. In a press release, LG Ad Solutions’ technology chief, Dave Rudnick, said that the ads were effective in testing and “present a valuable opportunity for brands to be front and center on the largest screen...

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat “disappearing” purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they’re just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it. When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like “buy” or “purchase,” unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false...

The House of Mouse plans to make you pay between $7 and $9 just to let your mother use your Disney+ account.

Xiaomi’s updated 14T phones have plenty to offer, but lack a little personality.

Hummingbirds—like this golden-tailed sapphire from South America—draw the eye with their bright colors and busy, hovering flight. Biologists are drawn to understand the suite of adaptations they have evolved to survive extreme lifestyles. Everyone loves to watch hummingbirds—tiny, brightly colored blurs that dart about, hovering at flowers and pugnaciously defending their ownership of a feeder. But to the scientists who study them, hummingbirds offer much more than an entertaining spectacle. Their small size and blazing metabolism mean they live life on a knife-edge, sometimes needing to shut down their bodies almost completely just to conserve enough energy to survive the night—or to migrate thousands of miles, at times across open ocean. Their nectar-rich diet leads to blood-sugar levels that would put a person in a coma. And their zipping, zooming flight sometimes generates g-forces high enough to make a fighter pilot black out. The more researchers look, the more surprises lurk within those tiny bodies, the smallest in the avian world.

Google took a page out of a familiar playbook in court this week, defending itself from claims of anticompetitive conduct by raising security concerns. While the government argues it locked up the ad tech market to make more money, Google’s witnesses say that a more closed ecosystem is often safer for users — echoing a defense both it and Apple have made of their mobile app stores. Google’s attorneys have spent the last few days mounting its defense against the Department of Justice. The company argues that conduct the Department of Justice paints as anticompetitive — like locking customers into its services and exerting control over the rules of the industry through its dominance — actually has justifiable business purposes. The point...