The new Transformers movie starring Chris Hemsworth, Bryan Tyree Henry, Keegan-Michael Key, and Scarlett Johansson is out September 20.

Apple has officially released iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. We break down all the top new features and how to download it.

Physical buttons that appear from nowhere, audiophile tech mounted in 3D-printed lattices, weight-saving wizardry, and an extraterrestrial race car design. Lotus’ future isn’t just lifestyle SUVs.

Zihao Ou, who helped develop this solution, holds a tube of it. One key challenge in medical imaging is to look past skin and other tissue that are opaque to see internal organs and structures. This is the reason we need things like ultrasonography, magnetic resonance, or X-rays. There are chemical clearing agents that can make tissue transparent, like acrylamide or tetrahydrofuran, but they are almost never used in living organisms because they’re either highly toxic or can dissolve away essential biomolecules. But now, a team of Stanford University scientists has finally found an agent that can reversibly make skin transparent without damaging it. This agent was tartrazine, a popular yellow-orange food dye called FD&C Yellow 5 that is notably used for coloring Doritos. We can’t see through the skin because it is a complex tissue comprising aqueous-based components such as cell interiors and other fluids, as well as protein and lipids. The refractive index is a value that indicates how much light slows down (on average, of course) while going through a material compared to going through a vacuum. The refractive index of those aqueous components is low, while the refractive index of the proteins and lipids is high. As a result, light traveling through skin constantly bends as it endlessly crosses the boundary between high and low refractive index materials.

What’s next after the PS5 Pro? A report from Reuters focuses on Sony’s plans beyond this fall’s new $700 system, saying that the battle to win a contract for the chip powering a future PlayStation 6 came down to AMD vs. Intel, with others like Broadcom eliminated earlier, with AMD eventually winning out. According to Reuters, since AMD makes the chip in the PS5 and PS5 Pro, maintaining backward compatibility in a possible move was part of “months” of discussions in 2022 between executives and engineers at Sony and Intel. However, Intel’s bid was blocked because they couldn’t agree on how much profit Intel would make from each chip it would design as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) handled the manufacturing process. Besides...

Google appears to be working on a way to finally synchronize notifications across devices in its ecosystem, according to Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman, who discovered code references to a new “sync across devices” option in the Android 15 beta. The snippet is apparently located under the Notifications section of Settings, nestled between “sensitive notifications” and a new “notification cooldown” option he spotted last week. There’s no Android notification syncing feature at the moment, as Rahman notes. So if you dismiss a notification on your Android tablet, the same notification will still greet you over on your phone later. This would, I’m sure, be a welcome change for most.

After years of being on the fringes of home automation, LG is now making a big play in the smart home. It has a shiny new multi-protocol hub, is opening its ThinQ platform to work with more smart home devices, and will soon allow other platforms to integrate its appliances into their ecosystems. ThinQ’s shift from being solely an app to control LG appliances and electronics to becoming a competitor to smart home platforms like Samsung’s SmartThings and Apple Home has been spurred by the standardization of smart home connectivity through initiatives like Thread and Matter and the rapid development of artificial intelligence. “Until now, the smart home was all about the connectivity of smart devices, but with the emergence of generative...

The cold super-Jupiter's mass rivals that of some of the largest-known exoplanets.

Low-end iPads are also apparently hitting the shelves.

TV camera during a game between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens on December 25, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. DirecTV and Disney agreed to a new distribution contract on Saturday, ending a two-week blackout during which DirecTV subscribers lost access to ABC, ESPN, and other Disney-owned channels. A joint announcement said the companies reached an agreement in principle and that "Disney's full linear suite of networks has been restored to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse customers while both parties work to finalize a new, multi-year contract." While Disney previously accused DirecTV of "undervaluing" its content, DirecTV said during the blackout that it was seeking flexibility to sell slimmed-down channel packages that don't force customers to buy channels they don't want. The joint announcement of the resolution said the new deal "provides greater choice, value, and flexibility to [the companies'] mutual customers." The deal includes ABC and ESPN networks, Disney-branded channels, Freeform, FX networks, and National Geographic channels. DirecTV will be able to "offer multiple genre-specific options—sports, entertainment, kids & family—inclusive of Disney's linear networks along with Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+," the companies said.

New software, new features.

Dan Da Dan: First Encounter is as close to a slam dunk as a new anime premiere can get.

Last Tuesday in Shine, North Carolina, a barn holding over 1,000 pigs caught on fire. Multiple fire departments were called to put out the blaze, but only 200 pigs survived. The cause of the fire is under investigation and hasn’t yet been determined. This is not an isolated incident. Three weeks ago, 1,100 pigs died in a fire at a factory farm in Ohio, while 70,000 chickens died in a fire at a California factory farm in mid-July. So far, in 2024, nearly 1.5 million farmed animals have died in barn fires, according to data compiled by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), a US nonprofit organization. More than 8 million farmed animals have perished in barn fires over the last decade, but animal advocates believe the true number is much higher because reporting requirements vary by state. Among the factory farming complex’s many cruelties, these deaths are little noted but disturbingly common. This week’s fire at the pig farm in North Carolina is especially timely, however: The pork industry has recently pushed back against proposed fire codes that would require sprinkler systems at new farms. Virtually all animals raised for meat, dairy, and eggs in the US are raised on factory farms, where thousands to tens of thousands of animals are crammed together in large warehouses. These aren’t the old red barns you might see from the highway, anachronisms from a pre-industrial age. These contain modern ventilation, lighting, and heating systems that can malfunction and start a fire.  Malfunctioning heating and electrical systems are the main cause of barn fires, according to the research foundation of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a non-governmental organization that writes the fire codes and standards many states and localities adopt. Other causes include machinery, weather, wildfires, and, albeit rarely, arson.  In early 2024, an NFPA expert committee overwhelmingly voted to update its animal housing code, which includes commercial livestock facilities, to require that buildings being built or renovated at mid- and large-sized factory farms install sprinkler systems starting in 2025. However, the code would still need to be adopted by localities and states to become enforceable. In response, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) filed a motion to strike the requirement, which was rejected by NFPA members at its annual technical meeting. NPPC appealed that decision and was granted a hearing by the organization’s standards council, which took place last month. The council recently rejected the industry’s appeal, and the requirement for applicable livestock barns to install sprinkler systems will be included in the upcoming 2025 edition of the NFPA’s animal housing code. The National Pork Producers Council didn’t respond to a request for comment, but it laid out its position in a September blog. One of its arguments is simply that more research is needed to determine the causes of barn fires and solutions to prevent them. Notably, however, the National Fire Protection Association’s foundation published a comprehensive report in 2022 detailing the causes of barn fires and recommended sprinkler systems as the first solution. In its appeal, the pork group had laid out a number of other reasons to reject the sprinkler requirement, including biosecurity, environmental pollution, and the potential for sprinkler activation to harm animals.   “In my opinion, a lot of this is grasping at straws,” said Allie Granger, a policy adviser at AWI. “A lot of their claims seem to really just distract from the fact that this is a pervasive issue within their industry.” The pork group’s biggest concern, however, appears to be how much sprinkler requirements would cost the industry.  The pork council claims that installing sprinkler systems would cost pork producers $9 to $15 per square foot. If they’re right, that would come out to roughly $200,000 for an industrial barn, and many facilities have multiple barns.  It’s a lot of money, but a reasonable price to pay for protecting vulnerable animals trapped in a fire. Even though fires are relatively rare, buildings for humans require sprinkler systems because we’ve decided — rightfully — that we value human life enough to protect it, even if it makes construction that much more expensive. “They don’t want to put up the cost for sprinklers, and they just will continue to ignore the fact that thousands of animals are dying on their facilities,” Granger said. The pork industry, despite its supposed “moral obligation” to raise animals “humanely and compassionately,” is willing to absorb the loss of animal life in an occasional barn fire if it means not incurring the cost of installing and maintaining sprinkler systems. It has also aggressively lobbied to maintain its right to confine pregnant pigs in tiny crates for virtually their entire lives for the same reason: cost.  Over the last couple of years, the poultry industry — in its efforts to stamp out the spread of bird flu — has killed tens of millions of animals by closing vents and cranking up the heat so the birds slowly die by heatstroke, the most cost-effective, and cruelest, form of mass euthanasia. If there’s one defining characteristic of today’s meat industry, it’s a willingness to sacrifice the welfare of an animal — or the safety of a worker or the health of a river, for that matter — if it improves its bottom line. At some point, regulators need to say enough is enough and enact commonsense reforms. Sprinkler systems to prevent animals dying en masse by fire seems like a good place to start.  Update, September 16, 11:55 am ET: This story, originally published on September 16, has been updated with the NFPA council’s decision to reject the pork industry’s appeal of new sprinkler requirements.