A pair of Polaris Dawn astronauts will venture outside the spacecraft on Thursday at 2:23 a.m. ET.

Valve’s new Steam Families feature is now available for everyone following a beta launch earlier this year. With Steam Families, parents are able to share games with their families, manage parental controls for their kids, and approve requests from their kids to buy Steam games. The big improvement with Steam Families over Valve’s previous Family Sharing setup is that multiple people can play games from a shared library at one time. So if I’m playing Balatro, and my partner, who is part of my Steam Family, wants to play Arranger, we can both play those games at the same time. However, if my partner wants to play Balatro while I’m already playing it, she’ll need to buy an additional copy. With Steam Families, you can play shared games...

After playing the iconic Star Wars character originated by Alec Guinness in three movies and a Disney+ series, the actor is holding out hope for more.

On a tight budget and looking for a quality VPN? Don’t miss the current promotional offer from Private Internet Access.

It's never explained what this collection of app icons quite represents. A disorganized app you tossed together by sideloading? A face that's frowning because it's rolling down a bar held up by app icons? It's weird, but not quite evocative. You might sideload an Android app, or manually install its APK package, if you're using a custom version of Android that doesn't include Google's Play Store. Alternately, the app might be experimental, under development, or perhaps no longer maintained and offered by its developer. Until now, the existence of sideload-ready APKs on the web was something that seemed to be tolerated, if warned against, by Google. This quiet standstill is being shaken up by a new feature in Google's Play Integrity API. As reported by Android Authority, developer tools to push "remediation" dialogs during sideloading debuted at Google's I/O conference in May, have begun showing up on users' phones. Sideloaders of apps from the British shop Tesco, fandom app BeyBlade X, and ChatGPT have reported "Get this app from Play" prompts, which cannot be worked around. An Android gaming handheld user encountered a similarly worded prompt from Diablo Immortal on their device three months ago. Google's Play Integrity API is how apps have previously blocked access when loaded onto phones that are in some way modified from a stock OS with all Google Play integrations intact. Recently, a popular two-factor authentication app blocked access on phones with modified firmware, including GrapheneOS, which aims to surpass the security of Android's stock system. Apps can call the Play Integrity API and get back an "integrity verdict," relaying if the phone has a "trustworthy" software environment, has Google Play Protect enabled, and passes other software checks.

The final issue of Marvel's latest volume of the Star Wars ongoing is a perfect encapsulation of just what this run has been like to read.

Google can now turn your research into an AI-generated podcast, complete with two “hosts” that discuss what you’ve dug up. The experimental feature lives within NotebookLM, the AI note-taking app Google launched last year, and will have AI hosts “summarize your material, make connections between topics, and banter back and forth.” It’s meant to build on NotebookLM’s existing features that help you interact with all your notes, transcripts, and other research documents. The app already uses Google’s Gemini AI model to help summarize your research, and this is sort of like an audio version of that. Google isn’t making things up when it says the AI hosts will “banter” with each other, either. When trying out Audio Overview for myself, I...

Earlier this week, during Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event, the tech giant introduced the new Apple Watch Series 10 and a new look for the Apple Watch Ultra 2. The smartwatches start at $399 and $799, respectively, and both are available for preorder ahead of their forthcoming release on Friday, September 20th. The new Series 10 is both bigger and slimmer than its predecessor, and both the Ultra 2 and Series 10 now come in a slick black color. This is the first time Apple is offering the Ultra in a second shade, but it’s not the only change Apple announced for the watch. Both watches will offer new capabilities, including notifications for sleep apnea (pending FDA approval), a disorder that makes people stop breathing while sleeping....

The $700 PS5 Pro requires gamers to buy a separate $80 disc drive if they want to play physical copies of their games.

"They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs."

Klipsch has announced its new Flexus Core 300 soundbar, which it claims is the industry’s first to utilize Dirac’s Live Room correction technology to optimize its sound specifically for the room where it’s installed and where listeners are sitting. Dirac Live is typically only featured in amplifiers and receivers that are part of a more complex — and more expensive — home theater setup. The $999 Flexus Core 300 will be “available this winter,” according to What Hi-Fi? and features eight side-firing, front-firing, and up-firing 2.25-inch speakers, plus four 4-inch subwoofers. Connectivity includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ethernet, 8K passthrough HDMI, HDMI eARC, USB-C, and a digital audio port. Switching inputs and adjusting settings like EQ is...

Newsom has until September 30th to decide the bill’s fate, and both sides are lobbying hard.

US forces in the Red Sea had a busy day on Tuesday. According to a statement from US Central Command (CENTCOM), in less than 24 hours they had “destroyed five Iranian-backed Houthi uncrewed aerial vehicles and two missile systems in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”  CENTCOM posted that statement shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris declared on a debate stage in Philadelphia that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.” The remark echoed President Joe Biden’s claim when he withdrew from the race this summer to be “the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” Harris has been dinged by fact-checkers and criticized by Republicans for her debate statement. There is, after all, the ongoing US mission to counter Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, described recently by one former Navy commander as “the most sustained combat that the U.S. Navy has seen since World War II.” While the US formally ended its combat mission in Iraq in 2021, some 2,400 troops remain in the country to “advise, assist and enable” Iraqi forces fighting the remnants of ISIS, a campaign that began in 2014. Even if it’s not officially a “combat mission,” these troops still take part in raids targeting ISIS, including one just two weeks ago in which seven Americans were injured. Meanwhile, around 800 US troops are still in Syria, mainly assisting local allied armed groups fighting ISIS.  This isn’t safe work: Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, US troops in the region have been the target of dozens of attacks by Iran-backed militias, including one in January that killed three US service members at a base in Jordan. The US has also carried out strikes targeting suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia.  But none of this is “war,” according to the US government. A Department of Defense official, speaking on background, told Vox, “An aspect of military service includes serving in locations where hostile actions may occur. Those locations are designated by executive order and/or the secretary of defense. However, it’s important to note that just because a service member is in one of these locations does not mean they are engaged in war. The US is not currently engaged in a war and does not have troops fighting in active war zones anywhere in the world.” Harris does appear to have carefully chosen her wording — “active duty in a combat zone in any war zone” — though this may not be a particularly meaningful distinction for troops facing an incoming drone attack. One could also get further in the weeds and point out that the US hasn’t formally declared a war since World War II, and that US troops in Iraq and Syria are still operating under legal authorizations passed in the wake of 9/11. Beyond the legal hair-splitting, Harris made the comment in the context of a defense of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, and it is true that under Biden, the US military posture overseas has significantly shrunk from what it was under the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations.  (Trump has falsely claimed in the past that his presidency was the first in 72 years that “didn’t have any wars,” despite the fact that he oversaw four years of combat in Afghanistan as well as major military escalations in Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. At least 65 US troops died in hostile action under Trump’s presidency.)  If the so-called forever wars aren’t completely over, they’re certainly being fought at a much, much lower level.  Since the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the number of US troops involved in counter-terrorist missions can be measured in the hundreds rather than the thousands or tens of thousands. The number of those troops who are killed every year is in the single digits. The number of drone strikes and special forces raids carried out by US forces around the world is down dramatically as well. US political and military leaders have shifted their focus, to a significant degree, to “great power competition” with countries like Russia and China.  For most Americans, this shift away from the post-9/11 era is welcome. But some critics warn there’s a danger of complacency in accepting that a certain level of combat — call it war or not — will just continue indefinitely.  “The lighter footprint and the smaller number of casualties makes it easier for the administration to downplay these conflicts’ significance and keep them out of the public eye,” Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser now with the International Crisis Group, told Vox. “It lets them off the hook from actually having to explain why US forces are in harm’s way, or why they’re bombing the Houthis, or what the plan is to bring an end to this.” Biden and Harris can fairly claim to have presided over the end of an era of warfare that began with the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan as well as the beginning of a new one in which US forces in the Middle East are engaged in a much lower but still significant level of combat with terrorist groups and state-backed militias, more or less indefinitely and with little public debate.  Admittedly, though, that’s not as pithy a debate line.