After the legendary actor passed away this week, we look back at some of his finest moments as Star Wars' iconic villain.

Google just landed a deal to capture planet-heating pollution at a huge bargain: $100 per ton of CO2, the price climate tech startups around the world are racing to achieve in order to make their technologies commercially viable. The company announced the agreement today with Holocene, a startup with an even shorter history than others in the emerging carbon removal industry that has nevertheless attracted some big-name backers. If Holocene can actually pull it off — take carbon dioxide out of the air at a price far lower than competitors charging $600 per ton or more for the same service — it could prove that carbon removal technologies are ready to help in the climate fight. But it’s still...

Enlarge The human body is full of marvels, some even bordering on miraculous. That includes the limited ability for nerves to regenerate after injuries, allowing people to regain some function and feeling. But that wonder can turn, well, unnerving when those regenerated wires end up in a jumble. Such is the case for a rare neurological condition called gustatory hyperhidrosis, also known as Frey's syndrome. In this disorder, nerves regenerate after damage to either of the large saliva glands that sit on either side of the face, just in front of the ears, called the parotid glands. But that nerve regrowth goes awry due to a quirk of anatomy that allows the nerves that control saliva production for eating to get tangled with those that control sweating for temperature control. In this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in Taiwan report an unusual presentation of the disorder in a 76-year-old woman. She told doctors that, for two years, every time she ate, her face would begin profusely sweating. In the clinic, the doctors observed the phenomenon themselves. They watched as she took a bite of pork jerky and began chewing.

Today may have marked the beginning of the end for game console disc drives. Sony finally announced the $699.99 PS5 Pro, and while it looks to be an impressive machine, it’s the first PlayStation console that will require you to buy the console and a separate disc drive if you want to play your physical games. Sony’s offered disc-free variants before and inched in this direction with the PS5 “slim,” which you can buy with the separate disc drive already attached or add a disc drive to later. But with the PS5 Pro, you’ll have to get a separate PS5 disc drive, whether that means you buy it for $79.99 or swap a disc drive from a slim PS5 to a PS5 Pro. Microsoft is clearly eyeing the discless direction with Xbox as well. The more affordable...

The versatile 10.1 inch Amazon Fire HD tablet is 36% off now, only $90 for boundless fun!

In the U.S., a folding phone has you carrying around nearly $2,000 of fragile, folding OLED phone. In China and export-friendly countries, the Mate XT adds $1,000 and yet another hinge. if you could buy it in the US. Most notably, the phone launched just hours after Apple's iPhone 16 event. As noted by The New York Times, Huawei's product launches are often timed for maximum pushback against the US, which has sanctioned and attempted to stymie Huawei's chip tech. “It’s a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create,” Richard Yu, Huawei’s consumer group chairman, said during the Mate XT livestream unveiling. “I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it.”

In the shadow of the new iPhone 16 announcement lies a great deal on the latest smartphone from Google.

Lifx has a new smart “Polychrome” Tube light that can glow with multiple colors and transform your home lamps and fixtures into fun light-up popsicles. The bulbs are made of a frosted glass tube and contain 104 LEDs with 52 controllable zones that enable color-shifting effects and include themes like cracking fire in “Flame Mode” or a lava lamp effect in “Morph Mode.” The accompanying app also lets you “paint” colors on the bulb surface for a more custom look for your room. Lifx is also releasing a new B10 Polychrome candlelight that has similar features to the tube, including the E26 standard bulb socket so that it can fit in the most common existing lamps or many newer specialty ones (the existing model has E12 tips).

It’s that time again. The last act of Congress funding the federal government expires on September 30. So, unless Congress passes new funding legislation by then, much of the government will shut down. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), egged on by the House Freedom Caucus and by former President Donald Trump, reportedly wants to use this deadline to force through legislation that would make it harder to register to vote in all 50 states.  Johnson plans to pair a bill funding the government for six months with a Republican bill called the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act” or “SAVE Act,” that would require new voters to submit “documentary proof of United States citizenship,” such as a passport or a birth certificate, in order to register to vote. As recently as Monday night, Johnson’s plan to tie government funding to passage of the SAVE Act seemed dead. At least five House Republicans oppose the spending bill, enough that Johnson would need to secure Democratic votes in order to pass it. But Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, demanded on Tuesday that congressional Republicans “SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD” with legislation funding the government unless it also includes something like the SAVE Act. There is no evidence that noncitizens vote in US federal elections in any meaningful numbers, and states typically have safeguards in place to prevent them from doing so. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, for example, claims to have identified 1,634 “potential noncitizens” who attempted to register during a 15-year period. But these possible noncitizens were caught by election officials and were never registered. In 2020, nearly 5 million Georgians voted in the presidential election.  More broadly, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, “illegal registration and voting attempts by noncitizens are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate state authorities, and there is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome.” While noncitizen voting — which is, of course, illegal — has never been proven to have affected an election, there is evidence that the SAVE Act could have an impact on elections. That much is clear from Arizona, which already has a SAVE Act-like regime. Data from Arizona suggests the state’s law has made it slightly harder for people of color, a group that skews Democratic, to vote. And at least one analysis of Arizona voter data suggests that the SAVE Act could suppress voter registration among another group that tends to vote for Democrats: college students. So the bill could make it slightly more difficult for Democrats to win elections. That said, the SAVE Act law does have a vague provision allowing voters who “cannot provide” the required documentation to submit other evidence that they are a citizen, and it provides that state or local officials “shall make a determination as to whether the applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship.”  It’s unclear what, exactly, that means. Notably, the SAVE Act would take effect immediately if enacted by Congress, and it imposes significant new administrative burdens on state and local election offices. So, if the law did take effect in the two months before a presidential election, it could potentially throw that election into chaos. Realistically, that outcome is unlikely. Axios reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is opposed to making continued funding for the US government contingent on passing the SAVE Act. Most Democrats and President Joe Biden also oppose the bill. Still, the battle over the SAVE Act could put the US in danger of a government shutdown. And though it is unlikely to become law in the next two months, it is likely to be on the short list of bills that Republicans will be eager to turn into law should they prevail in this November’s election. If the SAVE Act became law, it would likely only have a marginal impact on election results — although even a modest shift in who is allowed to vote could potentially flip very close elections, particularly in swing states. On its face, the bill addresses a non-problem — again, there are no legitimate concerns about noncitizen voting in the United States. And most voters do have some documentation they could use to register under the SAVE Act. Still, Arizona offers a useful window into what voting might be like under the SAVE Act. In 2004, the state enacted a SAVE Act-like law requiring new voters to submit documentary proof of citizenship to register. This law, however, conflicts with a federal law which requires states to register voters who submit a standardized federal form. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could not prevent voters who register using this form from voting in federal elections. Arizona, however, responded to this decision by creating a second-class tier of voters. Arizona voters who submit the federal form without documentary proof of citizenship are allowed to vote in federal elections (for Congress and the president), but not in state elections. Data from Arizona suggests that non-white voters (who tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans) are more likely to be registered as federal-only voters than white voters. But college students appear to be hardest hit by Arizona’s two-tiered regime. A report by Votebeat, a news outlet that reports on election administration, found that most Arizona voting precincts have fewer than a dozen total federal-only voters. But, “of the dozen outliers with more than 300 federal-only voters,” Votebeat reports that “all but one are located at least partly on a college campus.” The one exception was a Phoenix precinct that includes a homeless shelter. This conclusion is intuitive. College students who leave home to earn their degree often do not bring their passport or birth certificate to school with them, so they are unable to submit it when they register to vote. (People without permanent housing are also likely not to have immediate access to these documents because they do not have a home to store them in.) In a close election, a law disenfranchising many college students could be dispositive.  In the razor-thin 2000 election, for example, official tallies showed that President George W. Bush won the crucial state of Florida by 537 votes. Meanwhile, the University of Florida alone enrolls nearly 35,000 undergraduates. So, while the SAVE Act wouldn’t do much to address the fake problem of noncitizen voting, it would have at least some impact on US elections.  Update, September 10, 4:35 pm ET: This piece was originally published on September 9 and has been updated to note Trump’s demand that a bill funding the government must include the SAVE Act.

Apple’s forthcoming AirPods 4 might be the latest pair of wireless earbuds to pique our interest, but if you’re a Galaxy phone owner, it’s hard to resist the appeal of the Galaxy Buds 3. And now, thanks to the latest Discover Samsung event, you can pick them up for $159.99 ($20 off) through September 15th from either Best Buy or Samsung. Like the Galaxy Buds 2 before them, Samsung’s latest earbuds will likely become a default pick for Android phone owners with time. Regardless of whether Samsung will admit it, the Buds 3 take heavy design cues from Apple’s now-ubiquitous AirPods, resulting in an angular stemmed look instead of the more discrete design of earlier models. They sport swipe and pinch-based gestures for controlling playback,...