After last week’s launch attempt misfired and a scheduled attempt Thursday was postponed due to weather, visibility is forecast to be “ideal” for a launch Friday evening, according to SpaceX. Other than plans to test the reliability of Starship and its Super Heavy booster rocket, it’s also supposed to test deploying 20 V3 Starlink satellites.

That 28-day pause could go a lot longer, now that US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved a deal saying that Paramount Skydance won’t close its transaction until June 1st, 2027, or at least until after legal claims of two lawsuits (one filed by a group of state AGs, and the other by the WGA) are resolved.

Now that BMW has shown off its M Concept Neue Klasse, M division head Frank van Meel talked to Autocar, saying that the future M3 EV’s “heart of Joy” controlled quad-motor setup could create racing and driving dynamics that the combustion engine M3 doesn’t match:

As reported earlier by the Washington Post, the CDC has updated its notice about parasite infections linked to now-recalled lettuce from Taylor Farms. The CDC noted it’s investigating other cases nationally “that are unrelated to this outbreak,” and today the FDA disclosed a new cyclospora outbreak with 72 cases, in addition to its three existing active cyclospora outbreak investigations.

After showing off its new Blade Runner 2099 series, Amazon also put out a trailer for the impending third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show returns to Prime Video on November 11th.

Aside from labeling and filtering AI slop, YouTube says you can directly chat with its Ask Studio bot to build thumbnails that are “tailored to your video’s specific themes and to your specific style.” It’s also added custom thumbnail uploads for Shorts if you’re in the YouTube Partner Program, and suggested thumbnail frames for Shorts.

President Donald Trump threatened a “substantial” tariff on Europe for what he claimed were “discriminatory” fines against US tech companies over alleged competition violations, most recently involving Google. While Trump claimed Europe’s high fines started during the Biden administration, some early fines were also imposed during Trump’s first term.

Amazon’s games head Jeffrey Gattis confirmed to The Game Business that the title won’t arrive in 2027 as originally expected.

There are lots of fun ways to customize a keyboard and accessorize your desk, but these Bob Ross spacebars and desk mats from Apos look like absolute charmers. The mats are fairly large (900mm x 400mm) and 4mm thick, and each spacebar comes with an escape key featuring Ross’s smiling face.

How could anyone have known that LeBron James would choose Philadelphia as his next NBA team? Well, there were signs.

The state’s recently-passed “Fair Price Protection Act” targets “discriminatory surveillance pricing”; something the FTC is investigating and that New York is also looking at. The law puts a one-year halt on new electronic shelf labels while NJ investigates “the effects and impact” of the technology.

After Microsoft brought four original Xbox games to PC earlier this week, a reverse engineer found that the company is powering them with Xenon Fusion — the same emulator that enabled backward compatibility on the Xbox 360. This might be laying the groundwork for Xbox 360 games on PC, as the XWine1 account on X figured out how to get some 360 titles running with “varying degrees of success.”

Happy new latter-career Strokes album release, my fellow olds. But the Avalanches dropping a rad, new song with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O? That’s the purest I-DJed-At-My-College-Radio-Station-In-2006 energy that we’ve got.

I love this map project that documents the world’s historical strongholds, which I usually only come across when someone posts a decrepit European castle going up for sale on Zillow. Historical maps are getting more popular these days and Castle Map is a good one. Tell us which fortress you’d choose in the comments. (h/t BoingBoing)

This single-serving site, IMAXXING, lets you punch in your closest theater, a few parameters, and a notification window to get an email alert when seats to The Odyssey are available — theoretically a handy, low-stakes use of AI agents. (You’ll just have to ignore the image of Clavicular as Odysseus and the repeated incorrect usage of “frame mogging” on the webpage.)

Shortly after confirming it was looking at closing plants and cutting up to 100,000 jobs, the world’s 2nd largest auto company posted miserable financials and a desperate outlook as it lays the ground work for a radical overhaul of its business under threat from Chinese upstarts.

Patreon CEO Jack Conte was clear in yesterday’s layoff announcement that AI doesn’t replace humans, but that might be cold comfort to the humans whose jobs were lost as AI impacts “how we operate and organize.”

Ten designs have been shortlisted for the next series of European banknotes. You can vote for your favorite until September 21st, ahead of the final selection expected later this year.

The Google partnership has yielded two new Onn outdoor security cameras: the $34.87 Outdoor Camera Plug-In and $77 Floodlight Camera Hardwired. Each 1080p HDR camera features live views, night vision and two-way talk accessible from the Google Home app. You’ll need a Premium subscription to unlock AI-driven features like event descriptions, searchable video history, and daily summaries.

Google’s more powerful, conversational assistant for the home is now available on first-generation Google Home Mini speaker and Google Nest Hub display. You’ll need a Google Home Premium subscription to make it work though.