Last summer proved to be prime season for boutique labels and major studios to slip some of their finest efforts onto physical media. Over the past several weeks, our home theaters have been treated to everything from blood-soaked beaches and Technicolor 3D slapstick comedy to Ray Harryhausen monster mashes.

Whether you’re hunting for vintage restorations, reference-grade Dolby Atmos fodder for your surround setup, hidden gems you missed in theaters, or lavish limited-edition packaging to show off to your friends, these late-summer releases deliver the goods and should carry us nicely into a cozy autumn.

The Fast and the Furious 25th Anniversary Edition 4K (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)

Yes, it really has been a quarter of a century since Dom, Brian, and their sick rides first roared onto the scene and changed the car-chase movie forever. The FBI/undercover LAPD plot and gritty characters provide a solid setup for some of the best, most intimate action ever captured, with the visual effects used judiciously to enhance the excitement before later films careened off into fantasyland.

Not content to simply repack last year’s model, Universal has rolled out a new driving experience that goes beyond a mere paint job, upgrading the film to Dolby Vision HDR, with some interesting changes to the color grade, while also switching to reference-quality Dolby Atmos for the first time.

A trunkload of legacy features carries over across the 4K and included HD Blu-ray discs, joined by a new half-hour retrospective featuring the three surviving stars plus Meadow Walker, daughter of the late Paul Walker.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

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Troy 4K Limited Edition (Arrow)

With Trojan horses becoming a big deal on the big screen this summer, there’s never been a better time to revisit Wolfgang Petersen’s take on Helen, Achilles, and yes, even Odysseus, here played by Sean Bean. The scale of Troy is big and bold, and the action is plentiful, owing much to Brad Pitt’s intense performance as the ultimate Greek warrior and the sweeping script by future Game of Thrones co-creator and showrunner David Benioff.

There are no audio commentaries and no new extras of any kind in Arrow’s new three-disc 4K upgrade of both the theatrical version and the vastly different director’s cut, aside from some new writing in the included booklet. The archival bonus material, however, is quite substantial. Most notably, the “In-Movie Experience” picture-in-picture commentary, first seen on the Warner HD DVD, carries over.

Both versions have been newly restored and remastered in Ultra HD with Dolby Vision from the archival camera negatives, and the results are truly stunning. One more reason to consider adding this Troy to your shelf: Reportedly, Disc 1, containing the 4K theatrical cut, will only be available in this limited-edition package and not in future releases.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

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Out of the Past 4K (Warner Archive Collection)

This was the movie that established film noir’s stylistic vocabulary, combining Robert Mitchum’s sleepy-eyed apathy, Jane Greer’s lethal elegance, and Nicholas Musuraca’s shadowy cinematography to indelible effect. A weary ex-investigator (Mitchum) finds his quiet town compromised when events he couldn’t outrun, and the femme fatale who engineered his downfall, pull him back into a web of deceit, money, and murder.

The new restoration comes from a scan of the nitrate camera negative, finished with Dolby Vision HDR and paired with the original mono audio. The legacy film critic commentary, 2022 introduction, and four radio shows from 1947, the year Out of the Past debuted, are included on both the 4K disc and the supplied HD Blu-ray featuring the new master.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

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The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 4K (Sony)

It has begun! 1958’s 7th Voyage was the first of Ray Harryhausen’s “Dynamation” extravaganzas to be marketed with that term, denoting a process he had refined over several previous films. Basically, by sandwiching his meticulous miniatures between foreground and background elements in-camera, he created more thrilling, more lifelike effects. As a result, audiences were treated to adventures never seen before, like our hero (Kerwin Matthews) doing Sinbattle with a stop-motion Cyclops, a fire-breathing dragon, and a lone bony warrior. (That last foe served as proof of concept for the climactic seven-skeleton army fight in Jason and the Argonauts. Can Sinbad on 4K be the portent of more awesomeness to follow?)

Sony provides a new restoration from the 1.66:1 camera negative with Dolby Vision HDR. Because Dynamation involves re-photographing previously shot film, and stop-motion animation has its own unique look, this isn’t a showoff disc, but I would argue that it is an exemplary preservation of the movie in its authentic form. The satisfying 5.1 remix goes a long way toward helping sell the illusions, too.

Disc Two is a repack of the previously released HD Blu-ray of the movie, loaded with extras: a Harryhausen audio commentary, interviews, featurettes, and even a music video for the tongue-in-cheek promotional song “Sinbad May Have Been Bad, But He’s Been Good to Me.” Newly added on the Ultra HD disc is a career-spanning, star-studded, hour-long TV special from 1998 covering Ray’s entire career.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

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Ju-On: The Grudge 4K Limited Edition (Arrow) 

Historically, Takashi Shimizu’s original Ju-On: The Grudge stands alongside Hideo Nakata’s Ringu as a cornerstone of the turn-of-the-millennium J-horror explosion, helping inspire modern horror’s preference for atmosphere over graphic violence. It captivates with its nonlinear structure, dread-inducing sound design, including vengeful ghost Kayako’s iconic throat rattle, and surreal domestic hauntings.

Rather than relying on jump scares, it weaponizes quiet spaces and revels in its unrelenting, daylight terror. That deceptive sunshine looks fabulous in Arrow’s new 4K master with Dolby Vision, accompanied by DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 in either Japanese or an English dub.

There are also two audio commentaries, one featuring director Sam Raimi, along with an extensive collection of new and archival on-camera interviews with the filmmakers and experts, deleted scenes, and a couple of “true” ghost stories. The slim, slipcased package includes a companion booklet and reversible cover art.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

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Money from Home Blu-ray 3D (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

How ’50s can you get? Martin & Lewis headline—in 3D!—this Damon Runyon-style “gangland comedy,” with slick ladies’ man “Honey Talk” (Dean Martin) roping gullible veterinarian Virgil (Jerry Lewis) into an elaborate scheme to fix a big horse race and pay off his debt to the mob.

KLSC presents Money from Home in both stereoscopic and anaglyph 3D, as well as standard 2D for those self-conscious about wearing glasses, all on a single disc. There are also not one but two film historian audio commentaries, along with other genuinely excellent supplements.

The extensive 4K restoration effort, with the final result presented here in 1080p, required double the work, as the 35mm “Dynoptic 3-D Technicolor” camera negatives for the left and right eyes had to be scanned and graded separately, with plenty of painstaking but necessary adjustments along the way. The results are absolutely gorgeous and worth checking out in any and all versions.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

Wicked Priest Collection Blu-ray (Arrow)

Shinkai is a vice-loving Buddhist monk with a surprising sense of justice in this series, which blends bawdy action-comedy with kinetic martial arts. Its titular hero uses his bravery and cunning, as well as his fists, to root out corruption, defeat vengeful nemeses, and dismantle ruthless yakuza syndicates.

The franchise peaks in its middle installments, particularly Wicked Priest 2, which strikes a fine balance between raunchy yuks and kinetic fight choreography, but star Tomisaburo Wakayama shines brightly across all five entries:

• Wicked Priest (1968)
• Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (1968)
• Wicked Priest 3: A Killer’s Pilgrimage (1969)
• Wicked Priest 4: The Killer Priest Comes Back (1970)
• Wicked Priest 5: Blood on the Commandments (1971)

There are sharp, colorful new restorations of all five Gokuaku Bōzu films, as they were originally known, with lossless Japanese mono audio and optional English subtitles. Several new interviews and video essays cover everything from the music and the depiction of Buddhism in pop culture to the broader filmmaking scene of the era.

Arrow’s wickedly handsome package arrives with extensive new liner notes and reversible sleeve art.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

New York, New York 4K (MVD Marquee Collection)

Is this Martin Scorsese at his most self-indulgent? Exploiting the creative and financial freedom afforded by the success of Taxi Driver, released the previous year, NY, NY is an ambitious but dissonant and ultimately abrasive musical, attempting to recreate the hyper-stylized ’40s MGM aesthetic while filling it with ’70s realism through the relentless toxic conflict between its two leads.

The butchered theatrical version has scarcely been seen since 1977, pushed aside in favor of the longer Director’s Cut, with its “Happy Endings” musical sequence and other footage restored. Here, it has been newly scanned in 4K at 16-bit and presented in the less common 1.66:1 aspect ratio, with a Scorsese introduction and commentary.

The HD Blu-ray includes the trimmed-to-the-bone International Cut (137 minutes), along with loads of legacy interviews, alternate and deleted scenes, and select-scene commentary from D.P. László Kovács.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Volume 3 Blu-ray (Warner Archive Collection)

They really do listen over at the Warner Archive. Here are 50 more of the most-requested-in-HD cartoon shorts (dang, that must be one huge studio vault in Burbank), peppered with historic milestones including the very first Looney Tune, “Sinkin’ in the Bathtub” (1930), and the first Merrie Melodie, “Lady, Play Your Mandolin!” (1931).

There are two-color, Technicolor, and no-color (black-and-white) outings, all remastered and uncut, with some unseen in such high quality in years. They’re organized alphabetically, which makes for an unusual, eclectic playlist, but not to worry: all of our favorite characters are represented.

And no, we’re not hallucinating. That is Hermann Göring going toe-to-toe with Bugs on Disc Two in “Herr Meets Hare.” Select commentaries from animation experts are provided, as is a clear age warning on the back cover.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

Pressure 4K (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)

Was the real hero of D-Day a meteorologist? Group Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott) stands up to the Allied high command in the lead-up to the pivotal invasion, putting his scientific expertise and personal integrity on the line to save Operation Overlord from catastrophic failure.

His combative yet symbiotic relationship with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, played with measured restraint and warmth by Brendan Fraser, provides the dramatic core of this historical tale, based on the stage play by David Haig.

Audio and video on Universal’s Dolby Vision/Atmos disc earn high marks, although the extras are somewhat sparse.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

Auntie Mame 4K (Warner Archive Collection)

The heartwarming story of Auntie Mame, about a sweet young orphan who goes to live with his larger-than-life relative, began as a novel, then became a play that evolved into this here film, and was later reimagined as both a full-on stage and screen musical.

The movie has always felt a little stagey for my taste, but even if the manic theatricality isn’t your cup of tea, it’s essential viewing for Rosalind Russell’s tour-de-force performance in the title role, its eye-popping 1958 Technicolor art direction, and a surprisingly sharp critique of postwar American conformity.

Auntie Mame remains a crown jewel for Warner and a fascinating moment in film history, so the studio has gone back to the large-format, horizontal 35mm Technirama camera negative for this glorious, exceptionally detailed restoration from a 12K scan, presented here in Dolby Vision. The original mono is preserved, along with a new 5.1-channel remix that works quite well, plus an isolated music-only track.

Brand-new extras comprise a brief before-and-after comparison (love these) and a recent sit-down with Jan Handzlik, the only surviving cast member, who played little Patrick. Warner Archive has also added a remastered HD Blu-ray and a booklet, unusual for one of its releases, reproducing the movie’s original pressbook in a scaled-down format.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Movie

★★★★★★★★★★ Picture

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Extras

Where to buy:

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Farmers around the world face a pressing problem: the equipment they use to till, plant, and harvest their fields is killing their margins. Studies have estimated that soil compaction can reduce yields by 20% to 60%. 

Plowing can help, but it’s a laborious and expensive task that harms soil health in different ways. Muju Earth has developed an alternative, the Aeropod, which automatically aerates the soil without machinery or robotics. The startup says it can promote better soil health while cutting farmers’ tilling costs by half or more.

The device is “built like a seed, it sows like a seed, and it ships like a seed,” Afolayan said. The device is about the size of a fingernail, and farmers drop it in the soil alongside their seeds using the same equipment. There’s no need to till the soil in advance.

“It just really seems like a no-brainer,” Ifeoluwa Afolayan, the company’s co-founder and CEO, tells TechCrunch.

After the Aeropod is exposed to a combination of temperature, pressure, and moisture, it bursts open, loosening the soil and creating small channels that let air, water and roots move through it more easily.

Muju Earth — one of the 200 startups in this year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in October — has tested its devices in lab settings and is embarking on paid field trials this fall in the UK. Nine farmers are participating, and the startup has more than 30 on a waitlist.

Its initial target market is onion growers in the UK since onions are particularly sensitive to soil compaction, Afolayan said.

Tilling a field once might cost around £250 to £400 per hectare when factoring in labor costs, diesel, and wear-and-tear on equipment, Afolayan said. Aeropods should produce similar results at just £100 per hectare, she said.

Aeropods were born during Afolayan’s and co-founder Wangyang Hu’s time at Imperial College London, where they sought to design a product that would improve farmers’ bottom lines while also aiding soil health. The Aeropod’s development was driven by a single question: “How do you make this as simple as sowing a seed?” Afolayan said. “That’s the most equitable practice across every farmer on the planet.”

In addition to farmers, the startup has also heard from companies developing biologic amendments — products added to soil, often containing living microbes, that boost or replace chemical fertilizers. Because those companies’ products work best in aerated soils, they’re interested in pairing with Aeropods.

But Afolayan said that farmers themselves have been leading adoption. Most of the marketing to date has been inbound. “The best thing about Aeropod is the farmers intuitively understand the proposition,” she said.

Muju Earth is one of 200 startups in this year’s TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, a pitch competition at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco in October in which 20 finalists will present on the main stage.

Anthropic lost a legal battle to overturn one of the supply-chain risk labels that the US Department of Defense slapped on the company, as a federal appeals court in DC on Friday refused to second-guess the Trump administration.

“The department had ample support for its conclusion that the continued integration of Claude into the department’s information systems, by the department or its contractors, presented a statutorily covered national-security risk,” the judges wrote in a majority opinion. “As Anthropic admits, the company encodes restrictions into Claude that prevent the model from performing tasks that Anthropic wishes to prevent.”

Anthropic spokesperson Danielle Cohen says the company remains confident in its position and is considering all options. That could include appealing to a broader panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals or the US Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon sanctioned Anthropic under a pair of separate supply-chain laws to remove the company’s Claude AI models from the military and other parts of the federal government by this month. Anthropic executives have said that the company would not allow the government to deploy its current AI models to support autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth deemed the stance a significant national security risk.

The laws designating Anthropic had to be challenged in separate courts. A federal judge in San Francisco tossed out one of the supply-chain risk labels in March and confirmed that decision last month, but Friday’s ruling means the other one will stay in place indefinitely, meaning the Pentagon’s blocking of Anthropic can continue. Both rulings face the prospect of years of appeals before being fully resolved.

In the immediate aftermath of the designations, Anthropic said it lost out on revenue because customers were concerned about doing business with a government pariah. Anthropic hasn’t provided further updates about how the designations have affected its bottom line. But the company has generally touted growing sales in recent months and is moving toward a potential initial public offering of its shares later this year.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon hasn’t provided detailed updates about its progress in replacing Claude with alternatives such as SpaceX’s Grok, Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s GPT models. Some employees at Google and OpenAI have objected to their employers striking a deal with the US military that Anthropic had rejected, citing ethical concerns. But the companies have brushed aside protests and described supporting the US government as crucial.

The new decision by a US appeals court in Washington, DC, was somewhat expected. In April the same panel declined to temporarily block the supply-chain-risk designation after finding that Anthropic failed to meet “stringent requirements” for an immediate reprieve.

During a hearing ahead of their ruling, the three judges on the panel challenged both Anthropic and the US government on their arguments and appeared divided on how to rule on blocking the designation completely. The final decision came in 2-1.

The majority also rejected Anthropic’s claims that its due process and free speech rights were violated, saying that the government followed procedure and that the dispute was standard contract negotiations. The Pentagon “excluded Anthropic from its supply chain based on the company’s refusal to assent to a contract term that the Department deemed essential, not based on the company’s support for greater governmental regulation of AI technology,” the judges wrote.

Anthropic had argued that the government had acted beyond what the supply-chain law allows. But for now, the Pentagon and much of the rest of the Trump administration will be able to continue to steer clear of Claude ahead of Anthropic’s expected IPO.

Music Piracy is Back: A recent case of “physical piracy” in the UK highlights the significant resurgence the recording industry is experiencing. Record labels are taking note, however, and trying to curb the growth of the unauthorized market that could accompany rising sales.

A Londoner named Rehan Ahmed sold thousands of vinyl records featuring music by popular artists, earning millions of pounds in the process. However, the vinyl discs were all “fake,” and Ahmed is now going to jail after being caught by police. Representatives from the music industry were instrumental in uncovering the illegal printing operation.

The BBC reports that 40-year-old Ahmed’s music “business” was caught in 2024 after a representative from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) made a “test” purchase from his company, Phoenix of Vinyl. London police raided the premises soon after, discovering what the agency described as the largest archive of fake records ever found in the UK.

Ahmed had amassed a total of 2,791 vinyl records featuring music by 108 different artists, including popular stars such as Adele, Ariana Grande, Bad Bunny, Drake, Beyoncé, and Rihanna. Classic bands such as the Beatles were available as well, highlighting the forger’s attempt to cover different genres and eras of music.

Phoenix of Vinyl employed several methods to sell its unlicensed records. The company supplied records to London’s surviving music stores and sold directly to customers through online platforms such as eBay and Discogs. The discs were made using 70-year-old presses, which means they were genuine vinyl records from a manufacturing standpoint.

According to BPI director of content protection Peter Ratcliffe, Ahmed’s operation had stolen tens of millions of pounds from artists, record labels, and other professionals working in the music industry. Phoenix of Vinyl exploited the resurgence of physical music by creating a highly organized and highly profitable counterfeit operation.

Physical music is indeed enjoying a return to growth after being decimated by streaming platforms over the past couple of decades. The RIAA said revenue from CD audio music grew by 58.6% in the first quarter of 2026, while vinyl record revenue increased by 17.7% over the same period.

Now that physical media is making a comeback as a legitimate listening format, music pirates such as Ahmed are trying to make an easy buck from it. Ratcliffe said counterfeit records are damaging the legal music economy once again, while customers who fall prey to the illegal releases are being affected as well.

Ahmed pleaded guilty to operating the illegal business and copyright infringement, and is now set to spend the next three and a half years in prison.

Google just gave its newest live conversation model a face. Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar became generally available on September 24 for Gemini Enterprise customers, one week after the audio-focused Gemini 3.8 Live models launched and months after a first look at Google Cloud Next 2026. The update generates a 24-frame-per-second video of an animated person or cartoon character whose mouth and expressions stay locked to the spoken words, pairing the existing speech model with low-latency streaming video in a single pass.

Live Avatar listens to any speech in real time, watches live camera feeds or screen sharing at one frame per second, and responds swiftly with a 24 kHz voice and a real-time moving face. Lip movements remain in sync even when moving from English to Japanese or any of 97 languages, and Google claims the quality never decreases or loses crispness. It can also display more information on the screen as the avatar continues to speak. Furthermore, affective dialog is the default, so the emotions will alter subtly in tandem with the tone of the words you’re saying.

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Businesses can choose from a library of pre-made faces, ranging from cartoon characters to very lifelike humans, and have them paired with a matching voice. Any organization on the approved list may simply provide a still photo, and the system will generate a personalized talking version that looks just like a live person while maintaining the original branding. In one instance, the avatar checked in a hotel guest in the middle of a conversation as the system ran booking tools in the background without halting the chat. Before you realize it, Live Avatar is being used in real life by shopping assistants and multilingual support representatives.

Those fluid interruptions function exactly the same as in the audio-only version, so a caller can simply jump in mid-sentence and the context remains intact, including any background work the avatar has already begun. There is no separate transcription step between what you say and what the face replies – this is all native speech-to-speech stuff.

Every second of music and video has an invisible watermark known as a SynthID, which later programs can use to verify that the clip was created by Live Avatar. Google also added some more identification precautions and keeps custom faces under review. Sessions are only a few minutes long (rather than hours as we would prefer), and they are slightly more expensive than using voice alone. As with all of those large models, the occasional delusion or slowness is still possible.

Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar is now live on endpoints in the United States and the European Union, complete with the necessary configuration and typical enterprise security. The more powerful Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking version is still in private preview and does not yet have the face feature. For the time being, the talking heads are entirely internal in company accounts, intended at support desks, product demos, virtual receptionists, interactive assistance that get to see what a customer is pointing to while they speak, and so on.

Big quote: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI companies that cannot control the systems they are building should stop developing them. Huang made the comments during an interview with The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, as companies including OpenAI and Anthropic push for tighter rules governing advanced AI models and autonomous agents. He argued that the companies developing these systems already have the power to hold back products they believe are unsafe.

“Now, if they say the alternative, which is: There is no way to contain our experiments, there’s just no way; when we test our AI models, it will get out, and it will damage the world – then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down,” Huang said. “Because the cost to humanity, the damage is too great. The shareholder, the liabilities – it could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities. I mean, the liability’s incredible.”

The issue has become more pressing as AI developers give their models access to external tools, software systems, and computer networks. The risks are no longer limited to a chatbot producing incorrect information. Agents can write and run code, search for information, interact with websites, and carry out tasks across different systems.

Those concerns received renewed attention after an OpenAI agent hacked Hugging Face, a popular platform for hosting AI models. Nvidia now owns Hugging Face. The incident has been cited in the wider debate over whether companies can safely test and deploy increasingly capable AI agents.

Anthropic, OpenAI, and other frontier AI companies have pointed to the possibility of rogue or misused systems in their calls for new safeguards. Huang has taken a different view. He said companies should not portray themselves as powerless to prevent unsafe releases.

“These are companies with agency,” Huang said. “If I believe that I’m about to launch a product that is unsafe, it is completely in my ability… to not launch that product. And so I can’t buy into the idea that somehow, all of Americans, around 400 million of us, are pushing them to launch untested products that are unreliable.”

Huang is not arguing that AI should be exempt from oversight. Rather, he said existing laws and regulations should be used when companies cause damage or release products irresponsibly.

“I’m saying that we have lots of laws and regulations. Apply it,” Huang said.

His comments come amid a growing split between Nvidia and some of the companies that rely on its hardware. Nvidia’s GPUs are the backbone of the computing systems used to train and run the largest AI models. The company has benefited from the race to build more powerful models, but Huang has rejected the most extreme warnings about where that race could lead.

He recently dismissed claims that AI could destroy the world by 2030. At the same time, he said AI companies should not ship products before they are ready or put unsafe systems in front of users.

The regulatory fight has also become tangled with competition concerns. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI are facing an antitrust lawsuit over an agreement to slow AI development. The plaintiffs say the plan is self-serving and designed to limit competition. The companies have presented slower development as a safety measure.

Huang’s argument shifts the focus back to the companies making the models. Frontier labs have grown quickly from research organizations into businesses that may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In his view, that growth brings a basic obligation: if a company knows a system is unsafe, it should not release it.

“I’m not against laws and regulations,” Huang said. “I’m against, currently, the distraction.”

Leaked artwork of the next iPad mini shows its front camera on the long edge, a useful change for video calls that would bring the small tablet in line with other iPads.

The images reportedly come from Apple’s code and show only the front of the device. They offer a glimpse of its layout, but leave the back and sides unseen.

The current iPad mini’s Center Stage camera sits on its short edge, so the lens ends up off to one side during landscape calls. Center Stage can keep you in frame, but it can’t move the lens above the screen where you’re looking.

A narrow groove also appears along the top of the pictured display glass when the tablet is upright. Earlier reporting described a vibration-based speaker that could eliminate conventional speaker holes and help improve water resistance.

The groove raises questions about how that design might work, but the image can’t settle them.

The code reportedly identifies an A20 Pro chip, which earlier leaks had already suggested. An OLED display is also expected, but the artwork can’t confirm the screen technology.

MacRumors first reported the images and code details in its original report.

An earlier report put the new iPad mini’s release by the end of October. Product artwork in Apple’s code suggests preparations are underway, but it doesn’t establish when Apple will announce the tablet.

India’s Gen Z consumers are becoming one of the country’s most influential economic forces, and they’re making shopping decisions very differently from previous generations. A new report by Rukam Capital, in partnership with YouGov, suggests that young consumers rely more on personal research than influencers, increasingly use AI to compare products, and still put family at the center of festive spending.

Gen Z shops with AI, but still wants the final say

One of the report’s biggest findings is that AI has become a regular part of the buying journey. Nearly 6 in 10 Gen Z consumers say they use AI at least occasionally to research products, compare features, or find the best prices before buying.

However, the generation isn’t ready to hand over complete control. While 70% are comfortable receiving product recommendations from AI, only 49% would allow AI to make purchasing decisions without their approval. The report describes this as a balance between convenience and personal agency, with Gen Z treating AI as an evaluator rather than a replacement for decision-making.

AI adoption also extends beyond shopping. Around 66% of respondents said they’d trust AI for healthcare-related guidance, while 63% are open to using it for career advice, highlighting AI’s growing role across everyday life.

Influencers drive discovery, but research builds trust

Despite the rise of creator marketing, the report found that Gen Z rarely buys products purely because an influencer recommends them. Instead, 29% discover products through social media creators, but just 6% make an immediate purchase afterward. Personal research remains the strongest source of trust. 27% of respondents said they trust their own research more than anything else, compared to 20% who rely on friends and 15% who prioritize online reviews.

The same skeptical mindset appears in trend adoption. One-third of respondents research viral trends before trying them, while only 9% adopt trends immediately. Brands that overuse influencer marketing, forced slang, or trend-chasing also risk losing credibility, with roughly 30% of Gen Z respondents calling out those tactics as inauthentic.

The report suggests that Gen Z is pragmatic despite its reputation for impulsive spending. Quality (51%) and price (49%) emerged as the two biggest factors influencing purchase decisions, ranking well ahead of trends or social media popularity.

Research has become a defining habit, with 46% saying they now investigate products more thoroughly before buying. Only 4% purchase immediately after discovering a product online. Trust also plays a major role. Concerns about fake listings and deepfake content have led 32% of respondents to verify sellers before buying, while 29% prefer established brands they already trust. Meanwhile, 28% regularly use quick-commerce platforms for convenience, even as 20% admit they’ve become more impulsive shoppers in certain situations.

In September 2015, the Founders Fund hosted a retreat at an eco-resort in British Columbia. Most of the attendees were VCs and people from the companies the firm was backing, but they also invited a few outsiders, including computer pioneer Alan Kay, writer Neal Stephenson, and me.

One morning at breakfast I was sitting across from Kay at a long table. The man who conceived the Dynabook—basically the modern computer that we all use—was expounding on his exploits when Founders Fund leader Peter Thiel plopped down next to him. As Kay, in full raconteur mode, spun stories of optimizing the mouse and advising Steve Jobs, Thiel listened with increasingly visible incredulity. Finally, he couldn’t take it. “Who ARE you?” he demanded of Kay.

The mustachioed legend was stunned. He began stumbling out his bona fides, but quickly realized that for someone unacquainted with his résumé, it would have sounded ridiculously overblown. It was like asking Einstein or Mick Jagger to explain themselves. Kay stopped mid-sentence and sighed. “I’m just an old has-been,” he said and went back to his breakfast. Two worlds had collided, and failed to connect.

I thought back to that moment a couple of weeks ago while reading an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “Silicon Valley Was Right From the Start,” by Sharon Weinberger. The essay claimed that the portrait often painted of the Valley as driven by the counterculture and a desire to make the world better was a sham. Today’s bare-knuckled approach to accumulating massive wealth, kowtowing to an authoritarian leader, and embracing lethal military technology simply exposes the industry for what it always was. (Weinberger’s essay was promoting her new book Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War.)

“Silicon Valley’s values haven’t changed, just its customers,” she wrote, calling the industry’s current love affair with military tech “less a story of political conversion than of market adaptation.” In that reading, all that hippie stuff about free expression and democratization during the 1980s PC revolution and the 1990s Internet boom was a mirage, an opportunistic feint by Big Tech to push its wares and garner the loot.

I disagree. The story as I see it is that beginning in the late 1970s, a new generation of technologists, identifying with the counterculture, operated with a set of values that unleashed innovation and ironically set the stage for the industry’s current wealth. Yes, that movement carried a torch from the field’s defense industry roots. But even as DOD funding kept fueling innovations (Darpa grants provided dough for the GUI, the internet, and Google Search), that new generation was characterized by idealism, a hackerish love of building things, and disdain for conventional practices.

That mindset changed not only the course of the computer industry, but the culture of American business. (Before Apple Computer, a CEO wouldn’t dare come to work in anything but a suit.) Denying the existence of that idealism is not only inaccurate, but it conveniently lets the new generation of defense contractors off the hook for their pivot toward deadly materiel.

When I shared my views with Weinberger, she acknowledged that I’d probably studied tech culture more than she had from her perch in Washington, DC. Still, she gamely defended her op-ed. “We’re all products of what we grow up in,” she says. “If you were growing up in the peace-dividend era, with defense tech jobs disappearing, the money from defense was less important, and you start to have different values.”

By that standard, the market shift from missile control modules to Macintoshes was driven not by values but by greed. Likewise, she says, the recent return to high-tech weaponry doesn’t represent a philosophical repositioning but a fortuitous opportunity to sell to a Pentagon eager to exploit the Valley’s innovations. “It’s not like everybody in the workforce in Silicon Valley woke up and went, like, ‘Defense is cool,’” says Weinberger. That impulse to go where the money is, she argues, is the defining ethos of Silicon Valley. “Your prime directive is for your company to succeed,” she says. “Why didn’t Apple work with the military? Because they didn’t need to. They had the consumer marketplace.”