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10 Essential B-Horror Movies for Hot Summer Nights
There’s a special kind of charm to B-horror movies—their cardboard sets, rubber masks, wildly inconsistent acting, and plotlines that feel like they were scribbled on a cocktail napkin during a Red Lobster happy hour. But unlike the modern wave of “torture porn” horror—think Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, or that unwatchable subgenre where every scene feels like a cry for help from the writer’s therapist—classic B-movies rarely take themselves that seriously.
They’re campy, clunky, and weirdly comforting, like cinematic junk food that knows exactly what it is. You won’t find graphic mutilation, sexual violence, or undead creeps assaulting teenagers here. For that kind of deeply uncomfortable energy, there’s TikTok. No, these flicks are more about rubber-suited swamp monsters, vengeful house pets, mutated insects, and hilariously avoidable demises. They’re terrible—gloriously, unapologetically terrible—and sometimes, in just the right light, kind of brilliant.
Some of our favorite actors got their awkward, low-budget start in these films—Kevin Bacon danced his way out of Friday the 13th, and even George Clooney once tangoed with a mutant tomato. For others, these roles were less a launching pad and more a career obituary, filed under What Happened to That Guy?
But no matter the budget or IMDB legacy, the ingredients are always deliciously familiar: the sexy, oblivious heroine wearing an outfit that would make modern-day Britney ask, “Girl, are you okay?”; the overweight, vaguely racist sheriff who thinks every teen is part of a Satanic cult; and the mad scientist “just following orders” while accidentally unleashing a lizard the size of Newark.
Back when zombie apocalypses were clever satires on capitalism and mall culture, they made you laugh and squirm—Dawn of the Dead walked so TikTok influencers could shop in silence. Now? The genre’s largely become a grim, soul-sucking gorefest of despair, like The Walking Dead had a baby with a Serbian art film–28 Days Later still gets a pass—Danny Boyle knew how to mix dread with drama. But if I wanted to watch human beings consume one another with that much chaos and urgency, I’d just swing by the Cracker Barrel on a Sunday morning.
So Bad They’re Brilliant: The Best B-Horror Movies to Watch When You’re Tired of Prestige TV and Crippling Anxiety
Because sometimes, you just want a radioactive alligator, a chainsaw-wielding prom queen, and dialogue that makes Hallmark movies sound like Shakespeare—all projected under the stars in your backyard movie theater, where the sound is killer and the real monster is probably already inside your house. Bonus: more room to run!
Fright Night (1985)
Before he was dodging Andre the Giant and Westley, Chris Sarandon was rocking a popped collar and bloodlust as Jerry Dandridge—the smoothest vampire to ever move into suburban hell. Poor Charley Brewster, your typical horror-obsessed teen, figures it out pretty quickly: the dude next door is a vampire, and his roommate? Not just a “friend.” But nobody believes him, because of course they don’t—especially not washed-up horror host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), who looks like he hasn’t staked anything but his pension in years.
You’ve also got William Ragsdale before Herman’s Head, and Amanda Bearse before she evolved into Marcy Darcy, the permanently outraged neighbor of Married With Children—here she’s just Charley’s innocent girlfriend, unknowingly caught in a vampire’s trance with a questionable new hairstyle. The film walks a perfect line between slick ‘80s horror, a love letter to old-school vampire flicks, and just enough camp to make you grin. Solid practical effects, creepy as hell transformation scenes, and one of the all-time great vampire taunts: “You have to have faith for that to work on me, Charley.” It’s a bite of nostalgic brilliance with just the right amount of garlic.
Where to buy: $25.84 at Amazon
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Before evil clowns became horror cliché #243, this cotton-candy-coated fever dream crash-landed like Ringling Bros on bath salts. Killer Klowns from Outer Space sounds like something a stoned film student pitched at 3 a.m. after bingeing on Fun Dip and trauma, and yet—somehow—it stuck.
The plot? Aliens arrive on Earth disguised as circus clowns and start turning people into human lollipops. The weapons? Shadow puppets that kill, popcorn that hatches into monsters, and cotton candy cocoons that look like Jim Henson and John Wayne Gacy co-directed a snuff film.
What makes it all work (and weirdly rewatchable) is the absolutely unhinged production design. The makeup and costumes are grotesque and brilliant—like a demented toy factory exploded and took a few carnies with it. It’s not scary in a “hide under the covers” way, but it gets under your skin like a funhouse mirror that suddenly moves when you’re alone.
It’s not art, it’s not satire, and it sure as hell isn’t subtle. But it is classic B-Horror cinema doing exactly what it should—being memorable, messy, and just self-aware enough to know it’s rotting your brain in the best possible way.
Where to buy: $44.98 at Amazon
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
This one’s the granddaddy of cult midnight madness—a musical send-up of B-movies that somehow became the B-movie it lovingly roasted. Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter practically invented camp royalty, while Barry Bostwick, Meatloaf, and Susan Sarandon (yes, way before she was rubbing lemons on her skin and tweeting questionable love notes to Hamas) rounded out a cast that nailed the mix of horror, sci-fi, and pure, unapologetic weirdness.
The soundtrack slaps harder than a chorus line of tap-dancing zombies, and the audience participation? Essential. If you show up without your prop kit—no rice, no toast, no newspapers to throw when the wedding scene kicks in—you might as well stay home and stream TikTok instead.
More than just a movie, Rocky Horror turned midnight screenings into ritual, a bizarre party where trash wasn’t just tolerated, it was worshipped. Without it, your local midnight movie wouldn’t be half the spectacle it is today. And seriously, if you haven’t seen someone dress as Frank-N-Furter and own that spotlight, you haven’t lived.
Where to buy: $39.99 at Amazon
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
Ed Wood’s infamous sci-fi horror masterpiece—if you can even call it that—is basically the gold standard for “so-bad-it’s-good” cinema. After losing Bela Lugosi mid-production (thanks, Grim Reaper), Wood had to scramble and cobble together scenes with a stand-in who looked like he wandered in from the wrong movie. The sets? Let’s just say if a class of kindergartners had crafted them for a school play, they’d still outshine this mess.
The plot is pure cosmic nonsense: aliens resurrect the dead to stop humanity from wrecking the universe, which sounds ambitious until you realize the dialogue loops like a stuck record and half the cast is obviously reading lines off cue cards. Plan 9 easily ranks as one of the absolute worst films ever made — and that was before Heaven’s Gate showed up to ruin everything else.
Where to buy: $23.96 at Amazon
The Thing (1982)
If we’re moving from one body-snatching nightmare to another, John Carpenter’s The Thing is the undeniable heavyweight champ of B-movie sci-fi horror. Sure, it had a $15 million budget — way more than your average bargain-bin monster flick — but deep down, it’s pure B-movie DNA. From its grotesquely brilliant practical effects that still make you squirm decades later, to a cast stacked with cult favorites like Kurt Russell and yes, the painfully annoying guy from Cocoon who somehow survived this massacre, it nails every box on the checklist.
Carpenter’s masterstroke? The isolation. A remote Antarctic research station, trapped in the snow and paranoia so thick you could slice it with one of those alien tongues. It’s not just a movie; it’s an intense, paranoid fever dream best devoured late at night with a giant bag of Twizzlers—ready to lob into the air when the creature shows off its next horrifying mutation. If you don’t feel your skin crawl and your stomach tighten, are you even watching The Thing?
Where to buy: $14.99 at Amazon
They Live (1988)
Just when you thought the only thing sneaking into your brain was your ex’s bad taste in music, They Live drops the ultimate wrestling-themed conspiracy smackdown. Rowdy Roddy Piper — yes, the WWF’s greatest heel, Hot Rod himself — plays Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker who stumbles on a pair of sunglasses that reveal the brutal truth: the world’s a nightmare of subliminal messages like “Stay Asleep” and “Obey,” all pumped out by a bunch of ugly alien puppet masters disguised as your average Angelenos. Think Platoon meets The Twilight Zone, but with more spandex and less jungle warfare.
Keith David and Meg Foster round out the cast, backing Hot Rod in this instant cult classic that’s basically a wrestling promo turned dystopian social commentary. If Platoon’s soldiers needed shades to spot the enemy, Nada’s your man with the specs — and a mean right hook to boot. Pop on those glasses, and suddenly every billboard is a brainwash, every handshake a trap. Just remember, when life gives you aliens disguised as suits, throw a piledriver.
Where to buy: $20.99 at Amazon
Them! (1954)
In the New Mexico desert, a kid shows up wandering around like she just took a wrong turn at Albuquerque—and what do they find? Giant mutant ants, thanks to good old atomic testing back in ’45. Yep, nuclear bombs didn’t just ruin the planet, they also gave birth to an army of colossal, angry insects. Police Sgt. Ben Peterson and FBI agent Robert Graham team up with the brains of the operation—Dr. Harold Medford and his daughter, Dr. Patricia “Pat” Medford—to torch these oversized pests with real flamethrowers. No CGI here, just fire and fury.
But the nightmare’s just getting started: two queen ants hightail it to Los Angeles and set up shop in the city’s underground flood control tunnels. Yeah, because nothing screams “welcome home” like giant ants crawling beneath your house. A mother reports her kids missing, triggering a frantic race to save them before becoming ant snacks. As for me? You couldn’t pay me enough to crawl into those L.A. tunnels—not even if Sandy from Grease and Dr. Medford showed up with a blanket and a bottle of Whispering Angel.
Low-budget and dripping with Cold War atomic age paranoia, Them! is a mutant ant cautionary tale that looks like it was shot on a shoestring. Bosch could have cracked this case in two days flat. Giant mutant ants? No thanks.
Where to buy: $9.24 at Amazon
The Fog (1980)
John Carpenter’s The Fog is basically a “Don’t go into the fog, you idiot” PSA wrapped in a creepy coastal town revenge flick. Antonio Bay is ready to party for its 100th birthday, but surprise — the town’s founders committed a crime so ugly it still haunts the place like a bad Yelp review. Enter a rolling fog thicker than your uncle’s excuses, full of restless dead folks who are way past forgiving.
Shot on a shoestring budget just over a million bucks, Carpenter still managed to dress it up in fancy anamorphic Panavision widescreen—because why make a cheap-looking horror movie when you can make a cheap-looking horror movie that looks expensive? Meanwhile, Avco Embassy must’ve thought the fog was contagious, dropping three times the budget on ads to make sure everyone knew not to trust that eerie mist.
Oh, and don’t forget Adrienne Barbeau, who plays a badass local and was married to Carpenter at the time—because nothing says “marriage goals” like starring together in a flick where ghosts want your soul. Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, mother and daughter, also star—proving that in horror, talent (and trauma) runs in the family. So yeah, if you see fog creeping in, do yourself a favor and stay the hell indoors.
Where to buy: $36.98 at Amazon
The Blob (1958)
Imagine a giant, gooey, murderous blob of Jell-O on a rampage — that’s The Blob for you. This alien slimeball crashes into a small town and starts swallowing everything in sight, all while the adults ignore the teens who actually know what’s up. Because, you know, teenagers are always wrong.
The actual Blob wasn’t CGI — it was a lovingly concocted mix of red dye and silicone, and get this: it still hasn’t dried out. It’s locked away in the original five-gallon pail from Union Carbide where it was shipped in ’58, a true horror relic that makes you question your kitchen’s Tupperware game. Every summer, Phoenixville, PA (one of the film’s shooting spots) hosts Blobfest, where fans gather to worship this gelatinous terror, reenact panicked theater escapes, and binge-watch the gooey masterpiece.
Steve McQueen was offered $2,500 or 10% of the profits and—bless his practical soul—took the flat fee because no one thought this wobbly menace would make a splash. Fun fact: the film’s idea came from a weird “star jelly” discovery in ’50s Pennsylvania, described as a giant quivering dome of goo that dissolved on touch—kind of like your ex’s promises.
So yeah, if you ever get invited to Blobfest, bring your appetite… for terror, and maybe some lemon Jell-O to feel superior.
Where to buy: $30.12 at Amazon
The War of the Worlds (1953)
Look, New Jersey wasn’t quite Hollywood-cool enough back then, so this classic H.G. Wells invasion flick got transplanted to sunny California — where apparently aliens prefer their death rays with a side of palm trees. The story kicks off when a flaming meteor crashes into some hills, and the locals get all excited… until they realize the passengers inside aren’t here for a barbecue.
Gene Barry plays Dr. Clayton Forrester, and Ann Robinson is Sylvia Van Buren — the town’s unofficial alien damage control team. The visual effects? Absolutely mind-blowing for 1953. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill laser pointers — the aliens wield death rays with a flair and style that would make George Lucas jealous years before he even dreamed up Project Stardust. Watching those Martian tripods stomp around still feels like pure sci-fi joy, especially if you enjoy a little MST3K-style riffing on the melodrama and over-the-top earnestness.
If you want classic alien invasion vibes with some vintage charm and killer rays, this is your ticket — just don’t expect Jersey shore vibes anytime soon.
Where to buy: $39.95 at Amazon
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Add flair to your conversations and clean up those reactions everyone’s getting tired of seeing
Emojis and GIFs are great for reactions and conveying emotion, but new emoji offerings arrive slowly and there are only so many of them. GIFs offer lots more options, but you can’t always find the right one to capture exactly how you’re feeling. If you’re looking for something that’s much more personalized to yourself and your friend groups, you need to check out stickers on your iPhone.
Stickers are a much more personal option that are a lot of fun to use in the Messages app (and elsewhere) on your iPhone. If you haven’t tried these custom “stickable” images yet, you’re missing out. Any photo or video from you or your friends can become a hilarious reaction image. And they’re easy to set up, with no photo editing skills required.
You can easily create stickers using your own photos, including animated stickers from Live Photos. A perfectly timed sticker can be funny in a group chat, great for inside jokes or inventing new memes between friends. After you make a sticker, it stays saved to your library for quick reuse later. And managing your stickers is simple too; you’re free to remove any you aren’t happy with or no longer use. Chances are that when you start using stickers, your friends will too, which means more amusing chats for everyone.
How to make stickers on your iPhone
There are two possible routes when you want to create a new sticker: through the Photos app or in the Messages app. For the former, open Photos and find a picture that you want to build a sticker from. The best sticker candidates are images that have a clear subject in the foreground, like a person, animal, hand, or object.
After tapping to view the picture you want to build from, press and hold on the element you want to turn into a sticker. You’ll see it shine for a moment, then a tooltip menu will appear next to it. If this doesn’t happen, try a different element that’s more pronounced against the background (or another photo). Choose Add Sticker to save the sticker to your library. Repeat this to craft as many stickers as you like. You can sometimes even make multiple stickers from the same image. And if you select a Live Photo, your sticker will be animated (toggle off the Live option at the top-left to disable this if you’d rather it stay static).
If you prefer, it’s also possible to create stickers from the same menu you access them from. Open a conversation in the Messages app, select the + (Plus) icon to the left of the area where you type, and choose Stickers. There, hit the + (Plus) icon in your list of stickers. This opens your photo collection with a key difference from earlier: elements that can be converted into stickers appear highlighted without you having to press on them. Tap one, followed by + (Plus) at the bottom, to add it to your library.
Sending and managing stickers on your iPhone
The Messages app is the best place to use stickers. Open the same + (Plus) menu mentioned above to see all the ones you’ve made so far. To manage them, press and hold one, then select Rearrange from the tooltip. This puts the stickers into a “jiggle mode” similar to when customizing the iPhone’s Home screen, allowing you to drag them around or tap the – (Minus) button to delete them in bulk. On the same tooltip menu, select Add Effect to jazz your stickers up a bit. You can pick from a few options like Outline and Shiny; some of these even react as you turn your iPhone, looking like a holographic trading card.
To send a sticker, tap it from your library. This adds it to your message draft just like when you attach a photo. For more fun, press and hold a sticker from your library to “peel” it, then drag it onto the conversation to “stick” it there. Try this to mess with texts and images in funny ways: have your pet photobomb your beautiful landscape shots, use your friend’s goofy face as a reaction, and whatever else you can think of.
Keep in mind that stickers are designed to work in iMessage conversations (those with blue bubbles). They should send in RCS chats with Android users but likely won’t show the “peel and stick” option properly. SMS conversations have strict size limitations, meaning stickers might appear blurry.
Other ways to use iPhone stickers
Messages isn’t the only app compatible with your stickers. They’re usable in other messaging apps like WhatsApp; just tap the Emoji button at the bottom-left of your keyboard and choose the Stickers tab. You can’t “stick” them on messages like in iMessage, though. Stickers are also available in any iPhone app that features Markup mode. For example, try opening an image in the Photos app, tapping the Edit (sliders) icon at the bottom, then selecting the Markup (marker) icon at the top.
Once you’re in Markup mode, tap + (Plus) on the bottom toolbar and choose Add Sticker. You can move stickers around, change their size, and make copies. Be sure to save the edited image once you’re done. Other apps where Markup is available include Mail and Notes. If you’re feeling uninspired, tons of iPhone apps offer their own sticker packs. Inside the Stickers menu, you’ll see icons for emoji (any emoji can double as a sticker), custom Genmoji, Memoji, and compatible installed apps. On my phone, for instance, the American Airlines, Wikipedia, and Taco Bell apps offer their own stickers. Choose Edit at the far right to rearrange your sticker packs, following Get Sticker Apps on the App Store at the bottom if you’re interested in more.
Your created stickers sync to all devices using your Apple account, so try them out on your iPad and Mac too! They’re a great way to make your reactions more personal. There’s no wrong way to use them, so create a bunch and give them a try.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning of a significant increase in attacks targeting internet-exposed programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in the water and wastewater systems sector.
The agency’s urgent alert comes after hackers disrupted more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota in attacks that started last Sunday and continued through Monday.
CISA’s alert refers to threat activity involved hackers targeting exposed programmable logic controllers (PLC) and changing passwords to lock operators out, modifying IP addresses to disconnect devices from the internet, and other actions that disrupted operations.
“CISA urges critical infrastructure owners, operators, and integrators to remove publicly exposed PLCs and other operational technology (OT) from the internet as soon as possible.”
Organizations of all sizes running water and wastewater systems are being targeted, including some with mature cybersecurity programs.
The bulletin notes that exposed operational technology (OT) may include undocumented cellular modems installed by operators, vendors, or system integrators.
Internet-facing assets are exposed to defacement attacks, configuration changes, operational disruptions, and even physical damage, the agency said.
CISA recommends immediately removing these assets from direct internet exposure. If this is not possible, organizations should use a VPN connection or gateway devices for secure access.
Additionally, default passwords should be changed, and access should be limited to an IP address allow-list.
The agency also pointed owners of Rockwell Automation MicroLogix 1400 PLCs to vendor guidance for recovering access if passwords have been changed.
Cybersecurity search company Censys published a blog post where it quantifies internet exposure, estimating that currently there are more than 4,100 internet-exposed Rockwell Automation/Allen-Bradley hosts, 4,100 Siemens hosts, and over 2,000 Schneider Electric hosts.
Source: Censys
However, it should be clarified that the map above shows devices reachable over the public internet, not systems that are necessarily being targeted or compromised.
Regarding the MicroLogix 1400 controllers mentioned in CISA’s bulletin, Censys notes that many appear to be running EoS (end-of-sale) firmware versions.
The cybersecurity company also highlighted the problem of undocumented cellular modems as a common blind spot, reporting that nearly half of the exposed Rockwell devices are reachable via Verizon Business, AT&T, T-Mobile, Comcast, Charter, and Starlink networks.
Source: Censys
Censys also provided an expanded set of indicators of compromise (IoCs) in its report, along with threat-hunting guidance.
Earlier this week, the Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) agency activated the state’s cybersecurity incident response plan after identifying what it described as “a coordinated cyberattack targeting operational technology at more than 30 Minnesota community water systems.”
Multiple municipalities reported disruptions caused by the cyberattack, with equipment malfunctions forcing some utilities to temporarily switch to manual operations.
MNIT has shared threat intelligence collected from the affected systems and provided guidance and best practices to help impacted utilities restore normal operations.
Many drivers turn on the air conditioning in their cars without ever giving much thought to how the system works. That is, unless your A/C starts to smell bad or worse yet stops working properly. Until then, it’s easy to assume that a car’s air conditioning unit is one of those systems that engineers have mostly perfected over the decades. However, behind the scenes, it’s a very different story. Scientists have been working for years to try and cut down the amount of emissions that A/C systems generate, and it turns out that the industry’s previous efforts might not quite have been as successful as it was initially hoped.
The culprit is the refrigerant that’s used in many modern systems. It was supposed to be a more environmentally-friendly alternative to the previously used chemicals, but new studies have cast doubt on that idea. This isn’t the first time that this has happened either; manufacturers have already changed the refrigerant that they used twice before, and now it looks like they’ll have to do it again.
Early automotive A/C systems mostly used a refrigerant called R-12. It was synthesized by researchers who were trying to create a stable, non-toxic substance to replace the litany of potentially hazardous chemicals that the first commercial refrigerators had used. The new chemical proved to be very effective and just as stable as hoped, but scientists later found that it was contributing to the loss of the Earth’s ozone layer. In response, automakers switched to a new refrigerant, R-134a, in the 1990s.
Today’s main refrigerants are still problematic
This initial change was seen as an improvement; R-134a, which is also called HFC-134a, didn’t contribute to ozone depletion. However, it was part of the chemical group known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. They’re sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals,” because they can cause long-lasting contamination when they’re released into the environment. Research about the full effects of these chemicals is ongoing, but studies have shown that areas with high levels of PFAS contamination in drinking water have seen higher instances of some types of cancer, as well as other diseases.
R-134a is also a greenhouse gas with a high global warming potential (GWP). As the use of R-134a-based A/C systems increased, so did the concentration of R-134a in the atmosphere. This finding prompted European authorities to ban the use of R-134a refrigerant in new car’s A/C systems in 2017, with manufacturers instead replacing it with R-1234yf (also called HFO-1234yf). This new refrigerant has a much lower GWP, but now new research has suggested that it pollutes the environment in a different way.
A 2026 study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters found that R-1234yf can break down into trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) in the atmosphere at a significantly higher rate than R-134a. According to the findings, R-1234yf produces between 3.6 and 10.3 times as much TFA as R-134a. TFA is a type of PFAS that scientists are particularly worried about, since it’s been linked to liver disease and developmental issues with unborn children. It’s also extremely long-lasting, with scientists warning that its accumulation in the environment is effectively irreversible.
Some of the newest refrigerants aren’t actually new
With R-1234yf being a lot less eco-friendly than scientists initially thought, the clock is ticking for manufacturers to find alternatives yet again. Some are already beginning to phase out R-1234yf, with several Volkswagen Group brands switching certain models to R-744 instead. This latest refrigerant is more commonly known as carbon dioxide (CO2).
This is far from a new idea — carbon dioxide’s suitability as a refrigerant has been known for decades, and it drew a lot of attention in the late 1990s when researchers were trying to find alternatives to R-134a. At the time, carmakers like GM opted not to use R-744, in part due to the fact that it needs to operate at significantly higher pressure than R-134a.
Volkswagen came across the same problem, but chose to use it anyway because R-744 brings a couple of key benefits when it’s used in EVs. Battery packs can deliver less range when they’re cold, and R-744 is particularly good at transferring heat in colder operating temperatures. In turn, that helps boost the car’s range, which is a big enough benefit to offset the inconvenience of the high-pressure system.
Another refrigerant that’s attracting interest is R-290, which is propane. It has a low GWP and it’s efficient, but the compromise is that it’s flammable. Still, it’s considered less polluting than today’s main refrigerants, and a report by IDTechEx suggests that demand for both of these alternatives is set to increase significantly over the coming years as manufacturers start to make this latest switch.
CNN tells the unfortunate tale of hedge fund Situational Awareness, “founded in 2024 by German-born Leopold Aschenbrenner when he was in his early 20s.”
Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI employee, founded the hedge fund on the premise that “AI will be the dominant driver of global market returns over the next decade,” according to the firm’s site… Aschenbrenner managed to turn hundreds of millions of dollars into tens of billions of dollars over the course of roughly two years… That streak ended on Thursday, though, when the fund was forced to sell the bulk of its public holdings to a bigger rival after many of its investments went south.
But that’s only part of the story. The fund employed a risky strategy of borrowing money to purchase stocks. When the investments appreciate, the payoff can be massive. But when the investments sour, the losses can be catastrophic. The downturn in AI stocks over the course of this month, like chip makers and cloud computing providers, hit the hedge fund extra hard. It was forced to sell off many investments at a steep discount to rival hedge fund Citadel in what Aschenbrenner reportedly compared to a “bank run” in a letter to investors.
“Critics pointed out that Aschenbrenner had no experience running money prior to launching his fund in July 2024, calling him more lucky than smart,” writes CNBC:
Some noted that his early work experience was at the doomed crypto firm FTX, where he helped now-disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried run a charity out of a Bahamas penthouse. Others on Wall Street, including former traders at global investment banks, noted that in light of reports Situational Awareness used as much as 400% leverage, the collapse wasn’t shocking.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Situational Awareness “also used options to amplify its returns. That meant that even small declines in individual names could have big impacts on Situational’s portfolio.”
And so, as the New York Post put it, “The celebrated crystal ball of the ‘Nostradamus of AI‘ hasn’t merely gone cloudy — it has rolled off the table and shattered on the parlor floor.”
Wall Street breathed a huge sigh of relief last week as an AI-focused hedge fund called Situational Awareness reportedly sold most of its portfolio — reportedly down 67% last month on the backfiring of debt-fueled bets on chipmakers and assorted artificial-intelligence firms — to billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel…
The prevailing sentiment was best summed up by a veteran Wall Street sage who has seen a lot of flameouts in his day. Let’s just say he wasn’t impressed by Leopold Aschenbrenner, the 25-year-old German-born “Nostradamus” figure who is the founder of Situational Awareness… “Just your typical leveraged Âidiot who was right until he was wrong,” the source said, adding that the implosion is a “one-off…”
[Another trusted source] felt there was room for conversation: “A significant issue. Not viewed as systemic right now. I wonder if that changes as more problems arise.” Indeed, the fact is that most of Wall Street is closely monitoring the Situational Awareness situation because they were holding many of the same positions as ÂAschenbrenner. Another top hedge fund manager I won’t name tells me he has been getting crushed on similar investments in chipmakers essential to the AI supply chain, as well as other companies feeding off this technology.
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
software
The first job was lucrative and went well, but a pension was preferable to rolling projects
ON CALL Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day, dear reader! And happy Friday, too, as it heralds both the end of the working week and the day on which The Reg delivers another edition of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which we share your stories of support jobs that twisted, tanked, or turned out terrifically.
This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Roger” who told us he spent decades providing application support for a UK-based software biz.
In 2015, Roger’s company ended support for legacy products and assumed users would decommission their systems. The company advised them to preserve their old documents and invoices on paper or in durable file formats, just to be safe.
Roger retired in 2021, and a year later heard that a large US-based corporation had acquired his former employer. “They immediately modernized the business by making the entire European support team redundant,” Roger told On Call.
He therefore put his old job out of his mind and settled into life as a pensioner.
And then, a few months ago, the American company contacted Roger.
“They had a customer in Germany who had used our software in the past, lost their paper archive, but still had their digital archives,” he told On Call.
“Every single backup disk was still there and contained every byte of raw data with military precision. What they did not contain were the few insignificant items required to turn those bytes back into documents.”
Which was awkward because the customer was undergoing a tax audit and needed every last document to prove its affairs were in order.
The American company asked if Roger could restore the documents – for a daily fee roughly equal to one month’s pension.
Those sums meant Roger was sure he could help – and proved it by remembering that backups of the application in question produced raw ASCII data that could be converted into human-readable documents with a print server running on bespoke software.
Roger found all the relevant code, got it running, and converted the ASCII files into PDFs.
“Twenty years after last using the software, I still remembered the installation procedure,” he told On Call. “Apparently retirement affects one’s recollection of obscure print server parameters less than where one left one’s reading glasses.”
Once he converted all the files, Roger assumed the job was done.
Then came news that the auditors had refused to accept the data for 2013.
“Apparently a large number of invoices for that year existed in the documents I had provided, but were missing in the accounts data. The expression ‘large-scale tax fraud’ began appearing with uncomfortable frequency.”
Roger rescued the situation by realizing that someone had imported one year’s archives twice, doubling the number of invoices and confusing the taxman.
“I had to charge them another day to discover their error,” Roger told On Call.
One of the younger people on the project casually mentioned several other archives were preserved using the same techniques, suggesting there was plenty more work for Roger to do.
“At that point I decided that retirement was still preferable to returning to full-time employment,” he told On Call.
This story has a bittersweet ending, because Roger told us that as he worked on the project, he realized the income would complicate his own tax affairs. He therefore donated his fees to the care home where he lives.
“That was very positively received by the home’s management,” he told On Call.
Have you been hauled out of retirement to support ancient tech? If so, make one more mouse click here to send On Call and email and share your story. ®
Why it matters: The video game industry has seen a historic wave of layoffs in recent years, with thousands of workers impacted in the last few weeks alone. To support some of the developers affected, indie game storefront itch.io is collaborating with an industry union to sell a collection of over 100 heavily discounted games.
The Game Industry Hardship Fund bundle is live on itch.io through August 13. The collection currently includes more than 100 indie titles, along with a few soundtracks, assets, and other materials, all for just $10.
All proceeds go toward the Game Industry Hardship Fund, which the United Videogame Workers union has promoted amid repeated massive rounds of layoffs throughout the industry. US and Canada-based developers can add more games to the bundle, so it will likely keep growing over the next couple of weeks. Customers can download any games added after their purchase at no additional cost.
The bundle mostly consists of small indie titles, but it also includes a few gems with positive Steam ratings. Examples include A Short Hike (MSRP: $8), Dungeon Bodega Simulator ($10), Eldritch ($15), Neon Struct ($18), Holedown ($10), and more.
Although games purchased through the bundle do not activate on Steam, downloads via the itch app or website are DRM-free. Many of the included titles also natively support macOS and Linux, and items from bundles appear in a separate tab on itch.io’s library section.
The Game Industry Hardship Fund aims to support the thousands of employees laid off over the past several years amid the industry’s pandemic-era overinvestment. The bundle page cites reports claiming that 33% of the industry’s workers have experienced job losses in the past two years.
Publishers have announced layoffs impacting thousands this summer alone. France’s video game union, the Syndicat des travailleurs et travailleuses du jeu vidéo, announced a strike after more than 1,000 workers lost their jobs. Bungie also recently eliminated roughly 400 positions after pivoting away from Destiny 2.
Ubisoft laid off 51 workers at its Barcelona studio shortly after the massively successful launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, a game the office helped develop, and MindsEye developer Build A Rocket Boy recently faced protests from laid-off workers in the UK while flying in fans for playtesting.
Most notably, Microsoft recently eliminated 1,600 positions, with another 1,600 employees set to be laid off over the course of this year. In a bid to “reset” Xbox, the company let go of five studios and began reorganizing its gaming business. That move has already prompted further layoffs at the now-independent Double Fine.
The writing is on the wall, so CodeWeavers is removing its reliance on Rosetta 2. A very early test version of Apple Silicon-native Crossover is now available for testing.
Cross-platform app compatibility tool CrossOver was designed to work on Intel Macs and could only work on newer M-series models thanks to Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer. Apple put developers on notice in June 2025, warning them that they would need to build apps designed without needing Rosetta 2 before 2027’s big macOS software update.
Since then, the developers of CrossOver have been working to get ready for the big transition. It announced in June 2026 that CrossOver 27 would ditch support for Intel Macs and transition fully to Apple Silicon.
Now, CodeWeavers has announced the availability of a preview version of CrossOver 27, complete with Apple Silicon support.
Very much a preview
Simplifying a complex issue, Apple Silicon uses ARM64 architecture. CodeWeavers has been working on an ARM64-native version of CrossOver for some time.
Wine, the compatibility layer that allows Windows apps to run on Macs, is core to CrossOver and began work to transition to ARM64 in January 2023.
There have been various milestones since that date, culminating in the release of this preview version of CrossOver.
However, while the preview can be downloaded and used on Apple Silicon Macs today, there are some caveats to keep in mind. CodeWeavers warns that the current very early preview has three big, known limitations.
- No D3DMetal in this build. Direct3D 12 support coming soon.
- Many game launchers do not function at all.
- No way to convert existing bottles to ARM64: you will need to create new bottles for testing.
Thankfully, all three limitations are expected to be resolved before CrossOver 27 launches. It’s currently penciled in for a release in early 2027.
If you’re still using an Intel Mac, the good news is that CrossOver 26 will continue to work even after CrossOver 27 is released. But Apple’s upcoming macOS Golden Gate update will not support Intel Macs, giving Intel owners yet another reason to upgrade to a new model.
Stream decks are very useful when you’re live on camera and you need to hit some complicated macro at a glance. However, there is sometimes a perception that commercial options are a touch expensive for what they are, an attitude which has spawned many DIY builds. [Fady Faheem] has developed just such a device of his own.
Named Stream32, the build is intended to be simple to understand and adapt to one’s own individual workflow. Putting one together is as easy as buying a display, hooking it up to an ESP32, flashing the firmware, and then adding pages of shortcuts as desired. [Fady] has designed the firmware to be flexible with regards to screen choice — currently, it can be set up for a 4″ Waveshare LCD or a nice roomy 10.1″ display from Elecrow. Since it’s open source, adapting to a wider range of displays is a potential exercise for the builder.
The great thing about custom stream decks is you have all the freedom in the world to customize them to your own specific setup. Play with the code, the functionality, the visual layout—all to suit your own needs. If you’re working on your own custom hardware, be sure to tell us on the tipsline.
While we’ve largely settled on analog sticks and digital buttons for controlling video games, there’s all sorts of projects to create truly esoteric controllers that allow playing games in unique ways. This one from [sukolupo] lets you use data from standard bike trainers to get your virtual character moving.
Called Deck de France, it maps the data coming from one of the supported bike trainers to a virtual controller which can then be “plugged in” to a gaming console of choice, in this case a Steam Deck mounted to the trainer’s handlebars. Although a bike trainer doesn’t have the same number of inputs as a modern gaming controller, it does have enough to play games like Rocket League. As you might expect, it’s also perfect for biking titles such as the Tour de France series.
As far as unique controllers for video games go, this one is surely up in the rankings with a real trombone or a controller purpose-built for riding virtual horses. It’s also a great way for those who are getting a bit bored of riding their trainers to breathe some new life into their exercise routine. We’ve also seen some open-source alternatives for modern bike trainer software as well, which is another great way to get excited about exercise equipment too.
- Startup replaces Nvidia GPUs with custom Arm-powered AI processing hardware
- Prometheus packs up to 128TB of unified LPDDR6 memory onboard
- New server promises 1,000× more memory available per processor
Majestic Labs, a startup founded in 2023 by former Google and Meta engineers, has unveiled a server built to rival Nvidia‘s GPU and HBM combination.
The Tel Aviv-based company argues that pairing costly graphics processors with high-bandwidth memory has become a fundamentally memory-bound and dead-end approach for AI inference.
Its answer is the Prometheus server, which swaps GPUs for Ignite AI Processing Units combining Arm cores with RISC-V vector and tensor engines.
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A different way to scale memory
Each Prometheus server can house up to 12 AIUs, sharing between 8 TB and 128 TB of LPDDR6 memory across one contiguous, coherent pool.
That memory pool is accessed through custom memory aggregation chiplets linked by copper cables up to one metre long instead of memory attached directly to GPU packages.
A standard 40U rack can hold four such servers, drawing 120 kW total and cooled through cold-plate liquid systems rather than air.
By comparison, an Nvidia DGX B300 system with eight Blackwell GPUs offers 2.3 TB of HBM3e plus up to 4 TB of DDR5 system memory.
Majestic claims its architecture therefore delivers over 50 times more fast memory than that rival configuration, alongside 1.7 times its interconnect bandwidth.
“One Majestic rack holds the fast memory capacity of 25 Nvidia NVL72 Vera Rubin racks at a fraction of the power,” Majestic Lab said.
“Organizations that could never justify hyperscaler infrastructure can now run any workload. In fact, there can be up to “1000× more memory per processor.”
Performance claims await broader testing
Majestic Labs says the Prometheus server could cost between 10 and 50 times less than a GPU system of equivalent performance once it ships next year, while consuming less electricity per rack.
The server is designed to be OCP-compliant and will support PyTorch, vLLM and OpenAI’s Triton frameworks, letting existing AI models run without modification.
Founded by CEO Ofer Shacham, President Sha Rabii and COO Masumi Reynders, the company employs around 40 people across Tel Aviv and Los Angeles and raised $100 million in an A-round late in 2025.
It claims to have already received significant orders from large enterprises, neoclouds and hyperscalers.
Yet several details remain unclear, including how many memory aggregation chiplets a single server actually requires.
If a 128 TB configuration relies on widely available 2 GB LPDDR6 dies, it would need roughly 64,000 of them, implying well over a hundred aggregation chiplets per server.
The numbers Majestic Labs presents are striking, but they remain the startup’s own projections ahead of any independent benchmarking or shipped hardware.
Enterprise buyers considering a shift away from established GPU vendors may have to wait for independent validation to verify Majestic’s claims.
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