The moderately successful Star Wars film The Mandalorian and Grogu will be available to stream via Disney+ on September 2. This is just over three months after the film hit theaters and six weeks after it became available to rent or purchase in a digital format.

For the uninitiated, this is a sequel film to the hit series The Mandalorian, which is the show that launched the Disney+ platform. Both the series and the film follow the exploits of the titular Mandalorian bounty hunter and his cute and cuddly ward, a 55-year-old member of Yoda’s species that presents as a baby. They age differently. It’s a whole thing. 

The galaxy’s favorite duo is bringing the adventure home.

Stream Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu on @DisneyPlus September 2. pic.twitter.com/1FdjwklA1V

— Star Wars (@starwars) August 14, 2026

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The Mandalorian was so successful that it spawned an entire interconnected Star Wars universe on TV. This led to direct sequel shows, like The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka.

The Mandalorian and Grogu received a fairly muted response from critics, with many saying it seemed more like a series of TV episodes stitched together than a proper movie. I saw it and tend to agree with that assessment, though it’s a fun enough romp that’s perfect for a Friday night Disney+ watch party.

As a matter of fact, it’s likely to perform rather well on Disney+. It’s a pretty decent flick for older kids and teens. The stakes are fairly simple and there isn’t all that much dialog. That’s because the two lead characters are a puppet and a guy in full body armor that barely speaks. Later, they are inexplicably joined by the muscular (?!) son of Jabba the Hutt. Like I said, it’s a fun enough romp.

This could even help Disney+ with customer retention. Obviously, I’m not privy to what’s going on over there, but it doesn’t seem like the platform cares all that much about its two most popular IPs. There’s only one big Star Wars show on the horizon and that’s season two of Ahsoka.

We haven’t heard that much about Marvel either. There’s a show about Vision coming in October and the third season of Daredevil: Born Again next year, but that’s about it. That said, it’s possible the company is holding onto some cards until its big D23 presentation, which happens this weekend.

AI labs offer a range of models with different capabilities and prices, with costs varying further according to the version of a model and the “effort” settings used. Customers are typically charged for input tokens, used to measure data fed into a model, and output tokens, which measure what it generates in response.

The latest price cuts from US labs apply to mid-tier products and make them more competitive with Chinese offerings. OpenAI, for example, cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna from $1 to $0.20 per million input tokens and from $6 to $1.20 per million output tokens.

Anthropic launched Opus 5 at $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens—half the price of its Fable 5 model. This week, the company called off a planned rise in prices for its Sonnet 5 model, which had been due to take effect from September.

Headline token prices do not provide a straightforward comparison between AI models, however. More capable models can sometimes complete a task using fewer tokens or with fewer attempts, meaning a model that appears more expensive based on the headline price of tokens can ultimately cost less.

Additionally, most can operate at different “effort” settings, which vary the computing power used to answer a question and can affect both performance and the ultimate cost of completing a task.

Artificial Analysis, which benchmarks models across areas including math, science, coding, and reasoning, found Anthropic’s Opus 5 at “medium” effort delivered similar performance and cost per task to Moonshot’s Kimi K3 at “max” effort. OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Luna at “max” effort performed similarly to DeepSeek’s V4 Flash at “max,” but cost just under twice as much per task.

Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment.

A person close to Anthropic said Opus 5’s pricing below its flagship Fable 5 was how the startup’s “family of models is built, so there’s no connection to competitors.”

Mantas Lukauskas, AI tech lead at Hostinger, a website hosting provider that has used large language models since 2020, noted that prices for the very best models were “flat to rising.”

He added that the recent pricing changes are the “first real test” of whether groups such as Anthropic and OpenAI can protect the cost of their most advanced offerings: “The US labs have cut the middle and are defending the top.”

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

If you have ever generated an image with Gemini and gotten annoyed by that stamped-on watermark, Google finally heard you. Gemini is rolling out a new setting called Media Watermarks that lets you toggle visible watermarks on or off across everything you create, including images made with Nano Banana, videos made with Omni, and music made with Lyria. Until now, that visible watermark was applied automatically with no way to turn it off.

How to turn off AI watermarks for Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria in Gemini?

The steps to turn off AI-generated watermarks are straightforward. Head into Gemini’s settings, select Media Watermark, and simply toggle it on or off. Whatever you choose applies to every future image, video, and music track you create going forward.

Please note that turning off the visible AI watermark does not mean your content becomes untraceable, though. Google still embeds an invisible SynthID watermark and C2PA metadata into everything you generate, regardless of your visible watermark setting, so the origin of AI-generated content remains identifiable behind the scenes.

One more thing worth knowing is that this rollout is not available everywhere. If you are in India, South Korea, or Vietnam, you will only get this option with a paid AI Ultra subscription; otherwise your content keeps the visible watermark automatically. Work and school accounts do not get this setting at all either, meaning visible watermarks stay mandatory there no matter what.

Why did Google add the AI watermark toggle to Gemini?

This update did not come out of nowhere. Google VP Josh Woodward asked users for their biggest Gemini frustrations, and thousands responded. Removing Nano Banana’s visible watermark landed in the resulting top 10 requests. Woodward said the team would consider it, and now the option has officially arrived, following growing community efforts to strip AI watermarks from generated content altogether.

The companies did not reveal which areas they plan to expand to, but Pony told SiliconRepublic.com that further details will follow.

Uber and Pony AI are expanding their partnership to deploy more than 2,000 robotaxis across Europe.

The two first began collaborating in 2025 by bringing Pony robotaxis onto Uber’s platform in international markets outside the US – starting in Zagreb, in partnership with Croatian mobility company Verne.

Now, they intend to expand this to four additional cities across the continent. The companies did not reveal which locations they plan to focus on, but a Pony spokesperson told SiliconRepublic.com that further details will follow. The expansion will also see robotaxi rollouts to the Middle East, the two said.

Uber’s 200m-plus active user base and a growing network of human drivers, combined with Pony’s level-4 autonomous driving technology and rider experience, are expected to help the two scale their plans for wider robotaxi deployment.

The US ride-hailing platform has major autonomous vehicle (AV) goals, with plans in place to expand robotaxis to London, Madrid, Munich, Hong Kong and a number of US cities. The company already operates AVs across Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Riyadh, alongside US cities Atlanta, Austin and Dallas.

Uber also has existing partnerships with May Mobility, Lucid and Nuro, China’s Baidu and WeRide, and the UK’s Wayve to test and deploy AVs across metropolitan areas worldwide. It also works with Nvidia – which unveiled open-source AI models for self-driving vehicles earlier this year – to further develop the tech behind its robotaxis.

The 2016-founded Pony, meanwhile, operates fully driverless robotaxi services in four Chinese cities, where it claims to have achieved city-wide breakeven unit economics in multiple markets, “validating its commercially sustainable model for operating robotaxis at scale”.

“This expanded agreement marks an important new phase in the partnership between Pony AI and Uber. It reflects our shared commitment to bringing safe, reliable robotaxi services to more European cities,” said Dr James Peng, the founder and CEO of Pony.

“By combining Pony AI’s proven autonomous driving technology and operational know-how with Uber’s global mobility platform and extensive market reach, we aim to build sustained commercial operations at scale across Europe and beyond.”

Pony announced the launch of an AV mobility pilot programme earlier this year with Bolt and Stellantis to test out its seventh-generation robotaxis in Luxembourg.

Pony posted robotaxi revenue growth of nearly 400pc year-over-year in its quarter ending on 31 March this year. The company expects to end the year with a robotaxi fleet exceeding 3,500 vehicles deployed in more than 20 cities worldwide.

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from the what-free-speech? dept

It still amazes me that there are people out there who think that Donald Trump is a supporter of free speech. It has never been true. Anyone who looks will note that the Trump administration regularly engages in clearly unconstitutional attempts to suppress speech. But because he and his supporters like to claim he’s a free speech supporter, they believe it.

But here’s yet another story showing how that’s bullshit. The Wall Street Journal has a detailed report on how Trump’s personal secret police militia, ICE, is actively investigating, intimidating, and silencing people who criticize them online.

In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster’s name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible. 

To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social-media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE “may” be a crime.

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Criticizing ICE online is not a crime. It’s protected speech under the First Amendment. I’d point out that all of this clearly violates Trump’s early executive order on free speech, but did anyone ever take any of that seriously? It was always just red meat to throw out to his cultish base, rather than anything real.

Indeed, you can see that in the fact that the very same MAGA trolls who falsely insisted that the Biden admin was actively “censoring” people on social media will be quick to defend what ICE is doing here, even though it’s way more clearly an attack on the First Amendment rights of ICE’s critics.

DHS sent administrative subpoenas to Reddit for the information of 11 accounts that had posted “content critical of federal actions” between July and December of last year, the company’s most recent transparency reporting period, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While the article notes that Reddit (thankfully) pushed back on these requests, this is still quite different from the reports the Biden administration occasionally sent to social media companies, which tended to be much more “does this violate your rules?” not “reveal who these critics are.”

The article notes that these attacks on free speech appear to be ratcheting up as ICE and Trump grow more desperate to control the narrative around their secret police activities. That escalation now includes seeking grand jury subpoenas for critics’ information. And now that Trump gave ICE a lot more money, they’re investing millions in surveillance tech to track down online critics:

In the past year, OPR spearheaded an initiative to dramatically expand the agency’s ability to monitor online critics and potential threats, according to contractors, federal documents and former HSI agents.

Teams of contractors now scour the internet using sophisticated surveillance tools to find commentary that the agency regards as potentially dangerous.

ICE spending on surveillance technology and consultants has surged, reaching $258 million during Trump’s first full year back in the White House, a 57% increase from the same period a year prior, according to the Journal’s analysis.

ICE has inked at least six contracts that involve scanning public records for “threats,” paying out nearly $50 million since 2020. More than half those funds were obligated since last January, and another award potentially worth up to $50 million the agency continues to extend. The most recent awards call for contractors to help the agency geolocate individuals labeled as “extremists,” compile reports on individuals and cross-reference information with government databases, contracting documents show.

Of course, MAGA folks will claim they have to track down “threats,” but much of the content doesn’t sound threatening at all. For example:

… a New York poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea received a voicemail from a man identifying himself as an agent with Homeland Security. 

“We were just calling you in reference to a post that we believe you made on Instagram where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January,” said the caller. 

Shortly after, two agents from ICE OPR arrived at the voting site where she was working. 

They held printed screenshots from her account, she said, including the post in question. The agents flipped by it quickly, she said, but she caught one thing: The post included a photo of Ross, the immigration officer who killed Good.

The file that agents were holding also contained Gonyea’s address, date of birth and what looked like a picture of her taken at airport security, she said. They told her to take down the post and asked her to sign a letter acknowledging she had been informed that she “may” have violated federal law with her social-media account.

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Gonyea said she was only able to find one post that spoke about a specific ICE agent:  ”I think today is a great day for Jonathan Ross to be indicted!” the 40-year-old influencer and author had written in the post, referencing the Minnesota Star Tribune article that first named him. 

All of this is textbook behavior for thin-skinned authoritarians unwilling to tolerate even the mildest criticism. But in America, we’re supposed to have rights, including the right to free speech. But somehow all the people who claimed that Biden was suppressing speech have gone completely silent about stories like this one. Trump claiming to be the free speech president and claiming to outlaw anyone in the government from suppressing free speech means absolutely nothing as activities like the ones described here continue to happen daily.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, donald trump, free speech, ice, intimidation, paigelynne gonyea, surveillance

A straight 50% price cut on a Windows 11 laptop doesn’t come around often, but that is exactly what has landed on the HP UltraBook.

The HP UltraBook has dropped from its typical price of $599.99 to just $299.95, a full $300 saving. The deal also includes a year of Microsoft 365, a subscription that normally costs around $70 on its own, making the real saving even bigger.