Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.
Tech
You Don’t Have a Right to Safe Drinking Water, Trump-Appointed Judge Rules
This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2022, says the contamination violated Jacksonians’ constitutional right to bodily integrity. Donald Trump–appointed judge Kurt Engelhardt disagreed. “The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing,” Engelhardt said. “Defendants’ actions allegedly deprived Plaintiffs of clean water and guileless information. These deprivations, while grievous, do not infringe upon any deeply rooted constitutional right.”
That may be true in Mississippi—but on the state level in at least nine US states, and in more than a dozen other countries, clean drinking water is in fact a protected right. In countries including Uruguay and South Africa, a right to clean water is enshrined in the constitution. New York’s state constitution, as of a 2021 amendment, states that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.” So too in Massachusetts, where “the right to clean air and water” has been constitutionally protected since 1972.
But according to the Fifth Circuit ruling, the US constitution is too narrow for such a claim. The Jackson plaintiffs alleged that their city government deliberately withheld information about the water’s toxicity and exacerbated the problem through a series of boil-water notices—a practice that can eliminate some bacterial contamination, but also concentrates lead in water. Engelhardt stated there is no “constitutional right to truthful information from officials during a public health crisis.”
Jackson is more than 80 percent Black and has a poverty rate that is more than double the national average. The city’s water system has long been in dire need of upgrades. In 2015, officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health found elevated lead levels in the water supply. Instead of immediately informing citizens, they remained silent about the issue for six months, according to reporting from Grist, while residents continued drinking toxic water.
EPA officials ran a series of tests in 2020 and found “persistent and concerning violations” of water safety policy, including leaks, corrosion, and high lead levels throughout the system.
But no city, state, or federal agency fixed the problem. Meanwhile, people, including Jackson plaintiff Priscilla Sterling, continued drinking water with unsafe levels of lead. According to the 2022 lawsuit, several of Sterling’s children have since been diagnosed with lead poisoning, which can cause permanent brain damage. A quarter of Jackson’s residents are children, who are particularly vulnerable to the lifelong effects of lead poisoning.
The Fifth Circuit ruling comes as the Trump administration moves to weaken clean-water-related protections. Also on Friday, Trump’s EPA released a supplemental rule to further dilute the Clean Water Act, quickly condemned by environmental watchdogs.
“The administration is clearly struggling to craft a rule that will hold up in court while satisfying their donors’ desire to effectively scrap these protections wherever possible,” said Jim Murphy of the National Wildlife Federation. “One thing is clear: If we don’t protect our streams and wetlands, the cost of dirtier drinking water and increased flooding will flow downstream to households at a time when most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.”
Continue Reading
The Athletic reports that researchers at the University of Utah are studying itPBM, a medical-grade red-light therapy that has shown promising signs of reducing brain inflammation and improving cognition, mood, anxiety, motor performance and neural connectivity. The report centers in part on former BYU football star and University of Utah adjunct professor Larry Carr, who says the treatment helped him after years of brain damage from repeated head impacts. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: … The knife, the call, the diagnosis in 2013, would lead [Carr] on a life-changing mission — one in which he and a team of researchers at the University of Utah would eventually compile research that one of those researchers, Elisabeth Wilde, Ph.D, co-director of the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Concussion Center, calls “striking.” The treatment they are studying is called photobiomodulation therapy, or itPBM (intranasal transcranial PBM), also known as red-light therapy. It is different from the kind of superficial red-light usage one can find on social media skincare channels or at a wellness boutique, and its application is broader.
The research includes multiple studies, and is not just focused on ex-football players, but on women and men in various walks of life. The group recently published their latest results in the Journal of Neurotrauma, based on a study that followed 26 BYU football players throughout a season, suggesting the treatment could “potentially safeguard neurological health without reduced playing time or contact exposure.”
Definitive clinical trials haven’t been run yet; broader research and validation is required, and some in the field are skeptical. Carr acknowledges some have told him that it could be “too good to be true.” Still, other outside experts who spoke with The Athletic call the findings promising. They make sure to caution: This is not a cure-all, and there is much more to be tested. But the findings have been compelling enough to justify more research and more speculation. Researchers say 14 peer-reviewed studies have linked itPBM with improvements in cognition, mood, anxiety, attention, executive function, motor performance, and other measures, while brain imaging has shown reduced inflammation and improved connectivity.
One of the most striking findings mentioned in the report came from a study of 26 BYU football players during the 2021 season. Players who did not receive treatment developed significant, widespread brain inflammation, while the treated group showed no comparable increase and even demonstrated reduced inflammation in some brain regions. As researcher Michael Carr put it, “I believe our BYU data suggests the players’ brains using itPBM are actually healthier after the season.” He added: “That is a first.”
Carr also said treated participants showed fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and PTSD, along with faster processing, better sustained attention and stronger executive function. Researchers have also observed improvements in balance, motor control and grip strength. Taken together, the findings suggest itPBM may have a neuroprotective effect.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
From drafting documents to exploring creative ideas, Gemini is always just a shortcut away-ready to help right where you are so you never break your flow. Built for how you actually work on desktop. Explore how Gemini helps you tackle everyday projects across Windows and macOS.
With our new native desktop experience, you can share anything on your screen with Gemini to get help with exactly what you’re looking at, including local files. If you’re reviewing a complex chart, you can share your window and ask, ‘What are the three biggest takeaways here?’ to get an instant summary. This brings powerful context to your creative work as well.
Help right where you need it. Gemini can jump in when you need a hand. Share your window to get instant contextual help based on what you’re looking at.
Features
One shortcut to answers
Press Alt + Space on Windows or Option + Space on Mac to summon Gemini over your active work. Ask questions, verify facts, or draft text, then jump right back into what you were doing.
Your most complex to-dos, done
Hand off multi-step research, planning, and synthesis to Gemini Spark, your 24/7 personal AI agent. It operates autonomously, but always under your direction
Connected to your everyday Google apps
Pull information across Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, and Calendar directly into your desktop workflow. Ask Gemini to find details buried in email threads, summarize shared documents, or cross-reference meeting notes
Creativity for your desktop
Bring creative concepts to life in a dedicated desktop workspace. Generate custom images with Nano Banana and direct high-quality video creation with Gemini Omni, ready whenever inspiration strikes
Helpful tips for your busiest days
Discover new ways to get things done on desktop. Explore additional features available today on macOS, with more coming to Windows over time.
What is Gemini?
Gemini is an interface to a multimodal LLM (handling text, audio, images and more). Gemini is based on Google’s cutting-edge research in LLMs, which began with the Word2Vec paper in 2013 that proposed novel model architectures that mapped words as mathematical concepts, followed by the introduction of a neural conversational model in 2015. This framework demonstrated how models could predict the next sentence in a conversation based on the previous sentence or sentences, leading to more natural conversational experiences. This was followed by our breakthrough work on Transformer in 2017 and multi-turn chat capabilities in 2020, which demonstrated even more compelling generative language progress.
We initially launched Gemini (then called Bard) as an experiment in March 2023 in accordance with our AI Principles. Since then, users have turned to Gemini to write compelling emails, debug tricky coding problems, brainstorm ideas for upcoming events, get help learning difficult concepts, and so much more. Today, Gemini is a versatile AI tool that can help you in many ways. We already see Gemini helping people be more productive, more creative, and more curious and we add new functionality and innovations regularly.
Is Gemini available for my country?
The Gemini desktop app is available in all languages and countries where Gemini app is supported.
- Windows: Runs on Windows 10 or later (x64 and Arm64).
- macOS: Runs on Apple Silicon MacBooks and requires macOS Sequoia (15.0) or later.
Feature availability varies.
How can I access the Gemini app for Mac?
There are several quick ways to access Gemini on your desktop:
Windows:
- Customizable shortcut: Press Alt + Space to summon Gemini instantly from anywhere.
- Taskbar & System Tray: Launch the app from the Windows Taskbar or click the Gemini icon located in your system tray.
macOS:
- Customizable shortcuts: Press Option + Space to open the mini chat, or Option + Shift + Space for the full chat experience.
- Menu bar & Dock: Select the Gemini icon located in the menu bar at the top of your screen, or click its icon in the Mac Dock.
How can I share my screen’s context with Gemini?
To give Gemini context about your current work:
- Click the Add files and tools in the Gemini app.
- Select Share window.
- Choose the specific window you want to share.
Gemini will use what’s visible on your screen to tailor its answers. To let it read full pages in the browser, go to your Mac’s System Settings > Privacy & Security and enable Accessibility for Gemini.
Can I use the same account across web, desktop and mobile?
Yes! As long as you are signed into the same Google account, your chat history and memory will sync across all devices.
What’s New
Today, we’re launching the Gemini app for Windows. Designed to work seamlessly alongside your favorite tools and daily applications, the new desktop app gives you instant assistance without breaking your flow.
Here are three ways you can use the Gemini app on your PC:
Access Gemini instantly with a keyboard shortcut.
Press Alt + Space on your PC at any time to open Gemini over your active work. Whether you need a quick fact-check on a document or a few catchy title ideas for a presentation, you can get the help you need and jump right back into your workflow.
Power through deep work in a dedicated workspace.
Inside the new app, you can access everything you use Gemini for already. Hand off multi-step tasks to Gemini Spark 1 , your 24/7 personal AI agent, or ask Gemini to draft a project summary by pulling information directly from your Google apps like Gmail and Google Drive.
Create images and videos.
Bring creative concepts to life directly from your desktop. You can generate custom images with Nano Banana for a presentation, direct a high-quality video with Gemini Omni 1 , and best of all you can do it all in one convenient place.
Lightweight and quiet, the app runs without slowing down your PC. This is just the beginning for the Gemini app on Windows, with more native desktop capabilities rolling out over time. The app is available today globally for Windows 10 and 11.
Previous Release Notes:
Today, we’re rolling out updates to Gemini Spark that make it even more helpful, from a new desktop experience to deeper connections with your favorite apps. Here’s a look at what’s new:
Bring Gemini Spark to your Mac
We’re bringing Spark to the Gemini macOS app to help you automate time-consuming tasks across your desktop.
Gemini Spark can now move beyond the chat window, and tackle the heavy lifting across your desktop files and apps. For example, you can turn hours of manual file sorting into an instant action by asking Gemini Spark to sort all the PDFs in your Downloads into specific folders. Gemini Spark also connects your desktop and Google Workspace, so you can simply ask it to create a budget spreadsheet using the latest invoices saved to your computer, and create a schedule to update it regularly. To keep your information secure, Gemini Spark only has access to the files you give it permission to use.
And coming soon, you’ll even be able to run tasks remotely. You can assign a multi-step task to Gemini Spark from your phone – like asking it to find a specific sales report on your Mac, pull the total revenue number, and email it to you – and let it execute the work on your computer while you’re away.
Gemini Spark for macOS is available in Beta to Google AI Ultra subscribers aged 18 and over, starting in the US.
Connect Gemini Spark to your favorite apps
We’ve expanded our connected apps so Spark can help you across more of the services you use. It now works with Google Tasks and Google Keep, meaning you can ask Spark to scan your scattered brain-dumps in Keep and turn them into action items in Tasks. We’re also launching integrations with Canva, Dropbox, Instacart, OpenTable and Zillow Rentals, so you can easily design custom flyers, access and share your files, reserve a table for date night, order your weekly groceries or reserve an apartment tour. These connected apps are rolling out over the next week on Gemini Spark on web and mobile and will be rolling out to the macOS app in the coming weeks.
We’re also rolling out support for custom Model Context Protocol (MCP), giving you the ability to connect your favorite apps directly into Spark to build a more tailored assistant.
Stay up to date on topics in real time
We’re also giving Gemini Spark the ability to intelligently track topics and react to events in real time. For example, if you want to stay up to speed on highlights and analysis after your favorite soccer team plays, Spark brings you the latest the moment the match ends. Or, you can ask Spark to send you a detailed financial report if a stock reaches a certain threshold. You can now ask Spark to keep an eye on blogs, news sites, social media, finance, shopping, weather and sports, in addition to your email, so you don’t have to constantly hit refresh.
A new study suggests Mercury may have shrunk about 30% more than scientists previously thought, losing as much as 14 miles in diameter as its interior cooled and contracted over billions of years. “That’s significant for a planet barely 3,000 miles (4,900 kilometers) across,” reports the Associated Press. From the report: Mercury’s rough surface, continually reshaped by debris hurled from impact craters, may have hidden the true extent of the loss, according to the researchers whose findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The news comes one week after a pair of European and Japanese spacecraft shed its cruising platform and advanced toward Mercury. Known as BepiColombo, the linked craft are expected to enter orbit around Mercury in November before splitting up for a fuller survey.
BepiColombo’s laser instrument should confirm how much Mercury is withering as a result of internal cooling, said Gaku Nishiyama, the study’s lead author who is taking part in the space mission. The shrinkage could be even more than his team is estimating based on measurements from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in the 2010s. Only one other spacecraft has ever visited Mercury, NASA’s Mariner 10 in the 1970s.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The AH-64 Apache is known for its firepower, high-tech systems, and overall capability. But the most-feared military helicopter is also known for its striking features, most notably its nose assembly. That large protrusion contains the Apache’s Modernized Target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (MTADS/PNVS). The Apache uses this equipment to locate and track targets.
The U.S. Army first fielded the MTADS/PNVS system back in 2005, and it went into combat in Iraq the following year. By 2013, the system had accumulated one million flight hours, with most of those hours coming during combat missions. The system was used extensively in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The MTADS/PNVS system allowed crews to adjust their tactics, helping them locate targets more effectively. This was important because without these systems, the Apache’s weapons would be of little use in combat situations.
The Apache’s Day Sensor Assembly (DSA), part of the targeting system in its lower nose turret, has changed over time, as some of the original technology dates back to designs from the 1970s. Lockheed Martin’s Gen 3 upgrade brought newer equipment into the system to keep it compatible with modern weapons. This includes a new laser rangefinder/designator, updated electronics, a color TV sensor, and a newer laser spot tracker. The upgrade also adds a laser pointer marker for coordination with air and ground forces. The Gen 3 TADS/PNVS system handles targeting and pilotage during the day, at night, and in bad weather.
The Apache’s potential future sensor upgrade
The AH-64 Apache is one of the hardest military helicopters to fly, and there is another issue at play as well. The Apache’s current pilotage system uses a single thermal camera mounted on a gimbal that moves with the pilot’s line of sight. This setup lets the pilot direct the camera toward whatever they’re looking at. But there is a limitation, as the pilot can’t see all of the surrounding area at once. However, researchers at the University of Arizona are working on a project that may solve this problem.
The University of Arizona team is developing two prototype systems that use 21 sensors mounted inside a fixed ball on the Apache’s nose. One system uses uncooled long-wave infrared sensors for nighttime flying, while the other system uses visible-spectrum cameras for research and testing. Images from the sensors are combined into one wide view that can then be displayed in the pilot’s headset. The new system provides a 210-degree horizontal field of view, which is around five to seven times wider than the Apache’s current system.
University of Arizona researchers aren’t operating in a vacuum, as their work is being funded by the U.S. Army. The university is conducting research into strap-down pilotage technology as part of the Army’s Apache development efforts. The project includes flight testing a prototype pilotage sensor, with the Army specifically looking at issues such as motion blur and fixed-pattern noise.
Tech
A Breakthrough? Or Just Breakable? Apple Unveiled the iPhone Duo, and CNET Writers Have Many Thoughts
Apple unfolded its new iPhone this week, and we’re still trying to wrap our heads around it. The folding iPhone Duo, revealed at the tech company’s Surprise and Shine event Wednesday, was far from a surprise — and, in a sense, not all that new, since other phone makers have been folding their phones for years.
Still, the rumors were one thing. Seeing the real deal — which is available for preorder Oct. 16 and in stores Oct. 23 — is something entirely different. And once new CEO John Ternus gave us the first look at the $2,000 passport-style gadget, the tech experts at CNET had plenty to say. Here’s a glimpse at what we’re thinking. Like the apps on a folding phone, we aren’t always on the same page.
Maybe buy the iPhone Duo, but not this iPhone Duo
Having doubts about the crease? Maybe wait to see how the first batches of folding iPhones hold up before spending $2,000 on an experiment, CNET Reporter Katelyn Chedraoui says.
Read more: Apple’s iPhone Duo Is an Engineering Marvel, but Should You Buy 1st Gen?
Is this an iPad Mini killer?
Sometimes you want a phone for phone tasks and something a little bigger for slightly-larger-than-phone tasks. CNET Senior Consumer Insights Editor Dashia Milden wonders if the iPhone Duo can do the job of both — and if that spells doom for the company’s smallest tablet.
Read more: Bye-Bye, iPad. The iPhone Duo Could Be the All-in-One You Need
A familiar touch… ID
For some reason, having my phone scan my face creeps me out more than having it scan my fingerprint. The iPhone Duo’s inclusion of Touch ID, which hasn’t been on an iPhone for four years, was one of CNET Senior Editor Lori Grunin’s favorite things about the event.
Sure, you can stand it up, but this isn’t a smart display
We saw a lot of examples from Apple of people propping the iPhone Duo up like a tent and using it as a home display. But that’s no replacement for an actual smart home display, says CNET Senior Editor Tyler Lacoma.
Read more: Sorry, Apple, but the iPhone Duo Isn’t the Smart Display I’m Waiting For
Is the crease still a thing?
The dreaded crease. It’s the most annoying thing about folding phones. But did Apple engineer it into nonexistence? CNET Director of Content Patrick Holland could see it… barely.
Read more: I Saw the iPhone Duo’s Crease. Barely
Finally, an iPhone with a stylus
Apple has its own branded stylus, the Apple Pencil, but the company has long resisted letting you use that on the iPhone. The iPhone Duo puts an end to that, writes CNET Senior Editor Matt Elliott. Is the rest of the lineup next?
Read more: It’s iPhone Duo Users Who Will Want a Stylus
How does it compare?
What about those other folding phones? We’ve drawn up the key comparisons between the iPhone Duo and rivals like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold, although it’ll take some hands-on time with all these devices to see what really stands out.
Read more: iPhone Duo vs. Pixel 11 Pro Fold: 2 Durable Foldables Face Off
The average timetable between pro iPhone upgrades is three years. Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro has arrived, with iPhone 15 Pro owners taking a close look. Here’s how the two compare.
iPhone 18 Pro [left] vs iPhone 15 Pro [right]
Apple launched the iPhone 18 Pro at its fall event, the latest in the Pro line. Three years ago, the same thing happened for the iPhone 15 Pro.
A lot can change in three years. That means owners of the iPhone 15 Pro are now seriously considering taking advantage of all of the updates by upgrading to a newer device.
Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
Looking ahead: Although Ubisoft’s PC game launcher has a few useful features, gamers have long criticized the publisher’s policy of bundling the software with its Steam releases. A recent game update suggests that Ubisoft is at least considering simpler options that retain Ubisoft Connect’s advantages.
A recent update for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown reveals that Ubisoft is testing a streamlined tool that connects users to their Ubisoft accounts without requiring them to install the Ubisoft Connect client. More Ubisoft games on Steam will receive the feature, called Ubisoft Connect Services, although it remains unclear when.
Many Steam users prefer keeping Valve’s ubiquitous storefront as their sole PC game launcher, but Ubisoft games currently require Ubisoft Connect regardless of where they are purchased. Although Ubisoft’s client enables cross-platform multiplayer and progression, launching a separate client while booting a game from Steam is often viewed as an unnecessary annoyance.
Ubisoft Connect Services aims to remove the publisher’s launcher from the process while retaining cross-play, cross-progression, challenges, and rewards tied to Ubisoft accounts. Players will likely still need to log into their Ubisoft accounts to enjoy these features.
The move is the latest in a years-long retreat toward Steam. Ubisoft once stopped releasing its titles on Steam for many years to draw customers toward Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store. However, the publisher relented in 2022, shifting to a policy of delayed Steam releases.
However, as Ubisoft’s financial situation deteriorated over the years, this policy also evaporated. When Star Wars Outlaws failed to meet the company’s commercial estimates, Ubisoft moved its Steam release forward to coincide with a DLC launch and boost sales. The company also announced that Assassin’s Creed Shadows would mark a return to day-one Steam releases.
Removing Ubisoft Connect from its games might be the final signal that the publisher has given up hope of pulling its PC customers away from Valve’s market-dominating client. It also eliminates one of the primary annoyances that discouraged many users from buying Ubisoft games on PC, so the company likely hopes the move will drum up some badly needed sales.
A series of commercial misses and numerous cancellations have eroded Ubisoft’s stock price by more than 90% over the past five years, prompting the company to begin a major reorganization in January. While it remains unclear whether Ubisoft can turn the corner or how much Ubisoft Connect Services will help, its last major release, a remake of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, was considered a hit.
So far, EA and Rockstar have not revealed plans to remove their launchers from games installed via Steam.
Microsoft has fixed a bug that prevented Teams and Outlook from launching after installing updates released since the August 2026 Patch Tuesday.
The company confirmed last week that this known issue affects users who haven’t installed Microsoft Store updates on ARM-based Windows devices (such as the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7) running Windows 11 24H2 or later.
“After installing Windows security updates released on or after August 11, 2026, (KB5121003), Microsoft Teams and the new Outlook for Windows might fail to launch or might close unexpectedly on ARM-based devices, such as Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7,” Microsoft explained in a Windows release health update.
“Classic Outlook, Word, Excel, and other applications are not known to be affected. This issue is most likely to occur on new or freshly imaged PCs that have not yet installed any Microsoft Store updates.”
Although Microsoft has yet to disclose the root cause, it advised affected customers to update the Auto Super Resolution Package, which enables Copilot+ PCs to use AI to make gameplay smoother, as a temporary workaround.
Fixed by Patch Tuesday cumulative updates
On Tuesday evening, after releasing the September 2026 Patch Tuesday cumulative updates, Microsoft said it has now fixed the bug in KB5124012 and asked users to update their devices.
“This issue was resolved by Windows updates released September 8, 2026 (KB5124012), and updates released after that date,” it said. “We recommend you install the latest update for your device as it contains important improvements and issue resolutions, including this one.”
This is the latest in a series of other known issues caused by Windows updates released in August. On August 24, Microsoft also confirmed that August 2026 .NET Framework updates are breaking printing and PDF exporting in apps that use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) UI framework.
Days later, it began rolling out a fix for a bug caused by peripherals with built-in RGB lighting that triggered gaming issues and system crashes with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION” errors on Windows 11 systems.
Microsoft also asked customers to ignore alerts that Microsoft Defender Antivirus has been turned off after installing updates released last month.
This week, Microsoft also resolved known issues that wiped custom mouse settings and Windows desktop settings on some Windows 11 systems after installing the KB5120998 August 2026 preview update.
The Seattle-based video game developer behind the award-winning virtual reality adventure Moss has closed its doors.
The announcement was made via Polyarc Games’ LinkedIn page on Friday afternoon. No specific reason was offered for the studio’s closure.
“After nearly 12 years riding the joyous rollercoaster of emotions that is making video games, our time together has come to an end,” wrote an unnamed Polyarc representative. “Thank you to everyone at Polyarc. Our work is now finished.”
Twenty-nine employees will be dismissed due to the studio’s closure, including co-founders Chris Alderson, Danny Bulla, and CEO Tam Armstrong. Polyarc has posted a list of contact information and profiles for all affected employees, in an attempt to help them line up their next positions.
Polyarc’s first and best-known release was 2018’s Moss, where players helped guide a young mouse named Quill through a fantasy world on a journey to save her uncle. It was followed by 2022’s Moss: Book II, a direct sequel that continued Quill’s story, and the 2025 strategy spin-off Glassbreakers.
Polyarc’s most recent release was this year’s Moss: The Forgotten Relic for PC and console, which collected both Moss games into a single non-VR experience.
Armstrong, Bulla, and Alderson founded Polyarc as a startup in 2015. All three were former employees of Bungie in Bellevue, where they’d all worked in different capacities on Bungie’s online shooter Destiny.
Polyarc’s closure comes almost six months after its announcement in March that it’d had to significantly reduce the size of the company, and almost eight months after a wave of layoffs at Meta that forced a major reduction at Bellevue, Wash.-based VR studio Camouflaj (Republique, Batman: Arkham Shadow).
As noted in January, Meta is perhaps the largest current player in the virtual reality sector, largely off the ubiquity of its standalone Quest headsets. When Meta decided to deemphasize its VR efforts in January, reportedly in favor of wearable computing and AI research, it touched off a negative ripple effect throughout the virtual reality field.
There is a chance that Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame may serve as an effective bailout for the VR sector by reigniting consumer interest, but at time of writing, the Frame has no release date. It’s apparently imminent, as suggested by a big leak in August, but there’s nothing definite. If the Steam Machine’s release in June was any indication, however, we can assume the Steam Frame will launch without warning on some random Tuesday morning in the next two months.
A set of parents and their children in Illinois and California filed a lawsuit last week in federal court in Chicago alleging that Meta illegally used their Facebook and Instagram photos to build NameTag, an unreleased face-recognition system for its smart glasses, and to train generative AI models including Emu and Muse Image.
The proposed class action alleges that Meta violated Illinois and California privacy laws by extracting biometric information from people’s photos without notice or consent.
WIRED reported in June that code for NameTag had been secretly embedded in the Meta glasses AI companion app, which had been downloaded more than 50 million times. While the feature had not been enabled for users of the app, the analysis found that the system was designed to turn faces captured by the glasses into biometric signatures and compare them with so-called faceprints stored in a database on the user’s phone. That database was configured to receive updates from Meta. At the time, WIRED could not determine where the underlying faceprint data came from.
The complaint alleges that those faceprints are possibly derived from Facebook and Instagram images, citing reporting that Meta employees claimed that NameTag could recognize people through their Meta connections or public Instagram accounts, along with a company patent describing face matching against profile photos and other images held by Meta.
Meta told WIRED in June that it was “not building a central face database,” but it would not answer questions about whether NameTag would be opt-in or how the system would retain faceprints. The complaint acknowledges that Meta has not disclosed which images, if any, were used for generating biometric data, saying that information remains solely in the company’s possession.
The suit also targets Meta’s image-generation systems. Meta has said it trained Emu on large quantities of Facebook and Instagram images and text, with chief product officer Chris Cox calling those platforms a “data advantage” for its AI systems. The complaint alleges that the training process illegally harvested biometric information about people who appeared in the images. Muse Image, released this summer, had earlier drawn criticism after allowing users to generate images based on other people’s public Instagram accounts, a feature the company removed within days after saying it had “missed the mark.”
“This lawsuit is without merit and misrepresents our work. We’ve been transparent about how we use people’s information to build and improve our AI products. As for NameTags, nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” a Meta spokesperson says in a statement. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a universal face database.”
“People shouldn’t have to worry if their biometric information will be misused simply because their photographs appear on a social media platform,” Justin Boley, a partner at Wexler Boley & Elgersma and an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
The plaintiffs are Francisco Alvarez and his son, both Illinois residents, and Jeremy Wahl, a California resident, and his 10-year-old daughter. But the proposed class includes people in Illinois, California, and across the United States whose images were uploaded to Facebook or Instagram or were submitted to Meta’s generative AI systems through prompts, dating back to September 4, 2021. The complaint estimates that the national class could number in the millions.
Under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, the plaintiffs are seeking $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation, or actual damages if greater, and $1,000 for each negligent violation, or actual damages if greater, as well as injunctive relief. The California claims seek additional damages and other relief.
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