theck1 IT/AI news

These new winter tires have studs that retract as it warms up

Kristin Shaw • March 10, 2026 Nokian provided flights from Austin, Texas, to Ivalo, Finland, and accommodation so Ars could visit its test facility. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. IVALO, Finland—In 1987, fictional superspy James Bond careened around a frozen lake in an Aston Martin in the movie The Living Daylights. Bond’s tires

Ig Nobels ceremony moves to Europe over security concerns

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Jennifer Ouellette • March 10, 2026 Every year, we have a blast covering a fresh crop of winners of the Ig Nobel prizes. After 35 years in Boston, the annual prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, this year and will continue to be held in a European city for the foreseeable future. The

Gemini burrows deeper into Google Workspace with revamped document creation and editing

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Ryan Whitwam • March 10, 2026 Google didn’t waste time integrating Gemini into its popular Workspace apps, but those AI features are now getting an overhaul. The company says its new Gemini features for Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides will save you from the tyranny of the blank page by doing the hard work for

NASA and SpaceX disagree about manual controls for lunar lander

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Eric Berger • March 10, 2026 NASA’s inspector general released a new report on Tuesday that examines the space agency’s management of the Human Landing System development contracts signed with SpaceX and Blue Origin. These landers are essential for NASA’s program to land humans on the Moon this decade and then establish a long-term settlement

Trump’s divisive FDA vaccine regulator self-destructs, will exit agency (again)

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Beth Mole • March 10, 2026 For the second time, Vinay Prasad is set to leave the Food and Drug Administration. In a post on social media Friday, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced that Prasad will exit in April, adding that he got “a tremendous amount accomplished” during his year at the agency. Prasad’s tenure

Anthropic sues US over blacklisting; White House calls firm “radical left, woke”

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Jon Brodkin • March 10, 2026 Anthropic sued the Trump administration yesterday in an attempt to reverse the government’s decision to blacklist its technology. Anthropic argues that it exercised its First Amendment rights by refusing to let its Claude AI models be used for autonomous warfare and mass surveillance of Americans and that the government

After complaints, Google will make it easier to disable gen AI search in Photos

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Ryan Whitwam • March 10, 2026 Google has spent the past few years in a constant state of AI escalation, rolling out new versions of its Gemini models and integrating that technology into every feature possible. To say this has been an annoyance for Google’s userbase would be an understatement. Still, the AI-fueled evolution of

Meta acquires Moltbook, the AI agent social network

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Samuel Axon • March 10, 2026 Meta has acquired Moltbook, the Reddit-esque simulated social network made up of AI agents that went viral a few weeks ago. The company will hire Moltbook creator Matt Schlicht and his business partner, Ben Parr, to work within Meta Superintelligence Labs. The terms of the deal have not been

AI can rewrite open source code—but can it rewrite the license, too?

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Kyle Orland • March 10, 2026 Computer engineers and programmers have long relied on reverse engineering as a way to copy the functionality of a computer program without copying that program’s copyright-protected code directly. Now, AI coding tools are raising new issues with how that “clean room” rewrite process plays out both legally, ethically, and

FDA contradicts Trump admin, declines to approve generic drug for autism

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Beth Mole • March 10, 2026 In September, the Trump administration took what it called “bold actions” on autism that included touting the generic drug leucovorin as a promising treatment. In a news release, Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, claimed a “growing body of evidence suggests” the drug could be helpful.