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The American public elected Donald Trump to run the federal government. His erratic patron seems to think the job is also his.

From The Bikeriders to The Order, these are the movies you should watch before the year is through.

Despite Q's long silence, QAnon beliefs have never been more prevalent—and as Donald Trump prepares to reenter the White House, excitement among the faithful is at an all-time high.

Beleaguered automaker Nissan is going to throw its lot in with Honda. The two Japanese OEMs want to merge by 2026, creating the world's third-largest car company in the process. In fact, earlier this year the two signed memorandums of understanding to create a strategic partnership focused on software and electrification. Now, the changing business environment calls for deeper integration, they say.

"Today marks a pivotal moment as we begin discussions on business integration that has the potential to shape our future. If realized, I believe that by uniting the strengths of both companies, we can deliver unparalleled value to customers worldwide who appreciate our respective brands. Together, we can create a unique way for them to enjoy cars that neither company could achieve alone," said Makoto Uchida, Nissan's president and CEO.

"Creation of new mobility value by bringing together the resources including knowledge, talents, and technologies that Honda and Nissan have been developing over the long years is essential to overcome challenging environmental shifts that the auto industry is facing" said Honda director Toshihiro Mibe. "Honda and Nissan are two companies with distinctive strengths. We are still at the stage of starting our review, and we have not decided on a business integration yet, but in order to find a direction for the possibility of business integration by the end of January 2025, we strive to be the one and only leading company that creates new mobility value through chemical reaction that can only be driven through synthesis of the two teams."

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Cameras can offer peace of mind, but choose carefully when you’re inviting one into your home.

Although the details remain in flux, the transition team reviewing NASA and its activities has begun to draft potential executive orders for changes to space policy under the Trump Administration.

Sources familiar with the five people on the team, who have spent the last six weeks assessing the space agency and its exploration plans, were careful to note that such teams are advisory in nature. They do not formally set policy nor is their work always indicative of the direction an incoming presidential administration will move toward.

Nevertheless, in trying to set clear goals for NASA and civil space policy, the ideas under consideration reflect the Trump administration's desire for "big changes" at NASA, both in terms of increasing the effectiveness and velocity of its programs.

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It's Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-enabled, can play music as you shower, and has a motion-sensing full-color light and even a humidity sensor.

Recap some of Google’s biggest AI news from 2024, including moments from Gemini, NotebookLM, Search and more.Recap some of Google’s biggest AI news from 2024, including moments from Gemini, NotebookLM, Search and more.

Editor's note: Warning: Although we’ve done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list does include a few specific references to several of the listed films that some might consider spoiler-y.

This was the year that Marvel Studios hit the pause button on its deluge of blockbuster superhero movies, after rather saturating the market in recent years. It proved to be a smart move: the only Marvel theatrical release was the R-rated Deadpool & Wolverine, a refreshingly irreverent, very meta take on the genre that delighted audiences and lit up the global box office. Perhaps audiences aren't so much bored with superhero movies as becoming more discriminating in their choices. Give us a fun, fresh take and we'll flock back to theaters.

Fewer superhero franchise entries meant there was more breathing room for other fare. Horror in particular had a stellar year, with numerous noteworthy offerings, touching on body horror (The Substance), Satanic Panic (Late Night with the Devil), psychological horror (Heretic), hauntings (The Oddity), a rom-com/revenge mashup (Your Monster), an inventive reimagining of a classic silent film (Nosferatu), and one very bloodthirsty child vampire with a wicked sense of humor (Abigail). Throw in a smattering of especially strong sequels (Inside Out 2, Dune: Part 2), a solid prequel (Furiosa), and a few hidden gems, and we had one of the better years for film in recent memory.

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The incoming Trump administration has signaled its hostility toward EVs. Will the red-state/blue-state divide come for public charging?

The first medical treatment to use Crispr gene editing has been on the market for a year. Its complexity means few patients in the US have received it yet.

In Russia’s war against Ukraine, electronic warfare, including signal-jamming, anti-drone weapons, and innovative protections for critical military systems, has become a key piece of the conflict.

Surrendering to algorithmic agents risks putting us under their influence.

Surrendering to algorithmic agents risks putting us under their influence.

L'Oréal's first professional hair dryer combines infrared light, wind, and heat to drastically reduce your drying time.

The humble French press is affordable, effective, and hard to mess up. Here are our favorites to make your morning cup of coffee.

Just because you use Chrome doesn’t mean you have to use Google. Learn how to invite Bing, DuckDuckGo, Brave, or even ChatGPT into your omnibox.

A2RL provided flights from San Francisco to Tokyo and accommodation so Ars could attend its race. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

TOKYO—Racing is hard. It's hard on the teams, it's hard on the owner's bank account, it's hard on the cars, and it's especially hard on the drivers. Driving at the edge for a few hours in a vehicle cockpit that's only slightly wider than your frame can take a toll.

The A2RL (Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League) removes one of those elements from its vehicles but, in doing so, creates a whole new list of complexities. Say goodbye to the human driver and hello to 95 kilograms of computers and a whole suite of sensors. That setup was poised to be part of a demonstration "race" against former F1 driver Daniil Kvyat at Suzuka Circuit in Japan during the Super Formula season finale.

But again, racing is hard, and replacing humans doesn't change that. The people who run and participate in A2RL are aware of this, and while many organizations have made it a sport of overselling AI, A2RL is up-front about the limitations of the current state of the technology. One example of the technology's current shortcomings: The vehicles can't swerve back and forth to warm up the tires.

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When we introduced last year's annual list of the best games in this space, we focused on how COVID delays led to a 2023 packed with excellent big-name blockbusters and intriguing indies that seemed to come out of nowhere. The resulting flood of great titles made it difficult to winnow the year's best down to our traditional list of 20 titles.

In 2024 we had something close to the opposite problem. While there were definitely a few standout titles that were easy to include on this year's list (Balatro, UFO 50, and Astro Bot likely chief among them), rounding out the list to a full 20 proved more challenging than it has in perhaps any other year during my tenure at Ars Technica (way back in 2012!). The games that ended up on this year's list are all strong recommendations, for sure. But many of them might have had more trouble making a Top 20 list in a packed year like 2023.

We'll have to wait to see if the release calendar seesaws back to a quality-packed one in 2025, but the forecast for big games like Civilization 7, Avowed, Doom: The Dark Ages, Grand Theft Auto 6, and many, many more has us thinking that it might. In the meantime, here are our picks for the 20 best games that came out in 2024, in alphabetical order.

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Wherever astronomers look, they see life’s raw materials—and hints at answers to one of the great mysteries of science.