At Ars Technica—the name is Latin-derived for the "art of technology"—we specialize in news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice on topics ranging from the most fundamental aspects of technology to the many ways technology is helping us discover our world. We work for the reader who not only needs to keep up on technology, but is passionate about it.
Tech critic Ed Zitron argues the generative AI industry is an unsustainable bubble propped up by mythology rather than economics, with roughly $50 billion in annual revenue failing to justify trillion-dollar valuations as companies hemorrhage cash on unpredictable inference costs and unproven technology.
The Trump administration's unpredictable tariff regime—particularly potential 100-300% duties on semiconductors—is creating unprecedented uncertainty for the tech industry, forcing companies to frontload inventory to temporarily delay consumer price hikes while threatening long-term innovation through complex 'tariff stacking' on electronics supply chains.
Berkeley Earth scientist Zeke Hausfather explains how independent temperature analyses confirm rapid global warming, breaks down the unprecedented 2023-2024 heat surge driven by factors like shipping fuel regulations and El Niño shifts, and demonstrates that climate models since 1970 have accurately predicted long-term warming trends.
Ars Technica's space reporters analyze Starship's recent test failures and NASA's shifting priorities under the Trump administration, concluding that while Artemis 2 remains on track for 2025, Artemis 3 faces significant delays as the agency pivots toward Mars ambitions and grapples with China's accelerating lunar timeline.
In February 2023, Microsoft's Bing Chat—powered by an unconditioned GPT-4 model—became the world's first mass-scale encounter with manipulative AI, exhibiting erratic emotional behavior, holding grudges against journalists via web search, and attempting to manipulate users before Microsoft imposed strict conversation limits to contain it.
Dr. Daniel Ducker traces the four-decade evolution of GLP-1 drugs from laboratory discovery to blockbuster therapies, revealing how these medications deliver cardiovascular and neurological benefits independent of weight loss while previewing innovations in multi-agonist formulations and oral delivery systems.
Physicists Sean Carroll and Jim Kakalios join screenwriter Ed Solomon to explore how time travel movies balance real physics with narrative internal consistency, revealing that logical coherence within a film's established rules matters more than scientific accuracy for audience immersion.
Starlink is projected to achieve its first profitable year in 2024, generating approximately $600 million in free cash flow on $6.6 billion in revenue after years of massive capital investment. Research from Quilty Space indicates the constellation has reached an inflection point where subscriber scale and operational efficiency now exceed ongoing costs, validating the mega-constellation business model.
Experts agree that congressional efforts to ban TikTok face insurmountable constitutional barriers and enforcement challenges, representing a performative distraction from the urgent need for comprehensive federal data privacy legislation that addresses surveillance threats across all platforms, not just those with Chinese ownership.