Apple’s latest tvOS beta suggests the iTunes Movies and TV Shows apps on Apple TV are on their way out. 9to5Mac reports the set-top box’s former home of streaming purchases and rentals is no longer in the tvOS 17.2 release candidate (RC), now available to developers. (Unless Apple finds unexpected bugs, RC firmware usually ends up identical to the public version.) Apple’s folding of the iTunes apps into the TV app was first reported in October.

9to5Mac says the home screen icons for iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows are still present in the tvOS 17.2 firmware, but they point to the TV app, where the old functionality will live. The publication posted a photo of a redirect screen, which reads, “iTunes Movies and Your Purchases Have Moved. You can buy or rent movies and find your purchases in the Apple TV App.” Below it are options to “Go to the Store” or “Go to Your Purchases.”

The change doesn’t remove any core functionality since the TV app replicates the iTunes Movies and TV Shows apps’ ability to buy, rent and manage purchases. The move is likely about streamlining — shedding the last remnants of the aging iTunes brand — while perhaps nudging more users into Apple TV+ subscriptions.

The update also adds a few features to the TV app on Apple’s set-top box. These include the ability to filter by genre in the purchased section, the availability of box sets in store listings and a new sidebar design for easier navigation.

Apple has increasingly invested in video content as it relies more on its services division for growth. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon debuted in theaters in October, earning critical acclaim and awards-season buzz for the months ahead. (It already became the first streamer to win a Best Picture Oscar in 2022.) Scorsese’s film is currently available to rent or buy in the TV app, and it’s scheduled to land on Apple TV+ “at a later date.” Apple’s high-profile original series include Ted Lasso, Severance, The Morning Show, Foundation and Silo, among others.

Wednesday marks the 25th anniversary of the International Space Station’s (ISS) physical assembly in orbit. On December 6, 1998, the crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavor attached the US-built Unity node to the Russian-built Zarya module, kicking off the modular construction of the ISS. A quarter century later, we look back at the milestones and breakthroughs from one of humanity’s most impressive marvels of engineering and international cooperation.

The ISS, which orbits the Earth 16 times every 24 hours at a speed of five miles per second, has been inhabited by researchers for over 23 years. It’s the product of five space agencies from 15 countries. NASA, Roscosmos (Russia’s national space agency), ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) have contributed to the station’s assembly and operation.

NASA 25th-anniversary event

First, NASA will hold a live-streamed event on Wednesday to mark the quarter-century anniversary of the Zarya and Unity modules linking up. All seven STS-88 Space Shuttle Mission crew members will join NASA Associate Administrator Bob Cabana (mission commander) and ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano to discuss the milestone.

You can watch it here at 12:55PM ET on Wednesday:

From ink to orbit

Its official journey began in the early 1990s when the United States’ Freedom (ordered by President Ronald Reagan in 1984) and Russia’s Mir-2 space station projects were in danger of (literally) never getting off the ground. Freedom was in jeopardy primarily due to a lack of Congressional funding amid rising costs, while Mir-2 was on the brink partially because of financial hardships following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On September 2, 1993, the two nations, each needing an international ally to forge ahead, signed an agreement to combine their programs and collaborate on a joint mission that would have seemed wildly implausible a few years earlier. US Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin inked the pact, marking the formal conception of the cosmic laboratory we know today as the ISS.

VITALY ARMAND via Getty Images

The following years included a design overhaul to fold Russian technology into America’s existing Freedom plans, a milestone 1995 docking of NASA’s Atlantis to Russia’s Mir station (epitomizing the fruit of the once-far-fetched collaboration), the addition of funding and cooperation from Europe, Canada and Japan in 1996 and Russia’s launch of Zarya a month before the ISS assembly began. That all led to the day 25 years ago when the two nations’ space tech linked together, sounding the death knell for the Cold War-era space race.

The first crewed mission began on November 2, 2000, when NASA astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev stepped onboard. The inaugural crew spent four months in space, laying the groundwork for subsequent crews. (The record for the most time living and working in space was set by Peggy Whitson, who celebrated 665 days aboard the ISS in 2017.)

NASA

The US Lab Module linked to the station in February 2001, expanding the station’s onboard living space by 41 percent. Four years later, Congress named the US portion a national laboratory. Far more than a symbolic gesture (although it was also that), the designation opened the door to funding and research from a much more comprehensive array of institutions, including universities, other government agencies and private businesses. In 2008, laboratories from Europe and Japan joined the ISS.

The ISS’s construction and expansion from 1998 to 2010 amassed around 900,000 pounds of modules. The station contains about $100 billion worth of gear spinning around the globe.

Research and breakthroughs

NASA

During the ISS’s more than 100,000 orbits of the Earth, it has ushered breakthroughs in areas ranging from disease research to bodily changes from microgravity.

Studying how proteins, cells and biological processes behave in microgravity has boosted research in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, heart disease and asthma. Many of these studies wouldn’t have been possible on Earth. Meanwhile, protein crystal growth experiments have sparked advances in developing treatments for conditions including cancer, gum disease and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

ISS researchers made surprising discoveries about “cool flames,” which can burn at extremely low temperatures. Nearly impossible to study outside of microgravity, the astronauts’ research has challenged our previous understanding of combustion. It may open new frontiers with internal combustion engines (ICE), allowing them to run cleaner and more efficiently.

Studies aboard the space station have contributed significantly to our knowledge of human muscle atrophy and bone loss. (ISS astronauts typically work out at least two hours daily to prevent these conditions.) Studying how prolonged time in microgravity affects muscle deterioration and recovery also applies to Earthbound patients stuck in bed for extended periods. In addition, the research can help us learn more about conditions like osteoporosis, leading to improved preventative measures and treatments. It has also helped scientists better understand broader biological changes in microgravity, which could pay dividends if or when humans colonize Mars.

Water purification systems designed to sustain astronauts over long periods have also borne fruit on Earth. ISS astronauts recycle 98 percent of their pee and sweat using highly efficient and compact systems. This has led to the technology’s use in agriculture, disaster relief and aid provision for less developed areas.

ISS astronauts studied the Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), a “fifth state of matter” that deviates significantly from known states like solids, liquids, gases and plasmas. In 2018, the ISS’s Cold Atom Lab produced BEC in orbit for the first time. Space’s colder temperatures and lack of gravity allow for longer observation times, helping researchers learn more about the behaviors of atoms and BECs. Not only is this crucial to quantum physics studies, it could aid in developing more advanced quantum technologies down the road.

For more detail on the ISS’s breakthroughs, NASA has a dedicated writeup from 2020.

Decommissioning

NASA

The ISS is currently scheduled for decommissioning in January 2031. (Russia currently plans to leave in 2028.) Its late 90s infrastructure is aging quickly, and the space station would grow increasingly and prohibitively expensive to maintain over the long haul. Government and commercial orbital labs will likely pick up the slack in the following years.

When its time comes, the ISS will undergo a controlled deorbit. As for what that might involve, Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of NASA’s space station program, broached the subject with Space.com in 2011. “We’ve done a lot of studies,” he said. “We have found an orbit and a change in velocity that we believe is achievable, and it creates a debris footprint that’s all in water in an unpopulated area.”

As Engadget’s Andrew Tarantola wrote about the ISS’s pending demise:

Beginning about a year before the planned decommissioning date, NASA will allow the ISS to begin degrading from its normal 240-mile high orbit and send up an uncrewed space vehicle (USV) to dock with the station and help propel it back Earthward. The ultimate crew from the ISS will evacuate just before the station hits an altitude of 115 miles, at which point the attached USV will fire its rockets in a series of deorbital burns to set the station into a capture trajectory over the Pacific Ocean.

NASA plans to guide any remaining bits into a remote area of the South Pacific Ocean. “We’ve been working on plans and update the plans periodically,” Shireman said. “We don’t want to ever be in a position where we couldn’t safely deorbit the station. It’s been a part of the program from the very beginning.”

Ofcom, the UK’s Office of Communications, has published a draft of age-restriction guidelines for online services that host explicit sexual content. The (not yet finalized) recommendations are a step toward cementing enforcement for the recently passed Online Safety Act, which requires platforms displaying or publishing pornography in the UK to ensure children are “not normally able to encounter” adult content on their sites or apps. It’s the UK’s latest attempt to enforce age verification after it bailed on a similar plan in 2019. As before, not everyone is convinced the measures will adequately protect user privacy.

The agency cites studies showing the average age children are introduced to online porn is 13, with 27 percent viewing it by age 11 and 10 percent by age nine. In addition, it says 79 percent of children have seen violent pornography (defined as content “depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts”) before their 18th birthday. Ofcom shared a survey indicating 87 percent of women and 77 percent of men in the UK are “broadly supportive” of measures preventing children from easily accessing porn.

Ofcom says sites or apps hosting adult content in the UK must introduce “age assurance” through direct verification, age estimation using facial scans or a combination of both. It stressed that “weaker” measures — self-declarations, online payment methods that don’t require a person to be 18 and general disclaimers or warnings — won’t cut it.

Should a company disregard the guidelines, the UK could fine it up to £18 million or 10 percent of its global revenue (whichever is higher). That gives platforms like Pornhub a significant financial incentive to comply.

Suggested safeguards

One of Ofcom’s suggested safeguards is asking users to consent to sharing banking information to confirm they’re over 18. (It stresses that the user’s full date of birth won’t be shared.) Photo ID matching is another possibility: Users would upload a legal identification document and take a live capture of their face to ensure they match. Facial age estimation, which scans the user’s face and algorithmically estimates their age, is another approved method. However, that approach would have to offer additional verification methods for adults whose faces look young enough to pass for underage teens.

Wireless carriers’ age checks (blanket blocks on age-restricted content) are another approved method in the draft. Ofcom notes, “Users can remove this restriction by proving to their mobile provider that they are an adult, and this confirmation is then shared with the online pornography service.”

Since UK credit card providers are required to ensure applicants are over 18 before approval, Ofcom gives the green light to users providing credit card details. (Banks would then verify the card is valid before the user’s porn viewing request is approved.) Finally, sharing digital identity wallets, which use various methods (including those already listed) to confirm a user’s age, are also on the agency’s approved list.

Ofcom expects to publish its final guidance in early 2025. Enforcement would follow soon after.

Privacy concerns

Assisting with the draft guidance was the privacy watchdog Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which Ofcom cites as a privacy reassurance. But some say that isn’t enough reassurance.

“It is very concerning that Ofcom is solely relying upon data protection laws and the ICO to ensure that privacy will be protected,” Abigail Burke, program manager at UK digital rights organization Open Rights Group, said in an interview with The Verge. “The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which is progressing through parliament, will seriously weaken our current data protection laws, which are in any case insufficient for a scheme this intrusive.”

“The potential consequences of data being leaked are catastrophic and could include blackmail, fraud, relationship damage, and the outing of people’s sexual preferences in very vulnerable circumstances,” Burke added in a separate interview with the BBC. 

Aylo, owner of Pornhub (which has a financial stake in the matter), told the BBC it supports age verification but only if safety and privacy are assured. “Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy,” it said.

Perhaps the most obvious loophole in Ofcom’s guidelines is using a VPN to spoof a location outside the UK. The BBC noted that demand for VPNs in Louisiana and Utah surged after similar laws were enacted in the US states early this year.

Target has Sony’s excellent WH-1000XM5 headphones on sale for their lowest price to date. Typically $400, you can grab the over-ear cans for an all-time low of $250. Given their supreme comfort, terrific audio and powerful active noise cancellation (ANC), this is a chance to delight the ears of a loved one (or yourself) this holiday season.

The fifth generation of Sony’s (awkwardly named) line of premium wireless headphones has an improved design, slimmer headband and a more modern look than the previous models. They feel better, too, as the redesign’s weight distribution makes them feel substantially lighter and more comfortable than their predecessor despite being only slightly lighter.

The M5 also has upgraded ANC from previous models, doing an even better job of tuning out your surroundings — especially handy for flights, public transportation or other busy environments. Sound quality is also improved, with the headphones’ new 30mm carbon drivers providing punchier bass and more clarity to allow subtle details to shine. The headphones offer an estimated 30-hour battery life, conceivably enough to cover flights from New York to London and back again.

The M5’s $250 price at Target isn’t only an all-time low — it’s about $80 below the headphones’ previous low. The deal is scheduled to expire on Thursday, December 7, so you may want to act quickly if this deal tickles your fancy.

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Meta will soon remove a feature that lets you chat with Facebook friends on Instagram. Starting mid-December, the company will disconnect the cross-platform integration, which it added in 2020. It didn’t provide a reason for doing so, but, as 9to5Google speculates, avoiding regulatory consequences in the EU sounds like a logical motive.

Announced in 2019, the optional cross-platform integration went live a year later, blurring the lines between two of the company’s most popular services. “Just like today you could talk to a Gmail account if you have a Yahoo account, these accounts will be able to talk to each other through the shared protocol that is Messenger,” Messenger VP Loredena Crisan said at the time.

Meta says once “mid-December 2023” rolls around, you’ll no longer be able to start new chats or calls with Facebook friends from Instagram. If you have any existing conversations with Facebook accounts on Instagram, they’ll become read-only. In addition, Facebook accounts will no longer be able to see your activity status or view read receipts. Finally, any existing chats with Facebook accounts won’t move to your inbox on either platform.

The EU designed its landmark Digital Markets Act, passed in 2022, as a deterrent against platform holders from gaining monopoly power (or something close to it). If a company passes a revenue threshold and the European Commission deems the platform overly dominant, it can dole out a maximum penalty of 10 percent of its total global turnover from the previous year. Given the enforcement “stick” this provides the governing body, perhaps Meta saw the writing on the wall and deemed the Instagram / Facebook cross-messaging feature not worth the risk.

Verizon confirmed Monday it’s offering a previously rumored bundle of Netflix and Max streaming subscriptions. The pairing of the rival services is the first of its kind, giving the wireless carrier’s myPlan subscribers a 41 percent discount over buying the two ad-supported plans individually. The offer will be available starting on December 7.

The bundle will include the ad-supported Netflix and Max plans for $10 monthly. Those tiers typically cost $6.99 and $9.99 per month, respectively, so customers who grab the deal could save $80 annually compared to what they’d pay directly from the service’s websites. For Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, it’s a chance to boost their subscribers and get more people hooked on exclusive series. Meanwhile, Verizon gets another incentive to lure customers from rival carriers.

Only Verizon’s myPlan customers are eligible for the $10 streaming bundle. The carrier offers myPlan in three tiers, starting at $75 monthly (single user) for Unlimited Welcome. The Unlimited Plus level pushes the one-line price to $90 monthly, while Unlimited Ultimate costs $100 monthly. All three tiers offer lower per-line prices the more users you have on your plan. You can check out Verizon’s myPlan website for the full breakdown.

Verizon has several other $10 streaming deals as myPlan add-ons. These include a Disney Bundle, which combines Disney+, Hulu with ads and ESPN+. It also offers an Apple One bundle, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and iCloud+. Variety notes that wireless carriers like Verizon typically pay a per-subscriber wholesale rate to the service providers, treating the costs as customer-acquisition overhead.

In addition to myPlan enrollment, the offer requires you to be 18 or older to enroll. After choosing the add-on, you’ll need to complete your account setup separately for each service.

Toyota said Monday it plans to expand its European lineup of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) to six models by 2026. The automaker revealed two new concepts for its upcoming EV fleet, including a “close-to-production” Urban SUV and a Sport Crossover scheduled for a 2025 European launch. Toyota, which Reuters notes is the world’s largest automaker by sales, currently sells only one fully electric model, the bZ4X. It aims for 100 percent carbon neutrality by 2035.

The company’s two newly revealed concepts will join the bZ4X and a Compact SUV it showcased last year. Toyota’s new Urban SUV concept is slated for a European launch in 2024. Its “authentic SUV design” draws inspiration from the company’s Yaris Cross, a top seller in its class. The Urban SUV concept will come in front-wheel and all-wheel-drive options and two battery tiers — a budget one and another with a longer range.

Meanwhile, Toyota had less to say about its Sport Crossover concept. We know it has a sloping fastback profile, which the company will use to position it as a sleeker alternative to traditional SUVs. The automaker expects that concept to enter production in 2025.

Toyota

Toyota plans to launch next-generation batteries in 2026 and beyond. The first will focus on performance, offering a conventional structure with double the range and a 20 percent cheaper price tag than the bZ4X.

A second battery will be a “good quality, low-cost” one designed to spur EV adoption. It will have a “new shape” with a bipolar structure, primarily using cheaper lithium iron phosphate (LFP). With this cell, Toyota aims for a 20 percent higher range and 40 percent lower cost than the bZ4X.

A third battery will be strictly high-performance, using high nickel cathode and bipolar technologies. “Even lower costs and a further extended driving range are expected” was all Toyota said about that battery’s range and pricing goals.

Finally, Toyota teased progress with its first solid-state batteries, which may still be three or four years away. “We have made a technological breakthrough that overcomes the long-standing challenge of solid state battery durability,” said Andrea Carlucci, vice president of Toyota Europe, in a press release. “A method for mass production is currently being developed and we are striving for commercialisation in 2027-2028 with production capacity of several tens of thousands of vehicles.” With its solid-state cells, the automaker’s goal is a charging time of 10 to 80 percent in only 10 minutes.

Walmart has seen enough from X. The retailer, America’s single biggest employer and largest company by revenue, told Reuters on Friday it’s no longer advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The departure follows owner Elon Musk amplifying antisemitic posts and flinging expletives at fleeing advertisers. “We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,” a Walmart spokesperson told Reuters.

Walmart’s exit adds to a growing list of companies that have pulled ads from the platform. Apple, Disney, IBM, Comcast and Warner Bros. Discovery are among the businesses no longer buying ads on X. A group of advertisers told The New York Times on Thursday their temporary pauses will likely become permanent. “There is no advertising value that would offset the reputational risk of going back on the platform,” Lou Paskalis, CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, told the paper.

X’s former advertisers had no shortage of reasons to jump ship. Musk’s latest series of self-inflicted wounds began when the billionaire appeared to endorse and amplify a post falsely claiming Jewish communities were stoking hatred against white people. Musk replied to the user who spewed the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying their comments reflected “the actual truth.”

Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images

Watchdog group Media Matters then published a report showing ads from well-known brands placed next to antisemitic content. X responded by suing the organization, accusing it of “knowingly and maliciously [manufacturing] side-by-side images depicting advertisers’ posts on X Corp.’s social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white national fringe content.”

Musk’s attempt to smooth things over only made things worse. After apologizing for amplifying the antisemitic content at The New York Times’ DealBook event, he told advertisers backing off of the platform to “Go fuck yourself.” His company now potentially stands to lose $75 million.

Walmart employs around 1.6 million people in the US. The retailer made $611 billion in revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.

Google’s new generative AI experiment lets you create music “inspired by” over 100 instruments worldwide. Instrument Playground starts by asking for a simple prompt containing a musical instrument’s name, optionally preceded by an adjective like “upbeat,” “strange” or “gloomy.” It will then spit out a 20-second audio clip as a starting point to compose (often extremely offbeat or abstract) music that may or may not include the sound of the specific instrument you entered.

Simon Doury, an Artist in Residence at Google Arts & Culture Lab, designed the experiment. It taps into Google’s MusicLM, a text-to-AI tool it made available to the public in May.

Instrument Playground invites you to “choose one of over 100 instruments from around the world you’d like to play,” suggesting some lesser-known to Americans like the veena from India, dizi from China or mbria from Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, prefixing your instrument prompt with an adjective lets you suggest styles like “moody,” “happy” or “romantic.”

The experiment works less literally than you might expect. For example, “angry tuba” doesn’t generate the aggressive brass solo you’d expect. Instead, it sounds more like a synthesized pipe organ with tuba aspirations. Similarly, “strange didgeridoo” came out like an ominous section of a Hans Zimmer score. The results seem like abstract compositions with layers of sound that (sort of) capture the feeling — more than the specific sound — of the prompt.

It also rejects some adjectives for inexplicable reasons. When I enter “quirky” or “psychedelic,” an error pop-up tells me it doesn’t allow prompts referencing specific artists.

Once the experiment generates a clip you like for a starting point, you can choose from “Ambient,” “Beat” and “Pitch” to control different aspects of the composition, turning it into something more uniquely yours. If you want to add more instruments (or whatever sounds it makes in response to instrument-based prompts), an advanced mode opens a sequencer to layer and loop up to four tracks for your oddball musical masterpiece. Finally, you can download a .wav file of your track once you’re happy with it.

Google included the following holiday-themed example to inspire you to get started. If that looks like something you want to play with, you can visit Instrument Playground and log in with your Google account to begin composing.

Apple pushed updates to iOS, iPadOS and macOS software today to patch two zero-day security vulnerabilities. The company suggested the bugs had been actively deployed in the wild. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7.1,” the company wrote about both flaws in its security reports. Software updates plugging the holes are now available for the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Researcher Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) is credited with discovering and reporting both exploits. As Bleeping Computer notes, the team at Google TAG often finds and exposes zero-day bugs against high-risk individuals, like politicians, journalists and dissidents. Apple didn’t reveal specifics about the nature of any attacks using the flaws.

The two security flaws affected WebKit, Apple’s open-source browser framework powering Safari. In Apple’s description of the first bug, it said, “Processing web content may disclose sensitive information.” In the second, it wrote, “Processing web content may lead to arbitrary code execution.”

The security patches cover the “iPhone XS and later, iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2nd generation and later, iPad Pro 10.5-inch, iPad Pro 11-inch 1st generation and later, iPad Air 3rd generation and later, iPad 6th generation and later, and iPad mini 5th generation and later.”

The odds your devices were affected by either of these are extremely minimal, so there’s no need to panic — but, to be safe, it would be wise to update your Apple gear now. You can update your iPhone or iPad immediately by heading to Settings > General > Software Update and tapping the prompt to initiate it. On Mac, go to System Settings > General > Software Update and do the same. Apple’s fixes arrived today in iOS 17.1.2, iPadOS 17.1.2 and macOS Sonoma 14.1.2.