Mad Men’s 4K debut botched by HBO Max streaming episode with visible crewmembers

Producer Lionsgate reportedly contributed to the gaffe.

Streaming services have a way of reviving love for old shows, and HBO Max is looking to entice old and new fans with this month’s addition of Mad Men. Instead, viewers have been laughing at the problems with the show’s 4K premiere.

Mad Men ran on the AMC channel for seven seasons from 2007 to 2015. The show had a vintage aesthetic, depicting the 1960s advertising industry in New York City.

Last month, HBO Max announced it would modernize the show by debuting a 4K version. The show originally aired in SD and HD resolutions and had not been previously made available in 4K through other means, such as Blu-ray.

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India orders device makers to put government-run security app on all phones

Apple will refuse to preload state-run “snooping” app on iPhones, report says.

Apple reportedly won’t comply with a government order in India to preload iPhones with a state-run app that can track and block lost or stolen phones via a device’s International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) code. While the government describes it as a tool to help consumers, privacy advocates say it could easily be repurposed for surveillance.

Reuters reported today, citing three anonymous sources, that “Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey its concerns to New Delhi.” Reuters noted that the government mandate has “sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar.”

The government’s Sanchar Saathi (“Communication Partner”) app is billed as a consumer tool for reporting suspected fraud communications, verifying the genuineness of a phone, and blocking lost or stolen handsets. The app can already be installed by users as it is available on the Apple and Google Play app stores, but the government wants device makers such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and Xiaomi to load phones with the app before they are shipped.

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Testing shows why the Steam Machine’s 8GB of graphics RAM could be a problem

Valve has work to do on the software side—but some fixes are coming.

By Valve’s admission, its upcoming Steam Machine desktop isn’t swinging for the fences with its graphical performance. The specs promise decent 1080p-to-1440p performance in most games, with 4K occasionally reachable with assistance from FSR upscaling—about what you’d expect from a box with a modern midrange graphics card in it.

But there’s one spec that has caused some concern among Ars staffers and others with their eyes on the Steam Machine: The GPU comes with just 8GB of dedicated graphics RAM, an amount that is steadily becoming more of a bottleneck for midrange GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 7060 and 9060, or Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060 or 5060.

In our reviews of these GPUs, we’ve already run into some games where the RAM ceiling limits performance in Windows, especially at 1440p. But we’ve been doing more extensive testing of various GPUs with SteamOS, and we can confirm that in current betas, 8GB GPUs struggle even more on SteamOS than they do running the same games at the same settings in Windows 11.

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Google announces second Android 16 release of 2025 is heading to Pixels

The update is rolling out to Pixels starting today.

Google is following through on its pledge to split Android versions into more frequent updates. We already had one Android 16 release this year, and now it’s time for the second. The new version is rolling out first on Google’s Pixel phones, featuring more icon customization, easier parental controls, and AI-powered notifications. Don’t be bummed if you aren’t first in line for the new Android 16—Google also has a raft of general improvements coming to the wider Android ecosystem.

Android 16, part 2

Since rolling out the first version of Android in 2008, Google has largely stuck to one major release per year. Android 16 changes things, moving from one monolithic release to two. Today’s OS update is the second part of the Android 16 era, but don’t expect major changes. As expected, the first release in June made more changes. Most of what we’ll see in the second update is geared toward Google’s Pixel phones, plus some less notable changes for developers.

Google’s new AI features for notifications are probably the most important change. Android 16 will use AI for two notification tasks: summarizing and organizing. The OS will take long chat conversations and summarize the notifications with AI. Notification data is processed locally on the device and won’t be uploaded anywhere. In the notification shade, the collapsed notification line will feature a summary of the conversation rather than a snippet of one message. Expanding the notification will display the full text.

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Meet CDC’s new lead vaccine advisor who thinks shots cause heart disease

Milhoan has a history of touting unproven COVID cures while disparaging vaccines.

When the federal vaccine committee hand-picked by anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets again this week, it will have yet another new chairperson to lead its ongoing work of dismantling the evidence-based vaccine recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the chairperson who has been in place since June—when Kennedy fired all 17 expert advisors on the committee and replaced them with questionably qualified allies—is moving to a senior role in the department. Biostatistician Martin Kulldorff will now be the chief science officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), HHS said. As such, he’s stepping down from the vaccine committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Kulldorff gained prominence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, criticizing public health responses to the crisis, particularly lockdowns and COVID-19 vaccines. He was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration that advocated for letting the deadly virus spread unchecked through the population, which was called unethical by health experts.

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Samsung reveals Galaxy Z TriFold with 10-inch foldable screen, astronomical price

Samsung’s long-awaited tri-fold phone is launching in Korea this month, with a US launch early next year.

Samsung has a new foldable smartphone, and it’s not just another Z Flip or Z Fold. The Galaxy Z TriFold has three articulating sections that house a massive 10-inch tablet-style screen, along with a traditional smartphone screen on the outside. The lavish new smartphone is launching this month in South Korea with a hefty price tag, and it will eventually make its way to the US in early 2026.

Samsung says it refined its Armor FlexHinge design for the TriFold. The device’s two hinges are slightly different sizes because the phone’s three panels have distinct shapes. The center panel is the thickest at 4.2 mm, and the other two are fractions of a millimeter thinner. The phone has apparently been designed to account for the varying sizes and weights, allowing the frame to fold up tight in a pocketable form factor.

Huawei’s impressive Mate XT tri-fold phones have been making the rounds online, but they’re not available in Western markets. Samsung’s new foldable looks similar at a glance, but the way the three panels fit together is different. The Mate XT folds in a Z-shaped configuration, using part of the main screen as the cover display. On Samsung’s phone, the left and right segments fold inward behind the separate cover screen. Samsung claims it has tested the design extensively to verify that the hinges will hold up to daily use for years.

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Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold is a 10 inch tablet and a 6.5 inch phone

Samsung is expanding its line of smartphones with foldable displays with the first model featuring a three-part design. By folding like a tri-fold wallet, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold gives you a 10 inch, 2160 X 1584 pixel tablet-sized screen …

Samsung is expanding its line of smartphones with foldable displays with the first model featuring a three-part design. By folding like a tri-fold wallet, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold gives you a 10 inch, 2160 X 1584 pixel tablet-sized screen when unfolded, and smaller 6.5 inch, 2520 x 1080 pixel screen when folded for use […]

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3D model shows small clans created Easter Island statues

Study: Moai were created by small, decentralized working groups, not managed by one central “chieftain.”

Credit: ArcGIS

Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago. The volcanic rock used for the moai came from a quarry site called Rano Raraku. Archaeologists have created a high-resolution interactive 3D model of the quarry site to learn more about the processes used to create the moai. (You can explore the full interactive model here.) According to a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE, the model shows that there were numerous independent groups, probably family clans, that created the moai, rather than a centralized management system.

“You can see things that you couldn’t actually see on the ground. You can see tops and sides and all kinds of areas that just would never be able to walk to,” said co-author Carl Lipo of Binghamton University. “We can say, ‘Here, go look at it.’ If you want to see the different kinds of carving, fly around and see stuff there. We’re documenting something that really has needed to be documented, but in a way that’s really comprehensive and shareable.”

Lipo is one of the foremost experts on the Easter Island moai. In October, we reported on Lipo’s experimental confirmation—based on 3D modeling of the physics and new field tests to re-create that motion—that Easter Island’s people transported the statues in a vertical position, with workers using ropes to essentially “walk” the moai onto their platforms. To explain the presence of so many moai, the assumption has been that the island was once home to tens of thousands of people.

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