Google announced a significant evolution of its AI models at I/O in May with the release of Gemini 3.5 Flash, and it's not slowing down. The company revealed three new AI models today , including its first version of Gemini geared toward cybersecurity. However, none of the new models is the delayed Gemini 3.5 Pro, which was supposed to launch in June.

Gemini 3.5 Flash, which was the star of the show at I/O , has already been deprecated. In its place, developers and users will find Gemini 3.6 Flash. Google makes the usual claims about this model—it's marginally more capable and better at coding, and it has great multimodal features.

Google says the changes to 3.6 Flash were made in response to user feedback on the 3.5 release. In general, Gemini 3.5 Flash didn't appear to live up to Google's promises around code generation. Perhaps that is simply a consequence of Google's intense focus on efficiency as businesses have started to fret over the cost of AI tokens.

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The company behind the disk space analyzer TreeSize has irked some users by no longer offering support or updates for perpetual licenses beyond their maintenance period unless customers subscribe. Further frustration has come from JAM Software's long-standing policy of not providing license keys or installers to TreeSize perpetual license holders after that support period ends.

Since 2025, JAM Software has been transitioning most TreeSize editions to subscription models. Today, it sells perpetual licenses only for personal use, which include 12 months of updates, support, and “downloads of older versions, and your license,” plus the option to extend the support period. TreeSize currently has "no plans to discontinue the sale of perpetual licenses for TreeSize Personal," product manager Hendrik Christ told Ars Technica.

As perpetual-license maintenance periods expire, customers are discovering that extending support now generally requires subscribing to software they already own the right to use.

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Do you use your vehicle’s app to pre‑cool the cabin on a scorching day, confirm the doors are locked from bed, or have the car automatically call for help when the airbags go off?

Savor those connected, cloud‑based conveniences while you can—the clock is already ticking on their obsolescence. In a few short years, you may be driving today’s vehicle without many of the features you currently enjoy.

How we got hooked on the cloud

"Connected services"—cloud-based and networked features that let a vehicle communicate with external systems to deliver apps, data, and remote functions to drivers and passengers—have been around since the 1990s, when GM introduced OnStar as an option. Those early systems were mostly voice‑centric, but they still depended on centralized back‑end systems. Modern versions, which are fully data-driven and cloud-hosted, use much more sophisticated over-the-air data links to allow a considerably better feature set.

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A recent examination of hundreds of mobile apps marketed toward US military personnel found more than one in eight contained software built by companies in China , Russia , or other foreign nations, raising fresh concerns that adversary governments could harvest data revealing where service members live, work, and deploy.

According to researchers at Purdue University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and Florida International University , one popular app used by service members to rate living conditions on their own bases include code from Huawei, the Chinese telecom that US regulators flagged as a national security threat in 2020. Two others were built by Russian companies and incorporate the Russian ad service Yandex.

The largely unregulated advertising industry that tracks Americans online treats civilians and service members mostly the same—unless there is profit in telling them apart —despite evidence that exposure can reveal troop deployments, unit movements, and the routines of personnel within intelligence facilities and hardened shelters where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.

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Kia provided flights from Washington, DC, to Orange County, California, and accommodation so Ars could drive the Seltos. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—Although it sometimes feels like automakers have all but abandoned everything other than high-end luxury model vehicles, it's not universally true. While some car companies have lobbied the government, terrified, asking to build protective walls to fend off cheap Chinese competition, others have looked at the problem from a different angle, trying to meet the moment. One such effort is the new Kia Seltos, a small SUV that takes inspiration from the Telluride but with a starting price of just $24,990 plus delivery charge.

The US almost didn't get the Seltos in the first place; the first-generation model was designed with China in mind. Seltos take two is more considered, and also a little more substantial. The new body with its Telluride-like design cues has been stretched, mostly in the wheelbase. That said, at 174.4 inches (4,430 mm) long, 72 inches (1,829 mm) wide, and 64.9 inches (1,648 mm) tall, it's still a subcompact, one segment smaller than something like a Toyota RAV4 or Mazda CX-5 .

Kia is offering a choice of three different powertrain variants. The 1.6 L hybrid is the one we're most interested in. But that version won't be in showrooms until Q4 this year; don't expect an Ars first drive of the hybrid Seltos until early next year. Or any other details in this first drive report—the hybrid Seltos is still undergoing its EPA certification, and Kia isn't prepared to talk power, torque, or efficiency until that's done and dusted.

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On March 31, 2026, a rather odd complaint arrived at the Bucks County, Pennsylvania District Attorney's Office.

It came from the local sheriff's office, and it concerned one of their own, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Gaffney. The allegation was unusual: Gaffney had used his iPhone to snap photos of nude prisoners he had encountered in his job—and he had then shared those photos with "several female civilian employees inside the Sheriff's Office."

The main claim involved a local man suffering a mental health crisis on the morning of January 30, 2026. Five fully uniformed deputies had arrived at the house and were in the upstairs bedroom. Their detainee was naked from the waist down and had just been persuaded to put on some pants.

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Drones capable of spraying water and fire retardants have been practicing how to snuff out wildfires early in California and Alaska this summer—demonstrating a possible rapid-response tool for firefighting as climate change transforms wildfire season into a nearly year-round risk for much of the United States.

Most drones are significantly smaller than crewed aircraft and have shorter flight ranges, meaning they cannot replace large airtankers in delivering massive payloads of water or other fire-suppressing payloads to remote wildfires. But companies and fire agencies—along with organizers of the $11 million XPRIZE competition—are testing whether drones can help firefighting crews respond more quickly to small fires and put them out before they become more destructive.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as CAL FIRE, ran its own field test involving five autonomous drones that worked together to deploy between 500 and 1,000 gallons of foam combined for suppressing fires on July 15, according to the TV station KPMH . The demonstration was organized with the help of the nonprofit FireWERX and the California-based company Seneca , which is making the drones commercially available starting in 2026.

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A federal judge today ordered Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery to halt their $111 billion merger, handing an early win to states that sued to block the deal. The ruling granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the firms from completing the merger and from consolidating their operations.

The temporary order is only in effect for 14 days, but it can be converted into a preliminary injunction that would prevent the merger from being completed until the case is resolved. The temporary restraining order can be extended past the 14-day period if more time is needed to rule on a preliminary injunction.

A group of 12 states led by California sued the companies last week in an attempt to block the deal, which had been approved by the Trump administration . The states say the merger will eliminate competition by combining two of the five major Hollywood movie studios, and two of the five major owners of basic cable TV channels.

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It seems as though $5.6 billion wasn't enough. That was the news from the US Space Force on Friday, when military officials announced they were tripling the maximum value of one of the service's National Security Space Launch contracts to $17 billion.

The expansion of the Space Force's National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 contract comes as the Pentagon signals rising demand for military satellite launches. The NSSL program is set up to allow Space Systems Command, which oversees the Space Force's launch program, to select from a pool of launch providers for individual missions to deliver the military's satellites to orbit.

The NSSL program has two parts. Lane 1 covers the Space Force's more risk-tolerant missions, such as medium-lift launches with experimental payloads or rideshare missions carrying satellites for the Pentagon's surveillance or data relay constellations . Lane 2 includes higher-priority strategic missions, like the government's largest and most expensive spy satellites, or radiation-hardened communications satellites designed to survive a nuclear war.

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