A protester shows off a creative sign during a rally against Tesla CEO Elon Musk in London, England. Alishia Abodunde/Ge Cybertruck fans gathered in Texas for the second annual Cybertruck Rodeo over the weekend where they shared their dismay over the public backlash they've faced for simply driving a Tesla.John Cronin, one of the event's organizers, drove his Cybertruck from Texas to Plymouth Rock, only to be met with hostility on the road. "I knew buying a Cybertruck would turn heads," he wrote online. "But I never expected it to turn people against me."Many owners say they've been met with middle fingers, angry stares, and cold shoulders — a reaction they attribute not to the truck itself, but to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's increasingly controversial political presence. Musk, now a key player in the Trump administration, has alienated former supporters with incendiary social media posts and far-right rhetoric.Tesla drivers commiserated over feeling unfairly judged at the Cybertruck Rodeo in Gatesville, Texas Monthly reported. Over 120 Cybertruck drivers, who have come to expect hostility everywhere they go, were pleasantly surprised that the event was unencumbered by protest.Still, the mood reflected a community under pressure. "Forces are against us," one speaker warned. "It's a little bit of a difficult time," a Tesla employee told the crowd during a speech. A Tesla Cybertruck with a "HAIT B8" license plate drives past protesters outside an Austin, Texas Tesla dealership. Brandon Bell/Getty Images Tesla's sales are down sharply, the Cybertruck has been labeled a flop, and the company is sitting on $200 million in unsold inventory. Sponsorships for the rodeo were reportedly rejected by over 80 companies.Many attendees insist their support of Tesla is about innovation, not politics."I think people are nuanced enough to figure out there's a difference between a CEO and a product," said Matt Holm, president of the Tesla Owners Club of Austin. Holm is a Democrat who thinks its unfair to target Tesla for Musk's politics. "Have you ever heard of a car company called Volkswagen? They are a car company commissioned by Hitler and designed to be the 'people's car' of Nazi Germany."Others, like Canadian visitor Ryan Bailey, acknowledged issues with Musk's political affiliations but didn't waver in his support of the brand. "I'll have one by the end of the year," he announced with a smile.Tesla Owners Club vice president, Anuarbek Imanbaev, has been driving Teslas since they were associated with environmentalism."In the early days of Tesla, these guys in big gas-guzzling trucks used to step on the gas and shoot exhaust at your car when you were driving behind them," Imanbaev said. "Now all these same guys are giving us thumbs up and honking their horns in support. It's hilarious."While plenty of drivers find the politicalization of their beloved vehicles frustrating, the Cybertruck Rodeo-goers are willing to ride it out.© 2025 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

And it's not getting much better.Nintendo had a pretty quiet year in 2024, all told. Sure, it launched some pretty significant games like The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, but there was definitely a sense that the company was starting to wind things down ahead of its big Switch 2 reveal early in 2025.As such, Nintendo's performance in 2024 has been greatly attributed to a staggering drop of 26% in UK physical game sales. As highlighted by Chris Dring in his latest The Game Business podcast episode, physical game sales for the Switch dropped by 1.8 million in 2024. By contrast, PlayStation 5 physical sales dropped by 800,000, PlayStation 4 by 600,000, and Xbox by 300,000.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being considered is worth up to $25 million, according to a report by Pro Publica. Pro Publica claims that fintech Ramp has been lobbying for the administration’s attention since January, before President Trump was sworn in.  In January, Ramp co-founder CEO Eric Glyman and Ramp VC investor Kyle Harrison wrote a blog post titled “The Efficiency Formula” in which they listed the ways they imagined the government could “eliminate inefficient spending.” Harrison is a general partner at the firm Contrary.  The post seemed to be an appeal to Elon Musk’s government agenda — which would be formally created a few days later as the Department of Government Efficiency — considering Ramp has ties to Musk’s and Trump’s world. Ramp’s investors include Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund; Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures; Thrive Capital, which was founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared; Trump ally 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale and Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and brother of former Republican President George W. Bush. Ramp “is competing in a standard procurement process for a SmartPay pilot program based on the strength of our solution,” Lindsay McKinley, head of communications told TechCrunch on Thursday.  She added: “Ramp’s technology has prevented billions of dollars in wasted spend across the economy, and if chosen, we’ll bring those same results to the American taxpayer.” Despite McKinley’s strong rhetoric, she’s referring to how Ramp positions itself as a money-saving option for corporations. It offers similar spend management features as other corporate expense management platforms, like setting parameters to identify expenses that don’t conform to policies. The federal government has many such policies for employees in place. McKinley said that the startup saw a public post on X shared by the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, on February 18 that said “the US government currently has ~4.6M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~90M unique transactions for  ~$40B of spend in FY24.” “Since then we have demonstrated the product and are now part of a standard RFI process,” she said. “We have no indication of whether we’ll be selected.” In March, Ramp doubled its valuation to $13 billion after a $150 million secondary share sale. The startup has raised over $1 billion in equity financing and $700 million in committed debt funding since its 2019 inception.

Purchasing one of Samsung's select OLED or QLED TVs or Q-Series soundbars comes with a $400 gift: A Samsung Music Frame.

iPhones and Android phones are under attack.

Rumor mill: Bethesda has spent over a decade porting Skyrim to everything short of a smart fridge. So when early rumors hinted at an Oblivion remake, Elder Scrolls fans were quick to latch on. Now, a curious Xbox Support exchange suggests the long-awaited revival might be just around the corner. Thanks to leaked documents from the FTC's case against Microsoft, we've known for a while that remasters of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion are in the works. A former Virtuos Games employee backed up the Oblivion part of that equation two years ago. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Bethesda have remained tight-lipped about the leaked roadmap. However, that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from spinning. More recently, reliable leaker NateTheHate claimed that Bethesda moved up the Oblivion timeline. While earlier reports pointed to a June release, his sources suggested it could launch as early as March or April. A batch of alleged screenshots (peppered throughout) surfaced earlier this week, including box art and official-looking Xbox promo pages, adding weight to the claim. Then, on Tuesday, just as those images were making the rounds, an X user named Raven posted screenshots and a video of what he claims is an Xbox Support bot telling him the Oblivion remake will release in less than a week – on April 21, to be exact. However, the authenticity of the exchange is questionable. The support thread begins with a "virtual agent" greeting but quickly pivots to, "This is a live agent." After Raven asks if the game will be available via cloud gaming, the rep responds with what appears to be a pre-written message confirming that it will be. When he asks when the game will launch, the agent replies that it's a day-one Xbox Game Pass title arriving on April 21, 2025. The chat warrants a healthy dose of skepticism despite how plausible it looks. Kotaku attempted to replicate the exchange by contacting Xbox Support multiple times. Unsurprisingly, a live service agent responded, saying the studio hasn't officially announced the game and directing users to watch the Xbox social media channels for more info. It's the kind of boilerplate reply companies always give when asked about unannounced products, so it doesn't debunk the leaked date. Still, it remains the only official word we have so far.

The Alienware Aurora R16, one of the most powerful gaming PCs you can buy today, is currently on sale from Dell. This configuration with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card is available with a $250 discount, which brings its price down from $2,650 to $2,400. It’s still expensive, but that’s understandable considering the capabilities of this machine. Consider the savings a bonus if you’re interested in buying the gaming desktop anyway, but you’re going to have to hurry with your purchase as it may be back to its regular price sooner than you expect. The Alienware Aurora R16 sits on top of our list of the best gaming PCs after scoring an impressive score of 4 out of 5 stars in our review. We described it as “a prebuilt worth buying” as it’s actually competitively priced for a machine that’s powered by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor, and 32GB of RAM that’s the sweet spot for high-end gamers, according to our guide on how much RAM do you need. You’ll be able to play not just the best PC games, but also the upcoming PC games of the next few years. You’ll be able to install several AAA titles on the Alienware Aurora R16 because it comes with a 2TB SSD, and with Windows 11 Home out of the box, you can start building your video game library right after you hook up the gaming PC to the necessary peripherals. The gaming desktop also comes with a liquid cooling system, so there’s no worry about overheating even when you play for several hours at a time. Related If you’re planning a serious investment in gaming PC deals, we highly recommend going for the Alienware Aurora R16. Its original price for this configuration with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card is expensive at $2,650, but you can currently get it with a $250 discount from Dell that pulls it down to $2,400. You’ll be able to take advantage of monitor deals and buy more video games with those savings, so it would be a shame to miss out. Go ahead and push through with your transaction for the Alienware Aurora R16 gaming PC right now, as tomorrow may already be too late. Editors’ Recommendations

The ‘Black Panther’ director reunites with Michael B. Jordan for an ambitious, uneven movie about blues-playing and blood-sucking in the segregated South.

brain drain Trump admin accused of censoring NIH’s top expert on ultra-processed foods Kevin Hall claims an aide for Kennedy edited his written responses to a reporter. Beth Mole – Apr 17, 2025 6:18 pm | 7 WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 12: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends a St. Patrick's Day breakfast for Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the vice president's residence on March 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 12: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends a St. Patrick's Day breakfast for Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the vice president's residence on March 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Kevin Hall, a prominent nutrition expert who led influential studies on ultra-processed foods, has resigned from his long-held position at the National Institutes of Health, alleging censorship of his research by top aides of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In a post on LinkedIn, Hall claimed that he "experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction." In comments to CBS News, Hall said the censorship was over a study he and his colleagues recently published in the journal Cell Metabolism, which showed that ultra-processed foods did not produce the same large dopamine responses in the brain that are seen with use of addictive drugs. The finding suggests that the mechanism leading people to overconsume ultra-processed foods may be more complex than the studied mechanisms in addiction. This appears to slightly conflict with the beliefs of Kennedy Jr., who has claimed that food companies use additives to make ultra-processed foods addictive. The study "just suggests that they may not be addictive by the typical mechanism that many drugs are addictive," Hall told CBS. "But even this bit of daylight between the preconceived narrative and our study was apparently too much," he said. Hall claims that because of this, aides for Kennedy blocked him from being directly interviewed by New York Times reporters about the study. Instead, Hall was allowed to provide only written responses to the newspaper. However, Hall claims that Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for Kennedy, then downplayed the study's results to the Times and edited Hall's written responses and sent them to the reporter without Hall's consent. Further, Hall claims he was barred from presenting his research on ultra-processed foods at a conference and was forced to either edit a manuscript he had worked on with outside researchers or remove himself as a co-author. An HHS spokesperson denied to CBS that Hall was censored or that his written responses to the Times were edited. "Any attempt to paint this as censorship is a deliberate distortion of the facts," a statement from the HHS said. In response, Hall wrote to CBS, "I wonder how they define censorship?" Hall said he had reached out to NIH leadership about his concerns in hopes it all was an "aberration" but never received a response. "Without any reassurance there wouldn’t be continued censorship or meddling in our research, I felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family," he wrote in the LinkedIn post. "Due to very tight deadlines to make this decision, I don’t yet have plans for my future career." Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 7 Comments

The last standing pillars of Napata’s temple of Amun in SudanHomoCosmicos/Alamy An excavation in northern Sudan suggests there were limits to the military might of the Roman Empire – even if the Romans weren’t prepared to admit them. The imperial forces claimed they destroyed an ancient city controlled by their enemies, but it turns out they didn’t. Following the downfall and death of Cleopatra in 30 BC, Egypt became a province of the emerging Roman Empire. But Roman Egypt was relatively weak to…