This is a spoiler-free preview of the first five episodes of season three. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ended its second season with arguably the single strongest run of any streaming-era Trek. The show was made with such confidence in all departments that if there were flaws, you weren’t interested in looking for them. Since then, it’s gone from being the best modern Trek, to being the only modern Trek. Unfortunately, at the moment it needs to be the standard bearer for the show, it’s become noticeably weaker and less consistent.  As usual, I’ve seen the first five episodes, but can’t reveal specifics about what I’ve seen. I can say plenty of the things that made Strange New Worlds the best modern-day live-action Trek remain in place. It’s a show that’s happy for you to spend time with its characters as they hang out, and almost all of them are deeply charming. This is, after all, a show that uses as motif the image of the crew in Pike’s quarters as the captain cooks for his crew. Its format, with standalone adventures blended with serialized character drama, means it can offer something new every week. Think back to the first season, when “Memento Mori,” a tense action thriller with the Gorn, was immediately followed by “Spock Amock,” a goofy, starbase-set body-swap romantic comedy of manners centered around Spock. Strange New Worlds is the first Trek in a long while to realize audiences don’t just want a ceaseless slog of stern-faced, angry grimdark. And if they want that, they can go watch Picard and Section 31. Marni Grossman/Paramount+ But, as much as those things are SNW’s greatest strength, it’s a delicate balance to ensure the series doesn’t lurch too far either way. And, it pains me to say this, the show spends the first five episodes of its third season going too far in both directions (although, mercifully, not at the same time). No specifics, but one episode I’m sure was on the same writers room whiteboard wishlist as last season’s musical episode. What was clearly intended as a chance for everyone to get out of their usual roles and have fun falls flat. Because the episode can never get past the sense it’s too delighted in its own silliness to properly function. Marni Grossman/Paramount+ At the other end of the scale, we get sprints toward the eye-gouging grimdark that blighted those other series. Sure, the series has gone to dark places before, but previously with more of a sense of deftness, rather than just going for the viscerally-upsetting gore. A cynic might suggest that, as Paramount’s other Trek projects ended, franchise-overseer Alex Kurtzman — who has pushed the franchise into “grittier” territory whenever he can — had more time to spend in the SNW writers’ room. Much as I’ve enjoyed the series’ soapier elements, the continuing plotlines take up an ever bigger part of each episode’s runtime so far. Consequently, the story of the week gets less service, making them feel weaker and less coherent. One episode pivots two thirds of the way in to act as a low-key sequel to an episode from season two. But since we’ve only got ten minutes left, it feels thrown in as an afterthought, or to resolve a thread the creative team felt they were obliged to deal with (they didn’t). In fact, this and the recently-finished run of Doctor Who suffered from the same problem that blights so many streaming-era shows, which is the limited episode order. Rather than producing TV on the scale broadcast networks were able to — yearly runs of 22-, 24- or 26 episodes, a lot of (expensive) genre shows get less than half that. The result is that each episode has to be More Important Than The Last One in a way that’s exhausting for a viewer. But Strange New Worlds can’t solve all the economic issues with the streaming model on its own. My hope is that, much like in its first season, the weaker episodes are all in its front half to soften us up for the moments of quality that followed toward its conclusion. ASIDE: Shortly before publication, Paramount announced Strange New Worlds would end in its fifth season, which would be cut from ten episodes to six. It's not surprising — given the equally-brilliant Lower Decks was also axed after passing the same milestone — but it is disappointing. My only hope is that the series doesn't spend that final run awkwardly killing off the series' young ensemble one by one in order to replace them with the entire original series' roster as to make it "line up." Please, let them be their own things. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-third-season-falls-short-of-its-second-020030139.html?src=rss

A five-year court battle between tech titans Apple and Epic Games may finally be coming to a close.After months of explosive back-and-forth that went as high as the Supreme Court, Apple has reinstated Epic Games' landmark game, Fortnite, back onto its App Store.Fortnite — a free-to-play game which makes money from gamers spending cash on flashy cosmetics — began prompting users to bypass Apple's iOS payment system and pay Epic directly back in August, 2020. The move helped Epic get around Apple's 30 percent fee, a flat tax it charged all developers for selling on the App Store.Apple didn't like that, as Fortnite had over 116 million downloads through the App Store at the time. Apple argued Epic's payment portal violated the App Store's terms of service, and took the massively popular game off its platform.In response, Epic filed suit against Apple on antitrust grounds, launching an admittedly corny "Free Fortnite" campaign, which nonetheless posed a serious question: does Apple have the right to restrict developers' access to the billions of devices that exclusively use the iOS App Store?It's a question that took years to answer, and more twists and turns than a viral Fortnite dance. Apple countersued Epic, seeking damages from Epic's terms of service violation. In September 2021, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a split decision, ruling with Apple on nine of ten counts, but awarding Epic a crucial injunction ordering Apple to allow apps to link to external payment platforms.Notably, Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple wasn't a monopoly, but rather a duopoly alongside Google, which was engaged in a similar legal battle with Epic over the Google Play store. She likewise ordered Epic to pay Apple $3.6 million in damages.Unhappy with the decision, both companies appealed, eventually escalating the issue to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear either appeal. Forced to allow developers to bypass Apple Pay, the company begrudgingly complied, but with on caveat. Apple now required developers to fork over 27 percent of the revenue made this way within 7 days of each transaction — a tactic known as malicious compliance.That, of course, spawned another series of lawsuits in March 2024, as Epic vowed to continue the fight and prove that Apple was acting in bad faith.Though Apple put on a cooperative face as the next phase kicked off, it would later emerge that the company's execs withheld documents, delayed proceedings, misled the court, and lied under oath.On the final day of that trial, Epic introduced a series of messages between senior PR executives at Apple, showing the tech giant's frustration at having to follow the law."How is this still going," wrote Apple corporate communications worker Hannah Smith during an earlier day of trial."I have no idea. I am stunned," replied Marni Goldberg, Apple's director of public affairs, and former press secretary for Senator Joe Manchin. "It's our F****ING STORE," she roared in a message minutes later. "This is very much pissing me off."Now knowing exactly who she was dealing with, Judge Gonzalez Rogers issued her scathing ruling on April 30, 2025, finding Apple "in willful violation" of the court's earlier decisions."In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony... documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," Gonzalez Rogers wrote."To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath," the judge found. Though Roman testified that Apple decided on the 27 percent fee in January 2024 — a split-second decision made after the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal — other records prove the tech giant was plotting it as early as July 2023.The ruling found that the decision to ignore the injunction went as high as Apple CEO Tim Cook, who ignored advice to follow the court's decision, and instead went with his "finance team," which convinced him to go through with the 27 percent fee.  As Gonzalez Rogers wrote: "Cook choseSomehow, that wasn't enough hot water. After the April 30 decision, Apple began quickly approving updates to apps linking to third-party payment platforms, according to antitrust journalist Matt Stoller. However, there was one exception: Epic's Fortnite, which Apple had "determined not to take action on the Fortnite app submission" until after all lingering legal appeals were done.Presumably at her wit's end, Gonzalez Rogers issued a brutal one-page order, demanding Apple either make amends with Epic, or else sacrifice an Apple executive to the full wrath of the law."Obviously, Apple is fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing," the judge raged. "However, if the parties do not file a joint notice that this issue is resolved, and this Court’s intervention is required, the Apple official who is personally responsible for ensuring compliance shall personally appear at the hearing."Within a day of that final order, Apple folded, and has officially allowed Fortnite back on the app store (it's now estimated that the five year legal battle cost Apple $1 billion in lost revenue and legal fees.) Though the appeals battle still rages with Google, this one's a major win for software developers, publishers, and phone gamers everywhere.More on Apple: Tim Cook Has a Strange ObsessionShare This Article

You might be having a bad week, but AI is having a worse one. First there was the "racism glitch" that beset Grok, and now music platform SoundCloud is facing some serious criticism for a clause buried in its terms of service.The imbroglio began in February 2024, when SoundCloud quietly changed its TOS to include:In the absence of a separate agreement that states otherwise, You explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services.That quietly sat there in the TOS for more than a year, but this week, Ed Newton noticed the change and posted about it on his X account. The response was immediate and fiery, with many musicians and SoundCloud users decrying the use of their music to train AI. But some of that user ire seems misplaced; it's a more nuanced situation than it seems at first.What Soundcloud was planning to do with AIIt's easy to see why musicians wouldn't want their art used to train machines designed to replace them, but, according to SoundCloud, the TOS change was never about that. The company's president, Eliah Seton, issued an open letter on Wednesday explaining that they were using AI for "powering smarter recommendations, search, playlisting, content tagging, and tools that help prevent fraud" but the company has never "used artist content to train AI models. Not for music creation. Not for large language models. Not for anything that tries to mimic or replace your work."According Seton, it's basically been a misunderstanding. "The language in the Terms of Use was too broad and wasn’t clear enough. It created confusion, and that’s on us," Seton wrote. Opt-in or opt-out: The eternal questionSoundCloud may have cleared up how it has used AI in the past, but company reps waffled on what it plans to do with your music in the future. The initial response to the controversy, delivered in a statement to Verge from Marni Greenberg, SVP and head of communications at SoundCloud, explained, "Should we ever consider using user content to train generative AI models, we would introduce clear opt-out mechanisms in advance."The community responded with, "shouldn't that read 'opt-in?'" "Yeah, opt-in. Sounds great," SoundCloud responded, eventually.How SoundCloud is planning to change its terms of serviceIn his open letter, SoundCloud CEO Seton got specific about planned changes to the service's terms of service. The offensive AI section will be replaced with:We will not use Your Content to train generative AI models that aim to replicate or synthesize your voice, music, or likeness without your explicit consent, which must be affirmatively provided through an opt-in mechanism. So AI won't be used for replication or synthesis of users' music unless they opt in. Presumably, SoundCloud's will continue to use AI for recommendations, tagging, and play-listing, a much more benign, and generally accepted used of the technology. A couple of lessons from this flare-up: One, dealing with AI requires companies to be crystal clear with their users about how AI will be employed. Two, we should all read the TOS.

Rewilding, Rigour and Radical Care: Practice Visits in CopenhagenCopenhagen’s architecture is generous to the public realm and Copenhagen’s architects were even more so to us. Day two began at the shared office space of Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter, Djernes & Bell and Kim Lenschow, over coffee and Baku pastries. In this collaborative, little ecosystem of a workplace, the three practices share lunch, end-of-year parties and knowledge – a testament to the collaborative nature that ran through all of the practices we visited. Johansen Skovsted’s extensive experience in architectural reuse, landscape rewilding and rewetting offered a fascinating approach to working within existing ecological systems and utilising architecture to improve components of that as opposed to reworking the entire structure of the landscape. It’s an approach that can inform our work in various remote Indigenous communities in Australia, where we should be looking for smaller-scale solutions that support existing social, cultural, and environmental systems, rather than attempting to rebuild them. As Djernes & Bell director Justine Bell reminded us, that is not the role of the architect.Bell remarked that the architect’s role in this work lies in our professional expertise in land use, existing structures, storytelling and the synergy in communicating potential futures – how landscapes can look and how buildings can feel. Their rigour in material testing and resource-mapping encouraged vigorous conversation around climactic materiality, vernacular architecture and construction methods. Bell, a South African architect, noted that both Australia and South Africa often look to Europe for answers, when, in fact, more relevant ideas are emerging from home. As many Australian architects grapple  with integrating colonial vernaculars with Indigenous knowledge systems, we can also look to vernacular architecture, not to overly romanticise it, but to understand and reinterpret these ideas through a contemporary lens. These kinds of projects rely on the humility of the architect to engage with experts in agriculture, biology, geology, rewetting and research.Through Copenhagen’s built environment principle of not building new, we’ve come to understand – through the lens of these architectural practitioners – the idea of making what is necessary with what is available. The labour involved in reusing existing buildings, conducting material research and constructing the architecture that has been redefining Copenhagen for the past decade reflects the same care that continues to be invested in a building throughout its life span.“Buildings that have included the most labour are taken care of the most,” said Bell. I’ve seen this ethos at work first-hand in my own work in regional and remote communities in Australia. When communities are involved in the design – through consultation, iterative design and revalidating form translation – and in the construction – by engaging local builders, sub-contractors, suppliers, ongoing contracts, the buildings are valued as more than just structure and form. They become  part of the system of the community: spatially, economically and culturally. The post DST Day 2 – Marni Reti appeared first on Australian Institute of Architects.