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  After hitting a tunnel-painted wall three years ago, Coyote vs. Acme finally made it to theaters yesterday. Originally greenlit in 2020 by Warner Bros. Discovery, the film was shelved by the studio before the small distributor Ketchup Entertainment rescued it and released it this weekend to rave reviews. It was a long road. The film, which follows Wile E. Coyote fighting the Acme Corporation for making shoddy products, cost Warner Bros. ~$70 million, and was already completed when new leadership decided to kill it in 2023 as part of a $115 million tax writeoff. But, unlike other projects the company was tossing, Coyote vs. Acme got stellar reviews from early screenings and critics. The backlash was almost immediate, with Warner Bros. saying it would sell the title to another company: Last year, Ketchup said it would buy the worldwide rights to distribute the film for $50 million. Then it got to work marketing it, using the real-life story of the movie’s almost-demise as a way...

Your first day at a new job is always stressful—remembering names, filling out documents, locating the office snacks—but new Apple CEO John Ternus takes the big desk from Tim Cook today under slightly more pressure as he leads the company into the AI future. Ternus, 51, joined Apple in 2001 and made a name for himself overseeing the company’s hardware division. Now that he’ll be at the top, he is facing big challenges, including: Playing catch-up: The company was already behind when Apple Intelligence and Vision Pro landed with thuds in 2024. The next big moment is in two weeks, when Apple releases a new AI-powered Siri it hopes will compete with ChatGPT and Claude. Talent acquisition: Apple is no longer the most coveted destination for hardware talent; hundreds of former Apple employees have fled to OpenAI. Memory shortage: AI companies are gobbling up chips, making them scarcer and more costly for Apple, which is passing those expenses on to customers. Cook’s legacy When he replac...

  There’s a reason why Patrick Mahomes’s helmet looks like that. The nearly $700 piece of headgear protecting the Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback sits high atop his dome in part because of a crowning discovery from decades of testing : Distance makes the head blow softer. In other words, the more space and time between shell contact and head contact, the better—similar to car crash safety techniques. That’s why today’s helmets are bigger and less rigid than their predecessors. Inside, 3D-printed, collapsible liners compress better than foam to absorb more impact. Modern progress happened quickly: “We’ve seen more change in roughly the last 14 years than we probably did in the previous 40,” the director of the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab—the leading authority in football helmet safety—told the publication Science. When the lab started rating headgear in 2011, helmets received top marks (five stars) if they were projected to expose wearers to zero to 10 concussive hits in a season....

  There will be more than just rom-coms about busy career women going back to their hometown inns on Netflix around the holidays this year. Netflix’s new four-year deal with the NFL gives the streaming platform the rights to five games this season, three more than the previous year as it goes all-in on football. In addition to two Christmas Day games, Netflix will stream the Los Angeles Rams vs. the San Francisco 49ers in Australia in September, as well as a game on Thanksgiving Eve and one January Game: In its previous deal, Netflix aired two games that reportedly cost the company about $75 million apiece. There was some concern that technical issues , like the glitches during the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight last November, would be a problem. But both games went off without a hitch. Netflix and the NFL have what each other want. The NFL wants some of Netflix’s young and international audience as it tries to expand overseas. Meanwhile, Netflix sees live events as one of the best ...

  Amid disagreements between NASA and Boeing, two astronauts who have missed brat summer thanks to spacecraft troubles could end up staying at the International Space Station until next year, NASA officials said at a press conference yesterday. It was supposed to be an eight-day mission. But NASA veterans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been at the International Space Station (ISS) since June 6, when they arrived via Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed voyage . They docked at the ISS successfully but noticed several thruster glitches and helium leaks, which Boeing and NASA officials have been working to resolve. But the two organizations are not on the same page about Starliner’s flight-readiness, the Wall Street Journal reported : Boeing says recent test data shows that the problems are under control and its craft is ready to complete the return mission. NASA noted some promising tests but has concerns about other results. The space agency is internally divided over whe...

  US Space Command is renting a U-Haul and preparing for a cross-country road trip: Yesterday, President Trump said its HQ will move from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama—a major aerospace hub already known as “Rocket City.” The unit, which is responsible for defending US satellites and conducting military operations in space, will relocate to the Redstone Arsenal base, home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. Bama wins The announcement culminates years of political jockeying between two states for the economic prize of housing the personnel and infrastructure for projecting US military might into space. The Air Force chose Huntsville as Spacecom’s new base during Trump’s first term in 2021, but: In 2023, President Biden reversed that decision, making the Space Command’s temporary HQ in Colorado its permanent home. Biden’s move was investigated by government watchdogs, which found that the Air Force preferred H...

  Dark matter and dark energy account for 95% of the universe, but we still know even less about them than where all your missing socks went. NASA’s new space telescope could help scientists learn more. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (named after NASA’s first chief astronomer) launched into space yesterday atop a SpaceX rocket toward an observation point about 1 million miles from Earth, where it will survey the cosmos like never before: Its field of view is more than 100 times wider than Hubble’s—and its camera is much faster. It can observe in a month what it would have taken Hubble a century to do, the Associated Press reported. Roman has a special instrument to block out starlight, making it easier to image planets orbiting other stars. The telescope’s main mirror was repurposed from a powerful spy satellite donated by the National Reconnaissance Office. Roman’s ultimate goals are to 1) shed light on the enigmatic nature of dark energy and 2) understand more about the m...

  A legendary roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California known for its extreme speeds and twists has been closed since July after two women fell into comas with similar brain hemorrhages a few days apart, shortly after going on the ride, according to a report from CNN. Pamela Guillen regained consciousness after two weeks; Naomi Greer-Wilkinson has still not awakened. Six Flags, which has a market cap of ~$1.6 billion, declined to comment to CNN on Guillen and Greer-Wilkinson’s injuries. Those two cases are part of a possible pattern with the X2 coaster, per the report. According to medical and court records found by CNN: Christopher Hawley in 2022 and Hilda Farias in 2010 died of brain injuries after going on the ride. The coaster has been connected to more than a dozen serious injuries and hospitalizations in its more than 20 years of existence. Attorneys for the amusement park have argued that a sign warns passengers about “inherent risks” on any amusement ride, ...