Enlarge / Firaxis has upped the ante on presentation for the cities. It's still a bit abstract and removed, but they have more vibrancy, detail, and movement than before. (credit: 2K Games)

2K Games provided a flight from Chicago to Baltimore and accommodation for two nights so that Ars could participate in the preview opportunity for Civilization VII. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

From squares to hexes, from tech trees to civic trees, over its more than 30 years across seven mainline entries, the Civilization franchise continues to evolve.

Firaxis, the studio that has developed the Civilization games for many years, has a mantra when making a sequel: 33 percent of the game stays the same, 33 percent gets updated, and 33 percent is brand new.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

According to The Wall Street Journal, there's internal conflict at OpenAI over whether or not to release a watermarking tool that would allow people to test text to see whether it was generated by ChatGPT or not.

To deploy the tool, OpenAI would make tweaks to ChatGPT that would lead it to leave a trail in the text it generates that can be detected by a special tool. The watermark would be undetectable by human readers without the tool, and the company's internal testing has shown that it does not negatively affect the quality of outputs. The detector would be accurate 99.9 percent of the time. It's important to note that the watermark would be a pattern in the text itself, meaning it would be preserved if the user copies and pastes the text or even if they make modest edits to it.

Some OpenAI employees have campaigned for the tool's release, but others believe that would be the wrong move, citing a few specific problems.

Enlarge / Features like Image Playground won't arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions. (credit: Apple)

Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.

In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here's the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

It is unclear from Apple's statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we're not sure.

Enlarge / Signage outside a Dell campus. (credit: Getty)

Big tech companies are still trying to rally workers back into physical offices, and many workers are still not having it. Based on a recent report, computer-maker Dell has stumbled even more than most.

Dell announced a new return-to-office initiative earlier this year. In the new plan, workers had to classify themselves as remote or hybrid.

Those who classified themselves as hybrid are subject to a tracking system that ensures they are in a physical office 39 days a quarter, which works out to close to three days per work week.

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  The Calculator app is finally coming to iPad. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

CUPERTINO, Calif.—After going into detail about iOS 18, Apple took a few moments in its WWDC 2024 keynote to walk through some changes.

There are a few minor UI changes and new features across Apple's first party apps. That includes a new floating tab bar. The bar expands into the side bar when you want to dig in, and you can customize the tab bar to include the specific things you want to interact with the most. Additionally, SharePlay allows easier screen sharing and remote control of another person's iPad.

But the big news is that the Calculator app we've all used on the iPhone to the iPad, after years of the iPad having no first-party calculator app at all. The iPad Calculator app can do some things the iPhone version can't do with the Apple Pencil; a feature called Math Notes can write out expressions like you would on a piece of paper, and the app will solve the expressions live as you scribble them—plus various other cool live-updating math features. (These new Math Notes features work in the Notes app, too.)

Enlarge / A Mac virtual monitor in visionOS 2. (credit: Samuel Axon)

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple kicked off the keynote for its annual developer conference by announcing a new version of visionOS, the operating system that runs on the company's pricey but impressive Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

The updates in visionOS 2 are modest, not revolutionary—mostly iterative changes, quality-of-life improvements, and some features that were originally expected in the first version of visionOS. That's not too surprising given that visionOS just went out to users four months ago.

Vision Pro users hoping for multiple virtual Mac monitors will be disappointed that's not planned this time around, but Apple plans to add the next-best thing: Users will be able to take advantage of a larger and higher-resolution single virtual display, including a huge, wraparound ultrawide monitor mode that Apple says is equivalent to two 4K monitors.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. (credit: JASON REDMOND / Contributor | AFP)

Apple and OpenAI have successfully made a deal to include OpenAI's generative AI technology in Apple's software, according to The Information, which cites a source who has spoken to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the deal.

It was previously reported by Bloomberg that the deal was in the works. The news appeared in a longer article about Altman and his growing influence within the company.

"Now, [Altman] has fulfilled a longtime goal by striking a deal with Apple to use OpenAI’s conversational artificial intelligence in its products, which could be worth billions of dollars to the startup if it goes well," according to The Information's source.

Enlarge / The Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. (credit: Anadolu Agency | Getty)

Apple's earnings report for the second quarter of the company's 2024 fiscal year showed a slide in hardware sales, especially for the iPhone. Nonetheless, Apple beat analysts' estimates for the quarter thanks to the company's rapidly growing services revenue.

iPhone revenue dropped from $51.33 billion in the same quarter last year to $45.96 billion, a fall of about 10 percent. This was the second consecutive quarter with declining iPhone revenues. That said, investors feared a sharp drop before the earnings call.

Notably, Apple's revenue in the region it dubs Greater China (which includes China, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) fell 8 percent overall. The company fared a little better in other regions. China's economy is slowing even as China-based Huawei is taking bigger slices of the pie in the region.

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  Weird Al's Rambo parody was a drop in the bucket amidst all the other jokes in the film, but it's among the most memorable. [credit: Shout Factory ]

Believe it or not, it's been 35 years since Weird Al's quotable cult classic UHF first came out. Right on time for that anniversary, Shout Factory will release an UltraHD Blu-ray of the movie. This will be the first time it has ever been available in 4K.

Releasing July 2 but pre-ordering now, the disc will include a new 4K scan of the original 35mm negative, along with audio commentary from Weird Al and Jay Levy, the film's director.

It will also come bundled with a standard HD Blu-ray that includes the film in that older format along with a bunch of special features, including video of a 2014 Comic-Con panel on the movie, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes videos, and some other assets. Some of those return from the movie's last physical edition, which was a 25th anniversary HD Blu-ray, but not 4K.

Enlarge / The nukes went off in 2077 in Fallout's universe. The show tells us more about this event than we've learned from the games before. (credit: Amazon)

It's been just over a week since the Fallout TV series premiered on Amazon Prime, and one thing's for sure: It's a huge hit. You can hardly open a social media app without seeing content about it, the reviews are positive, and the active players for the Fallout games have doubled over the past week.

A few days ago, I shared some spoiler-free impressions of the first three episodes. I loved what I'd seen up to that point—the show seemed faithful to the games, but it was also a great TV show. A specific cocktail of tongue-in-cheek humor, sci-fi campiness, strong themes, great characters, and visceral violence really came together into a fantastic show.

Still, I had some questions at that point: Would the franchise's penchant for satire and its distinct political and social viewpoint come through? Where was all this headed?

Enlarge / This mysterious model appeared on eBay with little fanfare. (credit: eBay)

The first-ever model of Star Trek's USS Enterprise NCC-1701 has been returned to the Roddenberry family, according to an ABC News report.

The 3-foot model was used to shoot the pilot and credits scene for Star Trek's original series in the 1960s and was used occasionally for shots throughout the series. (Typically, a larger, 11-foot model was used for shots after the pilot.) The model also sat on series creator Gene Roddenberry's desk for several years.

It went missing in the late 1970s; historians and collectors believe it belonged to Roddenberry himself, that he lent it to a production house working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and that it was never returned. Its whereabouts were unknown until last fall, when a listing for a mysterious model of the Enterprise appeared on eBay.

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  The game includes re-creations of classic battles from the original trilogy... [credit: Lucasfilm ]

There was once a time of outstanding Star Wars computer games before Disney made a deal with publisher EA that led to a plethora of lukewarmly received multiplayer games-as-a-service and mobile titles. (And Jedi: Fallen Order, of course.) Now, a cornerstone of that era is set to be revived in the form of the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection.

Announced this morning, the collection includes two beloved LucasArts-developed online multiplayer shooters from the 2000s: Star Wars Battlefront and Star Wars Battlefront 2. Although it debuted during a Nintendo livestream, the collection won't just be coming out on Nintendo Switch—it's coming to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, too.

The collection will include "restored online play for up to 64 players" of all the previous Galactic Conquest and Campaign mode content from both games on all platforms, including bonus maps and extras that were previously exclusive to specific consoles. Additionally, the Hero Assault mode will now be playable on all ground maps.