A Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Comedy Series Is Coming From the ‘Archer’ Creators
It’s been a few years since Archer ended, and while we still go around yelling “Phrasing!” whenever the opportunity arises, it’s high time for some fresh jokes from the team behind the long-running spy-fi show. HBO Max has ordered up two seasons of Merrick & Treves, a half-hour animated comedy co-created and executive produced by Archer and Frisky Dingo vets Adam Reed, Casey Willis, and Lucky Yates.
Here’s the official logline, courtesy of HBO Max: “Set inside Queen Victoria’s top secret Royal Temporal Constabulary, Merrick & Treves follows a team of unlikely heroes as they voyage back and forth through time in an effort to stop Jack the Ripper.”
The release doesn’t specify more details on the characters, but Deadline puts them into historical context: “Joseph Merrick was better known as the Elephant Man, who was exhibited at a freak show in 19th-century Britain, before he was taken in by surgeon Sir Frederick Treves and went to live at a hospital in Whitechapel,” the London neighborhood frequented by Jack the Ripper.
In the HBO release, Reed, Willis, and Yates sounded very excited about what’s to come. “The three of us are beyond excited to have found a home for Merrick & Treves at HBO. We can’t wait to start working with the creative team behind so many of our favorite shows. It’s actually quite daunting, now that we think about it. Like, holy shit, y’all. HBO.”
There’s no word yet on casting; presumably, it’ll have a British-accented cast for the most part, though Reed and Yates are both voice-acting veterans. We’re also hoping H. Jon Benjamin—the voice of Sterling Archer, as well as Bob Belcher on Bob’s Burgers—might find the time to add yet another eccentric character to his resume.
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Bumble Given a Billion Reasons to Go Private
Bumble is breaking up with the Nasdaq. According to a report from Reuters, the floundering dating app has accepted a $1.3 billion bid from Ithaca Holdings to go private, taking the company off the market as it and its many rivals struggle to figure out how to get Gen Zers and Gen Alpha to care about dating again.
The deal will see the shareholders of Bumble get a cool $6.05 per share, which Bloomberg reported is about a 138% premium on its most recent closing share price—but is still down quite a bit from the company’s $13 billion valuation when it first went public back in 2021. Unfortunately for Bumble, that’s about when the public’s love affair with it ended, and it’s been largely getting negged by the market ever since.
That’s not entirely Bumble’s fault, either (though, frankly, it was pretty wild that anyone thought that the “women go first” thing was enough of a differentiator to justify a multi-billion-dollar valuation). The dating app market has been a bad business to be in for years now. Usage of the apps has been on the decline, with prospective daters dealing with burnout and a growing disinterest in paying for a subscription just to endlessly swipe. A recent 2026 Harris Poll found that about two-thirds of singles say they aren’t even bothering with setting up profiles, finding the platforms too transactional and cringey.
Bumble perhaps contributed to that, but it also tried really hard to stave off the decline. The company tried to pivot from exclusively dating to offering a “Bumble for friends” and “Bumble for professional networking.” It even fully abandoned its “women go first” rule, which kinda just turned it into Tinder but with a yellow paint job instead of a red one.
None of it worked, and now the company has been forced to sell. As part of the deal with Ithica Holdings, Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd will be booted from the CEO chair—a spot she just returned to last year after having initially stepped down in 2024. She’ll be replaced by Ithica Holdings’ execs, former Instacart chief operating officer Ravi Gupta and former Meta chief revenue officer John Hegeman.
Notably, they’re both men taking over a dating app meant to be more thoughtful about women’s experiences in online dating. And hey, if you think dating apps are nothing but human meat markets that have been rendered completely unusable without paying by an inundation of the worst mobile ads imaginable, surely the people to fix that are one guy from a groceries-on-demand app and another who was in charge of monetizing Meta around the time that it was reportedly making about 10% of its revenue from fraudulent advertisements.
Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli Could Be in Big Trouble Again
The Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal judge to hold Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive better known as “Pharma Bro” in the 2010s, in contempt of court for allegedly publicly trading in pharmaceutical industry stocks and giving his opinion on the pharma industry, according to a press release from the federal agency.
Shkreli first became internet famous after raising the price of a life-saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill and bragging about how that just made him a good businessman. But prosecutors saw it differently and said he was engaging in an illegal, anticompetitive scheme to restrict access to the drug. He was arrested in 2015, and convicted in 2017 on eight counts, including securities fraud.
Shkreli was out on bail between his conviction and reporting to prison but was sent to jail in 2017 after a Facebook post in which he said he wanted to acquire some of Hillary Clinton’s hair. The Secret Service took this as a threat.
Shkreli didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed Tuesday. When I emailed with Shkreli back in 2017 to ask him about potentially going to prison, the pharma bro turned our exchange into a trolling competition. He asked if I was “antifa” and wrote that “given we live in a trump presidency, life is basically nirvana.” One of his emails ended with “NOW SET ME UP WITH DAT WIFE OF URS.”
Shkreli also noted that the sentencing guidelines for his crime were 0-6 months so he could just do some leisure reading in prison and “make paper from inside,” a suggestion that he’d still be making money. In 2018, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and ultimately served about four years. He was banned in 2022 from trading any pharma stock and broadcasting his opinion on the business or management of pharma companies.
The FTC alleges that since his release Shkrlei has been “publicly trading in pharmaceutical industry stocks of at least 60 companies and broadcasting online his opinions about the business and management of many pharmaceutical companies,” despite his lifetime ban. The agency even quotes him saying on one of his many livestreams, “I’m showing you how to trade and invest in biotech.”
The FTC also alleges that Shkrlei has “used his livestreams to wage multiple public campaigns to short certain pharmaceutical company stocks based on his prediction that their key clinical trials would fail.” The federal agency has been joined by seven states in asking a federal judge to hold the pharma bro in contempt.
According to the FTC’s press release, Shkreli should:
- Divest any pharmaceutical company stocks he currently owns;
- Pay a fine equal to his profits from any pharmaceutical company stock trading (plus prejudgment interest) without the ability to account for offsetting losses; and
- Face clear and escalating consequences for any future violations, including financial penalties and potential incarceration.
“After a full trial, the court found that Martin Shkreli’s conduct drove up prescription drug costs for American patients and blocked the entry of lower-cost generics,” said Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. When judgment is entered by a court, whether it’s a settlement or an order following a trial, defendants must fulfill their obligations. Today’s action should serve as notice that the FTC will not hesitate to enforce violations of court orders.”
Garmin’s Newest Smartwatches Push Luxury to Its Limits
Garmin has announced the Marq Gen 3, a new version of its family of high-end luxury smartwatches it last updated in 2022. And luxury is the key word here: While the Fenix 9 Pro—the watch the Marq most closely resembles—isn’t cheap at $1,100, it’s definitely cheaper than the $2,500 starting price of a Garmin Marq Athlete. Of course, that money isn’t necessarily wasted. All the Marq watches support the company’s inReach LTE network so you can stay connected without a smartphone, offer the usual health and fitness features, and come preloaded with maps that will make them great for navigation right out of the box. Still, it’s safe to say Garmin’s newest smartwatch is for a very particular kind of affluent customer.
The Marq Gen 3 is available in the same Athlete, Adventurer, Golfer, and Aviator styles as the previous generation, along with two new third-generation additions, Commander and Diver. All the watches are made from Grade 5 titanium, a more scratch-resistant blend of the already scratch-resistant Grade 2 titanium on the Fenix 9 Pro, and come with a sapphire lens that covers their 1.4-inch AMOLED touchscreen. Depending on the style you pick, you’ll get a slightly different design on the ceramic bezel and different watch bands, too, ranging from a silicone band on the slightly more affordable Athlete model to a leather band on the Aviator.
© Garmin
The actual features of the smartwatch span the gamut of Garmin’s recent releases. Any Marq Gen 3 watch will be able to track heart rate and heart health issues like atrial fibrillation, sleep, workouts, and recovery. They’ll also be able to connect to the company’s new Garmin Epic feature, which summarizes multiple types of workouts into a longer narrative, and have the ability to see notifications and take calls from a connected smartphone. Unique to these new watches, Garmin says they’ll also come preloaded with worldwide TopoActive maps and support up to 18 days of battery life.
Given their exorbitant prices, the real draw of these watches is their looks and the more personalized features they ship with. For example, the Athlete watch features ClimbPro, a software feature that can display information about your upcoming climbs, while Garmin’s Aviator model includes a collection of navigation tools for pilots. If you’re paying thousands of dollars for a smartwatch, it might as well cater to your specific luxury hobby.
The Garmin Marq Gen 3 watches are available to order today and will ship in the coming weeks. The Marq Athlete starts at $2,500, the Marq Adventurer starts at $2,700, the Marq Golfer starts at $2,800, and the Marq Aviator, Commander, and Diver models all start at $3,100.
‘Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew’ Comes Alive in First Trailer
For years, Netflix has been trying to get a new Chronicles of Narnia movie off the ground in the hopes of starting a new franchise. Now, with Barbie writer and director Greta Gerwig behind the camera, the streamer is getting its wish with Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.
Based on the sixth book in C.S. Lewis’ series, Nephew is a prequel set in the 1950s. (A notable change from the book, which was set in the early 1900s.) The important thing to know is the film will show how Aslan the lion (voiced by Meryl Streep) created Narnia, here inspired by British rock and roll. Also along for the ride are Digory Kirke (David McKenna) and Polly Plummer (Beatrice Campbell), a pair of real-world kids who accidentally cross over into the realm. No surprises for guessing that both kids wind up playing a substantial role in Narnia’s history going forward, and that they’ll cross paths with both Aslan and Emma Mackey’s Jadis, the eventual White Queen.
With a cast that also includes Carey Mulligan, Susan Wokoma, and Denise Gough, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew may be worth the theatrical, IMAX-heavy release Netflix is giving it on February 12, 2027. And if you can’t see it on a big screen, you’ll be able to watch it on Netflix beginning April 2, 2027. Peep the equally cosmic poster below.
Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. Trailer Tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/4X758BYrp1
— Netflix (@netflix) October 12, 2026
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OnePlus Just Dropped a Monstrous 9,000mAh Phone—And You Probably Can’t Buy It
Today in “things that aren’t big Apple announcements,” we’ve got a smartphone release that’s both intriguing and infuriating. As legions of U.S. phone reporters descend on Cupertino to swim in infinity pools of spatial audio and unified memory while Siri sings a context-integrated lullaby (at least, that’s what I assume happens at these big Apple events—I’ve never been to one), OnePlus has dropped a real doozy of a flagship phone on the other side of the world. Oh, and it won’t be sold in Europe or the United States.
At least, not officially. OnePlus called it quits on those two markets this summer in a fairly decisive and permanent-sounding fashion, so you’re unlikely to get your hands on this unless you’re willing to dig through some third-party listings and import the Chinese model, potentially forgoing things like warranty coverage, carrier compatibility, and local apps. The OnePlus 16 has one of the fanciest spec sheets in the world right now, and it’s clearly a feat of engineering, but it’s also a glimpse of the sorts of technological advances that we’re missing out on across this side of the planet—and may continue to miss out on now that one of China’s largest smartphone manufacturers has departed our shores.
The most bonkers thing on OnePlus’s bonkers-down-the-line spec sheet is its battery: it’s one of the largest currently in a mainstream flagship, weighing in at 9,000mAh. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra sports 5,000mAh, for comparison, and Gizmodo basically couldn’t drain that thing. On its website, OnePlus claims that its new flagship can deliver up to 20.6 hours of short-form video playback, 13.6 hours of map navigation (which I sincerely hope was tested via an epic, harrowing, charger-free odyssey around Shenzhen), and 8.1 hours of “a popular MOBA game” at 120 fps and maximum graphics. These are all approximate measures, of course, and I am both intrigued by and deeply afraid for anyone who plans to regularly watch 24 straight hours of TikTok (sorry, RedNote) on their premium handset, but they would make me hopeful that I could get a couple days of regular-person use out of this thing if I were to purchase it.
© OnePlus
The size of a battery, of course, is just one of many factors that determine how long a device can actually stay awake. One confounding variable might be the very hungry 185Hz OLED panel that graces the front of this phone, which can muster up to 165Hz not only in games but also throughout the UI. And there’s the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, Qualcomm’s first 2nm flagship, which OnePlus touts as a workhorse capable of delivering “unmatched” performance. We haven’t (and likely won’t, unless OnePlus has a major about-face) independently verified any performance benchmarks from this device, but I imagine that pushing those gaming features to their limits could take a sizeable bite out of that gargantuan brick.
My personal favorite aspect of this phone, however, is one that I’m convinced OnePlus is criminally underutilizing in its marketing material, because I had to scroll through its overwhelming website for approximately 34 years before I could even find a clear picture of it. Take a look at the back of the silver option’s chassis, and you’ll see a little LED 16, alongside the coordinates of…something, I never took geography. These LEDs will apparently flash when exciting events occur on your phone, such as when a notification arrives. Huh! I’m not saying this device is giving me war flashbacks to that couple of years when Asus was putting exploding LED heads on its products, but I am saying that having emerged alive from that weirdly psychedelic period of U.S. history, I can see why OnePlus may have felt the need to go ham on the battery.
There’s plenty else to marvel at on this spec sheet. OnePlus has bumped up a previously so-so camera set to a 200MP main with a 1/1.4-inch-type sensor, a 50MP ultrawide and a 50MP periscope telephoto with 3× optical zoom. A revamped vapor chamber promises 40% better cooling. There’s 100W wired fast charging and 50W wireless charging, if you’re asking. Configs range from 12GB RAM/256GB storage to 16GB/1TB, and the base model’s launch price is 5,699 yuan, or just over $850.
This is all very exciting, and kudos to OnePlus, which appears to be living its best life in the absence of this particular consumer base. Still, as a writer for a U.S.-based publication, I can’t help but feel a bit dreary about the whole thing. Exciting things are going on over in Shenzhen right now. We’re only a few months into a OnePlus-less future, and even though we can’t independently verify the company’s battery estimates, we’re clearly already missing out on a major advance in smartphone hardware. And I have a feeling that this won’t be the last time we have this kind of conversation.
GoPro Fixed the One Big Problem With Its Mission 1 Pro Cameras—But Is It Enough?
At launch, GoPro’s newfound fascination with “pro” cameras didn’t stretch to its durable action cams’ photo capabilities. Finally, thanks to a new update, GoPro has made its Mission 1 lineup much better at taking photos alongside their great low-light and slow-motion footage. What we have to ask ourselves is if GoPros can really be the “everything” cameras the company seems to imply they can be.
I had several good things to say about GoPro’s $700 Mission 1 Pro action camera. I had fewer positive spins on its similarly priced Mission 1 Pro ILS with its swappable micro four-thirds lenses. While the regular Mission 1 Pro is a great—though expensive—rugged shooter, the ILS trades in many of its durable capabilities and still doesn’t support any lenses with an electronic camera connection. That means you can’t use any lens with dedicated auto focus. It also means you have to manually input your focal length into the camera each time you pop in a new lens.
Both cameras suffered from low speeds when processing photos. A single 50-megapixel RAW image could take nearly four seconds to process between shots. This slow speed made each camera’s photo-taking ability pointless. In its latest firmware update, GoPro makes it far easier to capture multiple photos in rapid succession. Now, when you press the shutter button, the camera takes an instant photo and then loads it up in line. You can take as many photos as you want after that, and only when you stop for a few seconds will the camera process all those shots.
Left: GoPro Mission 1 Pro shooting 50 megapixels in RAW; right: a GoPro Mission 1 ILS shooting 50-megapixel RAW images using a 14mm lens.
In addition, now when you hold the shutter button, you can take a stream of photos in one go, with up to 50 photos at 12-megapixel size and 20 shots at 50-megapixel in RAW format. I’ve tried both capabilities, and there’s both a benefit and downside to this style of photography. It means you can take multiple photos in rapid succession without changing photo settings. The side effect of this is you can’t immediately look at each photo to fix problems between shots. You still have to slide up from the bottom of the Mission 1 Pro’s 2-inch OLED screen to tell if you actually got the shot you wanted.
So what does the change for photo capabilities mean for each camera? The base Mission 1 Pro still uses a wide-angle lens as the default. That means the camera is restricted to this fish-eye effect when taking pictures in a RAW format. You can instead snap JPGs in a linear mode, and that means it may be a useful alternative to your phone’s camera. Any dedicated photographer would rather want to capture RAW, and it’s why the ILS may be a better bet.
As for the ILS, nothing about these updates actually improves what kinds of scenarios the camera is best for taking footage. Instead, the ability to take multiple shots in rapid succession does mean it can act as a backup, small-body camera. I’m not nearly as annoyed by manual-only focus when taking stills versus shooting video.
The GoPro Mission 1 ILS may now operate as a backup, small-form-factor point and shooter. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
It’s still not quite the pocketable camera experience I want, especially not when I have my trusty Ricoh GRIIIx sitting in my bag. Having the option for multiple focal lengths can be an aid when snapping shots in the field, but the need to go into the drop-down settings menu just to change focal lengths, even if you’re not using a prime lens, is just too damn annoying. The limitations of GoPros versus any other camera mean the experience isn’t quite as premium as you would like, not when the camera still does not have any accessories that enable physical controls for ISO, shutter speed, or aperture.
GoPro’s most expensive cameras are now the most capable these rugged shooters have ever been. We can hope these ideas may transfer into less-expensive cameras in the future. The company recently went through a lot of hubbub after its stock price was pumped by YouTuber Markiplier only for Starman Optical to acquire the company for another $285 million. I would love to see GoPro keep its slow-motion and new photo software and apply it elsewhere, hopefully to something more people can afford.
Watch a Bee’s Stinger Keep Pumping Venom After the Bee Is Gone
Anyone who’s ever been stung by a bee knows how painful it can be. Now, for reportedly the first time, scientists have captured an incredibly detailed and up-close look at how these stingers work to cause us and other animals so much misery.
Using high-speed cameras, researchers in Australia recorded bee stingers delivering venom into a clear gel meant to mimic human skin. Among other things, they found that these stingers pump venom through a unique dual-piston mechanism that operates completely independently of the bee itself. The findings might allow us to build new kinds of medical or other devices, the researchers say.
“Our work shows the pumping behavior in a live stinger in a level of detail we did not have before,” lead author Fiorella Ramirez-Esquivel, a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University, told Gizmodo.
A bee’s sting up close
There are all sorts of venomous animals in the world, some of which—like bees—use specialized stingers to deploy their toxic payload. Most stinging animals use muscles that actively contract around the source of venom in their body to deliver the toxic blow, according to the researchers. The honeybee (Apis mellifera), however, has a unique strategy called autotomy: when they pierce their barbed stinger into a victim’s skin, it breaks off and continues to pump venom out all on its own (unfortunately, this trick is fatal for the bee, though only a few species employ it).
We have already learned much about the honeybee’s stinger and its accompanying structures, which include the venom sac, pumping chamber, nerves, and muscles. We know that it has two pointed lancets that slide backwards and forwards like a reciprocating saw; these lancets allow the stinger to dig deeper into the skin and deliver the venom. The lancets are also connected to valves that sit in the pumping chamber. But it’s only now that scientists have captured on high-speed film the full range of mechanisms at work when a bee stinger stings.
“By using strong transmitted light we were able to capitalize on the translucent nature of the stinger to see what the pumping elements inside the stinger do,” said Ramirez-Esquivel. “The video we captured allowed us to do frame-by-frame tracking to characterize the movement patterns of the pumping valves.”
The team used clear gel as a replacement for human skin, and they observed some previously unknown things about how the stinger works. The biggest discovery was that the valves basically function as alternating pistons, dynamically changing in shape during the pumping process. One valve inflates as the other collapses, generating pumping pressure while preventing the loss of venom as the lancets are refilled. The net result enables the stinger to deliver a continuous flow of venom to its victim.
Based on these findings, the researchers also built a mechanized, if simplified, version of the bee’s stinger, allowing them to verify what they had seen in the videos. The team’s research, along with all of its video footage, was published Monday in the journal PNAS.
Stinging lessons
The honeybee’s stinger appears to be even more remarkable than we knew, and the lessons researchers have learned from it just might have other applications down the road, according to Ramirez-Esquivel.
“The stinger pumps liquid in a very unusual way; having two deformable pumping pistons within a single chamber is just not something we commonly observe, either in nature or in man-made devices,” she said. “We think that the stinger’s approach to pumping liquid could be of interest for the design of manmade pumps such as medical devices, micro-pumps or any systems that require a continuous flow of liquid.”
Bees aren’t the only insects that engineers or other scientists could take inspiration from either, Ramirez-Esquivel added. An insect’s cuticle, the outer layer of their exoskeleton, is very adaptable, and different species have evolved to make their cuticles harder, softer, or more elastic even within very small areas. That malleability could very well teach us a thing or two. “As plastics and manufacturing progress, I am excited to see if we can replicate some of these properties in manmade devices,” she said.
In the meantime, I’m just glad that I already try my best to respectfully admire honeybees from afar. Elegantly ingenious as their stingers are, I don’t need a personal demonstration anytime soon.
Ryan Coogler’s ‘X-Files’ Is Officially a Go at Hulu
We all kind of suspected Ryan Coogler’s new X-Files series would become a reality—first of all, it’s Ryan Coogler, then all that talent started filling up the pilot, including stars Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel—and now Hulu has finally made it official.
“A reimagining of the classic, the series follows two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents who form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena,” reads Hulu’s official press release announcing the series order.
Coogler, whose Sinners racked up multiple Oscars earlier this year and who has Black Panther III coming in 2028, has long been excited about making his version of the ’90s sci-fi staple.
“I’ve loved The X-Files for a long time, so getting the chance to write and direct the pilot has meant a great deal to me,” Coogler said in a Hulu press release. Coogler wrote, directed, and executive produced the pilot; he’ll executive produce the show alongside showrunner Jennifer Yale.
“What Chris Carter created is special, and we wanted to honor everything that made the original series connect with so many people while also finding our own way into that world. Danielle and Himesh, along with the rest of our cast, have brought such original perspectives and performances to these characters, and watching that come together has been one of the most rewarding parts of the experience.”
He continued, “I couldn’t have asked for better collaborators than my crew, colleagues at Proximity Media, and our partners at Onyx Collective and 20th Television. I’m grateful for the trust and support they’ve given us as we take on this new chapter.”
So far there’s no release date set, but here’s hoping early 2027 might be a possibility. We want to believe!
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Archaeologists Find Possible ‘Palace’ Where Roman Life Continued After Rome Fell
Rome’s grip on modern-day France loosened around the 5th century CE. But traces of Roman influence persisted for much longer—particularly in the way wealthy communities built their homes.
During the latest rounds of excavations at Mount Saint-Laurent, French archaeologists uncovered a small hilltop settlement containing multiple buildings with distinct Roman elements, one of which was dated to between the 6th and 7th centuries. The site hosted multiple masonry buildings, glass fragments likely from lamps and tableware, and suspended floors indicative of a hypocaust—a Roman underfloor heating system. Taken together, the evidence suggests that high-ranking individuals lived at the site, which is also consistent with early medieval texts noting the importance of Mesmont, France, where the hill is located.
Hypocaust pillars and suspensura fragments, left in the corner of a room in the building excavated in 2026. Credit: A. Guicheteau/Inrap
The findings were announced in a recent statement (translated via Google) from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), whose experts led the research.
A historical settlement
According to Inrap, humans have occupied Mount Saint-Laurent as early as the Neolithic (between 6,000 and 2,200 BCE), but it appears to have been abandoned during Roman times. People clearly returned soon after, however, as early medieval texts refer to Mesmont as the “chief town” of the region. The city also frequently comes up in hagiographies—Christian biographical works—that detail the lives of notable saints from the era.
A drone view of Mount Saint-Laurent. Credit: J. Berthet/Inrap
For instance, Bishop Gregory of Langres reportedly appointed his grandson, Eustace, to head the monastic community in Dijon. But before that, Eustace was a priest at Mesmont, according to the statement. These individuals “belonged to the highest senatorial aristocracy of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages,” Inrap explained, and the Gregorii family was just one of many others said to have some connection with Mesmont.
To be clear, the team hasn’t determined whether the newly discovered site belonged to a specific saint and doesn’t claim to have done so. However, the new findings present physical evidence that strongly supports historical records, which is an important connection.
A wealthy patron
Archaeologists have studied the site as early as the 18th century, but more modern campaigns began in 2019, which was when the team, led by Inrap researcher Antoine Guicheteau, established the presence of a small hilltop settlement. This was followed by another survey between 2022 and 2024. During these two projects, the team excavated the large stone church—initially discovered in the 1970s—and identified archaeological elements that helped the researchers contextualize the site. There was an “abundance” of window glass fragments, light fixtures, a chancel screen, and what may have been a liturgical bench, which makes it highly likely that the building was a church of some kind.
Lidar survey of the current Mesmont cemetery. The basilica plan of the cemetery’s enclosure wall is visible. Credit: M. Thivet/Inrap
For the latest round of investigations, the team focused on a building to the west of this area. Here, the researchers found numerous Roman-style pipes, pillars, and remains of suspended concrete floors that likely formed a hypocaust. The structures overall used high-quality materials, and the general layout boasts a “certain complexity.” In addition to intricate pottery and glass fragments, the signs point to the presence of wealthy individuals capable of financing these projects, the team explained.
A Roman ‘palace’?
That said, the team noted how the site has already been frequented by metal detectorists, whose looting likely caused an “irretrievable” information loss. This is partly why the team isn’t yet certain who lived here, although we may be able to make an educated guess based on hagiographies.
Perhaps as a testament to this uncertainty, Inrap headed its announcement by questioning whether this was a “palace” from post-Rome France—at the very least, the intricate, high-quality structures do indicate that the buildings weren’t just regular homes. And importantly, the findings further our understanding of a period “still too often perceived solely through the lens of barbarian invasions or the reign of the ‘do-nothing kings,’” the researchers added.
Empromptu raises $2M pre-seed to help enterprises build AI apps
Sheena Leven says she learned two important lessons when building her first company, CodeSee. The first lesson was knowing the difference between what businesses need versus what sounds visionary; the second was that the fundamentals always apply, even with new technologies such as AI.
“Security, compliance, reliability, quality, those things don’t just go away for enterprise applications,” she said.
After CodeSee was acquired in 2024, Leven decided that she wanted to build a product that would let business owners, even those without technical backgrounds, build AI applications. She teamed up with AI researcher Sean Robinson, and last October, the two launched Empromptu, an AI service that businesses can use to build AI applications.
Empromptu claims all a user has to do is tell the platform’s AI chatbot what they want — like a new classification app or a generative recommendation app — and the tool will go ahead and build it. It also provides LLM tools to help users if they want to fine-tune any results, and also lets companies add AI features to their own existing code bases.
Leven doesn’t consider it a vibe-coding platform, though she does look to compete with companies like Replit and Lovable.
“Vibe coding is excellent for quick experiments, but Empromptu is what turns those experiments into real software,” she said. Empromptu, she continued, “turns ideas into production features with built-in evaluation, governance, and self-improvement,” she said. “You ship to real customers, with real data and complete control. If vibe coding is the brainstorm, Empromptu is the build.”
On Tuesday, the company said it had raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Precursor Ventures. Zeal Capital, Alumni Ventures, Founders Edge and South Loop also participated.
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Leven said the fresh capital will be used for hiring staff and developing new proprietary technology.
The company is hoping to target businesses launching in regulated industries or “deeply complex” areas that involve capturing data and creating applications — software that services hotels, for example.
Overall, Leven hopes that founders feel their businesses can be transformed without having to learn the technical skills to take advantage of the AI revolution.
“It’s just like any other skill,” Leven said. “And the beauty of this skill is that AI can help you learn it along the way.”
This piece was updated to clarify what Empromptu does.
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FTC upholds ban on stalkerware founder Scott Zuckerman
A stalkerware maker who was banned from the surveillance industry after a data breach that exposed the personal information of its customers, as well as the people they were spying on, will not be able to go back to selling the invasive software, according the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC denied a request to cancel that ban made by Scott Zuckerman, the founder of consumer spyware company Support King and its subsidiaries SpyFone and OneClickMonitor.
On Monday, the FTC announced the denial in a press release after Zuckerman petitioned the federal watchdog to rescind or modify the ban order in July of this year.
In 2021, the FTC banned Zuckerman from “offering, promoting, selling, or advertising any surveillance app, service, or business,” effectively preventing him from running another stalkerware business. The agency also ordered Zuckerman to delete all the data collected by SpyFone, as well as to undergo frequent audits and establish certain cybersecurity practices for his businesses.
“SpyFone is a brazen brand name for a surveillance business that helped stalkers steal private information,” said Samuel Levine, then acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The stalkerware was hidden from device owners, but was fully exposed to hackers who exploited the company’s slipshod security.”
In his petition, Zuckerman claimed that the FTC order’s security requirements have made it harder for him to run his other businesses due to financial costs, despite the fact that Support King is no longer in operation and he now only runs a restaurant and plans other “tourism ventures” in Puerto Rico, according to the petition.
When reached via email, Zuckerman declined to comment and referred questions to his lawyer.
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The FTC ban stemmed from an incident in 2018, when a security researcher found an Amazon S3 bucket belonging to SpyFone that left extremely sensitive data — including selfies, text messages, chat app messages, audio recordings, contacts, location, hashed passwords and logins, and more — exposed online for anyone to see and access.
The exposed data included 44,109 unique email addresses and, according to the researcher who found the breach, “at least 2,208 current ‘customers’ and hundreds or thousands of photos and audio in each folder” from 3,666 phones that had the SpyFone stalkerware installed on them.
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Do you have more information about stalkerware makers? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email.
Less than a year after the 2021 FTC order, TechCrunch reported that Zuckerman appeared to be running another stalkerware company. In 2022, TechCrunch received a trove of breached data from stalkerware app SpyTrac. The data revealed that SpyTrac was run by freelance developers with direct ties to Support King, in what appeared to be an attempt to circumvent the FTC’s ban. Furthermore, the breached data included records from SpyFone, which Zuckerman was ordered to delete, and keys to access the cloud storage of OneClickMonitor, another one of his stalkerware apps.
Eva Galperin, a prominent expert on stalkerware, celebrated the news. “Mr. Zuckerman was clearly hoping that if he laid low for a few years, everyone would forget about the reasons why the FTC issued a ban not only against the company, but against him specifically,” Galperin told TechCrunch.
TechCrunch’s revelation in 2022 that Zuckerman apparently violated the FTC ban, “suggests that Zuckerman did not learn his lesson,” added Galperin, who is the director of cybersecurity at the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Stalkerware apps allow their customers to surreptitiously spy on the phones and devices of their loved ones. In addition to enabling potentially illegal activities, for the last eight years, there have been at least 26 stalkerware companies that have been hacked or left sensitive data exposed online, according to TechCrunch’s tally. These repeated incidents show these companies have repeatedly failed to protect the privacy of their customers, as well as the people they spy on.
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SoftBank and Nvidia reportedly in talks to fund Skild AI at $14B, nearly tripling its value
SoftBank Group and Nvidia are in talks to lead an investment of over $1 billion at a $14 billion valuation in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational robotics model, Reuters reported.
The nearly three-year-old startup was last valued at $4.7 billion in May when it raised $500 million in a round led by SoftBank along with the participation of LG Technology Ventures, Samsung, Nvidia, and others, according to PitchBook data. Skild didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. SoftBank and Nvidia declined to comment.
Unlike other heavily funded startups, Skild AI is not building proprietary hardware. Instead, it’s developing a robot-agnostic foundation model that can be customized for various types of robots and use cases.
The company unveiled its general-purpose robot model Skild Brain in July with videos showing robots picking up dishes and climbing up and down the stairs. The company has secured strategic partnerships with LG CNS and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to develop its ecosystem.
Investor interest in AI robotics has been steadily growing. Physical Intelligence, another company developing “brains” for a broad range of robots, has reportedly recently raised $600 million at a $5.6 billion valuation led by CapitalG. One investor who evaluated but declined to fund Physical Intelligence told TechCrunch that its model is still in the early stages of development.
In September, Figure, a company developing a humanoid robot, raised more than $1 billion at a massive $39 billion valuation. Meanwhile, 1X, another humanoid robot developer, was in talks to secure as much as $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation, The Information reported several months ago.
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Investor letter reveals skyrocketing growth of Waymo’s robotaxi rides
Six months ago, Waymo disclosed it was providing 250,000 robotaxi rides a week across its service areas, an ever-growing list that includes Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Alphabet-owned self-driving company has been coy ever since, simply stating it is providing many hundreds of thousands of weekly rides. Now, we have a firmer grasp on those weekly ride numbers, thanks to a leaked letter from Tiger Global Management to it investors that was first reported by CNBC.
The letter was an appeal for investment into Tiger Global’s next venture capital fund and called out the gains, so far, of its current fund. Those gains rested largely on its investments in hot companies like OpenAI, Databricks, and Waymo. In the letter, Tiger disclosed that Waymo is now providing 450,000 robotaxi rides per week — nearly double the amount it disclosed this spring.
That number will rise as the company continues its aggressive rollout strategy, too. Waymo, which provides commercial robotaxi service in five cities, has announced plans to launch in 12 additional cities in 2026, including Dallas, Denver, Houston, Nashville, and San Diego.
A Waymo spokesperson declined to comment.
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Department of Commerce approves Nvidia H200 chip exports to China
Advanced Nvidia AI chips can head back to China after all.
The Department of Commerce will allow Nvidia to ship H200 chips to China, as originally reported by Semafor, to approved customers in the country. The U.S. will take a 25% cut of these sales, CNBC reported.
H200 chips are much more advanced than the H20 chips Nvidia developed specifically for the Chinese market, but the company would only be able to send H200s that are roughly 18 months old, Semafor reported.
“We applaud President Trump’s decision to allow America’s chip industry to compete to support high paying jobs and manufacturing in America. Offering H200 to approved commercial customers, vetted by the Department of Commerce, strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America,” an Nvidia spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The news report comes a week after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the decision on exporting these H200 chips to China was in President Donald Trump’s hands.
The decision to send these chips to China conflicts with Congressional concerns about national security.
Pete Ricketts, a Republican senator from Nebraska, and Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware, introduced a bill on December 4 that would block the export of advanced AI chips to China for more than two years.
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The Secure and Feasible Exports Act (SAFE) Chips Act would require the Department of Commerce to deny any export license on advanced AI chips to China for 30 months. It’s unclear when legislators will vote on the proposed bill especially now that the Trump administration has given the green light to sell the H200 chips.
While Congress has long been clear about sending advanced AI chips to China — on both sides of the aisle — President Trump has waffled on whether or not to allow the exports.
The Trump administration hit chip companies like Nvidia with licensing requirements to send their chips to China in April before it formally rescinded a Biden administration diffusion rule that would have regulated AI chip exports in May. Over the summer, the U.S. government signaled that companies would be able to start sending chips to China as long as the government got a 15% cut of all revenue, as chips became a bargaining tool in trade talks with China.
However, by that point, the market for U.S.-developed chips in China was strained.
In September, China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, banned domestic companies from buying Nvidia’s chips, leaving companies in the country to rely on less advanced domestic chips from Alibaba and Huawei.
On Monday, Trump said that Chinese president Xi Jinping “responded positively” to the latest H200 news in a Truth Social post.
This story was updated on December 8 when the proposed decision was confirmed.
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Google’s AI try-on app Doppl adds a shoppable discovery feed
Google announced on Monday that it’s introducing a shoppable discovery feed in Doppl, its experimental app that uses AI to visualize how different outfits might look on you.
The tech giant says the idea behind the new feed is to display recommendations so users can discover and virtually try on new items. Nearly everything in the feed is shoppable, with direct links to merchants.
The discovery feed features AI-generated videos of real products and suggests outfits based on your personalized style. Google determines your style by analyzing the preferences you share with Doppl and the items you interact with.
The move comes as short-form video feeds, particularly on TikTok and Instagram, have conditioned users to scroll visual feeds and buy what they see. However, unlike on TikTok and Instagram, where real influencers showcase products, Google’s new feed only consists of AI-generated content.
While some may not be fond of an AI-generated feed, Google likely sees it as a way to surface products in a format that people are already used to. Plus, it makes sense for the company to try a new e-commerce strategy, especially as it continues to lose ground to companies like Amazon and social media platforms.
It’s worth noting that AI-generated videos aren’t new to Doppl. While the app creates images of a virtual version of yourself wearing different outfits, it can turn these static images and convert them into AI-generated videos. The purpose of this is to give you a better sense of how the outfit would look on you in real life.
The new discovery feed is rolling out to Doppl on iOS and Android in the U.S. for users 18 and above.
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Although a feed consisting solely of AI-generated content would have seemed strange a year ago, the idea is now gaining traction. For example, OpenAI in September launched Sora, a social media platform of just AI videos. Meta also has a short-form video feed of AI-generated videos called “Vibes” in the Meta AI app.
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Lucid Motors’ former chief engineer sues for wrongful termination and discrimination
The former chief engineer of Lucid Motors, Eric Bach, has sued the company for wrongful termination, discrimination, and retaliation, and claims one of the automaker’s top HR executives referred to him as a “German Nazi.”
The federal lawsuit, filed Monday in the Northern District of California, claims Bach was stripped of his responsibilities overseeing the powertrain division in early 2025 as a result of an HR investigation into the company’s workplace culture. Bach claims to have been targeted because of his German heritage.
Bach first learned about the disparaging comment in mid-2025 — months after the investigation into workplace culture was launched and after losing some responsibilities at the company, according to the complaint. He encouraged a co-worker to report the incident.
TechCrunch has reached out to Lucid and will update the article if the company comments on the lawsuit.
Bach claims Lucid Motors “confirmed” the HR executive made the remark. Bach logged an internal complaint against another Lucid vice president for similarly racist behavior.
He claims Lucid Motors retaliated by trying to force him to resign in October 2025. Lucid fired Bach on November 5, 2025, according to the lawsuit. Lucid Motors’ press release from that day only said he had “departed.”
The lawsuit comes during a tricky moment for Lucid Motors. The company is burning through cash as it works to ramp up production of its second vehicle, the Gravity SUV. It is developing more affordable mass-market vehicles on a midsized platform slated to debut sometime in late 2026.
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Lucid has also been churning through executives. The company’s VP of engineering left on the same day Bach claims to have been fired, as TechCrunch previously reported. Former CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson suddenly resigned in February, and the company has still not named a permanent replacement. Lucid’s head of investor relations, Senior Vice President of Operations, Managing Director for Europe, and the Vice Presidents of Software Quality and Marketing all left within the last year, too.
Bach, in the complaint, claims to have been ascendant before the internal investigation. An engineer who spent a decade with the company, Bach says he oversaw “all hardware engineering,” “product management and corporate planning.”
Bach states that Lucid’s chairman Turqi Alnowaiser “praised Bach’s loyalty and dedication to the Company and expressed a desire to continue working with Bach.” He also claims board member Andrew Liveris “signaled that Bach would become Chief Technology Officer (the position ‘is yours to lose’) and that Bach could one day become Chief Executive Officer,” according to the complaint.
The workplace culture investigation launched in late 2024, which Bach claims was “tainted by HR’s racist beliefs,” “initially resulted in Bach losing significant responsibilities.” The HR department told Bach at the time that he contributed to a poor culture at the company, according to the complaint. In addition to losing oversight of the powertrain team, Bach claims to have been excluded from board meetings.
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Tiger Global plans cautious venture future with a new $2.2B fund
Tiger Global, the investor that spurred the VC bull market of 2020-2021, is reportedly raising a fresh $2.2 billion fund.
The firm sent a letter to potential limited partners, according to a copy obtained by CNBC, seeking to raise the cash for a vehicle called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17). The letter also promises a more humble approach than during the 2021 bull-market madness.
During that time, Tiger Global was moving fast and investing abundantly, a method the venture industry calls “spray and pray.”
PIP 15, raised in 2021, was a whopping $12.7 billion fund that pumped cash into startups at a blinding pace largely at peak valuations, TechCrunch reported.
In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data, and spurred bidding wars among VCs to get stakes in even unproven startups that ratched up valuations.
When interest rates rose, the party was over, and startups spent years trying to live up to their 2021 valuations, many shuttering along the way.
After the venture market crash in 2022-23, prolific Tiger Global investor John Curtius left to start his own fund, and Scott Shleifer, the firm’s chief of private equity investments, transitioned to an advisory role, while Tiger’s famed founder, Chase Coleman, took on a more direct role.
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Tiger Global went on to raise a much smaller PIP 16 fund of $2.2 billion in 2024, Bloomberg reported at the time, which is, admittedly, still an enormous fund.
Now, on the strength of PIP 16’s blockbuster AI investments, Tiger Global is raising Fund 17. PIP 16 holds stakes in OpenAI, Waymo and Databricks, all of which have had skyrocketing valuations and driven this fund’s paper gains by 33% so far, the letter said as reported by CNBC.
Still, in a nod to the need for more caution than in previous years, the letter promised a more targeted approach. It acknowledged that leaning into AI investments could be risky and require “humility” because “valuations are elevated and, in our view, sometimes unsupported by company fundamentals,” according to CNBC. (Tiger Global could not be immediately reached for comment.)
In other words, even as Tiger Global raises a fresh fund to go after more big AI opportunities, it’s implying that the AI market is in a bubble, and it doesn’t want to drive valuations to even higher, perhaps unrealistic, heights.
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Environmental groups call for halt to new data center construction
As energy demand for data centers soars, environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on the approval and construction of new facilities.
More than 230 organizations, including Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace signed a public letter urging members of Congress to support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers, citing rising electricity and water consumption.
“The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security,” the letter reads.
Several studies have linked higher energy prices to the arrival of new data centers in a region. Consumers have been arriving at similar conclusions: A recent survey, commissioned by solar installer Sunrun, found that eight in 10 consumers were worried about data centers negatively affecting their utility bills.
Electricity prices have already shot up 13% this year, bigger than any annual increase in the past decade.
The effects are expected to be felt most in a handful of states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey, which are slated for the largest increase in data center capacity.
Energy demand for data centers is expected to nearly triple in the coming decade, up from 40 gigawatts today to 106 gigawatts in 2035. Much of that will take place in rural areas.
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“All this compounds the significant and concerning impacts AI is having on society, including lost jobs, social instability and economic concentration,” the environmental groups said.
Proposed data centers have become a flash point in recent days.
Last week, protestors marched outside the headquarters of utility DTE in Detroit. The company is requesting approval from the Michigan Public Service Commission to supply OpenAI and Oracle with electricity for a 1.4 gigawatt data center. Protestors said they were concerned about the data center driving up electricity bills, using too much fresh water, and snarling traffic.
Also last week, three people were arrested in Wisconsin during a common council meeting about a 902 megawatt data center that’s slated to be part of OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate project.
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Claude Code is coming to Slack, and that’s a bigger deal than it sounds
Anthropic is launching Claude Code in Slack, allowing developers to delegate coding tasks directly from chat threads. The beta feature, available Monday as a research preview, builds on Anthropic’s existing Slack integration by adding full workflow automation. The rollout signals that the next frontier in coding assistants isn’t the model; it’s the workflow.
Previously, developers could only get lightweight coding help via Claude in Slack — like writing snippets, debugging, and explanations. Now they can tag @Claude to spin up a complete coding session using Slack context like bug reports or feature requests. Claude analyzes recent messages to determine the right repository, posts progress updates in threads, and shares links to review work and open pull requests.
The move reflects a broader industry shift: AI coding assistants are migrating from IDEs (integrated development environment, where software development happens) into collaboration tools where teams already work.
Cursor offers Slack integration for drafting and debugging code in threads, while GitHub Copilot recently added features to generate pull requests from chat. OpenAI’s Codex is accessible via custom Slack bots.
For Slack, positioning itself as an “agentic hub” where AI meets workplace context creates a strategic advantage: Whichever AI tool dominates Slack — the center of engineering communication — could shape how software teams work.
By letting developers move seamlessly from conversation to code without switching apps, Claude Code and similar tools represent a shift toward AI-embedded collaboration that could fundamentally change developer workflows.
While Anthropic has not yet confirmed when it would make a broader rollout available, the timing is strategic. The AI coding market is getting more competitive, and differentiation is starting to depend more on integration depth and distribution than model capability alone.
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That said, the integration raises questions about code security and IP protection, as it adds another platform through which sensitive repository access must be managed and audited — while also introducing new dependencies where outages or rate limits in either Slack or Claude’s API could disrupt development workflows that teams previously controlled locally.
TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic and Slack for more information.
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