In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen King published several novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman before being outed in 1984. One of those was The Running Man, later adapted into a star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's a new adaptation on the horizon courtesy of director Edgar Wright (Sean of the Dead, Ant-Man, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho), and Paramount just dropped the trailer for The Running Man (2025).

(Spoilers for the 1982 book and 1987 movie below.)

King wrote the original novel in just one week. It's set in a dystopian 2025 hellscape (making Wright's film particularly timely), with the global economy in a state of collapse and a totalitarian government ruling the US. The protagonist, Ben Richards, lives in "Co-Op City" with his wife and seriously ill daughter, unable to work because he was blacklisted. So he decides to compete on a deadly game show called The Running Man. He is declared an enemy of the state and given a 12-hour head start before an elite team of Hunters (i.e., assassins) chase after him. He's also required to post videotaped messages every day.

The goal: survive a full 30 days in order to win the grand prize of $1 billion. Of course, no contestant has ever survived that long; the record is 197 hours. But Ben gets a certain amount of money each day he survives, and for each Hunter he manages to kill, so there's still a financial incentive to help his suffering family. Ben ends up doing better than anyone ever expected, but the deck is stacked against him. And King isn't exactly known for indulging in many happy endings.

The 1987 action film starring Schwarzenegger was only loosely based on King's novel, preserving the basic concept and very little else in favor of more sci-fi gadgetry and high-octane action. (For one thing, King conceived of Ben as initially being "scrawny" and "pre-tubercular," not a well-muscled action hero.) It was a noisy, entertaining romp and very late '80s, but it lacked King's subtler satirical tone.

Wright expressed interest in adapting his own version of The Running Man in 2017, and Paramount greenlit the project four years later. Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall envisioned their film as less of a remake and more of a faithful adaptation of King's original novel. This new trailer bears that out, while still including plenty of high-octane action and humor. (We'll see if that faithfulness extends to the novel's bleak ending.) Per the official premise:

In a near-future society, The Running Man is the top-rated show on television—a deadly competition where contestants, known as Runners, must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins, with every move broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and each day bringing a greater cash reward. Desperate to save his sick daughter, working-class Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is convinced by the show’s charming but ruthless producer, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), to enter the game as a last resort. But Ben’s defiance, instincts, and grit turn him into an unexpected fan favorite—and a threat to the entire system. As ratings skyrocket, so does the danger, and Ben must outwit not just the Hunters, but a nation addicted to watching him fall.

In addition to Powell and Brolin, the cast includes Lee Pace as lead Hunter, Evan McCone; Jayme Lawson as Ben's wife Sheila; Colman Domingo as Bobby Thompson, game show host; Michael Cera as the rebel Bradley Throckmorton; William H. Macy as a man who aids Ben; David Zayas as Richard Manuel; Emilia Jones as Amelia, a hostage civilian; Karl Glusman as a Hunter; and Katy O'Brian and Daniel Ezra as two other contestants on the show.

The Running Man hits theaters on November 7, 2025. Incidentally, King's 1979 Bachman book, The Long Walk—concerning yet another dystopian competition to the death—has a film adaptation coming out on September 12, 2025.

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it's the largest freshwater lake on the planet by surface area, you could lose a couple of smaller countries in there and not even notice. (vs Europe)

on top of that, it's a Northern lake, so the water never really gets warmer than 50 F (10 C) even in the heat of summer, and it's famous for sudden violent storms that destroy ships and buildings alike. this thing has a MASSIVE body count because it's also a major shipping thoroughfare.

tldr it wants to eat you so so bad

kedreeva:

She is also over 1,300ft/400m deep at her deepest. Once she has eaten you, she will not give you back. Lake Superior doesn't give up her dead.

And when Bunjy says "the largest by surface are" what that means is: Lake Superior is a whopping 31,700 square miles (82,103 square km) of water. The only reason she is not an inland sea is because she is freshwater.

She has tides. She has rip currents, like an ocean does. You don't even have to go out on a boat to get got by her, all you have to do is step into her icy waters in the wrong spot. She has ice formations that aren't "icebergs" on the technicality that they didn't calve from glaciers, even though they look and act the same.

(photo by Paul Berger)

She LOOKS like an ocean when you are at her shores. This is from a location on the Minnesota side shore.

(photo by George Ilstrup)

She is huge, icy, and hungry. This makes her very dangerous. Not to be fucked around with, because you WILL find out.

Keep your ass in the shade.

With Comcast trying to figure out how to stop losing broadband customers, the cable firm yesterday announced new plans that are available nationwide and do not have data caps.

Comcast said it is offering "four simple national Internet tiers that include unlimited data and the advanced Xfinity WiFi Gateway for one low monthly price." Customers whose current plans have data caps won't automatically get unlimited data and would have to switch to a new plan to remove that annoying limit from their accounts.

"Customers can repackage into one of our new plans that include unlimited data if they don't have it already with their existing plan," a Comcast spokesperson told Ars today.

Comcast's press release said there is a five-year price guarantee in which the plan costs range from $55 to $115 a month, before taxes and fees, for download speeds ranging from 300Mbps to 2Gbps. There's also a one-year guarantee in which the prices for the same plans range from $40 to $100.

The Comcast Xfinity website today indicated that the one- and five-year price guarantees are only available to new customers. However, the Comcast spokesperson indicated to us that existing customers can get the price guarantee when switching to an unlimited data plan. Getting promised deals can often be difficult, particularly while a cable company is changing its offerings, so we wouldn't be surprised if customers have difficulty obtaining the unlimited plan at the lowest advertised prices.

The five-year guarantee would be a better deal than the one-year guarantee in the long run because of the rise in price once the deal wears off. Comcast's "everyday prices" for these plans range from $70 to $130 a month. Comcast said the one- and five-year guarantees are "available with no contracts" and that "all plans include a line of Xfinity Mobile at no additional cost for a year."

Comcast exec: “We are not winning”

The Comcast data caps and their associated overage fees for exceeding the monthly limit have long been a major frustration for customers. Comcast has enforced the cap (currently 1.2TB a month) in most of its territory, but not in its Northeast markets where it faces competition from Verizon FiOS.

Comcast recently started offering five-year price guarantees and said it would continue adding more customer-friendly plans because of its recent struggles. After reporting a net loss of 183,000 residential broadband customers in Q1 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said during an April earnings call that "in this intensely competitive environment, we are not winning in the marketplace in a way that is commensurate with the strength of [our] network and connectivity products."

Cavanagh said Comcast executives "identified two primary causes. One is price transparency and predictability and the other is the level of ease of doing business with us." He said Comcast planned to simplify "our pricing construct to make our price-to-value proposition clearer to consumers across all broadband segments" and to make these changes "with the highest urgency."

Even after the recent customer loss, Comcast had 29.19 million residential Internet customers.

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Smartphones contain a treasure trove of personal data, which makes them a worthwhile target for hackers. However, law enforcement is not above snooping on cell phones, and their tactics are usually much harder to detect. Cell site simulators, often called Stingrays, can trick your phone into revealing private communications, but a change in Android 16 could allow phones to detect this spying.

Law enforcement organizations have massively expanded the use of Stingray devices because almost every person of interest today uses a cell phone at some point. These devices essentially trick phones into connecting to them like a normal cell tower, allowing the operator to track that device's location. The fake towers can also shift a phone to less secure wireless technology to intercept calls and messages. There's no indication this is happening on the suspect's end, which is another reason these machines have become so popular with police.

However, while surveilling a target, Stingrays can collect data from other nearby phones. It's not unreasonable to expect a modicum of privacy if you happen to be in the same general area, but sometimes police use Stingrays simply because they can. There's also evidence that cell simulators have been deployed by mysterious groups outside law enforcement. In short, it's a problem. Google has had plans to address this security issue for more than a year, but a lack of hardware support has slowed progress. Finally, in the coming months, we will see the first phones capable of detecting this malicious activity, and Android 16 is ready for it.

An example of the network notifications that could appear on future Android phones. Credit: Android Authority

As part of Google's mobile network security features, Android phones will be able to detect when a network requests a unique identifier or attempts to force an unencrypted connection. This produces a "network notification" to warn of the potential attack. This settings page will also include a toggle to disable insecure 2G networks, which is already supported in Android.

The problem, however, is that no current phones can do this. To unmask fake cell towers, Android phones need to have version 3.0 of Google's IRadio hardware abstraction layer, which has to be supported at the modem level. Even Google's latest Pixel phones lack support, so the network security settings page is hidden in current builds of Android 16.

The Stingray, made by Harris Corp., is now so ubiquitous in law enforcement that it has become a generic term for cell site simulators. Credit: US Patent and Trademark Office

According to Android Authority, Google allows OEMs to lock in certain hardware features at the time of a phone's release. So it's unlikely any current phone will be updated with modem drivers that are capable of Stingray detection. Phones that launch on Android 16 later this year, like the Pixel 10, will be the first to call out fake cell towers. In the meantime, you can still disable 2G connections to limit the impact of cell site simulators.

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