When the action film Top Gun hit the big screen in 1986, critical reviews were mixed, but audiences were thrilled. The film racked up $358 million globally, making it the highest-grossing film of that year. Its success spawned a few video games and a critically acclaimed blockbuster 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, and the eye-popping flight sequences definitely boosted enlistment numbers for the US Navy. Those scenes are still the best thing about Top Gun, forty years later.

(Spoilers below because it's been 40 years.)

The film was inspired by a 1983 article in California magazine detailing the lives of fighter pilots at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego (aka "Fightertown USA") and featuring plenty of aerial photography alongside the text. Producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson tapped Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. to write the screenplay, with Epps sitting in on declassified classes at the academy and even taking a flight aboard an F-14.

Tony Scott, then a relative newcomer with just one feature film (1983's The Hunger) to his name, was hired to direct. But he'd shot a commercial for Saab featuring one of the company's car's racing against a Saab 37 Viggen fighter jet, so the producers figured he had the chops for Top Gun.

The film wastes no time getting us in the air. Our hero, Maverick (Cruise) and his radar intercept officer, Goose (Anthony Andrews) are flying maneuvers in an F-14A Tomcat in the Indian Ocean, along with Maverick's wingman, Cougar (John Stockwell) and his RIO. They encounter two hostile MiG-28s (a fictitious craft represented in the film by the Northrup F-5). Maverick scares one away with a well-timed missile lock, but the other MiG locks onto Cougar before getting chased away by Maverick. Just to make sure we understand how Maverick got his nickname, the pilot inverts his plane and flies directly above the hostile MiG, giving his adversary the finger as Goose snaps a commemorative Polaroid.

Cougar, however, is badly shaken by the encounter—so much so that he freezes up and can't land his plane. So Maverick defies orders to land immediately (they are low on fuel) and flies back to Cougar to lead him safely back to the carrier. That earns Maverick a reprimand and establishes him as a cocky, arrogant rule-breaker with a fierce loyalty to his fellow pilots. Despite this, because Cougar has "lost the edge" and quits his commission, Maverick and Goose get to take his place at the titular Top Gun.

Highway to the danger zone

Maverick's got the flying chops, the abrasive confidence, and nerves of steel, but can he learn to set his ego aside and be a team player? His archrival, Iceman (Val Kilmer), doesn't think so, especially when Maverick abandons his wingman in a training run to make a showy, aggressive pass at an instructor's plane. Everyone ends up failing the exercise because of it. Iceman thinks Maverick is dangerous—which the latter naturally tries to turn into an asset: "I am dangerous."

Lt. Commander Rick "Jester" Heatherly (Michael Ironside) shares Iceman's concerns, admitting that while Maverick's flying is impressive, he might not trust him in actual combat. And training for combat is why they're all there.

This is an '80s blockbuster, so of course Maverick ultimately redeems himself and saves the day in an actual air skirmish—and also gets the girl, a civilian Top Gun instructor named Charlie (Kelly McGillis). But first, he suffers a major personal loss. Maverick and Goose accidentally fly through the jet wash of another plane, both engines flame out, and they go into a flat spin that not even Maverick can recover from.

The pair eject, but Goose hits the jettisoned canopy of the aircraft, and the impact kills him. Maverick isn't to blame but nonetheless feels responsible. The loss chastens him just enough to take the edge off his insubordinate recklessness.

We all know that the best thing about Top Gun continues to be those incredible, pulse-pounding in-flight sequences and gorgeous orange-hued shots of crew and grounded planes at the base and on aircraft carriers. Scott shot most of the air footage from a Learjet, augmented by mounted cameras inside the F-14 cockpits and exteriors. That's why he shot the whole thing in Super-8: The larger anamorphic lenses wouldn't fit in the cockpits. The US Navy supplied aircraft, carriers, and crews, and the flight deck footage captured normal operations, with nothing staged.

The stunt pilots included future NASA astronaut Scott Altman, who performed the aforementioned infamous "flipping the bird" maneuver and the tower-buzzing moments. There was one casualty: aerobatic pilot Art Scholl, who performed a lot of the in-flight camera work. Scholl fell afoul of the flat spin maneuver; he couldn't recover and crashed his biplane into the Pacific Ocean near Carlsbad, California. Neither his body nor the plane was ever recovered, but Scott dedicated the film to Scholl.

From rebel to hero

The film's weaknesses are... well, almost everything else.

Confession: I've never been a huge Cruise fan, particularly in his early career. He didn't really come into his own until much later; Tropic Thunder, Minority Report, Edge of Tomorrow, and Magnolia are my favorite of his roles, and he acquitted himself admirably in the excellent Top Gun: Maverick.

I still find his performance in the original abrasive and insincere. It takes skill as an actor to make a character like Maverick genuinely likable, and Cruise was not at that level yet in the mid-'80s, coasting on his boyish good looks instead. The film tries to include some vulnerable moments to show the sensitive soul lurking behind the swagger, mostly in scenes with Charlie, but it's a shallow sentimentality and not very effective. The uninspired dialogue doesn't help.

As for Charlie, the character started out as an aerobics instructor in the earliest script drafts and was then changed from a fellow officer to a civilian contractor/astrophysicist at the Navy's request—otherwise, her romance with Maverick would count as fraternization. (The character was inspired by mathematician Christine "Legs" Fox, a civilian specialist in tactical development for aircraft carrier defense at Miramar.)

But while it might not be fraternization—and the film takes pains to show Charlie giving a brutally objective assessment of Maverick's piloting despite their involvement—sleeping with a student is certainly unprofessional and would probably have gotten her fired in real life. So this is a very dated Hollywood depiction of a female career scientist.

Equally dated is the famous bar scene where Maverick, Goose, and several other drunken officers serenade Charlie—not yet introduced as their instructor—with "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" because they've made a bet that Maverick can seduce her. It's supposed to be charming, but the scene plays more aggressively in 2026, particularly when Maverick literally follows Charlie to the ladies' room, leers at her, and suggests that they could do it right there on the sink.

She shoots him down, and he deserves it. The scene was even problematic 35 years ago—the US Department of Defense Office of Inspector General cited Top Gun's influence as a contributing factor in the 1991 Tailhook scandal.

Top Gun also has its fair share of technical errors and Navy protocol violations, despite the best efforts of technical advisor Rear Admiral Pete "Viper" Pettigrew—depicted by Tom Skerritt in the film as CDR Mike "Viper" Metcalf. But one expects that in a Hollywood blockbuster. If you want verisimilitude, I highly recommend the National Geographic documentary series, Top Guns: The Next Generation.

Much like C.S.I. did for forensics and The X-Files' Dana Scully did for the FBI, Top Gun (and Top Gun: Maverick) are still the best recruitment tools the US Navy could hope for, on the strength of that glorious aerial footage alone. Just be prepared to do the actual hard work if the films inspire you to become a fighter pilot.

Read full article

Comments

On Wednesday, Zillow abruptly lost access to thousands of property listings in the Chicago area after filing a lawsuit accusing a private listing network owner of colluding with the nation's largest brokerage to harm consumers by hiding homes.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, hopeful Chicagoland home buyers browsing Zillow and Trulia suddenly saw significantly fewer listings. On Zillow, a nearly 5,000-home market dropped to about 1,700.

Thorough home buyers diligently checking every possible resource can still turn to other platforms, like Redfin and Realtor.com, which currently host between 5,000 and 8,000 listings, the Sun-Times noted.

But in an antitrust lawsuit filed last week, Zillow claimed that everybody buying or selling a home will be harmed if the alleged collusion goes unchecked.

Specifically, Zillow alleged that Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) and Compass, two "powerful players in the real estate industry," have conspired to create "barriers to information that harm or threaten harm to sellers, buyers, and competitors by hiding real estate listings behind a velvet rope in a Private Listing Network (PLNs)."

As Zillow has alleged, MRED—Chicago's multiple listing service (MLS) provider—"entered into a conspiracy" with Compass—Chicago's dominant brokerage—to block platforms like Zillow from taking steps to increase transparency of available listings in the area.

"Rather than share all of its listings transparently—as its competitors do—Compass has sought to anticompetitively benefit from its dominance by hiding listings from anyone who is not working with a Compass agent in a PLN," Zillow's complaint alleged.

This allegedly "allows Compass to lure prospective home buyers to its brokerage with the promise of access to listings hidden behind a registration wall" and then maximize opportunity for profit by engineering "deals where its agents represent both sides of the transaction."

In a statement to Ars, Zillow said that "Chicagoland home buyers and sellers today have far worse access to the housing market than they had yesterday, because their local MLS decided one mega-brokerage's profits mattered more than their ability to achieve the American Dream."

Zillow has requested a preliminary injunction to end the suppression of listings and other unlawful attempts to allegedly manipulate the home buying market to disadvantage platforms that are pushing for more transparency.

Firms defend private listings

Challenging that, MRED has recently moved to force the legal fight into arbitration, alleging that Zillow's antitrust claims are "meritless" and amount to little more than a contract dispute. The company also claimed that Zillow's alleged harms are "self-inflicted," since the platform knew that choosing to block nine listings of previously hidden homes would trigger a violation cutting off access to 43,000 listings.

In a press release, MRED said that Zillow lost access to its listings due to breaching its contract. The company also criticized Zillow, writing that "in a striking lesson in irony, Zillow has chosen not to display 43,000 MRED listings because it demands the right, and has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to secure that right—to exclude nine listings it disfavors."

Asked for comment, Compass told Ars that the legal fight "is about whether homeowners have a choice in how they market their homes, or whether Zillow can set a one-size-fits-all policy for the industry."

"Restricting listing visibility and penalizing agents for exercising lawful and strategic marketing options undermines consumer choice," Compass said.

Defending sellers' choice in how they market their homes, Compass said that it commends MRED for "enforcing policies that protect both consumer choice and the fiduciary obligations agents owe their clients. Buyers in Chicago should not be deprived of access to listings because a platform disagrees with how a homeowner chooses to market their property."

Zillow Preview launch complicates fight

The real estate industry fight escalated in April 2025, when Zillow claims that it "took a competitive stand" to protect consumers by adopting new Listing Access Standards designed to throw a wrench in schemes like the alleged MRED/Compass conspiracy.

Zillow hoped that by threatening to block "listings that had been previously marketed privately to only a select group of buyers and were withheld from all market participants" from appearing on its websites, the market might shift to hide fewer listings.

But after Compass failed to secure an injunction blocking Zillow's new policy, Compass and MRED allegedly teamed up "to threaten loss of access to all of MRED’s listings if a competitor did not display one of MRED’s or Compass’s competing PLN listings," Zillow claimed. They did this, Zillow alleged, understanding that Zillow cannot afford to lose access to all Chicago-area listings and would have to revert to its prior standards.

And they soon followed through on that threat. In early May, after Zillow suppressed nine listings for failing to adhere to its Listing Access Standards, Zillow got a warning threatening to terminate its access to MRED’s listing feed "if Zillow did not display" some of the Compass listings that violated Zillow's policies.

In its motion to compel arbitration, MRED accused Zillow of filing the lawsuit out of its "dissatisfaction" with its contract terms and "insecurity about continuing to generate revenue." The company claimed that any harm that Zillow experienced is "completely self-inflicted, readily avoidable, and can be remedied at any time by simply complying with the same clear and longstanding license agreements under which it has operated for years."

Reached for comment, MRED's spokesperson also pointed to an article calling out Zillow's seeming hypocrisy for challenging MRED's private listing network while launching Zillow Preview, a pre-market listing network.

But Zillow insists that Zillow Preview is "not at all the same" as MRED's alleged scheme. In a statement to Ars, Zillow defended its pre-market listing product as "available for any buyer to see and aligned with our transparency standards."

"Private listings networks are just that—private, and only available to buyers working with a specific brokerage or agent," Zillow said. "The goal of Preview is to help sell the house. The goal of PLNs is to hide the house to force more buyers into working with your brokerage."

Home buyers in the US have in the past few years faced hardships, including "persistently high mortgage rates and home prices," since the housing inventory has never returned to pre-pandemic levels, a 2026 Experian forecast said. While inventory is expected to modestly increase this year, Zillow's legal fight suggests some brokerages may be motivated to increasingly hide new listings to increase profits.

Zillow worries that the MRED/Compass plan will inevitably block platforms that are promoting more transparency from competing with powerful private listings network providers. That will disadvantage both buyers and sellers in major markets like Chicago, Zillow alleged.

"Defendants’ conspiracy harms home buyers and sellers by incentivizing brokerages to withhold listings from the market only until the listing fails to sell privately, thus erecting barriers to information, exacerbating the accessibility and affordability crisis, and reducing the pool of buyers and listings that makes the real estate market efficient and competitive," Zillow alleged.

In its complaint, Zillow said that MRED and Compass "control over 99 percent of the market for Chicagoland real estate listing platforms." Allegedly, they've worked "in lockstep" and "in secret" to "leverage MRED’s monopoly power and control over Chicagoland listing feeds to force competitors like Zillow to display unwanted private listings, abandon pro-consumer listings policies, and block nascent competing offerings that preference access over exclusivity.

"MRED and Compass have colluded to turn back the clock on consumer transparency at the exact moment American families can least afford it, cutting off competition, hiding homes and engineering a market that extracts more from buyers and sellers so Compass can pocket more on every deal," Zillow told Ars.

Read full article

Comments

Last year marked the beginning of Google's explicit focus on AI search, and this year's I/O solidified that shift. As Google's search VP Liz Reid said during the keynote, "Google search is AI search." This change is well underway, and the very reasonable objections to this path will not dissuade the company. All the metrics that matter to Google say this is the right move. But at the end of the day, Google can get whatever outcome it wants because it's just that big and influential.

Google started testing AI Mode for search just over a year ago, making the shift official at I/O 2025. You hear a lot of complaints around the Internet about how AI is changing Google's search products, but Google is getting what it wants: more searches. Reid revealed at I/O 2026 that AI Mode usage has been doubling every quarter. There are now more than 1 billion people using AI Mode every month.

It's not hard to see how that could be true. AI Mode invites a conversational experience—it asks you questions—and each of those follow-up queries counts as searches. Google has also pushed AI Mode very hard, including prominent links and nudges to get people to use its search chatbot instead of the traditional product. And unlike many of Google's other AI experiences, you don't have to pay anything to AI search. Everyone who uses Google search gets the full AI experience.

You can hardly escape AI Mode as it is, and Google is announcing even more AI Mode integrations at I/O this year. AI Overviews may be the most prominent element of Google's AI search shift, but that's increasingly looking like a stopgap as AI Mode spins up. Google has a new "seamless" search experience that ties AI Mode into AI Overviews. Most Google searches now produce an AI Overview. Google is expanding a mobile feature that lets you move from an Overview into AI Mode. This feature is now available across desktop, too.

Google is getting what it wants from AI search. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The AI Mode nudge hovers at the bottom of the Overview, actually hiding the top of the organic search results. This will, no doubt, inflate the number of AI Mode searches even more. It may also disincentivise users from scrolling down to see the 10 blue links. It makes organic results feel more like footnotes than the core of the search experience.

Reid also says Google's new search box is the biggest change in its entire 25-year history. A search box isn't very complicated (or didn't used to be), but the new version again guides users toward AI Mode. It expands dynamically as you type more, and it will attempt to autocomplete your searches. Google definitely doesn't want you to call it autocomplete, though! It uses generative AI technology to guess at your intent, guided by what Gemini knows about you. This change is rolling out today globally.

Search vibes

Google's more-AI-than-ever search experience is also veering into experiences that don't really feel like a search engine. Search will employ agents to answer your questions in new ways, powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash. Google says it has integrated Antigravity as a harness for the new model's AI agents in search. This powers two different ways of finding information with vibe coding that are similar but technically distinct.

When you ask questions in regular search (AI Overviews) or AI Mode later this summer, Google's AI may choose to create generative UI. These are single-shot simulations that help you understand concepts like, for example, the golden ratio or the behavior of black holes. These interfaces will have sliders, buttons, and other elements conjured from the AI ether.

AI Mode builds custom mini-apps from a single prompt, but it might not show you the code at launch. Credit: Ryan Whitwam

The other experience is currently limited to AI Mode, and it goes a step further. If your query calls for it, Search will create a custom app to help you with the problem. Currently you have to ask for an app (e.g. make or build 'x' for me), but the line between generative UI and apps may blur over time.

What is that supposed to do for you? Maybe you want to plan a family outing for the weekend, so you ask search to build an itinerary. In that case, Search can create a UI with event suggestions, reviews, map embeds, and calendar integration. It pulls this data from Google's platform as well as from around the web. The early demos of search agent dashboards actually show you the code as it's generated, but Google is most likely going to hide this for the full rollout later this summer. Showing a simplified workflow of chain of thought would avoid confusing the average user who just wants a pretty UI and doesn't care that it was generated on the spot.

You can revisit and change the dashboard by accessing your AI Mode history in the sidebar. These generated apps can be customized with follow-up prompts, and you can share them with others via a link. The other party can even customize the app to their liking. Currently, there is no way to share those modifications, but that's something Google is exploring. It may also be possible in the future to manually modify the code of these mini-apps line by line.

Swallowing the Internet whole

The overarching trend here is fewer blue links and more AI-generated everything. Google says the greater efficiency of Gemini 3.5 Flash enables all these new AI experiences, and we can expect more of them in the future. The agentic app generation in particular may benefit from the pending improvements in Gemini 3.5 Pro, which might even be available before everyone gets search agents.

Googlers talk about these moves as a way to more efficiently extract the information people want from webpages that have become weighed down with extraneous text that forces you to scroll past more and more ads. That is a genuine problem with the current state of web content, but Google's hands aren't clean. Many websites have ended up in this state only after years of chasing search rank and compensating for low ad rates.

Despite what many see as a decline in Google search quality, the company's search products remain far and away the primary way people find things online. Even after a year of Google's AI search overhaul, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Brave, and the rest of the competition continue to be little more than a rounding error. Google appears to take its continued dominance and growth as proof that it's on the right track with AI.

Google has decided this is how search works, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Read full article

Comments

After nearly a quarter of a century operating as a private company, with its financial accounts a closely guarded secret, SpaceX on Wednesday afternoon released a detailed accounting of its business in a nearly 400-page S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

SpaceX, founded in 2002 and still led by Elon Musk, submitted the filing in anticipation of an initial public offering of its stock as soon as June 12.

The document revealed no major surprises about the company's space operations, but there was a trove of details about its sprawling operations, which now encompass launch, spaceflight, space-based Internet, and, thanks to its recent acquisition of Musk's xAI, social media and AI.

The company reported revenues of $18.67 billion in 2025, up significantly from $14.02 billion the year before. However, after turning a small profit in 2024, the company lost $4.94 billion in 2025 largely due to spending on artificial intelligence development.

That's a big market you've got there

SpaceX projects a "total addressable market," or TAM, of $28.5 trillion across its present and future offerings in space, data, and AI services. However, of this amount, only about $2 trillion is directly related to space or the company's Starlink network. The remaining $26.5 billion is believed to come from AI, largely from enterprise applications.

SpaceX estimate of total addressable market. Credit: SpaceX S-1 filing

"We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history," the company states on page 171 of the filing. "We believe our next trillion-dollar market is AI compute, which we contemplate will leverage our rockets and satellites for massive orbital deployment."

The company said its estimates for this large market were based on a number of sources.

"Our AI market estimates are based in part on projections of global data center compute demand from third-party sources, including estimates published by RAND Corporation, together with internal assumptions regarding the portion of global compute capacity that may be utilized for AI workloads and other operational assumptions such as power usage, utilization rates and pricing," the filing states.

Compensation details

The document includes some interesting details about the company's leadership. After the IPO concludes and SpaceX becomes a public company, Musk will retain 85.1 percent of the "combined voting power" in leading SpaceX. He will serve as the company's chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors. It will be very difficult to remove him from this position.

Musk's salary in 2025 was $54,080, a value tied to California’s minimum salary for exempt employees. Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of the company, received a salary of $1.08 million in 2025, but including stock awards, her total compensation was valued at $85.8 million.

The S-1 filing notes that Musk has served as an advisor to President Trump and alludes to the possibility that changes in politics might materially affect the company's future.

"The current political environment in the United States is highly polarized, and shifts in the composition of the US Congress or changes in the presidential administration can result in significant changes in government spending priorities, regulatory posture, and the allocation of contracts and resources across industries and programs," the filing states. "Our relationships with US government agencies and the favorability of the regulatory and procurement environment in which we operate may be affected by which political party controls the presidency or one or both chambers of the US Congress."

The space business

There is relatively little new information in this document about the company's launch business. For example, there is no breakdown of the Falcon 9's internal launch cost (believed to be about $15 million per launch) relative to the base public price of $74 million.

As for the larger Starship vehicle, the filing states that SpaceX aims to reduce the price per kilogram to orbit to at least $185. SpaceX intends to begin launching V3 Starlink satellites during the second half of this year on the super-heavy rocket, but this is predicated on a series of test flights that will resume as early as Thursday from Starbase in South Texas.

The filing also acknowledges the significant work that SpaceX has yet to complete with Starship to make it a fully reusable rocket capable of delivering large payloads to the Moon and Mars.

"These systems involve significant technological, engineering, and operational challenges, including the need to develop habitable transportation and surface environments, and perform complex in-orbit operations," the document states. "Solving these challenges will require developing solutions that are novel or untested and will require substantial capital investment."

The AI business

By staking its future on AI, SpaceX makes the case that it is the best-placed company to build a massive constellation of orbital data centers.

"We believe we are the only company with a commercially viable path to building orbital AI compute at scale," the filing states. "This is underpinned by our unique ability to launch substantial mass into orbit cost efficiently through reusable rockets and manufacture secure, reliable, and high performance satellites at low cost and high volume. Our goal over time is to launch 100 gigawatts of compute to space each year."

SpaceX said it expects to begin deploying its orbital AI compute satellites as early as 2028.

This company, founded with an initial goal of launching a small rocket known as the Falcon 1, has come a long way since its humble beginnings. It has become the world's most accomplished launch company and annually puts about 80 percent of all mass into orbit. It operates more satellites than the rest of the world combined.

And yet, to reach its stratospheric valuation and addressable market, SpaceX must evolve from a space company into an AI company and continue growing rapidly. These are huge bets. It will be up to investors to decide in the coming months and years whether these are also good bets.

Read full article

Comments

Larry Bushart, a retired Tennessee cop who was jailed for 37 days for posting a Trump meme on Facebook, won an $835,000 settlement Wednesday after suing the county and sheriff that he said jailed him in order to censor him.

In a press release, Bushart's legal team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) confirmed that Bushart agreed to dismiss his lawsuit in exchange for the "substantial settlement."

"I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated," Bushart said. "The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family."

The settlement will help assure that Bushart and his wife have a comfortable retirement. That was threatened when Bushart was jailed, as he lost his post-retirement job. But the settlement doesn't make up for other losses. The grandfather missed the birth of his grandchild while he was stuck behind bars for more than a month, as he couldn't afford to pay his eye-popping $2 million bond.

"No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a harmless meme just because the authorities disagree with its message," Adam Steinbaugh, FIRE senior attorney, said. "We’re pleased that Larry has been compensated for this injustice, but local law enforcement never should have forced him to endure this ordeal in the first place."

Cops came for Bushart after he posted a meme that he neither created nor altered on Facebook. The meme accurately quoted Donald Trump as saying, "we have to get over it," following a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.

Bushart posted the meme on a Facebook thread promoting a vigil for Charlie Kirk in Perry County in Tennessee after the right-wing influencer was assassinated.

A county sheriff, Nick Weems, saw the meme and was seemingly offended. He took advantage of the fact that the school referenced in the meme, Perry High School in Iowa, could possibly be confused with his area high school, Perry County High School. And he issued a warrant for Bushart's arrest "based on the absurd notion that the meme could be interpreted as a threat" of a shooting at a high school in his county, FIRE said.

Seemingly, Weems hoped the threat of arrest would pressure Bushart into removing the post, but Bushart refused to be censored.

Video from the arrest shows that Bushart told the arresting officer he never made such a threat, and some cops at the jail seemed similarly confused about the basis of his arrest. In one exchange caught on footage reviewed by The Intercept, Bushart even shared a laugh with an officer over how silly his arrest seemed to be:

"Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with—Threatening Mass Violence at a School," a Perry County jail officer told Bushart.

"At a school?" Bushart asked.

"I ain’t got a clue," the officer responded, laughing. "I just gotta do what I have to do."

"I’ve been in Facebook jail, but now I’m really in it," Bushart said, joining him in laughing.

Weems later admitted that "he knew at the time of the arrest that Larry’s Facebook post was a pre-existing meme that referred to an actual shooting that took place in a different state, over 500 miles away," FIRE said. But he arrested Bushart anyway, violating Bushart's "constitutional rights in retaliation for his protected speech," FIRE said.

FIRE noted that Bushart is one of 600 people that Reuters found were punished for making controversial online statements about Kirk's death, following a government-backed campaign targeting political speech. Bushart's win shows that the First Amendment can stand up to censorship attempts, FIRE staff attorney Cary Davis suggested.

"It’s in times of turmoil and heightened tensions that our national commitment to free speech is tested the most," Davis said. "When government officials fail that test, the Constitution exists to hold them accountable. Our hope is that Larry’s settlement sends a message to law enforcement across the country: Respect the First Amendment today, or be prepared to pay the price tomorrow."

Read full article

Comments

As of July 1, at 12:01 am UTC—or June 30 at 8:01 pm ET—people seeking access to Plex's media server features through a one-time purchase will have to pay $750. That’s three times the current price of $250.

The new price will not affect current Lifetime Plex Pass holders.

A Lifetime Plex Pass allows you to stream from your own Plex Media Server to a device connected to your own network, to stream from the server remotely, and to allow others to stream remotely from your server.

When first launched in 2012, a Lifetime Plex Pass was $75. In 2014, Plex increased the price to $150 because “at 2.5x the price of a yearly, it was priced in an unsustainable way for us,” Plex said in a blog post at the time. Eventually, lifetime passes were available for $120 for years until March 2025, when the price skyrocketed to $250. That brings us to today’s announcement.

In an email and blog post to customers today, Plex said that it sold lifetime passes early in its existence “because we knew many of our customers would rather pay a higher, one-time fee for software that they can depend on every day.” However, as evidenced by several price hikes, Plex has struggled to reconcile lifetime passes with its own financial goals. The company’s message says:

We’ve considered eliminating the Lifetime Plex Pass in the past, given that recurring subscriptions help us sustain long-term development, but we know it’s still a valuable option for many in our community. So instead of retiring it, we’re keeping it available at a price that reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we’re committed to building and maintaining for years to come.

The 200 percent price hike and Plex’s admission that it has mulled killing Lifetime Passes illustrate Plex’s shifting priorities as it seeks profitability. Notably, Plex didn’t announce any pricing hikes for its monthly or annual subscription tiers.

In its blog, Plex offered further reasoning for the upcoming price hike:

Over the years, as our software and product has evolved, the breadth of features and benefits included with your Plex Pass has expanded. This increase ensures we can continue to invest resources into building and maintaining the Plex personal media software, while continuing to offer a Lifetime option.

As noted in the announcement, Plex would rather people pay monthly or annually for its media server features than a one-time fee. With annual subscriptions currently $70, it would take 11 years for a $750 lifetime subscription to be a better value.

Plex's price hike is an extreme example of streaming service providers continuously increasing prices amid struggles to reach and maintain profitability while keeping prices stable and dealing with ongoing costs, like licensing fees for rental movies and app updates.

Plex claims to be working on numerous new features for its platform, including: adding all server and library management features currently available on app.plex.tv to Plex's mobile and, where applicable, TV apps; “boosting dialogue and normalizing loudness,” per today's announcement; transcoding improvements; IPv6 support; and the abilities to group downloads by show, automatically download new episodes, and make and edit playlists in mobile apps. New features that Plex has added recently include the ability to create custom metadata agents and an open API for server integrations.

Beyond new features, Plex has previously cited rising costs for the hike, including supporting various types of devices and codecs.

Plex moving beyond media serving

Plex’s various forays into areas outside of its original media server business also contribute to its rising costs. In recent years, Plex has expanded from a media server company to a streaming service provider that has hundreds of free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, rents out movies, and dabbles in social features. It also made a failed venture into gaming.

Legacy customers, however, have grown wary of Plex’s expanding interests and their potential impact on Plex's media server users. While adding streaming and social features, Plex killed free remote streaming access and its Watch Together feature and issued a controversial app redesign. Plex also has reason to put more focus on its streaming business since more people have been using Plex’s online streaming service than its media server capabilities since 2022, Scott Hancock, Plex’s then-VP of marketing, said in 2023.

The good news is that Plex has given months of warning before jacking up Lifetime Plex Pass prices. But as Plex seeks profitability, it will continue evolving from the pure-play, affordable media server company that it originally was and, in turn, drum up interest for rival platforms, like Jellyfin, Emby, and Kodi.

Read full article

Comments