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In late October, Samsung announced that it was preparing to take its long-anticipated solid-state batteries to market with a trilateral agreement between itself, BMW, and American battery expert Solid Power. It was January of last year that industry outlets began to get some of the promises that all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) developed by Samsung SDI would […] The post Samsung’s 600-Mile-Range Batteries That Charge in 9 Minutes Ready for Production/Sale Next Year appeared first on Good News Network.

News The Odyssey The Odyssey Trailer Is Visually Dull but Full of Promise Odysseus’ journey will see him battle the elements, monsters, and bad YouTube uploads By Matthew Byrd | Published on December 22, 2025 Photo: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Universal Pictures We’ve all been wondering what Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey will look like. One of our great epic film directors is adapting one of the great literary epics with help from a massive budget, IMAX cameras, and a stacked cast? They’ll have to kick us out of the theater, because we are already seated. Well, we finally got a proper trailer for The Odyssey and, to tell you the truth, it’s still hard to tell what Christopher Nolan’s movie looks like. To be very fair, it seems like something may have gone wrong when uploading this trailer to YouTube. It is incredibly blurry and dark even when viewed on the highest allowed YouTube resolution (which, for some reason, is limited to 1080p, at least for free users). This is seemingly not the ideal way to view this preview, so all comments about its looks have to be taken with that grain of salt. That said, Nolan may not be beating certain allegations anytime soon. Production photos of The Odyssey have been criticized in some circles for their lack of color and generally dull designs. The same criticisms could certainly be applied to this trailer, even if we only get the briefest glimpses of some of the movie’s potentially grander sequences. There are lovely shots spread throughout, though they are spread somewhat thin among other, simply serviceable glimpses of fairly mundane moments. The night scenes in particular are pretty rough, though it’s worth noting again that YouTube could be a co-conspirator for that particular crime. Still, the style debate will continue. That said, there is a lot to love here. The storm sequence, in particular, looks appropriately horrifying, as do the shots of the soldiers cowering in fear in a desperate attempt to avoid what appears to be a massive sword. Ludwig Göransson’s score is simply magical, and the sheer wattage of star power fueling this thing remains impressive. Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Mia Goth…hell, Lupita Nyong’o is in this movie, and we don’t even know her role yet. Perhaps most importantly, this is still The Odyssey we’re talking about. Reasonable concerns about what certainly seems to be a dark, dour, and dude-driven take on that story aside, The Odyssey remains both an incredible collection of potentially cinematic moments and a story that has rarely received a direct adaptation, much less one on this scale. We’ll all find out if The Odyssey lives up to that potential when the movie is released on July 17, 2026. [end-mark] The post <i>The Odyssey</i> Trailer Is Visually Dull but Full of Promise appeared first on Reactor.

Fashion loves to look back. Old fashions are reclaimed with a new twist every few decades, but currently, the 1980s and 1990s throwback is taking over the runways, the streets, and social media. There is CONTINUE READING... The post Why the 80s and 90s Are Back in Fashion appeared first on The Retro Network.

The Department of Justice has reversed the Biden administration’s decision to allow Veterans Affairs doctors to perform abortions on the taxpayers’ dime. After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration told Veterans Affairs doctors that they could perform abortions, even though federal law prohibits taxpayers from funding abortion. In 2022, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel advised that federal law authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs and its employees to provide abortion services. Trump’s Office of Legal Counsel on Dec. 18 withdrew this opinion, instead saying that the VA may not provide abortion services. In 1992, Congress passed the Veterans Health Care Act, amending Title 38 of the U.S. Code to expand and improve health care for female veterans. The law orders the VA to provide “[g]eneral reproductive health care” to women, but it expressly prohibits “infertility services, abortions, or pregnancy care (including prenatal and delivery care), except for such care relating to a pregnancy that is complicated or in which the risks of complication are increased by a service-connected condition.” The Biden administration removed the exclusion on abortion counseling and established exceptions to the exclusion on abortions. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Josh Craddock wrote that existing law “unambiguously commands that VA may not provide abortions when furnishing medical care under 38 U.S.C. § 1710 or any other provision in chapter 17 of Title 38.” “Nothing about our interpretation of section 106 undermines VA’s authority to provide infertility services or authorized pregnancy care, however,” Craddock wrote. The VA announced in August that it reversed the policy allowing taxpayer-funded abortion services to be provided to veterans. The VA said it will return its medical package and Civilian Health and Medical Program benefits to the time before the 2022 agency rule. “It is without question that VA has the authority to bar provision of abortion services through the VA medical benefits package to veterans,” the memo read. The post Trump DOJ Overturns Biden-Era Policy Letting Veterans Affairs Doctors Perform Abortions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Major American companies and commentators, including Google and Substack CEO Chris Best, have condemned the United Kingdom’s censorship law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), describing it as a measure that risks censoring lawful speech while failing to make the internet safer for children. They argue that the law normalizes digital surveillance, restricts open debate, and complicates how global platforms operate in the UK. Their objections surfaced through The Telegraph, which published essays from Best and from Heritage Foundation researchers John Peluso and Miles Pollard, alongside new reporting on Google’s formal response to an Ofcom consultation. That consultation, focused on how tech firms should prevent “potentially illegal” material from spreading online, closed in October, with Ofcom releasing the submissions in December. Google’s filing accused the regulator of promoting rules that would “undermine users’ rights to freedom of expression” by encouraging pre-emptive content suppression. Ofcom rejected this view, insisting that “nothing in our proposals would require sites and apps to take down legal content.” Yet Google was hardly alone in raising alarms: other American companies and trade groups submitted responses voicing comparable fears about the Act’s scope and implications. Chris Best wrote that his company initially set out to comply with the new law but quickly discovered it to be far more intrusive than expected. “What I’ve learned is that, in practice, it pushes toward something much darker: a system of mass political censorship unlike anywhere else in the western world,” he said. Best describes how the OSA effectively forces platforms to classify and filter speech on a constant basis, anticipating what regulators might later deem harmful. Compliance, he explained, requires “armies of human moderators or AI” to scan journalism, commentary, and even satire for potential risk. The process, he continued, doesn’t simply remove content but “gates it” behind identity checks or age-verification hurdles that often involve facial scans or ID uploads. “These measures don’t technically block the content,” Best said, “but they gate it behind steps that prove a hassle at best, and an invasion of privacy at worst.” He warned that this structure discourages readers, reduces visibility for writers, and weakens open cultural exchange. Best, who emphasized Substack’s commitment to press freedom, said the OSA misdiagnoses the problem of online harm by targeting speech rather than prosecuting actual abuse or criminal behavior. “This is how you end up with ‘papers, please’ for the internet,” he wrote, warning that the law could become a model replicated by other governments. In its submission, Google contended that Ofcom’s interpretation of the OSA would “stifle free speech” by imposing vague obligations on platforms to police “potentially illegal” posts. It cautioned that these measures would “necessarily result in legal content being made less likely to be encountered by users,” extending the law’s reach beyond what lawmakers intended when it passed in 2023. Ofcom, meanwhile, pointed to incidents of online unrest such as posts that spread following the Southport killings and subsequent riots and protests to justify its approach. The regulator argued that recommender systems should withhold questionable material until moderators review it, to prevent harmful content from going viral during crises. Yet this example has since become contentious. Following those events, authorities made several arrests, including that of Lucy Connolly, under laws critics say were applied in an excessively heavy-handed way leading to international condemnation. The use of the Southport unrest to defend tighter speech controls has therefore raised further questions about how the government interprets and enforces the boundaries of “illegal” online communication. The regulator argued that recommender systems should temporarily withhold questionable material until moderators review it, to prevent viral dissemination of possible hate or violence. The OSA’s enforcement has created new friction between the UK and the US. Negotiations over a £31 billion technology partnership were recently frozen after Washington voiced concern about Britain’s direction on online regulation. US Vice President JD Vance has accused the UK of following a “dark path” on free speech, while Elon Musk’s X platform declared that “free speech will suffer” under the new rules. An Ofcom spokesperson reiterated that its goal is to protect both safety and liberty online, stating: “There is nothing in our proposals that would require sites and apps to take down legal content. The Online Safety Act requires platforms to have particular regard to the importance of protecting users’ right to freedom of expression.” However, this line of defense sidesteps the real issue. While Ofcom insists that legal material will not be removed outright, the regulator’s approach effectively requires platforms to limit how widely such content can spread. By obliging companies to restrict “potentially illegal” posts before any clear determination of their status, the policy would lead to broad suppression of lawful speech. The UK’s legal landscape already (and unfortunately) criminalizes categories of expression that would fall under constitutional protection in the United States. As a result, any automated or large-scale moderation system built to comply with the OSA may inevitably block lawful content in order to ensure that no illegal material slips through. The distinction between taking content down and throttling its visibility is, in reality, far narrower than the regulator is pretending. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Google and Substack Warn Britain Is Building a Censorship Machine appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A proposal in the US Senate titled the Sunset Section 230 Act seeks to dismantle one of the core protections that has shaped the modern internet. Put forward by Senator Lindsey Graham with bipartisan backing from Senators Dick Durbin, Josh Hawley, Amy Klobuchar, and Richard Blumenthal, the bill would repeal Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, a provision that has, for nearly thirty years, shielded online platforms from liability for the actions of their users. We obtained a copy of the bill for you here. Under the plan, Section 230 would be fully repealed two years after the bill’s passage. This short transition period would force websites, social platforms, and hosting services to rethink how they handle public interaction. The current statute stops courts from holding online platforms legally responsible as the publishers of material shared by their users. Its protection has been instrumental in allowing everything from local discussion boards to global platforms such as YouTube and Wikipedia to operate without being sued over every user comment or upload. The legislation’s text removes Section 230 entirely and makes “conforming amendments” across multiple federal laws. “I am extremely pleased that there is such wide and deep bipartisan support for repealing Section 230, which protects social media companies from being sued by the people whose lives they destroy. Giant social media platforms are unregulated, immune from lawsuits, and are making billions of dollars in advertising revenue off some of the most unsavory content and criminal activity imaginable,” said Senator Graham. “It is past time to allow those who have been harmed by these behemoths to have their day in court.” Senator Graham’s statement reflects growing political hostility toward Section 230, but the premise behind his argument collapses under close examination of how the law actually functions. The idea that repealing Section 230 would meaningfully hold large tech platforms accountable misunderstands both the legal structure of the internet and the purpose of the statute. Section 230 does not grant “immunity” in the sense that companies cannot be sued for their own actions. Platforms can and routinely are sued for violating federal criminal law, intellectual property rights, or contractual obligations. What the statute prevents is liability for speech created by its users. Without that safeguard, every website hosting user comments, reviews, or uploads would risk litigation for each post. A total repeal would not just affect Facebook or YouTube; it would reach tiny community forums, news sites with comment sections, local businesses that host user feedback, and nonprofit educational networks. The senator’s claim that platforms are “unregulated” also misses the regulatory reality. These companies already operate under extensive regimes such as privacy laws, consumer protection statutes, antitrust oversight, and criminal prohibitions. Section 230 does not exempt them from any of these. Instead, it ensures that the legal responsibility for online speech remains with the speaker, an essential distinction for protecting open communication. The notion that repealing the law would “allow those who have been harmed to have their day in court” ignores the consequence that every user would become a potential source of liability. Faced with such risk, platforms would have no practical choice but to prescreen or block vast categories of lawful expression to avoid any potential lawsuits. The outcome would not be a fairer digital environment but a heavily censored one, where only the most risk-averse, well-funded entities could afford to host public dialogue. From a free speech perspective, Section 230 is the legal backbone that allows a diverse internet to exist. It protects the capacity of ordinary people to speak, organize, and publish online without requiring corporate pre-approval. Dismantling it in the name of punishing “behemoths” would primarily hurt small and mid-sized sites that lack armies of lawyers. Rather than empowering individuals, a repeal would consolidate control of online discourse in the hands of a few large companies capable of absorbing the new legal exposure. Senator Blackburn’s claim that Big Tech uses Section 230 “to censor conservative voices” misunderstands both the law and the First Amendment. Section 230 does not require or authorize any specific content decision. It simply prevents lawsuits over moderation choices, whether those affect conservative, liberal, or apolitical content. Even though major social media platforms censored conservative voices over the last decade, repeal of Section 230 would not create political neutrality; it would compel platforms to err on the side of suppression, further constraining speech across the spectrum. Senator Blumenthal’s suggestion that companies “hide behind Section 230 to dodge accountability” overlooks existing accountability mechanisms. Platforms can already be sued for their own misconduct, such as defective design, deceptive practices, or failure to comply with federal reporting obligations. Section 230 only blocks suits that attempt to treat a platform as the publisher of another person’s speech, a boundary drawn to preserve open dialogue while still permitting enforcement of genuine legal violations. Graham went further on Fox News: “These platforms are doing enormous damage to our country, pushing people to suicide and selling fentanyl-laced pills and tablets,” Graham said. “It is long past time to open up the American courtroom to those who have been harmed by this out-of-control system, and to finally have regulations and accountability for the largest businesses in the history of the country. The courthouse doors are closed, and there is no meaningful regulation.” Senator Graham’s argument combines real public concerns with a deeply mistaken premise about how the internet and US law operate. The harms he lists, suicide, drug trafficking, and unregulated digital power, are serious, but none of them exist because of Section 230. The law he seeks to repeal is not what “closes the courthouse doors.” It is what keeps those doors from being used to silence lawful speech or destroy the open nature of online communication. First, the claim that “these platforms are doing enormous damage” rests on conflating correlation with causation. While social media may amplify allegedly “harmful” behavior, the existence of such content is not created by Section 230. The statute does not encourage or condone drug sales, harassment, or suicide-related material; it merely allocates legal responsibility correctly. Those who sell drugs or post illegal content are still fully liable under state and federal law. Section 230 does not obstruct prosecution or civil claims against the individuals and organizations that commit these crimes. Second, the idea that repealing Section 230 would “open up the American courtroom” ignores what that would mean in practice. Courts would indeed become more accessible to plaintiffs suing any website, app, or forum where another person’s illegal act occurred. A grieving parent, for instance, could sue not only the perpetrator but also the hosting service, the software developer, or even a search engine that indexed a link. Each suit would require platforms to defend themselves against the speech of third parties, regardless of whether they had any knowledge or control over the content. The result would be a legal system flooded with claims that punish the medium rather than the offender. Third, the suggestion that “there is no meaningful regulation” is inaccurate. Major platforms are already bound by extensive federal and state oversight: data privacy laws, advertising regulations, antitrust enforcement, securities disclosure rules, and criminal statutes concerning child exploitation and narcotics. Federal agencies, including the DEA and FBI, routinely use digital evidence hosted by platforms to be able to arrest and prosecute those selling fentanyl online. The existence of Section 230 does not limit these prosecutions; it ensures that intermediaries can cooperate with law enforcement without becoming liable for every crime that passes across their networks. If Section 230 were repealed, platforms would not become more accountable; they would become more restrictive. Legal exposure would force them to monitor and filter user activity on an unprecedented scale, removing controversial, sensitive, or even tragic personal content to avoid potential lawsuits. Far from opening access to justice, this would chill public discussion of addiction, mental health, and other social crises. What Senator Graham calls an “out-of-control system” is in fact an information ecosystem dependent on a single legal distinction: that people are responsible for what they say, and that the conduit carrying their speech is not the publisher of it. Erasing that line will not prevent tragedy. It will only replace open networks with a censored and legally paralyzed internet where fewer people dare to speak at all. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Repeal Section 230, Endangering Online Free Speech appeared first on Reclaim The Net.