FlashFeed

Full text

There’s a particular kind of disappointment that only a good filmmaker can deliver, and Disclosure Day is steeped in it. This isn’t a bad movie, exactly. It’s something more frustrating: a missed opportunity, made by a director standing on the most fertile ground and for some reason refusing to dig.

Steven Spielberg has spent his career circling the idea of first contact with aliens. The closest comparison here is 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind , and the comparison is not kind to the new film. In Close Encounters , the government is secretly working toward contact, while ordinary civilians, struck by visions they can’t explain, get pulled into the orbit of an enormous, cosmic project. The film breathes a beautiful rhythm of mystery, reveal, and renewed mystery. The secretive authorities turn out to be, in their own way, the good guys. And the civilians at the center — above all, Richard Dreyfuss, the film’s protagonist — risk everything to reach the mountaintop in the finale. They have agency. They earn the encounter.

Disclosure Day throws nearly all of that away. The government is absent. In its place is the Wardex Corporation, a shadowy government contractor that functions like a secret-police outfit, existing mainly to suppress the truth and be disliked — a point the film hammers home with a video of them interrogating and torturing a helpless alien for no discernible reason. Meanwhile, the humans drawn toward contact don’t understand what’s happening to them and never gain any agency over it. They’re possessed, compelled, going through motions they don’t choose. They aren’t protagonists so much as passengers.

The deeper problem is that the film withholds the one thing it exists to deliver. Disclosure — the actual event, the thing the whole title promises — doesn’t arrive until the final seconds. We never hear what the aliens have to say. There’s a single, interesting line suggesting they regard empathy as nature’s greatest evolved capacity, which is a genuinely beautiful idea, but the movie does absolutely nothing with it. It’s stated and abandoned. We never see how the world reckons with the revelation, never watch humanity absorb the news. Every hard, interesting, worth-writing question — what does disclosure mean, what does it cost, how do we change — gets quietly sidestepped. The screenplay doesn’t fumble those parts. It declines to attempt them.

What’s left is suspense in search of a subject: a hollow chase movie about getting away from contractor thugs.

The characters suffer accordingly. Colin Firth’s antagonist spends the entire film going to extraordinary lengths to bury the truth, then, in the closing moment, simply sits down in a chair and lets it happen. Nothing has changed his mind. He just seems tired. It plays less like a resolution than a surrender the story never earned. Emily Blunt’s protagonist is even harder to hold onto because she’s possessed for most of the runtime, and we never actually meet her. We know she’s buried a childhood trauma, and we know she wants to be a news anchor, and that’s about the sum of who she is. You can’t root for a person the film never introduces you to.

The waste is sharpest with Josh O’Connor, who plays arguably the film’s lead. The movie opens strongly on him, trading the top-secret material he’s smuggled out for the safe return of his girlfriend from the secret-police thugs — an Edward Snowden figure who leaked the truth because he believes it belongs to the whole world. It’s a terrific setup. In a better version of this movie, he would use his training, skills, and insider knowledge to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, a Jason Bourne with a conscience. We get exactly one scene of that in the first ten minutes, and then it evaporates. From there, he mostly runs, trips, gets captured by the bad guys, and is eventually simply found by the good ones. O’Connor is a wonderful actor handed a bland character, and by the end, he’s given us no more reason to root for him than anyone else.

Spielberg being Spielberg, there are reaches for emotional weight, and they mostly land on the same note: Both leads were abducted as children and have blocked it out. It’s a decent idea on paper, but it never grabbed me — partly because the film leans on it instead of giving these people present-tense desires worth caring about. There’s also a baffling subplot in which one character objects to the truth coming out because it might compete with people’s belief in God. Every gesture toward religion in this movie is unnecessary; reaching for profundity it hasn’t built the foundation for.

I had some fun. It’s a popcorn movie, and it moves. But it’s also very long, and the length only sharpens how little is actually underneath it. That’s the real verdict: not that Disclosure Day is terrible, but that it’s inflated and hollow when it had every reason to be awesome and compelling. This was Spielberg returning to the richest material of his career, and the result is all mystery, no meaning — a movie that gestures at the biggest question we could ever ask and then looks away just as the answer arrives.

This article “Disclosure Day”: Spielberg’s latest alien film is all mystery, no meaning is featured on Big Think .

Full text

Steam has reportedly already brought Valve $11.1 billion in revenue in 2026 so far, and I bet that makes you feel even better about that Steam Machine price point.

Alinea Analytics has released its mid-year analysis of Valve 's platform, saying, "In the first half of 2026, we estimate that games on Steam generated $11.1B in gross revenue, the platform’s highest-ever half-year."

The firm adds, "That’s up 14.5% on H1 2025, and up 8% even on the holiday-heavy H2 2025, which is the more remarkable comparison given the back half of the year usually wins on seasonal sales and holiday buys."

As for why Steam did especially well this year, Alinea notes a "surge in Asian players (China especially), higher prices on releases, viral co-op hits, smarter back-catalogue strategies from the big publishers" and "third-party publishers quietly returning to Steam after their own-launcher experiments, tails between legs."

The report notes that the first half of 2026 was roughly four times as big as the first half of 2017. However, a more shocking metric is that Steam has reportedly generated more in the first half of 2026 than in the entirety of 2020 – a year when everyone was inside playing games and dodging COVID.

(Image credit: Valve) While massive AAA games like Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert, and 007 First Light – as well as indie hits like Mewgenics and Mina the Hollower – have blown up this year, the percentage of Steam revenue coming from new games actually appears smaller than in the past as backlog sales grow.

Alinea notes that 29% of game sales in the first half of 2024 came from games released that year, while 27% of H1 2025 sales were from new releases. Of course, 2025's first half had Monster Hunter Wilds, which sold 11 million copies in 2025 , with 8 million of those selling in the first three days . The first few months of 2024 were also stacked with anticipated games that undoubtedly bumped those numbers up. So far, Alinea is tracking 2026 Steam sales at just 21% from new releases.

This success is maybe a bit harder to swallow given that the 1TB Steam Deck OLED just got a price hike to be almost a grand, while Steam Machine pricing starts at $1,049. RAM shortages and US tariffs are obviously major weights, but when a company is printing money like this, you might expect it to eat some costs. However, Valve made it perfectly clear that subsidizing hardware "doesn't align with our beliefs."

I can't afford $1,049 for a Steam Machine, but Valve has already graced your PC with the ability to be a high-spec living room rig from afar.

Full text

Microsoft warns of “GigaWiper,” a destructive malware attributed to Iranian group CyberAv3ngers that combines multiple variants into one

It can wipe drives, encrypt files with a fake ransomware extension, or overwrite Windows partitions, while also spying via screenshots, VNC sessions, and system data theft

The malware hides under fake OneDrive tasks and registry keys, showing both espionage and sabotage capabilities with no recovery path for victims’ data

Microsoft is warning about a new piece of malware called GigaWiper, which can spy on people’s computers and then destroy them entirely, in different ways.

It was built by mashing different malware variants into one, and it seems to be the work of Iranian state-sponsored threat actors called CyberAv3ngers. The hackers also took a little cheeky dig at Microsoft, through the malware’s obfuscation mechanism.

As Microsoft explained , GigaWiper can overwrite the physical drive and wipe the partition table, destroying the contents of the disk directly. It can also encrypt all files on the drive, add a .candy extension, and change the desktop wallpaper to show a warning. This ransomware approach does not share a ransom note, and does not generate a decryption key, so there is nothing to pay, and no way to decrypt the files - they are gone for good, just giving victims false hope.

Spying on the victims

Finally, the third method goes straight for the Windows drive, overwriting it multiple times with different data patterns.

Besides bricking the disk, GigaWiper can also spy on its victims by grabbing screenshots, recording the screen, or opening a VNC session to either stream someone else’s work, or allow the attackers to use the mouse and keyboard. The malware can also extract system data, manage programs and services, modify the registry, and more.

But the cheekiest feature is how it hides. It schedules a task called OneDrive Update and tracks itself in a registry key called OneDrive\Environment. Perhaps the attackers assumed no one really pays attention to OneDrive , and thus the malware could stay out of sight for longer.

Speaking of the attackers, Microsoft does not name them, but most of the components mashed together to form GigaWiper were previously attributed to CyberAv3ngers, a group linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Full text

Bitcoin Magazine

Circle (CRCL) Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank

Circle Internet Group secured final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today, to establish a national trust bank, a milestone that sent the stablecoin issuer’s shares higher and deepened its ties to the federal banking system.

The regulator cleared Circle to charter First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., which will operate under the name Circle National Trust.

The company, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL, said the charter places the new entity under direct federal oversight by the OCC, the primary supervisor for national banks and national trust banks.

Circle National Trust will provide fiduciary custody services for digital assets held by Circle and its affiliates. Under the business plan the OCC approved, the bank could extend custody services to a limited set of institutional customers, with a focus on banks and regulated derivatives organizations.

The charter opens a path for the bank to manage the reserve backing USDC, the largest regulated stablecoin, which would bring that multibillion-dollar pool under federal supervision.

National trust banks differ from traditional lenders. They safeguard client assets and provide fiduciary services, and they do not take deposits or issue loans. The structure aligns its digital-asset infrastructure with a long-standing model for holding client assets under strict fiduciary standards.

“OCC approval to establish Circle National Trust marks a defining step in bringing blockchain technology and digital assets into the core of the U.S. financial system,” said Jeremy Allaire, co-founder, chairman, and chief executive of Circle. He said federal oversight of the trust bank “sets a new standard for transparency, governance, and scale” and unlocks a phase of adoption in which large financial institutions can build on public blockchains with confidence.

Investors welcomed the decision. CRCL shares climbed as much as 14% on the day of the announcement, a rebound from a three-month low. Other crypto-linked names, including Coinbase and Strategy, posted gains near 5% this morning as bitcoin bounced.

CRCL shares have since settled to 5% gains.

Circle’s federal framework

The approval caps a process that began when Circle filed its application on June 30, 2025. The OCC granted conditional approval in December 2025, alongside peers such as Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Paxos.

The final decision arrives as the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin law enacted in July 2025, moves toward full implementation in early 2027.

That statute requires OCC supervision of large stablecoin issuers, and the trust charter positions Circle to meet the mandate while bringing USDC reserves into a federal framework.

Circle has built a record of regulatory engagement across markets. It received a BitLicense from New York in 2015, became the first global stablecoin issuer to comply with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework in 2024, and holds licenses in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Bermuda, and Abu Dhabi.

The charter strengthens USDC’s role as regulated digital-dollar infrastructure for payments, settlement, and capital markets, Circle said.

This post Circle (CRCL) Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman .

Full text

A new upgrade to the International Space Station's (ISS) quantum laboratory is enabling NASA to probe the behavior of atoms further than ever before, the space agency has announced.

Combining the ISS's newly upgraded "Cold Atom Laboratory" with the near zero-gravity of low Earth orbit, scientists are attempting to understand the properties of so-called "ultracold" atoms in an environment impossible to replicate on Earth. The aim of the mission is to study how clouds of atoms behave at temperatures close to absolute zero (minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) — the coldest possible temperature in the universe, where atoms lose all their energy of motion.

"At the coldest temperatures, matter behaves drastically different from anything we have experienced," Jason Williams , project scientist for the Cold Atom Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built the facility, said in a statement . "The wavelike nature of matter dominates, and ultracold matter can behave in ways that are not only unexpected, but that also enable extremely precise measurements of time, gravity, and motion. The lab has lots of tools — especially with this latest upgrade — to let us probe the nature of the universe."

Rule-breaking particles

Atoms and their subatomic particles are quantum mechanical objects whose behavior is fundamentally different from that of the large-scale world. For example, the laws of quantum mechanics predict that particles can be in more than one place at the same time (quantum superposition); can be mysteriously linked with each other over great distances (quantum entanglement); and move through spacetime as waves as well as moving like fixed, solid objects.

But observing these behaviors is notoriously difficult. Firstly, atoms are so tiny that if an atom were the size of a golf ball, then a human teeing one off would stand roughly as tall as the distance from Earth to the moon. Secondly, it’s impossible to isolate measurements of these behaviors for atoms in "normal" environments (like on Earth), as the desired quantum behavior is disturbed by energy from heat and gravity.

To overcome these challenges, the ISS's Cold Atom Laboratory — which is the size of a mini-fridge — uses lasers to cool gases of rubidium and potassium to just above absolute zero. At these temperatures, atoms form a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate , in which many atoms behave like a single wave of quantum matter.

Not only does this setup allow scientists to observe quantum behaviors on a much larger scale than that of single atoms, but the reduced gravity enables the condensate matter waves to expand and evolve undisturbed for much longer periods than would be possible on Earth.

RELATED STORIES

Physicists confirm 'negative time' is real by asking the atoms themselves

The shape of light: Scientists reveal image of an individual photon for 1st time ever

Quantum physicists discover 'negative time' in strange experiment

This is the fourth major upgrade to NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory since it arrived aboard the ISS in 2018. According to NASA, the significant improvements in this most recent upgrade include a redesigned magnetic trap to contain the cloud of atoms, improved atom sources, and better measurement capabilities.

Scientists launched these upgrades to the ISS in April 2026, and they have since been installed, switched on, and started making state-of-the-art measurements. As well as enabling novel tests of fundamental physics, measurements of these effects are critical in demonstrating future, space-based, highly precise quantum technologies related to positioning, navigation, timing, and gravity sensing. These technologies could one day enable astronauts to navigate on the moon without GPS and produce high-precision maps of Earth’s gravity.

"In the previous century, there was a quantum revolution that led to lasers, cellphones, and MRIs for medical imaging," Ethan Elliott , deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said in the statement. "We’re performing Quantum 2.0 – direct manipulation of large quantum states – and we hope for similar gains in quantum technology by advancing this science in orbit."