Is the dark really making me sad?

When beauty is in the eye of the (robo)beholder

Let’s not mince words: Beauty and the Beast is a terrible movie

Disney

You know the story: girl meets boy, girl gets imprisoned by boy, girl and boy slowly grow closer with the help of his enchanted atlas. Okay, so you know most of the story.

Beauty and the Beast is the latest of the live-action Disney re-imaginings that are so unnecessary to the company's bottom line they can't be viewed merely as cash grabs. They're more like test tracks for a nostalgia engine. And Beauty and the Beast is determined to put a new spin on that tale as old as time, whether it needs it or not.

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Trump flips science the bird with new budget

WordStar: A writer’s word processor

Steve Jobs’ liver—and the quest for a better organ algorithm

Dealmaster: Get $10 when you buy a $100 Newegg gift card

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a bunch of new deals to share. Now you can get a bonus when you buy a Newegg gift card: get $10 extra with the purchase of a $100 Newegg gift card. We also have deals on the new Sony PSVR Aim when you preorder and Microsoft's Surface Pro 4, plus 30 percent off routers, switches, and networking products.

Check out the full list of deals below.

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Ghost Recon: Wildlands review: One hot mess of an open-world game

Classic bot-programming game Robo Rally has not aged well

Our new (mixed) reality: Early adopters have become HoloLens believers at work

Geneva motor show: EVs, autonomous tech, and the end of GM in Europe

Electric powertrains and driver-assist features have been the cutting edge in automotive technology for a while now, and at this year's Geneva International Motor Show both were more in evidence than ever.

There were the obligatory supercars, of course, from Ferrari's 812 Superfast and Lamborghini's Huracan Performante to McLaren's 720S, with styling that was less than universally loved. Aston Martin's Adrian Newey-masterminded AM-RB 001 now sported the name Valkyrie and showed off a profile so slender it seems hard to imagine a 6.5-litre V12 and a driver will both fit inside. There were also debuts for the production version of Techrules' Ren turbine-powered range-extender EV and the (Williams-engineered) Vanda Dendrobium prototype from Singapore, which may make limited production. Even Tata got in on the performance car act, with the Racemo sports car powered by a 187bhp (140kW) 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo engine.

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Techrules shows how to make EVs interesting: Just add a jet engine

Newspress

Like all auto shows, Geneva has its share of vaporware projects that never go beyond the first hopeful display of dreams. Most people would have filed Techrules' turbine hybrid, seen in concept form a year ago, in the same category. But at this year's Geneva International Motor Show, which opened to the public on March 9, the Chinese R&D company was back with a production version of its supercar—and big plans for more accessible machines based on the same formula.

That formula is as simple as it is breathtaking. The Techrules Ren—the name comes from a Chinese word that roughly translates as ‘benevolence'—is a carbon composite supercar with race-style pushrod suspension and a modular layout with up to three seats. Power comes from TREV, the Turbine-Recharging Electric Vehicle system that uses one or more micro-turbines to drive generators that recharge the vehicle's lithium polymer batteries and power up to six traction motors.

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Enter the UN’s Data for Climate Action Challenge and save the world

If you're a data scientist or pride yourself on writing perfect database queries, there's a fascinating challenge tailored just for you. For the second year in a row, the United Nations Global Pulse is issuing the Data for Climate Action Challenge, a unique contest that gives you access to reams of anonymized social and environmental data. This year, Ars Technica has partnered with the UN and Western Digital to expand participation in the project. Your job, should you choose to apply, is to use that data to learn more about climate change and how we can prevent it.

Companies ranging from telecoms to banks will participate in a project that the UN calls "data philanthropy." And participants can apply for access to data related to mobile phone usage, mobility, traffic patterns, satellite imagery, social media, and weather. There will also be a "compendium of open datasets curated for the challenge." There are countless ways that the research could go, from looking at heat islands and foot traffic in cities, to exploring how satellite data reveals long-term drought patterns or sudden shifts in resource availability. Social media might reveal patterns in energy use or how people learn about climate change.

By organizing challenges like this, the UN also sets an example for how corporations can release important data in a responsible, anonymized way. All of the data released to applicants will be carefully anonymized, though privacy-protection measures will vary by company and dataset. Global Pulse has created a data protection principles document, which all participants must follow. These principles include not using personal communications without permission, limiting the amount of data to the "minimum necessary" for the projects proposed.

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Volkswagen unveils Sedric, its first fully autonomous vehicle

Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen's plans to develop fully autonomous vehicles that would offer greater comfort and convenience than current cars, while slashing the number of road deaths and truly democratizing mobility, have borne their first fruit. This is Sedric, designed to be a platform for cross-brand ideas, which will feed into subsequent concepts from the group's car brands. The biggest idea it introduces is its full "Level 5" autonomy: no human driver is required.

There's no VW badge on the front of Sedric because this is the first concept car built by the Volkswagen Group, rather than the Volkswagen car brand. It was devised, designed, developed, and constructed by Volkswagen Group's Future Center Europe in Potsdam and Volkswagen Group Research in Wolfsburg. "We are systematically focusing on our customers, their wishes and requirements for the mobility of the future," says chief designer Michael Mauer. "The Volkswagen Group Future Centers give us the opportunity to conceptualize and develop new ideas of mobile life."

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Dealmaster: Get a Dell XPS 8910 tower desktop for just $749

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains, we have a new list of deals to share today. Now you can get a Dell XPS 8910 tower desktop (in silver only) that has a Skylake Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB hard drive for just $749. This powerful PC is made to be upgraded and can support up to a 225W GPU. Originally priced at $1,149, it's a great PC to grab now while you can save $400. Also featured in our list are great savings on laptops, monitors, tablets, headphones, and more.

Check out the full list of deals below.

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Night in the Woods review: Life sucks, so solve a mystery

Night in the Woods starts on a sour note. Then it piles on more of that bitter flavor day after in-game day of modern malaise and hopelessness. Such is life in the small, supposedly quiet town of Possum Springs. Such is life in thousands of forgotten towns across the United States.

We sense all this through Mae Borowski—a protagonist that should feel familiar even to those players who can't identify with the desperation of her rural hometown. She's a charismatic-enough 20-year-old with no job and zero interest in finding one. She dropped out of college—which was seemingly her one chance to escape the literal and figurative abyss swallowing Possum Springs—and has come home to live with her parents while telling her estranged friends how to live.

To put it simply, she's a jerk. To put it less simply, Mae comes across as a vessel for Night in the Woods' developer's/writer's musings on what's wrong with today's "entitled youth." At times, especially early on, Mae is so indefensible and so undefended by the game's plot and characters that she seems like the walking embodiment of a "Why Millennials Are Ruining America" article.

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Cottage Garden: Charming artwork, sleeping cats make a gentle game great

Op-ed: The Internet belongs to the people, not powerful corporate interests

Op-ed: Protect the Open Internet with a bipartisan law

Alcatel A5 LED: Someone, somewhere wants a phone that doubles as a mobile disco

Andrew Williams

BARCELONA, Spain—It’s not easy for a phone to stand out when once-impressive features such as multiple cameras and sub-8mm thickness are now normal. Alcatel manages it, however, with the A5 LED by using a completely different tactic: it has a bunch of RGB LEDs that perform a light show whenever you get a notification or play music, or pretty much whenever else it has even the slightest excuse to fire them up.

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