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Dolby has announced Dolby Vision 2, a “groundbreaking” HDR format.
DV2 will bring several quality upgrades and fix one big complaint.
Hisense TVs will be among the first to support the new tech.
The next generation of HDR is here.
Dolby unveiled Dolby Vision 2, the successor to Dolby Vision HDR that debuted a little more than a decade ago, the company said Tuesday. Calling it a “groundbreaking evolution of its industry-leading picture quality innovation,” Dolby explained that its latest technology would bring several upgrades over the current Dolby Vision and fix one of the most common complaints.
What’s new with Dolby Vision 2?
Dolby said that it has a “robust” content pipeline that includes movies and TV shows, weekly live sports broadcasts, and games that would take advantage of Dolby Vision 2.
At the core of the new tech is something the company is calling “content intelligence.” This introduces new tools, Dolby said, that optimize your viewing (using AI, of course) based on what and where you’re watching.
Also: Samsung will give you a free 65-inch TV right now – here’s how to qualify for the deal
The company acknowledged that one of the most common complaints about Dolby Vision is that images can often be too dark, making it hard to see details. Content intelligence will include “precision black” that improves clarity in darker scenes. In addition, a “Light Sense” feature will fine-tune picture quality by detecting ambient light and optimizing your picture to adjust, Dolby explained.
Also new:
Authentic Motion, the “world’s first creative-driven motion control tool” to make scenes feel more cinematic (creators will be able to use this on “a shot-by-shot basis”)
A redesigned and even more powerful image engine
Bi-directional tone-mapping that takes advantage of today’s brighter-than-ever TVs for improved brightness, sharper contrast, and deeply saturated colors
Sports and gaming optimization modes that let you fine-tune things like white point adjustments and motion control
In short, all of these features are designed to ensure that what you see at home is what the creatives behind the content intended for you to see.
Which TVs will get Dolby Vision 2 first?
Like most new technologies, it takes some time to reach wide availability. Hisense (which has produced some of the best sets over the past few years) will be the first TV to support Dolby Vision 2 with its RGB-MiniLED line. It’s almost certain we’ll see more TVs join the lineup at January’s CES.
Dolby explained that its new technology will be available in two tiers: the top-of-the-line Dolby Vision 2 Max on premium TVs that not only delivers the best possible picture, but also adds additional premium features, and Dolby Vision 2, which provides dramatically improved picture quality for mainstream TVs.
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Guillermo del Toro is getting the Beyond Fest treatment.
The filmmaker, who is coming off the Venice Film Festival premiere of his latest monster fantasy, Frankenstein, will be getting a 12-movie retrospective from the biggest genre film festival in the country that will showcase his three decades of bringing fantasy, dreams and nightmares to the screen.
In partnership with American Cinematheque, Beyond Fest is putting on Está Vivo: The Gods and Monsters of Guillermo del Toro, featuring new restorations, special director’s cuts and rare 35mm screenings of del Toro’s oeuvre, taking audiences from his debut with Cronos to his most recent, Nightmare Alley. This year’s festival runs Sept. 23 to Oct. 8.
“Guillermo del Toro’s films have inspired generations of filmmakers and audiences alike in a way unlike any other artist we’ve experienced,” said Beyond Fest head of programming Evrim Ersoy in a statement. “To welcome him and celebrate his artistic vision on this scale truly honors who he is as both a creative force of nature and a proudly obsessive servant of Cinema.” That’s right, the “C” is capitalized.
Del Toro will join the fest for four specially curated blocks of programming in which he will share his personal stories of his life behind the lens. And the blocks are divided into themes of monsters, humanity and imagination.
The celebration will open with In the Mood for Love, a triple bill exploring the emotional core of del Toro’s “high wire balancing of beauty and bloodshed,” per Beyond Fest. That will include Crimson Peak, his 2017 best picture Oscar winner The Shape of Water and a brand new version of Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light. Shape of Water will have a post-screening Q&A.
From Sketch to Screen will explore del Toro’s comic book movie era with special screenings of Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Blade II. There will be a pre-screening Q&A for Hellboy.
His first movies that suggested a new fantasy voice in cinema comprise the next block, The Early Years, and includes the theatrical premiere 4K restoration of his debut feature Cronos, the L.A. premiere of the 4K restoration of The Devil’s Backbone, and a director’s cut of first studio feature, Mimic. The latter gets a post-screening Q&A.
The movie of del Toro’s that consistently lands on top film lists, his 2006 period fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, gets its own rubric, that of Revolution. That one also will enjoy a pre-screening Q&A.
All the above movies will screen at The Egyptian in Hollywood.
Del Toro’s monster movie Pacific Rim and his stop-motion animation Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio will receive special screenings at the Los Feliz 3.
Tickets will be on sale on the American Cinematheque website Sept. 4 at 12 p.m. PT.
Scientists peering into the very heart of hearts of the planet Mars have found a deeply unexpected structure.
There, at the innermost core of the planet, InSight seismic data reveals a solid mass about 600 kilometers (373 miles) across. This is not just in contrast to previous findings that the core is squishy all the way through – it doesn’t fit with our current understanding of what the Martian core is made of.
“Having a solid inner core for Mars was something unusual,” a team led by seismologist Huixing Bi of the University of Science and Technology of China told ScienceAlert.
“Early studies suggested that the Martian core contains a significant amount of light elements, which lowers the solidus temperature and makes it unlikely for the core to crystallize given its relatively high temperature.”
Related: In an Incredible First, Scientists Have Discovered What’s at The Core of Mars
It’s only in the last few years that scientists have been able to map the red planet’s interior structure. That’s because NASA’s Insight lander features a seismometer that can record waves generated by quakes and meteorite strikes as they bounce around inside the planet, reacting differently to different matter densities.
The result is somewhat like a planet-sized ‘X-ray’, only made of acoustic waves.
InSight spent four years, from 2018 to 2022, monitoring the trembles in the belly of Mars, collecting data on hundreds of events. This data provided the first detailed internal map of Mars, revealing a structure similar to that of Earth: a hard crust, a molten mantle, and a dense core at the center.
But there are some crucial differences between Earth and Mars that have to do with the planetary interior, and that’s why Bi and colleagues wanted to obtain more information about Mars’s putatively soft and squishy core.
“Unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field today,” the researchers explained.
“Instead, parts of its crust are strongly magnetized, which tells us that Mars once had a magnetic field in the distant past. A planet’s global magnetic field is powered by a ‘dynamo’ in its core, which depends on a combination of thermal and compositional convection in the liquid outer core.
“In Earth, light elements preferentially remain in the liquid during core crystallization, leading to residual buoyant liquid at the inner core boundary. This mechanism is believed to play an important role in sustaining the Earth’s magnetic field today. In contrast, for Mars, things seem to work differently.”
Investigations of Earth’s layers rely on quake data from multiple seismic stations. On Mars, InSight spent its time in just a single location. To compensate for this, the researchers relied on impact events, in which large rocks smacking into the Martian surface send acoustic waves rippling through the planet.
They identified 23 high signal-to-noise ratio impact events and used seismic array analysis techniques usually applied to data from multiple stations here on Earth.
“This approach allowed us to pick out specific seismic phases based on how they arrive at the station, with their specified incident angles and arrival times,” the researchers said. “In doing so, we were able to detect waves that travel through the very center of Mars’s core and reflection from the inner core boundary, which provide critical observations for a solid inner core.”
The composition of the Martian core seems to be a little different from that of Earth’s. Mars’s core is also mostly made of iron, but with higher proportions of sulfur, oxygen, and carbon mixed in – lighter elements that should theoretically lower the temperature at which the mixture solidifies, defined by a limit referred to as the solidus.
Since the core of Mars is significantly hotter than this temperature, scientists thought the core should be soft all the way through.
Seismic waves are categorized based on how they move through a planetary interior. P waves are the fastest, traveling through the crust and mantle. K waves are waves that have traveled through a planetary outer core. I waves are those that have traveled through the inner core, while a lower-case i represents a wave that has bounced off the outer boundary of the inner core.
A comparison between the structures of Earth (left) and Mars (right). (Bi et al., Nature, 2025)
These letters can be put together to describe a wave’s path; for example, PKiKP waves travel through the mantle, enter the outer core, bounce off the inner core, come back out through the outer core, and then the mantle.
In their data, the researchers found not just one but multiple waves that separately indicated the presence of a solid inner core of Mars.
“Detecting the PKiKP wave is strong evidence on its own, but we also see PKKP arriving earlier than expected, which provides further confirmation. Beyond that, our model predicts – and our data confirm – other inner-core-related phases, including PKiKP at greater distances, PKIIKP, and even a new branch of PKPPKP that travels through the inner core,” they explained.
“These multiple phases are crucial because they cross-validate one another and all consistently point to the same conclusion: Mars really does have a solid inner core.”
Exactly how this can happen is currently unclear. Modeling will need to be done to explore the temperature, pressure, and compositional conditions involved, as well as the way the heavy and light elements are partitioned, to try to replicate what the team’s results have revealed.
The results, nevertheless, are exciting. This further exploration may lead to deeper insights into how Mars lost its dynamo and its global magnetic field. It may also reveal something about the way rocky planets – those scientists believe most likely to host life as we know it – evolve.
“The size and properties of Mars’s inner core serve as a crucial reference for understanding the planet’s thermal and chemical evolution,” the researchers said.
“Gaining a clearer picture of the inner core’s formation – and its implications for the history of Mars’s magnetic field – will require more detailed modeling, ideally within a comparative planetology framework.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US secretary of health and human services, defended his response to the largest measles outbreak in the US in 33 years in a new editorial, calling it an example of “what a focused” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “can achieve”.
Kennedy did so in a Wall Street Journal editorial published on Tuesday, which coincides with extreme tumult at the CDC and strong claims from a former employee that the secretary wasn’t even briefed on the measles outbreak.
In the piece, Kennedy praises his agency’s handling of the outbreak in west Texas, which hospitalized nearly 100 people and killed two children earlier this year.
He argued that the outbreak “ended quickly, proving the CDC can act swiftly with precision when guided by science and freed from ideology”, described the CDC’s response as “effective” and said that “effectiveness – not politics – will be the watchword of our leadership.”
The outbreak, which affected several states, was officially declared over by local officials on 18 August. Throughout the crisis, Kennedy faced criticism from some health experts who described his messaging as inconsistent. They pointed out that while he acknowledged the importance of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, he also framed vaccination as a “personal choice” and promoted and endorsed alternative treatments such as vitamins and cod liver oil.
The editorial arrives amid growing calls for his resignation, triggered by a disastrous few weeks at the CDC. Last week, the White House abruptly fired CDC director, Dr Susan Monarez, claiming that she did not “align” with Donald Trump’s agenda. She also reportedly clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy.
Her ousting triggered the resignations of several other senior CDC officials, including Dr Demetre Daskalakis, the former head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.
In a recent interview, Daskalakis even said that Kennedy has never been briefed by CDC experts on several health issues including measles, Covid-19 or the flu.
“No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics,” Daskalakis told CNN. “Perhaps he has alternate experts that he may trust more than the experts at CDC that the rest of the world regards as the best scientists in the areas.
“He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts who really are the world’s experts in this area … and he’s not taking us up on several offers to brief him on these very important topics,” Daskalakis added.
On Wednesday morning, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees signed a public letter demanding Kennedy’s resignation.
The letter accused Kennedy of putting US public health at risk and criticized his role in firing Monarez. It also blasts him for “appointing political ideologues” to influential vaccine policy positions, “refusing to be briefed by well-regarded CDC experts on vaccine-preventable diseases” and of “rescinding the FDA’s emergency use authorizations for Covid-19 vaccines”..
Earlier this week, nine former CDC officials penned a guest essay in the New York Times in which they called Kennedy’s leadership “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable.”
They warned that his leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings” and said that “amid the largest measles outbreak in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines”.
Last month, more than 750 current and former HHS staffers sent a separate letter to Kennedy, in the wake of the 8 August shooting at the CDC headquarters that killed a police officer. In that letter, the staffers accused him of fueling harassment and violence directed at government healthcare staff.
Despite the mounting pressure, Kennedy did not address Monarez’s firing, the subsequent resignations or the growing calls for his resignation in his editorial this week.
Instead, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s role in what he described as “restoring public trust” in the CDC which he argued had been “corroded” in recent years by “bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep”.
Kennedy, who previously founded an anti-vaccine group, also criticized the CDC’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, calling it a “failure” and blasted policies such as social distancing, mask mandates, lockdowns, and “the suppression of low-cost therapeutics in favor of experimental and ineffective drugs”.
Kennedy is scheduled to testify before the Senate finance committee on Thursday for a hearing on Trump’s healthcare agenda, according to the committee website.
Photographer Osama Fathi has captured a stunning view of Perseid meteors crossing the bright ribbon of the Milky Way over the ruins of an ancient settlement in Egypt dedicated to the worship of the crocodile god Soknopaios.
The image was captured from the Soknopaiou Nesos archaeological site to the north of Qarun Lake in northeastern Egypt on the night of Aug. 12, as the 2025 Perseid meteor shower hit its peak. Sadly, the light of a waning gibbous moon washed out all but the brightest shooting stars this year, though photographers were still able to capture stunning compositions featuring the most brilliant members of the annual shower.
“Despite the presence of the moon this night, we managed to capture a few bright meteors of the Perseid shower above the ancient ruins of Soknopaiou Nesos, known today as Dimeh es-Seba, in the Faiyum Oasis of Egypt,” said Fathi in an email to Space.com.
Fathi’s image captures a swarm of bright Perseid meteors streaking across the dense dust lanes and glowing heart of the Milky Way, framed by the ancient stones and truncated columns of ancient Soknopaiou Nesos.
Perseids captured in the skies over Egypt on the night of Aug. 12. (Image credit: Osama Fathi)
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“This settlement, founded in the 3rd century BCE during the great Ptolemaic land reclamation of the Faiyum, was once a powerful religious center,” continued Fathi. “It hosted a grand temple dedicated to Soknopaios, the oracular crocodile god with a falcon’s head, from whom the town derived its name.”
The scene is a composite of multiple images taken using a Nikon Z6 camera in conjunction with a Nikkor 14-24 mm wide-angle lens. The sky and Milky Way were captured over a 25 second exposure, while the meteors required a shorter exposure and high ISO of 8000.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com’s readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.
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South Africa have named 17-year-old wicketkeeper-batter Karabo Meso in their 15-member squad for the upcoming Women’s ODI World Cup, to be held later this month in India and Sri Lanka.
Meso, who made her senior international debut against Sri Lanka in March this year, has so far featured in two ODIs and five T20Is. Despite her limited experience, she has already shown promise at the highest level and now gets the chance to test herself on the biggest stage of all.
The teenager has previously played in two Under-19 Women’s T20 World Cups in 2023 and 2025 and will now take the step up to her maiden senior World Cup.
Wolvaardt to lead experienced squad
Laura Wolvaardt will captain the side, which also includes established names such as Sune Luus, Marizanne Kapp, Chloe Tryon and Ayabonga Khaka. Former skipper Dane van Niekerk, who recently reversed her decision to retire, was left out despite being part of the pre-tournament training camp.
The squad strikes a balance between youth and experience, with seasoned campaigners expected to guide Meso and other young players through the tournament. The selectors also retained several all-round options to provide flexibility in Indian and Sri Lankan conditions.
South Africa begin their World Cup campaign on 3 October against England in Guwahati. They will also face a high-profile clash against hosts India in Visakhapatnam on 9 October, a match likely to attract significant attention given India’s growing stature in the women’s game.
Before heading to the tournament, the Proteas will sharpen their preparations with a three-match ODI series against Pakistan in Lahore, scheduled for 16, 19 and 22 September.
Cricket South Africa officials said the series would serve as vital match practice and an opportunity to fine-tune combinations before the World Cup.
The inclusion of Meso is seen as an investment in the team’s future, but the immediate focus will be on making a strong push for the title. South Africa have reached the semi-finals of multiple global tournaments but are yet to claim a major trophy in women’s cricket.
The AI coding tool Warp has a plan for making coding agents more comprehensible — and it looks an awful lot like pair programming.
Today, the company is releasing Warp Code, a new set of features designed to give users more oversight over command-line-based coding agents, with more extensive difference tracking and a clearer view of what the coding agent is doing.
“I feel like with these other command-line tools, you’re kind of just crossing your fingers and hoping that what comes out the other end of the agent is something you can actually merge,” says founder Zach Lloyd. With the new features, he wants to “make a much tighter feedback loop for this agentic style of coding.”
In practical terms, that means you can see exactly what the agent is doing and ask questions along the way. “As the agent is writing code, you’ll be able to see every little diff that the agent is making,” Lloyd says, “and you’ll have an easy way of commenting on those diffs and adjusting the agent as it goes along.”
The general interface will be familiar to Warp users: a space at the bottom for giving direct instructions to the agent, along with a window for seeing the agent’s responses and a side window where you can see the changes the agent makes step by step. You can change the code by hand if you want to, similar to code-based tools like Cursor, but you can also highlight specific lines to add as context for a request or a question. Perhaps most impressive, Warp’s compiler will automatically troubleshoot any errors that come up when the code compiles.
“It’s about making sure that you understand the code the agent is producing, and making sure that you can edit it and review it,” says Warp founder Zach Lloyd.
It’s a new approach to the increasingly crowded field of AI-driven programming. Warp is competing with fully non-code tools like Loveable, as well as AI-powered code editors like Cursor and Windsurf. Foundation model companies offer their own competition with command-line tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex — even as Warp uses their models to power its own product.
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With 600,000 active users and counting, Warp is still a relatively small player in the AI coding race — but it’s growing fast. Lloyd says the company is adding $1 million in ARR every 10 days, suggesting there are still a lot of users ready to pay for a better way to vibe-code.
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September 03, 2025
Federal Reserve Board announces it will host a conference on payments innovation on Tuesday, October 21
For release at 11:00 a.m. EDT
The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday announced that it will host a conference on payments innovation on Tuesday, October 21. The conference will bring together a range of interested parties to discuss how to further innovate and improve the payments system.
“Innovation has been a constant in payments to meet the changing needs of consumers and businesses,” said Governor Christopher J. Waller. “I look forward to examining the opportunities and challenges of new technologies, bringing together ideas on how to improve the safety and efficiency of payments, and hearing from those helping to shape the future of payments.”
The conference will feature panel discussions on several aspects of payments innovation, including the convergence of traditional and decentralized finance; emerging stablecoin use cases and business models; the intersection of artificial intelligence and payments; and the tokenization of financial products and services. The Payments Innovation Conference will be livestreamed for the public at federalreserve.gov, with additional details to be announced in the future.
For media inquiries, please email [email protected] or call (202) 452-2955.
Luke Taylor, Co-President, sat down with Michael Sidgmore of the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to discuss the early days of his career at Stonepeak and the drivers of the firm’s entrepreneurial culture, disciplined approach to investing, and deep-rooted focus on value creation. Luke also shared his views on the emerging benefits of infrastructure for private wealth investors and insights on the growth of the firm’s dedicated wealth platform, Stonepeak+.
