Can we repair the internet? Three new books propose remedies that run the gamut from government regulation to user responsibility. From addictive algorithms to exploitative apps, data mining to misinformation, the internet today can be a hazardous place. Books by three influential figures--the intellect behind "net neutrality," a former Meta executive, and the web's own inventor--propose radical approaches to fixing it. But are these luminaries the right people for the job? Though each shows conviction, and even sometimes inventiveness, the solutions they present reveal blind spots.

Green was going through a breakup. The reasons for the split itself had been largely unremarkable by breakup standards: Two people, unable to meet each others' needs and struggling to communicate, had decided it was best to part ways. So when Green's ex reached out, unprompted, Green was shocked. The email itself was not notable. Green, a 29-year-old New Yorker, describes it as a typical letter to get after a breakup, an airing of grievances pointing out the ways in which expectations weren't met.

The Xbox 360 digital store is the latest to go offline, following the Wii U and 3DS store shutdown in March. It shut down on Monday, taking about 220 games with it, according to analysis by Video Games Chronicle. Preservation activists at the Video Game History Foundation even made a funeral cake. Microsoft is definitely the best of the major companies when it comes to backwards compatibility and game preservation – despite those 220 lost games, a huge percentage of the Xbox 360's back catalogue can still legally be played on later consoles. And it is remarkable that the Xbox 360 Marketplace lasted almost 20 years (the console was released in late 2005). It wasn't the first digital store on a console, but it was the first one I ever used, and I assume the same was true for a lot of British players – the Xbox 360 was the most popular console of its generation in this country.

For weeks now, we've been waiting for the other Timberland-inspired Manolo to drop. About a month ago, news outlets first reported that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's marriage was in trouble--that the two, in fact, had not been seen together in 47 days. No official announcement of a separation or divorce has followed, but the updates we have gotten--he moved out; they're only sometimes wearing their rings--support the narrative that bad news is on its way. I know that it's a sign of my celebrity brain rot that I can't help but see grim parallels between the fragmentary updates on the state of their marriage and the trickle of information about the state of Jimmy Carter's health. When a newsworthy event is likely to happen--for example, the imminent death of a 99-year-old former president--journalistic outlets have a practice of prewriting the news, to have it ready to go when the time comes.

Every time I go through a breakup, I'm compelled to rewatch the noughties classic High Fidelity, in which OG softboi John Cusack mournfully chronicles a "top 10 list" of his all-time worst breakups, soundtracked by the albums that accompanied them. A sanctuary for a hurting Cusack, this battered boutique becomes a refuge for Chicago's other lost souls, giving its perennially hungover proprietor and a gaggle of local music nerds a place to lick their wounds. It's this kind of DIY community spirit that spills out of the screen as I dive into Wax Heads, a narrative game about managing a struggling record shop. A self-described "cosy-punk life sim", this colourful comic-book-esque caper channels everything great about High Fidelity, as the player learns the ropes during a chaotic first shift at the fictional Repeater Records. As I design posters for a local punk gig between slacking off on a legally distinct knock-off of a Tamagotchi, it's clear that Wax Heads sees the local vinyl shop as a musical mecca, a place where you spin tunes and befriend its weird and wonderful customers.

How to Do It is Slate's sex advice column. Send it to Jessica and Rich here. I'm (35F) very interested in having a threesome and have been working the apps to try to find the right person to help make this happen. I've had a few bites. I was sexting with one guy for days on end about our joint fantasy of making this happen, and I found a second guy, who said he'd like to join us.

What a cold and heartless way to end things. You might feel this way if you have ever been dumped via text message. But what if your ex took it a step further and used an AI chatbot to craft their goodbye? Would you even be able to tell? Large language models, like the ones touted by AI companies like OpenAI, have quickly transformed the way we communicate.

Relationships are essential to our happiness and wellbeing. The dissolution of a relationship, the final stage of relationship's lifecycle and one of the most stressful events in an individual's life, can have profound and long-lasting impacts on people. With the breakup process increasingly facilitated by computer-mediated communication (CMC), and the likely future influence of AI-mediated communication (AIMC) tools, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 21 participants. We aim to understand: 1) the current role of technology in the breakup process, 2) the needs and support individuals have during the process, and 3) how AI might address these needs. Our research shows that people have distinct needs at various stages of ending a relationship. Presently, technology is used for information gathering and community support, acting as a catalyst for breakups, enabling ghosting and blocking, and facilitating communication. Participants anticipate that AI could aid in sense-making of their relationship leading up to the breakup, act as a mediator, assist in crafting appropriate wording, tones, and language during breakup conversations, and support companionship, reflection, recovery, and growth after a breakup. Our findings also demonstrate an overlap between the breakup process and the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behavior change. Through the lens of TTM, we explore the potential support and affordances AI could offer in breakups, including its benefits and the necessary precautions regarding AI's role in this sensitive process.

One day, B.J. Mendelson was playing Roblox with his school-aged nieces when suddenly, he heard a stranger's voice come out of one of their iPads. A longtime digital security buff, he was pretty creeped out. He knew how to keep himself secure online, but the incident brought home just how many opportunities for privacy breaches there are lurking in everyday devices. Most people, including his own brother and sister-in-law, operate them without a playbook. That's why this fall, he decided to start a podcast miniseries with the goal of making digital privacy more accessible.

Last month, at the G7 Leaders' Summit in Cornwall, United Kingdom, the leading industrial nations addressed the sustainable and safe use of space, making space debris a priority and calling on other nations to follow suit. This is good news because space is becoming increasingly congested, and strong political will is needed for the international space community to start using space sustainably and preserve the orbital environment for the space activities of future generations. There are more than 28,000 routinely tracked objects orbiting Earth. The vast majority (85%) are space debris that no longer serve a purpose. These debris objects are dominated by fragments from the approximately 560 known breakups, explosions, and collisions of satellites or rocket bodies. These have left behind an estimated 900,000 objects larger than 1 cm and a staggering 130 million objects larger than 1 mm in commercially and scientifically valuable Earth orbits. Today's already active satellite infrastructure provides a multitude of critical services to modern society, including communication, weather, navigation, and Earth-monitoring missions. Its loss would severely damage modern society. Furthermore, a new era in space has just started, driven by commercial, low-latency broadband services that rely on large constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit. These will revolutionize connectivity on the ground and in the air. However, they will also increase space traffic. The satellites to be launched over the next 5 years will surpass the number launched globally over the entire history of spaceflight. Congestion in space is only going to get worse. It is apparent that debris mitigation strategies—defined two decades ago by experts in the world's leading space agencies—are ever more important. They aim to prevent explosive breakups by venting residual energy from space systems at the end of their missions, and to “dispose” of a space object through a final maneuver that causes it to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Although these strategies are widely recognized, dozens of large space objects are still stranded every year in critical orbital regions where they will remain for several hundred years. And an average of eight fragmentation events in orbit occur annually, adding more pollution and increasing the likelihood of more collisions. Operations in space are themselves facing the burden of increasing evasive maneuvers to prevent losing a mission. In the most densely populated orbital altitudes, space objects are receiving dozens of collision warnings per day, of which only the most critical can be avoided. The number of such alerts will grow as large constellations of satellites come online. Another important facet of the debris problem is the risk on Earth from reentering objects. Between 100 and 200 metric tons of human-made hardware reenters Earth's atmosphere every year in an uncontrolled fashion. Heat-resistant material, like titanium or stainless steel, can survive the harsh reentry conditions. Progress can be made by advancing technology to ensure spaceflight safety. For example, the European Space Agency's Space Safety Programme is developing solutions that make disposal and energy passivation actions more fail-safe. “Deorbiting kits” will provide redundant propulsion and communication to ensure disposal of a spacecraft even after it ceases to function. A new field of “design-to-demise” will aim to replace critical components with less heat-resistant material to limit their chance of reaching ground upon reentry. In addition, a more systematic deployment of ground-based laser tracking could increase the accuracy of space surveillance data and consequently limit the number of collision avoidance alerts. Laser power could even transfer a small amount of momentum to objects to prevent their collisions. On top of that, missions, such as Clearspace-1, will aim to remove targeted debris through robotic capture. An internationally binding regime for the management of debris and space traffic is pending. Thus far, space missions have been supervised on the national level only, and states have been encouraged to translate the nonbinding space debris guidelines into national regulations. Space, however, is a commonly used resource with a limited capacity. International harmonization of space traffic would be required for an efficient and interference-free use of space. The coordinated use of the available radio frequencies could serve as a template. Furthermore, the implementation of space debris mitigation requirements should be tracked, following internationally binding principles. New and affordable technical solutions might stimulate more ambitious steps in international regulation to preserve space for the spacefarers of tomorrow.