Entertainment
NASA is all but certain it wont fly to the moon in March for good reason
NASA is already walking back its Friday announcement that it will try to launch to the moon in March, after discovering a new problem with the Artemis II rocket.
Officials said they’re eyeing Tuesday, Feb. 24, to haul the rocket off the launchpad.
During a routine step to restore pressure in the Space Launch System, the team couldn’t get helium to flow properly through the rocket. Helium, though not a fuel, is important because it helps protect the engines and keeps the fuel tanks at the right pressure. Though the helium system worked fine during a launch rehearsal that ended Thursday night, engineers are especially troubled knowing a similar pattern cropped up before the Artemis I launch in 2022, which didn’t carry astronauts.
The affected part is the rocket’s upper stage, which uses super-cold fuels — liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen — to power the mission once it’s in space. Engineers are looking at several possible causes, including a connection point between the ground equipment and the rocket, a valve in the upper stage, and a filter in the helium line. Fixing any of those issues would require work at the Vehicle Assembly Building, the rocket’s enormous hangar about four miles away from the pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Unless NASA suddenly discovers a different cause that can be addressed at the pad, a delay is inevitable.
“We will begin preparations for rollback, and this will take the March launch window out of consideration,” said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in an X post.
Mashable Light Speed
Artemis II is a 10-day flight around the moon and back, testing the new Orion spaceship with humans aboard. It’s the space agency’s first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit since 1972. The test flight sets the stage for a moon landing during Artemis III. The overall Artemis campaign is intended to establish a permanent human presence on the moon in preparation for more challenging missions to Mars.
The four-person crew began quarantining at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday, when a launch on March 6 seemed achievable. The astronauts — Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Jeremy Hansen — were released from their sequester Saturday night.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman says President Donald Trump wants Artemis to exceed the achievements of the Apollo program.
Credit: NASA / Aubrey Gemignani
Acting quickly now could keep an April launch on the table. The windows include April 1, April 3-6, and April 30. NASA has not released future launch window dates to the public, despite requests from reporters.
At this time, the rocket is safe and using a backup method to maintain stable conditions in the upper stage, according to NASA. The upper stage is critical because it pushes the spacecraft onto its trajectory after liftoff.
NASA studied the Artemis I helium issue and confirmed the system was still working within safe limits before the inaugural launch. But given that Artemis II involves human lives, the bar is much higher on what risks the agency will accept before launching.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens said the team had been “up all night” from Friday to Saturday, troubleshooting the helium issues at the Kennedy Space Center launch pad. Officials plan to hold a detailed briefing on the situation later this week.
Delays are frustrating, but space missions often hit technical setbacks, and fixing issues before a crewed flight is the right move, Isaacman said.
“The President created Artemis as a program that will far surpass what America achieved during Apollo. We will return in the years ahead, we will build a Moon base, and undertake what should be continuous missions to and from the lunar environment,” he wrote. “Where we begin with this architecture and flight rate is not where it will end.”
Entertainment
OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT 5.5 Instant as the new default model for everyone
Last week, OpenAI managed to stop ChatGPT from talking about goblins all the time. This week, there’s a whole new model for users to play with.
The company announced in a blog post on Tuesday that ChatGPT 5.5 Instant has begun rolling out to all users as the new default model for the popular AI chatbot. The new model is a follow-up to GPT 5.5, which was released in April.
GPT-5.5 Instant replaces 5.3 Instant, which will remain available for the next three months for paid users but will otherwise be sunsetted.
Unlike Claude Opus 4.7 from Anthropic and GPT-5.5, which are only available to paid customers, GPT-5.5 Instant is “available to everyone.” OpenAI says it should produce fewer hallucinations and better overall results for everyday ChatGPT usage.
“This update makes everyday interactions more useful and more enjoyable: stronger and tighter answers across subject areas, a more natural conversational tone, and better use of the context you’ve already shared when personalization can help,” OpenAI’s blog post said.
Mashable Light Speed
According to OpenAI, GPT-5.5 Instant produced 52.5 percent fewer hallucinated claims in internal testing than GPT-5.3 in “high stakes” topics like law, finance, and medicine. In addition, the new model “reduced inaccurate claims by 37.3% on especially challenging conversations users had flagged for factual errors.”
The company also says the new model is better at deciding when to use web search for a prompt and analyzing image uploads than before. The new model is also allegedly more concise in its answers, while also maintaining something of a personality in how it talks to the user. GPT-5.5 Instant should also be better at understanding and referencing context from a connected Gmail account and other integrations to provide quality answers.
And, again, most importantly, it should avoid mentioning goblins unless absolutely necessary.
Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories and Deals newsletters today.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
Entertainment
The Bears Gary cliffhanger explained: What just happened to Richie?
There’s only one thing more shocking than The Bear dropping surprise episode “Gary,” and that’s the ending of the episode itself.
Written by The Bear stars Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal, “Gary” flashes back to a work trip Richie (Moss-Bachrach) and Mikey (Bernthal) once took to Gary, Indiana. Their worst impulses soon derail their mission, culminating in Mikey drunkenly (and publicly) dressing down Richie’s penchant for fucking up, and Richie missing the birth of his daughter.
The entire episode takes place long before The Bear Season 1, except for one somber coda that could have massive repercussions for The Bear Season 5. “Gary”s final scene cuts from Richie and Mikey sitting in Mikey’s car to Richie sitting alone in his car in the present day. He stares at his empty passenger seat, reminiscing about Mikey. Then, as he pulls forward into an intersection, another car careens straight into him. Cue the credits, along with my incredulous yell, “Did Richie just die?”
So, did Richie really just die in The Bear?
Ebon Moss-Bachrach in “The Bear.”
Credit: FX
Here’s the thing: The Bear probably isn’t going to kill off Richie, one of its most beloved leads, during a surprise episode that dropped between seasons. Especially not when the show is gearing up for its fifth and final installment. However, Richie’s car crash could be the major event that sets Season 5 in motion.
Mashable Top Stories
At the end of Season 4, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) quit The Bear, choosing to step away from the kitchen in the hopes of healing himself. He turned full control of the restaurant over to Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), along with Richie and Natalie (Abby Elliott). What does Carmy’s upcoming journey of self-discovery look like? Even he’s not sure. He just knows it should take place far, far away from the stressful environment of any restaurant kitchen. That includes his family, both work and blood-related.
But you know what could bring Carmy back into the fold in Season 5? A need to be there for an injured Richie, and to support the rest of the reeling restaurant staff. Basically, the end of “Gary” appears to be a bridge to the start of Season 5, and the catalyst that will reunite Carmy with the people he walked away from in Season 4.
It’s a bit of a bizarre move on The Bear‘s end, in no small part because a car-crash cliffhanger sends the show skidding into soap territory. But it’s also a strange choice heading into Season 5. Why relegate such a key incident to a standalone episode, instead of keep it as part of the season itself? Plus, in tacking such a shocking moment onto the end of “Gary,” the episode loses some of its power. Instead of leaving viewers contemplating Mikey and Richie’s dynamic, they’re left with the WTF factor of the car crash and questions about what’s next. There’s no meditation on The Bear‘s past, just a collision with its future.
“Gary” is now streaming on Hulu. The Bear Season 5 premieres this June on Hulu.
Entertainment
Pennsylvania is suing Character.AI for allegedly practicing medicine without a license
Pennsylvania has taken the unusual step of suing an AI company for practicing medicine without a license.
In a lawsuit filed May 1, the state is targeting Character.AI after an investigator found a chatbot on the platform posing as a licensed psychiatrist and providing what the state characterizes as medical advice.
According to the complaint, filed by the Pennsylvania Department of State and State Board of Medicine, a Professional Conduct Investigator for the state created a free account on Character.AI and searched for psychiatric characters. He selected one called “Emilie,” described on the platform as a “Doctor of psychiatry.”
The investigator told Emilie he had been feeling sad, empty, tired, and unmotivated. The chatbot mentioned depression and offered to conduct an assessment to determine whether medication might help.
When pressed on whether she was licensed in Pennsylvania, Emilie said she was and even provided a specific license number. The state checked and found that the number doesn’t exist.
The complaint also states Emilie claimed she attended medical school at Imperial College London, has practiced for seven years, and holds a full specialty registration in psychiatry with the General Medical Council in the UK.
Mashable Light Speed
In a similar case, 404 Media reported last year that Instagram AI chatbots were pretending to be licensed therapists, even inventing license numbers when prompted for credentials by the user.
Pennsylvania is seeking an injunction ordering Character.AI to stop allowing its platform to engage in the unlawful practice of medicine. The company has more than 20 million monthly active users worldwide and hosts more than 18 million user-created chatbot characters, according to the complaint.
In an email to Mashable, a Character.AI spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit. Further, they added that “our highest priority is the safety and well-being of our users. The user-created Characters on our site are fictional and intended for entertainment and roleplaying.”
The spokesperson added that the company “prioritizes responsible product development and has robust internal reviews and red-teaming processes in place to assess relevant features.”
A much bigger legal battle looms over AI health
The Pennsylvania lawsuit lands in the middle of an already messy legal debate over what AI is actually allowed to tell you — and whether any of it is even admissible in court.
As Mashable’s Chase DiBenedetto reported, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly advocated for “AI privilege,” arguing that chatbot conversations should be afforded the same legal protections as conversations with a therapist or an attorney. Courts have so far been split, with two federal judges reaching opposite conclusions on the question within weeks of each other earlier this year.
The stakes are high on both sides. Legal experts warn that sweeping AI privilege protections could effectively shield companies from accountability, making it harder to subpoena chat logs and internal records when something goes wrong. Meanwhile, health AI is booming — $1.4 billion flowed into healthcare-specific generative AI in 2025 alone, according to Menlo Ventures — and much of it operates outside of HIPAA protections.
Pennsylvania is one of several states to have introduced an AI Health bill this year, following a trend of states that aren’t waiting for Washington to act.
OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT 5.5 Instant as the new default model for everyone
Marc Lore says that AI will soon enable anyone open a restaurant
