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Tech
Industry, products, and the wires that hold it all together.
546 stories archived
Rocket Report: FAA eyes more Starbase traffic; India's Skyroot snares US customer
The pioneering reusable upper stage for Stoke Space's Nova rocket ships out for testing.
‘We should all be worried’: calls grow to limit London rollout of robotaxis
Protest planned at Wayve HQ as Uber drivers fear for their future and city’s politicians demand TfL should have power over licences For passengers in Britain who want to try the latest ride, robotaxis are eagerly awaited: more than 100,000 are on Uber’s waitlist in London after the first UK services started in September. Others view them with trepidation. “I think we should all be worried,” said Florentina Ghiuzan, an Uber driver from Essex. “I was shocked TfL approved it so soon . I knew change would come. But I thought it would come with a solution for us.” Continue reading...
Blue Origin is going all in on the New Glenn rocket
The infrastructure is designed to support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.
Googlebook review: Android on a laptop is still Android
Android laptops are here, but Google has a lot of work ahead to make them good.
Penguin Colony review – an Antarctic odyssey of Nazis and Lovecraftian horrors
PC; Origame Digital This odd but absorbing adventure sends you waddling across Antarctica in search of an eldritch entity – uncovering a world far stranger than it first appears A Nazi kneels down on frozen snow, staring at an endless Antarctic horizon. Another holds a gun to his head, ready to end his own life. I direct a small waddling penguin up to them, trying to imagine what it could be thinking. Dismay, perhaps. Likely bewilderment. But then a faint smile seems to break out across its beaky face, as if amused by these silly humans and their misguided belief that they could ever best this howling, harsh landscape. For most games, the idea of playing as a penguin observing Nazis losing the plot near the south pole would be weird enough. But Penguin Colony, developed by Origame Digital, pushes further. This is an audacious, frequently brilliant retelling of HP Lovecraft’s 1936 novella At the Mountains of Madness, in which eldritch horrors are just as common as Nazis. Further weirdness abounds: the many collectibles scattered about this place are not shiny gold objects à la Super Mario or Sonic. Rather, they are words. So tottering about as a semiaquatic bird, you have a unique mission: collect human language. Continue reading...
Computers Made of Human Brain Tissue Identify Braille Letters In Breakthrough
Scientists discovered that human brain organoids, which are small neural clusters derived from stem cells, could identify the Braille alphabet with a high degree of accuracy.
Meta releases Muse Spark Open, a new ‘open-weight’ AI model
Meta says Muse excels at ‘multi-step reasoning’ and ‘complex software engineering’ as it races to catch up to Chinese rivals Meta on Thursday launched a new open-weight AI model which it claims rivals, and in some cases outperforms, similar products from leading Chinese developers. Muse Spark Open “is the most capable US open-weight model to date,” Meta’s chief of AI Alexandr Wang wrote on X. Continue reading...
KDE turns 30 with Plasma 6.8, remote upgrades, and an X11 farewell
KDE celebrates 30 years with a new Plasma release, a farewell to X11, and a movie.
Plex now helps sell movie theater tickets
Discovery data from Plex users will help studios, advertisers.
Hegseth’s dubious low-T screening may flag up to 25 percent of the Army
Medical experts explicitly recommend against blanket screenings.
Targeted ads delivered 0-click exploits to install mercenary malware
The incident is likely 1st confirmation of mercenary spyware delivered by targeted ads.
Above the 911? Porsche previews a new mid-engined supercar.
Porsche’s turnaround plan for 2035 involves less volume but more expensive cars.
What did the Liberty Bell sound like? Science is on the case.
Researchers hunted for clues in modal analysis of 20th-century replica bell at Penn State Behrend.
Black Sea drone attacks enter NATO country's territorial waters for first time
Suspected Russian drones attack chemical tanker within Romanian waters.
Microplastics in water aren’t inert and make damaging chemicals on their own
Its effect on people remains an ongoing question.
Nidal Hasan’s Public Execution Is Off, But Propagandists Are Still Using Him as a Martyr
News that the Pentagon would livestream the killer’s execution turned him into a celebrity in Islamist and extremist circles.
Trump cancels Pentagon plans to livestream firing squad execution
8 in 10 Americans opposed the Pentagon's plans, a Thursday poll showed.
Rocket Lab announces another delay for its medium-lift Neutron rocket
Rocket Lab announced the Neutron rocket in 2021, aiming for a first flight in 2024.
Tell us: have you used AI to help with online dating?
From chat-up lines to social coaching, we’d like to hear from people who use AI to assist them navigating the online dating world We’d like to understand more about the different ways that people are using AI to assist with online dating. Perhaps you have used an AI assistant to help with chat-up lines? Or you may have turned to one for some social coaching? However you have used AI for online dating, we’d like to hear all about it. What worked and what didn’t? Continue reading...
Accenture Tells Employees They Can Now Spend Only $29 on Claude Per Month
Some employees who spend as much as $1,000 on Claude usage each month are scrambling to find ways to maintain access to the tool.
Video Game Reverse Engineering Community Shuts Down Because AI Has Made It Too Easy
"Historically, decompilation has been a brutally difficult, time consuming task." Now, AI is trivially doing it.
How an accelerating Earth led experts to adopt the leap hour
International delegates agree leap second no longer tenable, but first leap hour not likely to happen for thousands of years After decades of discussion, quibbling and worrying about clocks in computer systems, the world’s official timekeepers have voted to replace what many viewed as a tiresome correction: the leap second. It’s time, they say, for the leap hour. Delegates from 69 countries cast their votes on Thursday at a conference in France of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, which ensures the world sticks to the same standards of time, weight, distance and more. Continue reading...
From a VR gay sauna to the gothic pile that inspired Cluedo – Fierce festival storms back
Venues across Birmingham As Britain’s longest-running live art festival returns, get ready for late-night artist dinners, a show in a swimming pool and Faye Driscoll’s incredible rotating disintegration The phrase “two things can be true” is a frequent refrain in popular psychology and it’s also a frequent response, I find, to witnessing the farther reaches of live art. Hmm, is this performance confusingly self-indulgent or utterly profound? Sometimes it can be both. In fact, it’s not just two things that can be true, it’s as many things as there are people in the audience, since this is all about the live subjective experience, in the moment; presence and connection. Launched in 1998, Fierce is Britain’s longest-running live art festival. For one week it takes over Birmingham’s conventional theatres alongside unconventional spaces, especially in ex-industrial Digbeth, which is fast becoming a creative hub. Also on the bill this year: late-night artist dinners, a show in a swimming pool, and a six-hour performance jam at a grand gothic hall that was apparently the inspiration for Cluedo. Continue reading...
Report: FTC probes Anthropic, OpenAI after Trump dismissed AI fears as “hoax”
FTC may fine AI firms on par with companies that delay data breach reports.