A recent conference sees doubts raised about the age of the oldest signs of life. The question of when life began on Earth is as old as human culture. “It’s one of these fundamental human questions: When did life appear on Earth?” said Professor Martin Whitehouse of the Swedish…
An encryption algorithm can have weaknesses that could allow an attacker to listen in. Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure–as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world–that made any…
It was tested for its ability to adhere to the inside of the digestive tract. Most adhesives can’t stick to wet surfaces because water and other fluids disrupt the adhesive’s bonding mechanisms. This problem, though, has been beautifully solved by evolution in remora suckerfish, which use an adhesive disk…
The biomechanics of dinosaur skulls say T. rex was the king of bite force. When a Spinosaurus attacked a T. rex in Jurassic Park III, both giant carnivores tried to finish the fight with one powerful bite of their bone-crushing jaws. The Spinosaurus won, because when the movie was…
In Colombia, the parasites were caught expanding into endangered wild mountain tapirs. Texas is gearing up for war as a savage, flesh-eating fly appears poised for a US invasion and is expanding its range of victims. On Friday, the Texas Department of Agriculture announced the debut of TDA Swormlure,…
It’s unclear exactly how GPT-5’s new approach to model-switching will work here. OpenAI’s GPT-5 model went live for most ChatGPT users this week, but lots of people use ChatGPT not through OpenAI’s interface but through other platforms or tools. One of the largest deployments is iOS, the iPhone operating…
Most companies downsizing office space say it’s because of hybrid work. Companies are monitoring whether employees adhere to corporate return-to-office (RTO) policies and are enforcing the requirements more than they have in the past five years, according to a report that commercial real estate firm CBRE will release next…
Running JavaScript from inside an image? What could possibly go wrong? Dozens of porn sites are turning to a familiar source to generate likes on Facebook—malware that causes browsers to surreptitiously endorse the sites. This time, the sites are using a newer vehicle for sowing this malware—.svg image files.…
“I want my GPT-4o back and I’ll do anything to get it.” After months of hype and anticipation, OpenAI released its new GPT-5 model family this week. Promising massive upgrades across the board, the company is already working to roll out the new AI to everyone. Some dedicated ChatGPT…
Well, that’s one way to exit beta. Bad news if you’re one of the handful of people using Steam to play games on a Chromebook: Google and Valve are preparing to end support for the still-in-beta ChromeOS version of Steam on January 1, 2026, according to 9to5Google. Steam can…
