Aerial drones are giving scientists a new view of life at sea. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath of the disaster, whale scientist Iain Kerr traveled to the area to…
Conversational AI from your phone cast to your car should be about to get better. Google’s platform for casting audio and navigation apps from a smartphone to a car’s infotainment system beat Apple’s to market by a good while, but that head start has not always kept Android Auto…
Google’s new image-generator model is available to try globally today. Google’s meme-friendly Nano Banana image-generation model is getting an upgrade. The new Nano Banana Pro is rolling out with improved reasoning and instruction following, giving users the ability to create more accurate images with legible text and make precise…
A simple proposal on a 1982 electronic bulletin board helped sarcasm flourish online. On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer science research assistant professor Scott Fahlman posted a message to the university’s bulletin board software that would later come to shape how people communicate online. His proposal: use…
The splatter master was more clumsy than graceful in his movements, which are key to his distinctive style. Not everyone appreciates the artistry of Jackson Pollock’s famous drip paintings, with some dismissing them as something any child could create. While Pollock’s work is undeniably more sophisticated than that, it…
A rundown of what we know of the third extrasolar object we’ve identified. Since early July, telescopes around the world have been tracking just our third confirmed interstellar visitor, the comet 3I/ATLAS—3I, for third interstellar, and ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) for the telescope network that first spotted…
“I worry this is the big botnet flexing,” CEO said. But outage was self-inflicted. When a Cloudflare outage disrupted large numbers of websites and online services yesterday, the company initially thought it was hit by a “hyper-scale” DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack. “I worry this is the big botnet flexing,”…
Integration of Copilot Actions into Windows is off by default, but for how long? Microsoft’s warning on Tuesday that an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows can infect devices and pilfer sensitive user data has set off a familiar response from security-minded critics: Why is Big Tech so intent…
Apple’s in-house Wi-Fi chip doesn’t set records, but it’s a reliable performer. This year’s newest iPhones included one momentous change that marked a new phase in the evolution of Apple Silicon: the Apple N1, Apple’s first in-house chip made to handle local wireless connections. The N1 supports Wi-Fi 7,…
The gaming community mourns a beloved mentor and LGBTQ+ advocate with a storied career. On Monday, veteran game developer Rebecca Ann Heineman died in Rockwall, Texas, at age 62 after a battle with adenocarcinoma. Apogee founder Scott Miller first shared the news publicly on social media, and her son…
