SpaceX was more than lucky Friday, sending its 13th full-scale Starship test flight halfway around the world from South Texas to an on-target, intact splashdown in a remote section of the Indian Ocean. Starship has… Read more: SpaceX eyes tower catch for next Starship after auspicious end to 13th flight

Traditionally, books have been good for two things: reading, and looking nice on a shelf. But AI companies are interested in neither. To those building large language models, books are nothing more than fodder to… Read more: AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale

A new analysis suggests the Sun holds far more silver than earlier estimates indicated. More advanced models of the solar atmosphere raised the calculated amount by 55 percent, bringing it into much closer agreement with… Read more: Scientists discover the Sun contains 55% more silver than expected

Scientists have uncovered new evidence that Venus may still be tearing itself apart from within. Advanced 3D simulations indicate that some of the planet’s giant rift valleys formed relatively recently and could still be expanding.… Read more: Venus may be tearing itself apart from within

Newer oral drugs related to semaglutide medications such as Ozempic reduced pleasure-driven eating in mice by quieting a deep brain reward circuit. The finding could open new avenues for understanding food cravings and potentially treating… Read more: Oral GLP-1 drugs may quiet the brain’s food craving circuit

Cosmic expansion allows distant galaxies to move away faster than light, while still letting us see ancient light they emitted when they were much closer. Eventually, accelerating expansion will push nearly every galaxy beyond our… Read more: The Universe can outrun light without breaking Einstein’s rules

Recycling, greener diets, and other personal climate choices do not seem to distract people from supporting major environmental reforms. A four-year study of nearly 2,800 Australians found that these habits neither increased nor reduced later… Read more: Scientists put the “recycling is a distraction” claim to the test

AI is upending the way voters take part in the democratic process. The worst part? You might not even know you’ve been affected. In the county of St. Charles, Missouri, a race for county executive… Read more: Voters Are Being Inundated by a Barrage of AI-Generated Election Ads

It’s become strangely difficult to attend a work meeting without the presence of an AI recording tool that’s carefully jotting down what every single participant is saying. Some people in tech circles are taking the… Read more: People Are Starting to Record Every Conversation They Have Without Disclosing It, and It’s Gross

In the final weeks before Romania’s presidential vote in November 2024, TikTok accounts that had previously spent years posting about manicures or fashion suddenly started promoting a little-known politician named Calin Georgescu. His posts, espousing… Read more: Big Tech accused of stonewalling European social media researchers

Giovanni Kanter goes to at least one art museum whenever he visits a new city. That’s on top of his regular exploration of galleries in New York, where the 25-year-old ICU nurse lives and studies.… Read more: With help from data, art museums are reframing the visitor experience

Artificial intelligence may not deliver on its promise of vast economic opportunity at a price that humanity is willing to pay In March, Anthropic, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence business that gave us the chatbot Claude,… Read more: The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon

Meta is testing an app that uses AI to automate bedtime stories for children. The future is here, folks — and boy, is it depressing. The app, first caught by 9to5Mac, is called “StoryKit.” (It’s not… Read more: Meta Working on Crushingly Sad AI App That Tells Bedtime Stories to Children, for “Tired” Parents

By now, it should be pretty clear that the corporate executives of the world aren’t exactly into AI because they think it’ll cure cancer. They’re making a different calculation, motivated by simple economics: pretty soon,… Read more: New Parody Site Threatens to Replace CEOs With AI for Tiny Fraction of Their Bloated Salaries

Plus: Russian hackers are trying to steal US nuclear scientists’ emails, the State Department bans known scammers from entering the United States, and more.

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that spoke in tongues, sought forbidden love, orbited an orbiter, and performed ritual magic. First, scientists have uncovered a “golden age” of languages that… Read more: Scientists Uncover Lost ‘Golden Age’ of Languages That Ended 1,000 Years Ago

Who could’ve guessed that students who use AI to cheat on their assignments are incredibly lazy? Jason Gibson, a history professor at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, says that he used white font to hide… Read more: Professor Hides White Font in Midterm, Catches Students Using AI in the Stupidest Way Possible

Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did… Read more: ‘I thought, I’ve tried everything else, why not give AI a shot?’: the long-lost family reunited by ChatGPT

Paramount Skydance agreed to a longer-term delay of its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, preventing the companies from combining until after a judge rules on the merits of a case in which a… Read more: Paramount/WBD merger delayed for months as states’ lawsuit moves toward trial

A fast-moving wildfire, one of many raging across Spain, bore down on the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex on Friday, forcing an evacuation and temporarily suspending operations at one of NASA’s most important tracking stations.… Read more: Wildfire forces evacuation of NASA’s Deep Space Network complex in Spain

Roku is raising the prices for its streaming sticks and boxes by up to 60 percent. Roku has updated its website with the new prices. Currently, it is still selling its streaming players at their… Read more: Roku raises streaming stick prices by up to 60 percent

Today, Anthropic rolled out Opus 5, the newest update for the model that has recently become a popular choice for coding and other software development tasks, among other things. While this is a noteworthy bump… Read more: Anthropic’s Opus 5 is about token efficiency, not a capability leap

Anyone who has used the Internet in recent years is probably used to encountering telltale signs of LLM prompting that lazy users sometimes forget to remove from their AI-generated pabulum. But a Canadian legislator took… Read more: Canadian legislator reads out apparent LLM response in floor speech

For years, the conventional wisdom for ambitious students and languishing jobseekers alike was “learn to code.” Do that, the ubiquitous advice went, and you’d be able to find yourself a six-figure job anywhere. But in… Read more: Computer Science Enrollment Now Declining Under Dark Cloud of AI

Nearly 200 U.S. startups are urging the Trump administration to avoid broad restrictions on Chinese open-weight AI models, arguing a ban would increase costs and hurt innovation. The post Hundreds of AI Startups Are Pushing… Read more: Hundreds of AI Startups Are Pushing Back Against Washington

Nvidia’s $1.5 billion Amkor deal will expand US AI chip packaging capacity and could help ease a growing semiconductor supply bottleneck. The post Nvidia Signs $1.5B Deal to Expand US AI Chip Packaging appeared first… Read more: Nvidia Signs $1.5B Deal to Expand US AI Chip Packaging

A couple of decades after the discovery of systems that could selectively target DNA, we’re starting to see the first therapies based on gene editing. One challenge these developments have faced is safety. While we… Read more: Team uses AlphaFold AI to redesign gene-editing proteins to make them safer

The European Union has begun delaying the release of satellite images showing shipping lanes near the Strait of Hormuz by 24 hours. The move comes in response to an earlier US government request and coincides… Read more: European Union grants US request to restrict satellite images of Iran War region

After criticism from a federal judge, the Department of Justice yesterday withdrew demands for phone records and grand jury testimony from New York Times reporters who wrote about security concerns related to the Air Force… Read more: Judge rebuffs Trump admin demand for phone records from NYT reporters

AI chatbots and politicians who aren’t even pretending to try anymore are a match made in heaven. Exhibit A: Canadian lawmaker Bill Oliver, who made a strange, cyborgian digression in a speech addressing the New… Read more: Braindead Politician Accidentally Reads AI Slop That Someone Left in His Speech: “Here’s a More Natural, Flowing Version of That Section That Reads Like a Legislative Speech”

In a widely expected move, a committee organized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has voted to endorse removing restrictions on the manufacture of peptides for human use. Thursday’s panel meeting saw a sharply… Read more: RFK Jr.’s hand-picked committee approves manufacture of peptides he uses

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss astrology, Flock on the brain, The Odyssey,… Read more: Behind the Blog: No Spoilers

On this episode of Uncanny Valley, we dive into accusations that China’s Moonshot AI stole from  Anthropic, and how the US Army needs to cut back on AI use.

Amap, Alibaba’s location-based services platform, has released a full-stack upgrade to its ABot embodied AI system, introducing ABot-N1, ABot-M0.5, ABot-ER, ABot-AgentOS and ABot-C0 to address key bottlenecks in embodied intelligence — AI systems that enable… Read more: Alibaba’s Amap Launches Full-Stack ABot Upgrade for Embodied AI Robots

New integrations combine network and endpoint telemetry to streamline investigations, improve threat detection and accelerate response Cato Networks, the converged network and security cloud for the AI era, today announced a collaboration with CrowdStrike to integrate the Cato SASE… Read more: Cato Networks, CrowdStrike Partner on Unified Security Operations

A study of over 1,000 large enterprises reveals only 17% of companies are proving clear AI ROI, and what it takes for everyone else to catch up A new study finds that companies deploying AI… Read more: Zip Study Finds Deep AI Investment Delivers 6x ROI

Microsoft customers worldwide can now discover and deploy Darrow through Microsoft Marketplace, accessing trusted solutions that accelerate innovation and business transformation with unified integration across Microsoft products Darrow announces the availability of Privacy Radar in the… Read more: Darrow Announced Availability in the Microsoft Marketplace

A monthly security-only, stability-first cadence delivers speed without the regression risk Azul, the trusted leader in enterprise Java for today’s AI and cloud-first world, today announced that it will deliver monthly Critical Security Patch Updates… Read more: Azul to Deliver Monthly Java Security Updates for LTS Versions

Two dozen companies and organisations signed an open letter urging US policymakers to protect open-weight AI models. The letter, published today (PDF), carries signatures from a list that spans direct commercial rivals and organisations with… Read more: Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, IBM, and others back open-weight AI

The report finds enterprises running mission-critical workloads on distributed PostgreSQL achieve a $15.6M net benefit and 181% ROI over three years Yugabyte, the distributed AI experts, today announced the release of a new report, From Database… Read more: Yugabyte Study Reveals Hidden Costs of Legacy Databases

Another glowing red indicator just lit up on the control panel steering the US economy: short sellers have placed a nearly unprecedented magnitude of bets against the domestic stock market. A new analysis by the… Read more: Investors Laying Groundwork to Profit Massively When Economy Collapses

The Trump administration is quietly considering a rule change that could make it easier for polluters to build facilities—including certain gas plants and diesel generators that power data centers—with little to no notice to the… Read more: AI firms want more data centers; Trump’s EPA may give neighbors less say

Welcome to Edition 9.04 of the Rocket Report! We’ve had to wait an extra week for SpaceX to get its 13th Starship test flight off the ground. A last-second abort on July 16 led engineers… Read more: Rocket Report: Lightning strikes in China; Starship launch on deck

A spacecraft fitted with two flexible robotic arms is on the way to geosynchronous orbit after launching earlier this week on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a planned decade-long mission to open new… Read more: This is the world’s most advanced robotic servicing satellite—that we know about

OpenAI is deploying a Health feature inside ChatGPT, giving users the option to connect Apple Health data and medical records to the chatbot. Logged-in users aged 18 and older can access it now on web… Read more: OpenAI pushes ChatGPT into patient health records

Meta has launched a new AI campaign featuring CEO Mark Zuckerberg, positioning artificial intelligence as a tool for creativity, connection, and human potential ahead of earnings. The post Zuckerberg Wants to Change How You Think… Read more: Zuckerberg Wants to Change How You Think About AI

1Password just gave Claude access to Australian logins without the passwords — right as Canberra moves toward mandatory AI rules. The post Could Australia’s AI Rules Challenge AI Agents That Can Log In? appeared first… Read more: Could Australia’s AI Rules Challenge AI Agents That Can Log In?

The AI “startups” worth billions of dollars are raising alarm bells about Chinese AI. The smaller players have a totally different take.

It’s no bedtime story See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here Continue reading…

Fossils discovered in Japan more than two decades ago have finally been identified as a new genus and species of giant salamander. Limnospondylus ajimuensis lived around 3.5 million years ago in a warmer, wetter Kyushu… Read more: New giant salamander species discovered in 3.5-million-year-old fossils

The longevity-linked APOE2 gene appears to protect brain cells by reducing DNA damage and helping neurons recover from stress. The finding could open a new path toward treatments that mimic APOE2’s defenses in people at… Read more: APOE2 may protect the brain from Alzheimer’s and aging

A newly identified fossil ape from northern Egypt is reshaping ideas about where the ancestors of modern apes first emerged. Analyses place it closer to living apes than any known East African species of the… Read more: Ancient ape fossil in Egypt challenges the story of human origins

China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter captured a faint but remarkable view of 3I/ATLAS as the interstellar comet raced past Mars. The images reveal its tail and glowing coma, offering scientists a glimpse of material born beyond our… Read more: China’s Tianwen-1 captures interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS near Mars

Sweden could become an important source of rare earth elements needed for magnets and green technologies. Instead of extracting one target metal, researchers are cataloging everything contained in Swedish mineral deposits. They will then develop… Read more: Sweden’s hidden rare earth deposits could help break China’s grip

AI agent workloads can vary dramatically in token use, making cloud costs difficult to forecast. New research shows why IT and finance teams need workflow-level controls. The post AI Agent Cloud Costs Are Making Enterprise… Read more: AI Agent Cloud Costs Are Making Enterprise Budgets Harder to Predict

Stanford Medicine researchers have discovered a naturally occurring molecule that may suppress appetite and reduce body weight much like Ozempic, but without several of its common side effects. The molecule, called BRP, acts on a… Read more: AI helps Stanford scientists discover “natural Ozempic” without the usual side effects

Robots slithered like snakes into the rubble of collapsed buildings to search for trapped survivors in the aftermath of Venezuela’s double earthquake disaster. The so-called snake robots represented a unique technological aid for international search… Read more: Robot snakes searched for Venezuela earthquake survivors in collapsed buildings

An incident in which an autonomous OpenAI agent hacked a startup either confirms that the end is nigh – or that the product is just amazingly sophisticated Throughout history, many things have been seen by… Read more: When is an apology not an apology? When it comes from an AI boss with an out-of-control chatbot | Marina Hyde

As fears of a bursting AI bubble reach new heights, Google has emerged as arguably one of the best yard sticks available to measure investor sentiment around AI. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, released its quarterly… Read more: Google’s Profits Look a Little Terrifying Under the Hood

If OpenAI loudly proclaims how dangerous AI is, investors will hear how powerful it is. And who benefits from that? On 14 February 2019, OpenAI announced a language model called GPT-2, the precursor to the… Read more: Be skeptical of OpenAI’s rogue hacker agent story | John Thickstun

Sometimes, what matters isn’t your output but what you put into the process. Think of it like work v the gym I teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at… Read more: Should you use AI for a task? Here’s a simple way to decide | Bruce Schneier

“I think it should stand for artificial idiot,” one 9-year-old says. Here’s why kids of all ages are calling AI “disgusting” and “creepy.”

The newest way to buy enterprise AI agents from OpenAI does not involve buying anything online. OpenAI Presence, announced on July 22, is a managed product delivered through a limited general availability programme, and the company states… Read more: OpenAI Presence sells enterprise AI agents with engineers attached

EdgeSites delivers operational AI infrastructure in existing powered buildings — factory-built data center modules, waterless cooling, and ready in months without new construction or grid interconnection required. Infinium Edge today announced Infinium EdgeSites, a development program… Read more: Infinium Edge Announced the Launch of EdgeSites™

For nuclear to be considered as a viable clean energy source, it has to be competitively priced and economical to produce.  Lauren Fortier, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering… Read more: Working to automate nuclear plant operations

A judge caught a court reporter making AI-generated errors in a court transcript, and put stenographers everywhere on notice for their use of AI.  In a memorandum decision concerning a case about a man who… Read more: A Stenographer Submitted AI-Generated Errors in Official Court Transcript, Judge Says

Reddit’s reported review of its Google AI partnership highlights growing publisher concerns that AI-powered search is changing the economics of web traffic. The post Reddit Rethinks Google AI Partnership as AI Search Reshapes Publishing appeared… Read more: Reddit Rethinks Google AI Partnership as AI Search Reshapes Publishing

A proposed law called the AI Kill Switch Act would let US government officials order the shutdown of AI systems “that can cause catastrophic harm,” the bill’s sponsors said today. If approved by Congress, the… Read more: AI Kill Switch Act would let Trump admin order shutdown of rogue AI systems

Getting locked out of an account is no fun. Google has a few ways to help you regain access if you happen to forget your password or lose an authenticator, including recovery contacts and backup… Read more: Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie.

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday that it’s investigating yet another outbreak of Cyclospora, the unicellular foodborne parasite behind a nationwide surge in explosive watery diarrhea illnesses. The FDA said 72 cases have… Read more: FDA reports new outbreak of explosive diarrhea with 72 cases identified

After the Los Angeles Police Department allowed its contract with Flock to expire, the surveillance company’s CEO, Garrett Langley, told local news that people don’t understand how its technology works, and that its automated license… Read more: Flock’s CEO Says its ALPRs Don’t Do Video After Repeatedly Announcing They Can

LG is reportedly pulling a McAfee pop-up ad from a controversial app that some of its monitors have stealthily installed on connected computers. An example of the pop-up ad is seen in a still from… Read more: Microsoft responds to LG monitors installing McAfee ads on Windows

ridvan_celik/Getty This week, the Victorian government announced it will act to protect workers from “inappropriate and unfair uses” of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. This will include introducing new laws to ensure AI hiring… Read more: Why clearer rules on using AI in hiring would be a win for bosses too

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has been a key player in the current wave of consumer artificial intelligence (AI) flooding the world. But so far it has all been software behind a screen. Last week,… Read more: AI companies are trying to escape the screen. Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI shows how hard it will be

Publishers have watched in horror as Google continues to double down on AI features that discourage users from actually clicking on links — a once-steady source of readership that’s causing a crisis in the media… Read more: Google’s Immense Greed Is Destroying the Open Web

‘Ratepayer Protection Pledge’ president has touted is non-binding as people continue to struggle with rising bills Donald Trump has announced that some 200 entities have signed onto his non-binding “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” expanding a voluntary… Read more: Trump says nearly 200 firms have signed pledge to protect Americans from costs arising from datacenters

Meta is reportedly developing Switchboard, an internal AI router designed to send simpler tasks to cheaper models and reduce rising token costs. The post Meta Develops Switchboard to Route Simpler AI Tasks to Cheaper Models… Read more: Meta Develops Switchboard to Route Simpler AI Tasks to Cheaper Models

Samsung is reportedly weighing a €1 billion investment in Mistral, giving the French AI lab a possible €20 billion valuation as Europe pushes sovereign AI. The post Samsung Reportedly Weighs €1B Mistral AI Investment appeared… Read more: Samsung Reportedly Weighs €1B Mistral AI Investment

Alphabet says Gemini now has 950 million monthly active users as AI drives Google Cloud growth and brings the chatbot closer to the scale of ChatGPT. The post Google Says Gemini Reaches 950 Million Monthly… Read more: Google Says Gemini Reaches 950 Million Monthly Users as AI Growth Accelerates

Google has reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2026 (PDF), and as usual, the search giant raked in an unfathomable amount of money. Google saw total revenue of $119.8 billion, beating analyst… Read more: Google just had its first negative cash flow quarter due to massive AI spending

Many gamers have been lamenting Sony’s recently announced decision to halt sales of physical game discs in 2028. However, new data revealed by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlights how years of stark economic trends helped… Read more: Sony’s decision to ditch discs was practically inevitable, data shows

On Thursday, Google became the third tech giant slapped with massive Digital Markets Act (DMA) fines, ordered to pay more than $1 billion for two serious violations that the European Commission (EC) found went unchecked… Read more: Google hit with $1 billion in fines as EU braces for Trump battle

A 63-year-old woman arrived at a hospital in pain. She had abruptly lost vision in her right eye. As doctors got to work, the series of findings that followed revealed not just bad news for… Read more: A woman got a UTI. Two years later, the bacteria had evolved, invaded her brain.

San Diego Comic-Con has kicked off strong, and we’ve got a couple of new trailers to show for it: the final trailer for Coyote vs. Acme, and the full trailer for director Zach Cregger’s fresh… Read more: Final Coyote vs. Acme trailer drops at SDCC

The clip features the David Bowie track “Five Years,” which includes lyrics such as “Earth was really dying (dying).”

For director Neill Blomkamp, “District 9” must feel like an eternity ago. The 2009 sci-fi action film used a quasi-documentary style to tell a thrilling tale of a man fighting for survival against government-backed mercenaries… Read more: Neill Blomkamp Is Making It Look Like AI Is the Last Resort for Filmmakers With Failing Careers

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Chris O’Shea defends Centrica’s plans as it reports rise in retail profits despite falling customer numbers The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal… Read more: ‘Customers prefer AI chatbots to humans’ says British Gas boss as 1,300 call centre staff axed

This image depicts an idea from the counterexample to the unit distance conjecture — a mathematical problem posed in 1946 and solved in 2026 by generative AI. (Trefor Bazett) In May 2026, OpenAI released a… Read more: A new ‘golden age’ of mathematics may be dawning — thanks to AI and human ingenuity

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman earlier this month endorsed the characterisation of its latest model as a rottweiler “who will grab the problem by the throat and not let go until it is done The… Read more: AI arms race in line for a reckoning after OpenAI hacking incident

Patreon laid off 93 employees, totaling 20 percent of its workforce on Thursday morning, according to an email to creators and staff from CEO Jack Conte. In a message sent to everyone on the platform… Read more: Patreon Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Workforce

Billionaire in interview with the Economist admits he was too consumed by politics and shares predictions about AI Elon Musk has admitted he became too consumed by politics during his volatile alliance with Donald Trump… Read more: ‘I got carried away’: Elon Musk expresses regret about Doge and wading into Trump’s orbit

Over four months after the deadly US bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Southern Iran, which killed 120 children and dozens of teachers and parents, questions still remain over how the horror unfolded.… Read more: Trump Says Images of the Iranian Elementary School His Lackeys Obliterated Could Be “AI Generated”

A global shift toward healthier diets could sharply reduce livestock farming, free up agricultural land, and cut emissions from land-use change by 85% by 2050. At the same time, fruit, vegetable, nut, and legume production… Read more: A healthier global diet could cut farm emissions by 85%

Researchers in the Gulf of California have documented a dramatic orca behavior never described before. In two separate encounters, one orca gripped a dead sunfish by the fin while another charged into it at high… Read more: Orcas filmed smashing giant sunfish into thousands of pieces

A new benchmark out of the University of Michigan just handed six frontier AI agents a causal reasoning exam. The scores expose a gap that raw capability metrics tend to paper over. The benchmark is… Read more: The causality test that humbled six AI agents

A little over a month ago, the former American Idol contestant, country musician, and Instagram influencer Noah Orion appears to have learned about the surveillance company Flock. “Cities are now covering Flock cameras with trash… Read more: The Rise of Anti-Flock Influencers Who Make Things Up for Clout

Cisco’s new Antares models help security teams narrow vulnerable code searches locally, but low benchmark scores expose important adoption limits. The post Cisco Antares Models Bring Local AI to Vulnerability Triage appeared first on TechRepublic.

A leaked document shows the spread of surveillance and investigative capabilities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have access to agency wide, from location data harvested from smartphones, to facial recognition apps that can… Read more: Leaked Document Shows the Surveillance Tech at ICE’s Fingertips

Google is restricting Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber to select partners as CodeMender enters preview. Here’s what security teams should verify before adoption. The post Google Holds Back Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber as CodeMender Enters Preview… Read more: Google Holds Back Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber as CodeMender Enters Preview