The wildfires afflicting communities across the world can now be tracked more easily by anyone using Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service—all thanks to a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.… Read more: Europe’s free satellite service just made it easier to track wildfires

A walk down the tarmac at the National Air and Space Museum of France is guaranteed to thrill aviation enthusiasts. Several civilian and military aircraft of the past and the present are showcased in this… Read more: The ultimate eclipse chase: A Concorde raced against the Moon’s shadow

A New Mexico judge yesterday ordered Meta to pay $567 million for a fund that would alleviate the “public nuisance” created by its social media services. The order to pay for youth mental health care… Read more: Judge rules Meta caused “public nuisance” and must fund mental health treatment

Since the flesh-eating screwworm fly reinvaded Mexico in 2024, human cases of the voracious parasite have been mounting. According to a July surveillance report from Mexico’s Ministry of Health, there have been over 500 human… Read more: Flesh-eating screwworms feast on humans in Mexico; human cases top 500

Roku is giving the masses what they never asked for: an unending conveyor belt of AI slop. Those exploring the mines of the free channels that Roku has to offer — yes, there are people… Read more: Roku Unleashes 24/7 AI Slop Channel

A US-made pickup truck by 2030 is part of Volkswagen Group’s plan to revive its American business. According to a Reuters report, entering this competitive but high-margin market, as well as the large SUV segment,… Read more: Volkswagen plans to win America back with a pickup, report says

Snails are well-known for their mucus. The slime is highly valued as an anti-inflammatory and anti-aging ingredient in certain skin care products, and snails can secrete different kinds of mucus with properties tailored to specific… Read more: How snails engineer their slime

OpenAI’s upcoming smart speaker will probably cost over $300, “people familiar with the matter” have told Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The generative AI company has “discussed” charging up to $400, Bloomberg, which has been reporting on… Read more: OpenAI’s expensive smart speaker will use moving parts to seem “more alive”

It won’t come as a surprise that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) didn’t save taxpayers nearly as much as it claimed. Analysis from outside the government showed savings claims were heavily inflated, and now… Read more: DOGE’s wild, unverifiable savings claims discredited in US government report

This year is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the original Quake by id Software, if you could believe it. To commemorate that, publisher Bethesda has released a new campaign chapter for the game,… Read more: New official 30th anniversary Quake mission pack adds new maps and mechanics

When police in West Virginia’s Monongalia County arrested 20-year-old Wesley Jackson for his alleged involvement in the destruction of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) deployed by the company Flock Safety, they likely never could have… Read more: Public Offers Implausible Number of Alibis for Man Accused of Destroying Flock Cameras

Responding to an article by China’s ambassador to the UK, Prof Paul H Cleverley advocates shared openness standards, while Dr Claire Jenkins says British AI can offer a distinctive path Ambassador Zheng Zeguang rightly celebrates… Read more: China’s AI ecosystem is not as open as it claims. Nor is any other country’s | Letters

Pega’s AI-powered platform recognized for agent and app development capabilities, with Pega Blueprint excelling in workflow design Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the enterprise AI software company for mission-critical work, today announced Forrester Research named Pega a… Read more: Pega Recognized as a Leader in AI Platforms by Independent Research Firm

Residents of Fort Wayne, Indiana may have to say goodbye to over four acres of federally protected wetland — at least if Google has its way. New reporting by local publication WANE revealed that a… Read more: Google Data Center Announces Plans to Pave Over Protected Wetlands

Thousands of chatbot conversations began producing the same strange ideas about AI consciousness, identity, and “The Spiral.” Researchers still do not know exactly why. The post What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained… Read more: What Is Spiralism? The Strange AI Chatbot Movement Explained

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 Flock blogging, “rare” books, and Jesus Christ.… Read more: Behind the Blog: Rare Books and Baseball Brain

This year alone, there have been numerous known instances—often via lawsuits—of AI chatbots (most often, OpenAI’s ChatGPT) that have gone horrifically wrong. A January lawsuit described the story of a man who took his own… Read more: AI chatbots have failed people in crisis. Can that be fixed?

SolidRun, a leading developer of embedded computing and edge AI solutions, and Leopard Imaging Inc., a global leader in embedded vision and camera technology, today announced a technology collaboration to simplify and accelerate the development… Read more: SolidRun and Leopard Imaging to Accelerate Edge AI Vision Development

Every post you see, every Reel that autoplays, and every ‘Explore’ page suggestion on Instagram is now decided by its AI system. With over three billion people using it, that’s not a small detail; it’s… Read more: How AI Is changing Instagram engagement without replacing the human touch

The White House is drafting an executive order on the disproven link between vaccines and autism, according to independent reports from The Washington Post and Bloomberg, which both cited unnamed sources with knowledge of the… Read more: Report: White House drafting executive order linking vaccines and autism

2026 survey of 500 nonprofit executives finds 83% grew revenue last year, 9 in 10 say donor trust is harder to earn, and 65% rely on a single person to manage all financial operations Momentive… Read more: Momentive Software Research Reveals Nonprofit Growth Risks

In case you weren’t already feeling paranoid about how AI is shaping our future, scientists for the first time have used an AI model to create new and viable viruses that have never been seen… Read more: AI Model Invents Completely New Viruses Unknown to Nature

The small town that arrested a person who clapped during a city council meeting about a hyperscale data center held its meeting on Wednesday virtually and had no public comment period in the name of… Read more: City That Arrested Person for Clapping at Data Center Meeting Moves to Virtual Meetings for ‘Public Safety’

It’s certainly increasing its output See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here Continue reading…

Stanford researchers have synthesised nearly 300 phages from DNA sequences produced by the Evo 2 generative AI model. Laboratory testing narrowed the group to 16 phages that showed particularly strong E. coli-killing activity. The work… Read more: Stanford Evo 2 AI model generates phages against E. coli

Industry experts point to network capacity as a major constraint on AI growth Zayo, a leading digital infrastructure provider, today announced it is delivering critical network capacity to power today’s AI ecosystem and accelerate the… Read more: Zayo Partners with NVIDIA to Scale Critical Network Capacity for AI Factories

Anton Dzhumelia/Shutterstock If you’re buying literature in translation online, buyer beware. You may unknowingly be buying low-quality AI-assisted translations presented as the work of a professional. Certain online retailers are being used to flood the… Read more: AI is flooding the online book market with poor translations – here’s how to spot them

Do you ever see comments on social media that seem way off topic, but still manage to wrench the discussion around to divisive political debate? A discussion about the cost of living suddenly becomes an… Read more: AI is making disinformation harder to spot – but we’ve found a new way to catch it

The use of AI systems to create viruses opens up new possibilities for combating bacterial resistance. It also raises concerns about the pace at which technology is outstripping regulation.

On Thursday, a US District Court in Oregon ordered the US government to restart the process of approving wind projects. All new wind development in the US has been on hold since August of 2025,… Read more: Trump is losing his war on wind power

Wherever two fluids slide past each other at different speeds, the boundary between them buckles, then curls, then rolls up into vortexes. It’s called the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the physics behind it was worked out… Read more: The world’s biggest solar telescope caught vortexes on the Sun’s surface

ByteDance is training an AI model that could approach the size of Anthropic’s most cutting-edge Mythos system, as Chinese companies continue to narrow the gap with the top US labs. The Chinese tech giant is… Read more: ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic

Just knowing how to use AI isn’t enough to prepare students for entry-level positions. J Studios/DigitalVision/Getty Images Artificial Intelligence has become part of routine business operations, as employers across most industries use AI for tasks… Read more: Employers everywhere are using AI – but business schools aren’t preparing students for the shift

Blocking the glycine transporter SLC6A20 restored important brain signaling and improved social, communication, and repetitive behaviors in autism-related mouse models. The treatment also worked in human brain organoids and showed lasting effects in adult mice,… Read more: New autism therapy shows surprising benefits even in adult mice

Alibaba plans to introduce revenue-sharing terms for some commercial users of its next Qwen open-weight AI model, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the company’s plans. The arrangement would require larger companies that generate… Read more: Alibaba tests new business model for Qwen open-source AI

A ten-month Antarctic experiment found that astronauts may struggle not only with loneliness but also with spending too much time around the same people. Frequent contact was linked to greater tension and mistrust, while the… Read more: Scientists tracked 12 people in Antarctica for 10 months—what happened could shape future Mars missions

Scientists have demonstrated that heat can move through a crystal in focused, wave-like rays at room temperature instead of spreading randomly. The breakthrough could make it possible to route heat around sensitive parts of next-generation… Read more: UCLA scientists discover how to guide heat like light at room temperature

If you thought AI customer service bots were bad, just wait until you need to convince a large language model that yes, you have been involved in a car accident, actually. According to new reporting… Read more: Better Hope You Don’t Need an Ambulance in New Orleans, Because the City’s 911 Operators Are Now AI

Denmark is adding oral defenses and tighter exam controls in upper secondary schools as officials move to curb AI-assisted cheating and verify student work. The post Denmark Adds Oral Defenses to Curb AI Cheating in… Read more: Denmark Adds Oral Defenses to Curb AI Cheating in High Schools

A Trump administration framework on AI testing leaves a lack of transparency – and plenty of open questions After months of talking with tech industry leaders, the Trump administration finalized a framework this week for… Read more: The White House’s plan to vet potentially dangerous AI is cloaked in secrecy

In the mid-’90s, the web was exploding, but finding anything of actual value on it felt like an elaborate negotiation with whatever proto-search engine happened to be standing closest to the door. Unlike now, when… Read more: Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment

Flock planned to use dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers’ vehicles to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed, essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according… Read more: Flock Pitched a Plan To Turn Uber and Lyft Drivers Into Roaming Surveillance Vehicles

Experienced technology executive to lead Infor’s next phase of growth in Japan, helping customers modernize operations through industry-specific cloud solutions, AI, and deep industry expertise. Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced the appointment of… Read more: Infor Appoints Yuka Kanemitsu in Dual Roles of Infor Japan

Beginning around age 50, the brain’s memory center appears to lose many of its longtime immune cells and replace them with more inflammatory ones. This surprising shift may help explain how normal aging sets the… Read more: Scientists discover a hidden brain shift that begins around age 50

Several enormous Megalodon vertebrae thought to have been destroyed in 1989 were found sitting unnoticed on a museum shelf. Their analysis strengthens evidence that the giant shark could exceed 24 meters (79 feet) in length… Read more: Scientists rediscover lost Megalodon fossils—and reveal a 79-foot giant

More than 5,000 years after his death, Ötzi the Iceman is still hosting a remarkable mix of ancient and modern microorganisms. Researchers separated microbes that lived in his body during his lifetime from those that… Read more: Scientists find unexpected life on Ötzi the Iceman’s 5,300-year-old body

Metal-rich asteroids could one day become hardware stores for Mars, supplying the materials needed to build and repair a growing colony. A new analysis shows that carefully selected asteroids may be reachable with current spacecraft… Read more: The key to colonizing Mars may be hidden inside asteroids

A new wearable patch may help people reach REM sleep faster and remain there longer without medication or surgery. In a study of 28 participants, the device shortened the time to REM by 43 minutes… Read more: Wearable ultrasound patch boosts REM sleep without drugs or surgery

Earth’s molten iron core unexpectedly reversed direction beneath the Pacific, revealing a dramatic change in the hidden engine that creates our planet’s magnetic field. Satellite data suggest the surge is already weakening, raising the possibility… Read more: Earth’s molten core suddenly reversed direction — and scientists don’t know why

DXC becomes the exclusive managed services partner for Primary’s AI-native Zero Trust Unified Control Plane, helping enterprises securely scale AI. New joint offering helps businesses and government agencies govern how AI agents and enterprise AI… Read more: DXC, Primary Launch AI-Native Zero Trust Platform for Enterprise AI

WIRED spoke with Tucker Bryant, an artist and former Google employee who created ChatTJB to get people to reflect on the “strange moment” we’re in.

Critics decry proposed hyperscale projects, fearing overuse of water and electricity, and ‘appropriating rural, Black-owned land for industrial purposes’ There seems to be a fight over datacenters in nearly every city in the US right… Read more: ‘This is very real redlining’: outrage in Little Rock as two datacenters loom

Built on the first Agent Gateway with native security, NeuralTrust protects what agents do, tool calls, reasoning, and MCP connections, not just what they’re told, without a custom integration for each agent or platform NeuralTrust,… Read more: NeuralTrust Launches First Runtime Security Mesh Extensible to Every AI Agent

Move to raise levy on goods made with polysilicon aims to protect domestic US supply chains from China, the major producer Donald Trump has ordered a new 15% tariff on imported products made of polysilicon,… Read more: Trump orders new 15% tariff on key material for solar panels and microchips

Zoe provides instant insights from reports, tickets and asset data to automate work and help prevent costly equipment failures EZO, a provider of enterprise asset management (EAM) and IT asset management (ITAM) software, today announced… Read more: EZO Launches Zoe AI for IT and Maintenance Asset Management

We’re planning a series on data centres and would like you to help us shape our coverage. What questions would you like answered about data centres? Let us know below. Loading…

What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics look like? Guided by the author, I propose the three laws of AI Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that… Read more: One of science fiction’s greatest writers warned us about a AI. Does he also hold the remedy? | Alan Finkel

On Wednesday, the Labor government announced environmental and energy safeguards on new datacentres in Australia. Our political editor, Tom McIlroy, speaks to the assistant minister for science, technology and the digital economy, Dr Andrew Charlton,… Read more: Can the government really get ahead of the curve on AI? – podcast

Security researchers say that Kimi K3, an open-weight model from China, wandered off to the internet in an attempt to cheat on a test it was given.

The US health department is working to shut down a Kentucky-based organ procurement organization that made headlines over a 2021 incident in which it was accused of trying to harvest a man’s organs while he… Read more: Organ donation group accused of trying to take living man’s organs faces shutdown

German police disarmed a drone carrying explosives after it was discovered near Ukrainian cargo aircraft parked at Leipzig airport—and authorities are looking into the possibility of a second drone after an approaching aircraft collided with… Read more: Explosive drone found hovering near Ukrainian cargo aircraft at German airport

Blue Origin provided its first substantive update this week on the cause of the catastrophic loss of the New Glenn rocket and most of its launch pad infrastructure at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in May. The… Read more: Blue Origin narrowing in on root cause of catastrophic rocket accident

A lot of the AI work in biology has been focused on designing proteins. That’s partly because proteins do most of the business of life, catalyzing the interesting chemistry and structuring cells. So, figuring out… Read more: Large genome models used to design new viruses

Anthropic is hiring a “custom silicon team” to design chips on which to run its models, the company has revealed. Yesterday, Business Insider noticed a job listing for a senior engineer with experience shipping semiconductor… Read more: Anthropic will design its own hardware to power Claude

Jonathan Brady/PA Images As the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) sweep across the labour force, it’s understandable for workers to be concerned about which jobs are most at risk of being replaced by technology. Women… Read more: These 3 charts show female-dominated jobs are actually the most exposed to AI

The Internet is awash in AI content, and it’s not always easy to tell it apart from genuine human creations. While images and videos are perhaps the most obvious type of AI slop, streaming music… Read more: Suno hopes to go legit with watermarks for AI-generated music

Last month, OpenAI revealed that a group of its AI models had broken containment, hacking into the systems of open source AI platform Hugging Face. On one hand, experts saw the incident as the latest… Read more: Jealously Watching OpenAI and Anthropic, Meta Suddenly Claims That Its AI Went on a Hacking Spree Too

Elon Musk’s X is trying to revive a lawsuit against advertisers it’s accusing of illegally boycotting the social media platform, despite previously reaching a settlement to end litigation against an ad-industry trade group. “This case… Read more: X wants to keep suing advertisers, asks 5th Circuit to overrule district judge

In today’s episode of Uncanny Valley, we discuss how ICE has been collecting DNA samples of people with no criminal convictions, including children, which end up in an FBI database indefinitely.

The tech industry is realizing it needs to build agents based on what regular consumers want, not just what its AI models can do.

SAP, one of the world’s biggest software companies, suspended most travel and hiring last month because of AI’s soaring cost, with exceptions only being made for AI-related travel or hires, according to an internal SAP… Read more: Software Giant SAP Stops Most Travel and Hiring Because of AI’s Soaring Cost

OpenAI’s attempt to boost its image by hiring influencers collided against a harsh reality: that it’s already become a fundamentally uncool company. The Verge details how influencers recruited by the ChatGPT maker were flown out… Read more: OpenAI Tried to Hire Influencers to Spread Love for Its Products, But It Backfired Horrendously

Cloudflare has open-sourced its Cloudflare OS platform, which it first developed as an internal workspace for employees to build apps using AI agents—including people who are not software developers or engineers. The company also touts… Read more: Cloudflare open-sources vibe-coding platform for people who aren’t coders

Despite significant drama from Trump officials this year, the Food and Drug Administration has for the first time approved a flu vaccine that uses mRNA technology. On Thursday, vaccine maker Moderna announced that its flu… Read more: Moderna’s mRNA flu shot earns FDA approval after rollercoaster review

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2–1 today to eliminate the National Television Ownership Rule, claiming authority to repeal a limit that was set by Congress over 20 years ago. The rule prohibits any single broadcast… Read more: Trump FCC kills TV ownership cap, claiming authority over limit set by Congress

The parasitic fungi in the Cordyceps genus are a favorite subject of nature documentaries. They’ve also infiltrated popular culture via the zombie-apocalypse video game The Last of Us (2013) and its TV adaptation, in which… Read more: Parasitic zombie-ant fungus thrives in mosses, too

We certainly wouldn’t blame you for having completely forgotten that last year, Elon Musk tried to reinvent Wikipedia because he thought it was too woke. In October, his AI startup xAI launched Grokipedia, named after… Read more: Grokipedia Appears to Have Completely Broken and Nobody Noticed

Researchers say breakthrough offers hope for new medicines but also raises urgent biosecurity questions Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also… Read more: Safety fears as scientists make first viruses designed by AI

Its WeatherNext model, which will be open-sourced, can accurately predict both a storm’s track and intensity using lower-resolution weather data. Researchers don’t yet fully understand how it does this.

Banks should factor in the time spent by humans checking invented facts, writes Dr Gleb Tsipursky Your report (Lloyds Bank to cut £2bn in costs as part of AI-powered strategy, 30 July) raises a question… Read more: Lloyds Bank should publish the human cost of its AI savings | Letters

🌘 Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week. Scientists have designed a virtual model of an alien cell and… Read more: Scientists Designed a Virtual Alien Lifeform to Hunt for Extraterrestrials

Text-to-video AI generating tools have come a long way. Just three years ago, we were all unsettled by grisly clips of actor Will Smith’s face morphing while “eating” a moving pile of spaghetti. Thanks to… Read more: Andreessen Horowitz Partner Boasts That the Company’s New Tech Can Fabricate Fake History Like in “1984”

CoreWeave, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRWV), The Essential Cloud for AI, today announced a multi-year strategic agreement with Solidigm, a pioneer in enterprise data storage and a leading supplier of high-capacity AI infrastructure storage solutions, for priority access… Read more: CoreWeave, Solidigm Partner to Advance AI Cloud Platform

Hyro’s AI agents for healthcare integrate with ServiceNow to deliver voice and digital self-service for health systems Hyro, the leading Agentic Care Communications platform, today announced a partnership with ServiceNow, the AI control tower for… Read more: Hyro, ServiceNow Partner on Agentic AI for Healthcare

Analyzes 100% of patient interactions to remove barriers to patient access, reduce cost, capture revenue growth, improve the patient experience, and drive measurable EBITDA gains Aqurio, an Agentic AI company for healthcare and other high-stakes… Read more: Aqurio Announced the Launch of No-Cost SmartAnalytics Trial

ChatGPT Atlas is scheduled to stop working Aug. 9, 2026. Users should export browser data, verify account access, and test replacement workflows before uninstalling it. The post ChatGPT Atlas Shuts Down Aug. 9: What Users… Read more: ChatGPT Atlas Shuts Down Aug. 9: What Users Must Save Before Migrating

Ford’s second attempt at an electric vehicle strategy is getting closer to primetime. After its initial approach of electrifying its best-selling F-150 fell a little flat, it decided to try something a little radical. An… Read more: Ford picks “Fathom” for its affordable truck name, starts at $28,350

A handful of cities across the U.S. have ditched Flock’s automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and immediately replaced them with equivalent systems from law enforcement contracting giant Axon, according to local media reports and… Read more: Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers

On July 27, a billboard went up in San Francisco advertising an AI service called ChatTJB. But the “AI” powering the service, as noted in a small disclaimer on the billboard, isn’t artificial intelligence. It’s… Read more: We Talked to the Guy Who Built a Chatbot That’s Just Him Manually Responding to People One-by-One

Millions of sperm do not always compete alone—some species send them into action as coordinated teams. A sweeping evolutionary study found that this cooperation is widespread among arthropods and has repeatedly emerged and vanished over… Read more: Forget the sperm race: Fertilization may depend on teamwork

Genetic changes may set off a chain reaction that causes the spine’s natural shock absorbers to harden and deteriorate. Zebrafish with a faulty collagen-related gene developed mineral buildup and spinal fusion similar to human disc… Read more: A drug already used for osteoporosis blocked spinal damage in a new study

A long-term brain study found that common risks such as smoking, high blood pressure, heart disease, and high blood lipids were strongly linked to damage associated with vascular dementia. The findings suggest that healthier lifestyle… Read more: Nearly half of dementia cases may be linked to risks you can change

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. But when it comes to AI slop and hateful content threatening the safety and value of social media platforms, adding more fire—in this case, more AI—can make… Read more: AI isn’t enough to protect social media communities from AI

A new hollow nanoreactor mimics living cells to make hydrogen peroxide more efficiently using visible light. Its light-trapping cavity and proton-shuttling shell could open new possibilities for cleaner chemical manufacturing and artificial photosynthesis.

A supermassive black hole has been found lurking about 30,000 light-years from the center of its galaxy—the first dormant black hole detected so far from a galactic core. It revealed itself only after shredding a… Read more: A star’s violent death exposed a hidden supermassive black hole

Teenagers must make oral defence of essays and schools will monitor computers during exams under crackdown Danish teenagers will have to make an oral defence of their written essays to combat AI cheating, the government… Read more: Students using AI to cheat will face stricter rules, says Danish government

An 1818 map of western Africa shows the continent bisected by the mythical ‘Mountains of Kong’, based on the explorations of Mungo Park. Image: John Pinkerton’s A Modern Atlas via Wikimedia Commons Throughout the 18th… Read more: Adding an AI tool to Google Earth shook our trust in maps that has been centuries in the making

New tools shows companies exactly which employees and agents are using AI, what they’re sending, and how much it’s costing—in real time, securely and without slowing down innovation Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET), the leading connectivity cloud… Read more: Cloudflare Helps Companies Audit and Analyze AI Use

McCrory brings decades of enterprise sales leadership to accelerate Keepit’s growth in the Americas as agentic AI reshapes the data protection landscape Keepit, the leading dedicated cloud data protection company, today announced the appointment of… Read more: Keepit Expands Americas Growth With New VP of Sales

Agentic Access Control and Intent-Based Activity Monitoring give security teams a policy layer for agents and a live check on their behavior, matched against intent instead of static permissions BigID, the leader in data security… Read more: BigID Introduces Governance Layer for AI Agents