Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://twitter.com/fynnso/status/2034706304875602030">https://twitter.com/fynnso/status/2034706304875602030</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452404">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452404</a></p> <p>Points: 63</p> <p># Comments: 22</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/19/essex-police-pause-facial-recognition-camera-use-study-racial-bias">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/19/essex-police-pause-facial-recognition-camera-use-study-racial-bias</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452248">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452248</a></p> <p>Points: 13</p> <p># Comments: 10</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260316-01.en.html">https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260316-01.en.html</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47451429">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47451429</a></p> <p>Points: 59</p> <p># Comments: 18</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/arxiv-pioneering-preprint-server-declares-independence-cornell">https://www.science.org/content/article/arxiv-pioneering-preprint-server-declares-independence-cornell</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450478">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450478</a></p> <p>Points: 308</p> <p># Comments: 84</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://trustedsec.com/blog/full-disclosure-a-third-and-fourth-azure-sign-in-log-bypass-found">https://trustedsec.com/blog/full-disclosure-a-third-and-fourth-azure-sign-in-log-bypass-found</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448994">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448994</a></p> <p>Points: 149</p> <p># Comments: 34</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://gist.github.com/mattmanning/1002653/b7a1e88479a10eaae3bd5298b8b2c86e16fb4404">https://gist.github.com/mattmanning/1002653/b7a1e88479a10eaae3bd5298b8b2c86e16fb4404</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448566">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448566</a></p> <p>Points: 147</p> <p># Comments: 54</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://code.claude.com/docs/en/channels">https://code.claude.com/docs/en/channels</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448524">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448524</a></p> <p>Points: 340</p> <p># Comments: 192</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://aicode.swerdlow.dev">https://aicode.swerdlow.dev</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446373">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446373</a></p> <p>Points: 126</p> <p># Comments: 50</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit">https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445599">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445599</a></p> <p>Points: 264</p> <p># Comments: 150</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://waymo.com/safety/impact/">https://waymo.com/safety/impact/</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445246">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445246</a></p> <p>Points: 322</p> <p># Comments: 334</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.getclockwise.com">https://www.getclockwise.com</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444906">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444906</a></p> <p>Points: 124</p> <p># Comments: 60</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://qlabs.sh/10x">https://qlabs.sh/10x</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444072">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47444072</a></p> <p>Points: 149</p> <p># Comments: 32</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.iroh.computer/blog/noq-announcement">https://www.iroh.computer/blog/noq-announcement</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443588">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443588</a></p> <p>Points: 206</p> <p># Comments: 32</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p><a href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html" rel="nofollow">https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-de...</a></p> <hr> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442690">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442690</a></p> <p>Points: 859</p> <p># Comments: 930</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Hey HN! We’re Hayden, Ronan, Avi, and Warren of Voltair (<a href="https://voltairlabs.com/">https://voltairlabs.com/</a>). We’re making weatherized, hybrid-fixed drones deployed for power utility inspections.<p>Here’s some footage: <a href="https://vimeo.com/1173862237/ac28095cc6?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/1173862237/ac28095cc6?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=...</a> and a photo of our latest prototype: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/bYHnqZ4" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/bYHnqZ4</a>.<p>The U.S. has 7M miles of power lines (enough to go to the moon and back 14 times), and they're aging. Over 50% of all power flows through transformers that are at least 30 years old, which is about when they start to fail.<p>Power line conductors are just bare metal with 4,000-765,000 volts sitting on ceramic insulators, usually held up by pieces of wood. It’s a cost effective and relatively reliable way to move power. But when the wood starts to rot, or the cotter pin falls out, and a live conductor is dropped on a dead tree on a windy day, you get devastating wildfires like the Palisades Fire in LA last year.<p>Most utilities solve this problem with foot patrols. Linemen drive out with a clipboard or an iPad, and run through a checklist with binoculars to visually confirm everything is in order. A lineman can inspect about 50-150 poles per day, yet even the smallest rural electric cooperatives (with about ~20 employees) have about 50,000 distribution poles. Clearly the math doesn’t work out. As a result, a given utility pole is inspected about every 10 years (at least that’s what they tell their insurance adjuster).<p>Helicopters are also used, but cost $25k to get off the ground, and more importantly, every year linemen die in helicopter crashes. Satellites can’t deliver the mm precision needed for these inspections. So drones have emerged as the best solution. Georgia Power saved 60% on operating expenses when they switched to using drones, and Xcel power found drones to find 60% more defects than foot patrols (because of pole-top vantage point).<p>Problem #2: Drones are held back by the need to constantly recharge and FAA beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) regulations. In response, the most well funded utilities (e.g., PG&E, SCE) primarily send out pilots in trucks to collect the data.<p>Current leaders in the drone space – Skydio and DJI – have built drone-in-a-box solutions. Their charging stations have inherent concurrency constraints (only one drone at a time) and don’t scale easily over large land areas. Skydio charges $250,000 / box, and has a there-and-back range of about 15 miles (assuming ideal performance). They are expensive and inflexible.<p>Our first solution (and why it didn’t work): We entered YC wanting to build drones that charge inductively from the magnetic fields around power lines. We used a split-core current transformer, wrapped it around the conductor with a clamp, and harvested power. We spent about 4 months testing and developing this hardware, and successfully recharged a few batteries in the field. It was a really cool proof of concept.<p>But we ran into a big problem. There’s not enough current on distribution lines! These are the wooden poles outside your home, as opposed to the tall steel transmission towers you might see in the countryside. Generally speaking, we needed about a MW of power – or about 1000 homes – to flow through the lines to charge our drone performantly.<p>We also found the risk-reward calculus didn’t make sense for utilities. Line attachments (and even inductive power harvesting) is common in the utility space. Fault indicators and smart sensors like the Heimdall Power “Neuron” do this. But they are installed one time with lineman supervision and left in place for years. The risk of landing a drone multiple times per day at myriad points around the network felt too risky for utility engineers.<p>We wondered if we could solve the range and battery swap issue from another angle. Reexamining drone-in-a-box solutions, we realized they had the tech backwards: expensive, overengineered boxes to protect fragile drones. A network of these big enough to cover a utility’s service area would cost hundreds of millions, and the drones still wouldn’t be able to fly when it matters most (during a wildfire, storm, or power outage). What if instead, the drone was ultra-rugged while the charging stations were cheap and attritable?<p>What we’re building now: We’re making weatherized, long-range (well over 70 miles), fixed-wing drones that can live outside for months at a time. They recharge inductively (no connections or moving parts) on stripped-down charging pads that cost a couple thousand dollars apiece. It doesn’t take many of these pads along a transmission line corridor for our drones to hop between them and inspect the entire length. We reason we could cover the continental U.S. with about 1000-5000 pads.<p>Having dedicated charging stations also solves the backhaul problem. When you LiDAR scan and take high-res photos of 50 miles of transmission corridor, you accumulate terabytes of data. Manual drone operators can pull out the SD card. We have to offload it wirelessly. Trying to do this directly from the drone over spotty LTE doesn’t work. Instead, we use the charging station as an intermediary, dumping the data from our drone to a hard drive on the station over a high-speed WiFi link. The station can then push this to our servers over Starlink, LTE, or a fiber link asynchronously, freeing the drone to get back in the field and inspect more.<p>One cool thing we can do this way is reactive inspections. If there’s a weird harmonic on a feeder, or a utility needs a rapid scan after a storm, we can get on-site within minutes to inspect. Contractors often spend months coordinating their on-site data collection, and dedicated storm response contractors are very expensive to keep on-site.<p>Power utilities are our first customers, but the applications for telecom, rail, oil+gas, forestry, search+rescue, and agriculture are also exciting. One thing that’s <i>not</i> exciting is a drone surveillance state. Unfortunately, we are now in a world where drones are increasingly weaponized, and examples of government overreach are numerous (case in point: Sonoma County, California spying on landowners). We have zero interest in supporting uses like this.<p>(Our backstory, if you’re interested: Ronan has always had an unhealthy obsession with flying machines, from designing remote controlled planes growing up, to building eVTOL tech for DARPA and the Air Force while still a university student. Warren and Ronan met during a startup competition with a UAV solution in agriculture. Hayden, a childhood friend of Ronan, was deeply ingrained in the power utility space, and realized the true pain point there. Shortly after graduating, Ronan, Hayden, and Warren quit their jobs to take the idea full time in the Summer of 2025. Around the same time Avi dropped out of college, bringing sales skill and regulatory expertise as our fourth cofounder.)<p>We just secured our first major contract and are working out the details of pilots with some big utilities. Our first paid flight is mid-April. Our business model is straightforward: inspection as a service. We charge per pole or tower.<p>We are very interested in your opinion! Maybe some of you all work in the energy industry and know a thing or two about infrastructure inspections that we could learn from? We’d love all feedback (good and bad).</p> <hr> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442452">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442452</a></p> <p>Points: 72</p> <p># Comments: 27</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://blog.skypilot.co/scaling-autoresearch/">https://blog.skypilot.co/scaling-autoresearch/</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442435">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442435</a></p> <p>Points: 184</p> <p># Comments: 79</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Hey HN! We're Aakash and Viswesh, and we're building Canary (<a href="https://www.runcanary.ai">https://www.runcanary.ai</a>). We build AI agents that read your codebase, figure out what a pull request actually changed, and generate and execute tests for every affected user workflow.<p>Aakash and I previously built AI coding tools at Windsurf, Cognition, and Google. AI tools were making every team faster at shipping, but nobody was testing real user behavior before merge. PRs got bigger, reviews still happened in file diffs, and changes that looked clean broke checkout, auth, and billing in production. We saw it firsthand. We started Canary to close that gap. Here's how it works:<p>Canary starts by connecting to your codebase and understands how your app is built: routes, controllers, validation logic. You push a PR and Canary reads the diff, understands the intent behind the changes, then generates and runs tests against your preview app checking real user flows end to end. It comments directly on the PR with test results and recordings showing what changed and flagging anything that doesn't behave as expected. You can also trigger specific user workflow tests via a PR comment.<p>Beyond PR testing, tests generated from the PR can be moved into regression suites. You can also create tests by just prompting what you want tested in plain English. Canary generates a full test suite from your codebase, schedules it, and runs it continuously. One of our construction tech customers had an invoicing flow where the amount due drifted from the original proposal total by ~$1,600. Canary caught the regression in their invoice flow before release.<p>This isn't something a single family of foundation models can do on its own. QA spans across many modalities like source code, DOM/ARIA, device emulators, visual verifications, analyzing screen recordings, network/console logs, live browser state etc. for any single model to be specialized in. You also need custom browser fleets, user sessions, ephemeral environments, on-device farms and data seeding to run the tests reliably. On top of that, catching second-order effects of code changes requires a specialized harness that breaks the application in multiple possible ways across different types of users that a normal happy path testing flow wouldn't.<p>To measure how well our purpose built QA agent works, we published QA-Bench v0, the first benchmark for code verification. Given a real PR, can an AI model identify every affected user workflow and produce relevant tests? We tested our purpose-built QA agent against GPT 5.4, Claude Code (Opus 4.6), and Sonnet 4.6 across 35 real PRs on Grafana, Mattermost, Cal.com, and Apache Superset on three dimensions: Relevance, Coverage, and Coherence. Coverage is where the gap was largest. Canary leads by 11 points over GPT 5.4, 18 over Claude Code, and 26 over Sonnet 4.6. For full methodology and per-repo breakdowns give our benchmark report a read: <a href="https://www.runcanary.ai/blog/qa-bench-v0">https://www.runcanary.ai/blog/qa-bench-v0</a><p>You can check out the product demo here: <a href="https://youtu.be/NeD9g1do_BU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/NeD9g1do_BU</a><p>We'd love feedback from anyone working on code verification or thinking about how to measure this differently.</p> <hr> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441629">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441629</a></p> <p>Points: 56</p> <p># Comments: 20</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Kitten TTS (<a href="https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS</a>) is an open-source series of tiny and expressive text-to-speech models for on-device applications. We had a thread last year here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44807868">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44807868</a>.<p>Today we're releasing three new models with 80M, 40M and 14M parameters.<p>The largest model (80M) has the highest quality. The 14M variant reaches new SOTA in expressivity among similar sized models, despite being <25MB in size. This release is a major upgrade from the previous one and supports English text-to-speech applications in eight voices: four male and four female.<p>Here's a short demo: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3u5qblqZA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3u5qblqZA</a>.<p>Most models are quantized to int8 + fp16, and they use ONNX for runtime. Our models are designed to run anywhere eg. raspberry pi, low-end smartphones, wearables, browsers etc. No GPU required! This release aims to bridge the gap between on-device and cloud models for tts applications. Multi-lingual model release is coming soon.<p>On-device AI is bottlenecked by one thing: a lack of tiny models that actually perform. Our goal is to open-source more models to run production-ready voice agents and apps entirely on-device.<p>We would love your feedback!</p> <hr> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441546">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441546</a></p> <p>Points: 437</p> <p># Comments: 161</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p><a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/4chan-fined-450000-for-not-protecting-children-from-online-pornography" rel="nofollow">https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-c...</a></p> <hr> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440430">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440430</a></p> <p>Points: 383</p> <p># Comments: 663</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Article URL: <a href="https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260319125859">https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260319125859</a></p> <p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439320">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439320</a></p> <p>Points: 206</p> <p># Comments: 60</p>

Mar 19, 2026

Under Kennedy, the health dept. has wiped out 75 advisory boards, corrupted others.

Mar 19, 2026

Broadcom says the group is misrepresenting market "realities."

Mar 19, 2026

DarkSword, a powerful iPhone-hacking technique, has been discovered in use by Russian hackers.

Mar 19, 2026

Tom Cotton supports FBI data purchasing, compares it to searching people's trash.

Mar 19, 2026

"Where we are today in space warfare is very similar to where air superiority was in the 1930s."

Mar 19, 2026

Codex maker says it will "continue to support these open source projects" after deal closes.

Mar 19, 2026

VR will be on life support while mobile remains the focus, though.

Mar 19, 2026

Cops asked the jury for millions after Afroman used raid footage in music videos.

Mar 19, 2026

The "advanced flow" will be available before verification enforcement begins later this year.

Mar 19, 2026

"8GB unified memory is the minimum practical configuration."

Mar 19, 2026

Full-magazine reloads throw out muscle memory in favor of "higher stakes" decisions.

Mar 19, 2026

Radiocarbon results suggest a single origin and rapid diffusion through cultural transition networks.

Mar 19, 2026

"This is a serious warning shot."

Mar 18, 2026

Remember when it was fun to play around with LLMs?

Mar 18, 2026

Planned EU ban on nudify apps would likely force Musk to make Grok less "spicy."

Mar 18, 2026

Department of Energy's attempts to prop up coal can look pretty pointless.

Mar 18, 2026

Our view of Neanderthal life keeps getting more complex and vibrant.

Mar 18, 2026

Firm says requiring site blocks within 30 minutes breaks core Internet architecture.

Mar 18, 2026

Company has previously tested its technology on the International Space Station.

Mar 18, 2026

One Microsoft product was approved despite years of concerns about its security.

Mar 20, 2026

Ubuntu maker Canonical announced today MicroCloud Cluster Manager that is now in beta as a new cloud platform for managing lightweight cloud clusters...

Mar 20, 2026

Vulkan 1.4.347 made its debut overnight as the latest routine update to this high performance graphics and compute API. Beyond the usual maintenance churn over the past week, Vulkan 1.4.347 brings three new extensions...

Mar 20, 2026

It's been nearly three years since the release of Mageia 9 for this Linux distribution who's lineage traces back to the glorious Mandrake Linux. Following the Mageia 10 alpha release back in January, Mageia 10 beta builds are now available...

Mar 20, 2026

Sent out today was the latest weekly round of drm-misc-next patches for queuing ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window that is set to happen in mid-to-late April...

Mar 20, 2026

An interesting new Steam client beta dropped overnight from Valve with some exciting low-level enhancements...

Mar 19, 2026

Well, here's an unexpected surprise... A new version of the Linux kernel patches for DXGKRNL were posted today for that DirectX kernel driver that began a few years ago for supporting Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL) use-cases. This comes four years to the month after the prior version was posted and without much excitement for getting it into the mainline Linux kernel...

Mar 19, 2026

Thunderbird announced today the availability of their public roadmaps where they are making it easier for end-users to comprehend what they are currently working on for this mail client not only for the desktop builds but also their Android and iOS versions too...

Mar 19, 2026

AMD today sent out another batch of AMDGPU kernel graphics driver and AMDKFD kernel compute driver changes to DRM-Next ahead of next month's Linux 7.1 merge window...

Mar 19, 2026

Simon Ser just released Wayland 1.25...

Mar 19, 2026

With this week's release of Blender 5.1 I have begun benchmarking it on different CPUs and GPUs. In this article is an initial look at the positive impact Blender 5.1 is having on CPU-based rendering performance on Linux.

Mar 19, 2026

Version 0.27 of GNUnet is now available for this free software framework for constructing decentralized, peer-to-peer networking. But it comes with some big caveats before use...

Mar 19, 2026

The last release of Llamafile was back in May and it's led me recently to wonder if Mozilla was slowly abandoning this AI project like they had done in the past to DeepSpeech and other software projects. Fortunately, that's not the case and out today is Llamafile 0.10 with some big updates...

Mar 19, 2026

The OpenGL API is still seeing new extensions introduced in 2026. Merged today to the OpenGL Registry is a new extension intended to help Wine usage for 32-bit Windows games/apps on 64-bit Linux systems...

Mar 19, 2026

It's been a while since most of you probably thought about the Opera web browser, but these days they have been catering their "Opera GX" web browser to gamers. Today they have finally delivered this Opera GX gaming-focused browser for Linux users...

Mar 19, 2026

The fourth iteration of patches implementing Virtual Swap Space for Linux were sent out on Wednesday. This stems from ideas going back years for an abstraction to better separate a swap entry from its physical backing storage...

Mar 19, 2026

Drew Fustini sent out DeviceTree patches this past weekend for enabling the HDMI display controller on the T-Head TH1520 RISC-V SoC. Additionally, there's a patch for lighting up the HDMI display support on the LicheePi 4A RISC-V board...

Mar 19, 2026

With Ubuntu 26.04 LTS quickly approaching release next week, Canonical is beginning more of their road-mapping for Ubuntu 26.10 and beyond. To help in plotting future work, Canonical is interested in feedback for features or improvements that developers/users would like to see around their Mir project...

Mar 18, 2026

AMD engineers are experimenting with a proof-of-concept implementation of a Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) implementation atop the DRM_GPUSVM framework...

Mar 18, 2026

An Intel project developed the past several years was kAFL-Fuzzer as a hardware-assisted feedback fuzzer for x86 virtual machines (VMs) to help with security. While it saw a lot of work in prior years, development activity slowed down last year and now the project has been formally ended...

Mar 18, 2026

GNOME 50 is out today, on-schedule and just in time for being the default desktop of the likes of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and Fedora Workstation 44...

Mar 18, 2026

While Fedora 43 was released at the end of October and there is just one month to go now until the release of Fedora 44, Fedora Asahi Remix 43 debuted today as this spin of Fedora Linux for Apple Silicon Macs...

Mar 18, 2026

Last week I provided a look at the EXT4 and XFS performance from Linux 6.12 LTS through Linux 7.0 in its current development form. As mentioned in that article and as requested by many Phoronix readers, benchmarks have since wrapped up looking at how the Btrfs copy-on-write file-system performance has evolved since that late 2024 period and all major Linux kernel releases past that Long Term Support version.

Mar 18, 2026

Last week it was security issues with AppArmor to worry about on Ubuntu Linux while this week a "high" rated vulnerability for Ubuntu's Snap daemon has been revealed...

Mar 18, 2026

It's been a while since having any improvements to talk about for the MGLRU multi-gen LRU functionality for the Linux kernel to optimize page reclamation and help with system performance especially when enduring memory pressure. But this week a Tencent engineer posted some very promising patches for further enhancing this kernel feature...

Mar 18, 2026

Samba continues strong in 2026 for this leading open-source SMB protocol re-implementation for Microsoft Windows file and print services interoperability. Samba 4.24 brings more features, including remote password management support...

Mar 18, 2026

Google engineers have been spending the past number of months developing Sashiko as an agentic AI code review system for the Linux kernel. It's now open-source and publicly available and will continue to do upstream Linux kernel code review thanks to funding from Google...

Mar 18, 2026

The widely-used GRUB bootloader is now being developed on FreeDesktop.org with a modern GitLab-based workflow...

Mar 18, 2026

A new platform feature being worked on by Arm engineers for the Linux kernel is Live Firmware Activation to allow for updated firmware components to be deployed without requiring a system reboot...

Mar 18, 2026

For those that happen to have the Logitech MX Master 4 wireless mouse or are considering this high-end ~$120 USD Bluetooth mouse, better support for it was merged yesterday to Linux 7.0...

Mar 18, 2026

Version 4.3 of the CMake software development tool / build system was released today. Notable with CMake 4.3 is support for importing and exporting packages described using the Common Package Specification (CPS) for greater interoperability in the ecosystem...

Mar 17, 2026

Systemd 260 was just released as the newest stable version of this widely-used Linux init system and service manager. Systemd 260 brings yet more features to this critical open-source project and to be incorporated into H1'2026 Linux distributions...

Mar 17, 2026

AMD Ryzen AI NPUs are now running LLMs on Linux with the recently debuted Lemonade 10.0 server and FastFlowLM 0.9.35 adding Linux support. In addition to those software components, AMD engineers have also been developing MLIR-AIE as a compiler toolchain for AMD AI Engine devices such as Ryzen AI NPUs in leveraging LLVM-based code generation with the Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLIR). Out today is MLIR-AIE v1.3 with some notable new features...

Mar 20, 2026

Valve has just released SteamOS 3.8.0 in preview, and it's a doozy. Not only is it the first release to support the upcoming Steam Machine living room gaming PC, it comes with long-awaited features for Valve's handhelds and more support for other companies' handhelds than we've seen to date - including Microsoft and Asus' Xbox [&#8230;]

Mar 20, 2026

OpenAI is working on a desktop "superapp" that merges its ChatGPT app, the Codex AI coding app, and its AI-powered Atlas browser into one app, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company is making the change as part of an effort to simplify its various product efforts, according to a memo cited by the WSJ [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

Sony’s WF-1000XM6 are the best noise-canceling wireless earbuds you can buy, but they’ve been hard to recommend over the last-gen model because of the price. While the older version is often on sale for $248, the update costs $329 — and has never before been marked down. That’s why this deal is worth paying attention [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

I admit, this is an innovation I did not see coming: Silicon Valley has invented the philosophical zombie from the classic thought experiment "lol how crazy would it be if there were a philosophical zombie." Until recently, the philosophical zombie was a concept closely associated with Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who defines it as "someone [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

The MCON is the closest to a Swiss army knife that a controller can be. No, it doesn’t contain a can opener, but it makes up for it with a surprising array of features. Once you attach your MagSafe- or Pixelsnap-ready phone to the top plate, pressing a button along its top edge satisfyingly pops [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

Over a decade after Apple first partnered with Herm&#232;s for a special Apple Watch collaboration, the French luxury goods maker has released a new collection of leather-wrapped charging accessories for Apple's mobile devices. The most expensive option is a multi-device wireless charger in a case made from the brand's signature gold-colored calfskin leather that will [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

For almost two hours last week, Meta employees had unauthorized access to company and user data thanks to an AI agent that gave an employee inaccurate technical advice, as previously reported by The Information. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said in a statement to The Verge that "no user data was mishandled" during the incident. A [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

Microsoft’s Xbox console strategy needs work, but its Bluetooth-ready controller that shipped alongside the Xbox Series X and Series S is fantastic. We think it’s one of the best Xbox controllers out there, thanks to its comfortable design, multiplatform compatibility (it works great on the Steam Deck and PC, too), and its textured grips and [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

These past few weeks have been particularly brutal for the EV industry - and anyone who believes that electric vehicles are the future. Thanks to slowing demand and policy whiplashes, automakers are on an EV murder spree, killing a host of promising new models. The EV graveyard grows bigger by the minute. And unfortunately, as [&#8230;]

Mar 19, 2026

Prediction markets are working to ingratiate themselves with mainstream news and culture: The Golden Globes broadcast in January was plastered with Polymarket odds, the AP is licensing election data to Kalshi, and a partnership between Polymarket and Substack means more prediction market data in newsletters. Some prediction market exchanges are now attempting to strike deals [&#8230;]

Mar 20, 2026

These apps, some of which use AI and computer vision, were helpful for meeting my caloric and nutrition intake goals. But they also gave me some anxiety.

Mar 20, 2026

Corsair's updated 4000D is one of the best cases you can buy, even if I still love the old one.

Mar 20, 2026

Meta blamed users for not opting into the privacy-protecting feature. Experts fear the move could be the first major domino to fall for end-to-end encryption tech worldwide.

Mar 20, 2026

When social media is constantly exhorting people to use AI, what is the point of not letting AI agents participate?

Mar 20, 2026

The ActiveBreeze smart bed cools from within, pairing airflow tech with surprisingly detailed sleep data.

Mar 20, 2026

Save on streaming with the latest Paramount+ promo codes and deals, including 50% off subscriptions, free trials, and more.

Mar 20, 2026

Enjoy up to 10% off your entire order with today’s Newegg discount code and save with the latest deals for gaming PCs, laptops, and computer parts.

Mar 20, 2026

The Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad botnets had infected more than 3 million devices in total, many inside home networks, according to the US Justice Department.

Mar 19, 2026

In this episode, we dive into Nvidia’s annual developer conference and what CEO Jensen Huang is saying about the future of the company.

Mar 19, 2026

Last year, as FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened ABC over a Jimmy Kimmel monolog, a civil servant overseeing West Coast stations privately pledged support, according to emails obtained by WIRED.

Mar 19, 2026

As Silicon Valley obsesses over a new wave of AI coding agents, Google and other AI labs are shifting their bets.

Mar 19, 2026

Save big on Apple’s previous-generation premium over-ear headset.

Mar 19, 2026

A day after saying it would shut down its metaverse, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth announced the service will remain available in VR—with limited support.

Mar 19, 2026

Inspired by real immigrant stories, H1B.Life captures the uncertainty, trade-offs, and pure luck that shape the lives of people trying to build a future in the US.

Mar 19, 2026

OpenAI plans to allow sexting with ChatGPT. A human-AI interaction expert warns of a privacy nightmare.

Mar 19, 2026

Moxie Marlinspike says the technology powering his encrypted AI chatbot, Confer, will be integrated into Meta AI. The move could help protect the AI conversations of millions of people.

Mar 19, 2026

Lightweight shoes now dominate the trails, so do you still need boots? Here’s how to choose the right footwear for your outdoor adventures.

Mar 19, 2026

Ever wanted a complete Dolby Atmos cinema packed into a big wheelie case?

Mar 19, 2026

If digital calendars are leaving you lacking, these WIRED-tested paper agendas and notebooks could change your life.

Mar 19, 2026

Fueled by the manosphere, men are boosting their testosterone levels through natural and synthetic means, with some competitively swapping test results on a regular basis.

Mar 20, 2026

<p><a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/gpt-54-mini-brings-some-of-the-smarts-of-openais-latest-model-to-chatgpt-free-and-go-users-170000585.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">OpenAI</a> is developing a “super app” for desktop that unifies <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/chatgpt-image-generation-is-now-faster-and-better-at-following-tweaks-180000750.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">ChatGPT</a>, its browser and its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-brings-its-codex-coding-app-to-windows-195345429.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">Codex</a> app, according to the <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=2f007401-3eaa-4237-b69b-54ccbe125502&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=5a0eedc9-c541-4abe-9e58-735d8ca57b00&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Wall+Street+Journal&amp;linkText=Wall+Street+Journal&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53c2ouY29tL3RlY2gvb3BlbmFpLXBsYW5zLWxhdW5jaC1vZi1kZXNrdG9wLXN1cGVyYXBwLXRvLXJlZm9jdXMtc2ltcGxpZnktdXNlci1leHBlcmllbmNlLTllMTk5MzFkIiwiY29udGVudFV1aWQiOiI1YTBlZWRjOS1jNTQxLTRhYmUtOWU1OC03MzVkOGNhNTdiMDAiLCJvcmlnaW5hbFVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndzai5jb20vdGVjaC9vcGVuYWktcGxhbnMtbGF1bmNoLW9mLWRlc2t0b3Atc3VwZXJhcHAtdG8tcmVmb2N1cy1zaW1wbGlmeS11c2VyLWV4cGVyaWVuY2UtOWUxOTkzMWQifQ&amp;signature=AQAAAedMyTFHVJ6WcbevGBU5rofDhKIKypIX_ylzGJWpVKBA&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Ftech%2Fopenai-plans-launch-of-desktop-superapp-to-refocus-simplify-user-experience-9e19931d" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Wall Street Journal;elmt:;cpos:4;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-plans-launch-of-desktop-superapp-to-refocus-simplify-user-experience-9e19931d"><em>Wall Street Journal</em></a><em> </em>and <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=34e37b9c-8975-48da-aa39-df8bcd5badc3&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=5a0eedc9-c541-4abe-9e58-735d8ca57b00&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=CNBC&amp;linkText=CNBC&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jbmJjLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE5L29wZW5haS1kZXNrdG9wLXN1cGVyLWFwcC1jaGF0Z3B0LWJyb3dzZXItY29kZXguaHRtbCIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiNWEwZWVkYzktYzU0MS00YWJlLTllNTgtNzM1ZDhjYTU3YjAwIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jbmJjLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE5L29wZW5haS1kZXNrdG9wLXN1cGVyLWFwcC1jaGF0Z3B0LWJyb3dzZXItY29kZXguaHRtbCJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAeJUFaDkGoUhHo1D7eFlYpolcpBjlA6Z6EGTZ6b1ocWR&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2026%2F03%2F19%2Fopenai-desktop-super-app-chatgpt-browser-codex.html" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:CNBC;elmt:;cpos:5;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/openai-desktop-super-app-chatgpt-browser-codex.html"><em>CNBC</em></a>. A company spokesperson told the publications that OpenAI Chief of Applications Fidji Simo will lead the application revamp with assistance from OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Simo will also help the marketing team advertise the app when it comes out. OpenAI’s leadership is apparently hoping that combining several products can help it streamline user experience and dedicate its resources to one project. </p><p>The company has yet to make an official announcement about the new app, but Simo replied to the <em>Journal</em> piece’s author on X. “Companies go through phases of exploration and phases of refocus; both are critical,” Simo <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://x.com/fidjissimo/status/2034769466433913082?s=20" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">said</a>. “But when new bets start to work, like we're seeing now with Codex, it's very important to double down on them and avoid distractions. Really glad we're seizing this moment.” </p><p>The <em>Journal</em> saw the internal note Simo sent to employees, wherein she said that the company realized it was spreading its efforts across too many apps and that it needed to simplify its efforts. “That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want,” she reportedly wrote. In an all-hands meeting, <em>CNBC</em> said she also told employees that the company was “orienting aggressively” towards high-productivity use cases.</p><p>It’s not clear yet when the unified app will be available, but OpenAI is reportedly focusing on developing agentic AI capabilities for it. The agents will be able to make decisions and use tools to do tasks on computers, such as writing software or analyzing data, with little human oversight. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-is-putting-chatgpt-its-browser-and-code-generator-into-one-desktop-app-025709839.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Alphabet&#39;s life sciences business Verily is restructuring and raising money as a new corporate entity. Verily <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260319148827/en/Verily-Secures-%24300-Million-Investment-to-Advance-its-Precision-Health-AI-Strategy" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">announced</a> that with its $300 million investment round, it will change from an LLC to a corporation and rename itself Verily Health Inc. As a result, Alphabet now has a minority stake rather than a controlling one in the business.&nbsp;</p><p>Similar to every other tech business, this chapter for Verily will be focused on AI. “From research to care, our customers need solutions that bring the best of clinical and scientific rigor together with AI to deliver the next generation of healthcare - one that is as precise as it is personal,&quot; Chairman and CEO Stephen Gillett said.</p><p>Google Life Sciences was <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2015-12-08-google-life-sciences-verily-spinoff.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">renamed</a> Verily in 2015, around the same time as Google also rebranded to Alphabet. It has worked on a wide range of projects over the years, such as using <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2018-02-19-google-ai-can-scan-your-eyes-to-predict-heart-disease.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">eye scans to predict heart disease</a> and an <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-02-06-verily-onefifteen-opioid-addiction-center.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">opioid addiction center</a>. In 2025, it <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/alphabets-verily-closes-its-medical-device-division-and-lays-off-staff-120009404.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">closed its medical device division</a>, a move that may have signaled its shift toward AI.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/alphabet-no-longer-has-a-controlling-stake-in-its-life-sciences-business-verily-221718631.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are leading a group of 20 other states in suing the US Environmental Protection Agency for renouncing its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, <a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/climate/epa-endangerment-states-lawsuit.html" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:1;pos:1"><em>The New York Times </em>reports</a>. The lawsuit <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/158b1f1c8d49362e/76ef57f7-full.pdf" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">specifically argues</a> that the EPA's decision to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/president-trump-and-administrator-zeldin-deliver-single-largest-deregulatory-action-us" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">rescind a 2009 study</a> that determined greenhouse gases are dangerous to public health was illegal. The study, which is the source of what's called the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.epa.gov/climate-change/endangerment-and-cause-or-contribute-findings-greenhouse-gases-under-section-202a#findings" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">"Endangerment Finding,"</a> was one of several justifications — along with things like the Clean Air Act — for the agency's ability to regulate emissions.</p><p>Rescinding the finding nullified the EPA's evidence for things like emissions standards and a variety of other regulations that attempted to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced by the automotive, coal and oil industries. The Trump administration framed the rollback as a cost-saving measure, but it was also a major blow to the government's ability to fight climate change. Greenhouse gases, which include things like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, collect in the atmosphere and warm the planet, upsetting weather patterns and negatively impacting the environment. Determining the changes caused by greenhouse gases posed a risk to public health gave the EPA the authority to regulate them under its existing mandate to address air pollution. An authority it could have again, depending on the result of this litigation.</p><p>Of course, winning a lawsuit isn't necessary to restore the EPA's role in fighting climate change. Congress could do that now by passing a new law. The legal route is just faster, and potentially riskier. <em>The New York Times</em> writes that this new lawsuit was filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and could ultimately be combined with an existing lawsuit from environmental groups. Depending on how the case fairs in the lower court, it may eventually be appealed to the US Supreme Court, who could decide on an even more restrictive interpretation of the EPA's role.&nbsp;</p><p>Under President Donald Trump, the EPA has already <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/science/the-epa-is-rolling-back-biden-era-clean-water-rules-130029921.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">rolled back clean water rules</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/science/epa-scientists-were-reportedly-ordered-to-halt-publication-of-research-papers-183751436.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">attempted to stifle research</a>. The Trump administration has separately tried to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">undermine the authority</a> of independent agencies like the EPA and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-now-has-full-control-of-the-ftc-180816016.html" data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1">FTC</a>, something the Supreme Court <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/fight-over-trumps-power-fire-ftc-member-heads-us-supreme-court-2025-12-08/" data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1">has yet to determine</a> to be illegal.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/states-are-suing-the-epa-for-relinquishing-its-role-as-a-greenhouse-gas-emissions-regulator-221425064.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Amazon has acquired Rivr, a startup focused on autonomous robotics. Rivr is based in Zurich and was valued at $110 million in a funding round from August 2024, which both Amazon and its CEO's Bezos Expeditions participated in. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.&nbsp;</p><p>Rivr's robots have four legs and wheels that allow it to maneuver on stairs and other potentially uneven surfaces. The company just released its second generation of the robot. The purchase will likely further Amazon's capabilities for ever-faster and more efficient package deliveries.&nbsp;</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2q3kPl4mJQ?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>"This acquisition reflects our commitment to a continued investment in research, which we believe has the potential to further improve safety outcomes and the overall delivery experience for delivery service partners and their delivery associates," a representative from Amazon told <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=ba0a4cdc-cec8-416a-9e93-e11b8179129c&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=c20027d6-7d09-4b53-9bf2-0814bc72d979&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Information&amp;linkText=The+Information&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVpbmZvcm1hdGlvbi5jb20vYXJ0aWNsZXMvYW1hem9uLWFjcXVpcmVzLXJvYm90aWNzLXN0YXJ0dXAtYm9vc3RpbmctZWZmb3J0cy1zdHJlYW1saW5lLWRlbGl2ZXJpZXMiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6ImMyMDAyN2Q2LTdkMDktNGI1My05YmYyLTA4MTRiYzcyZDk3OSIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlaW5mb3JtYXRpb24uY29tL2FydGljbGVzL2FtYXpvbi1hY3F1aXJlcy1yb2JvdGljcy1zdGFydHVwLWJvb3N0aW5nLWVmZm9ydHMtc3RyZWFtbGluZS1kZWxpdmVyaWVzIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAdISOlZIaCzzQKaMnXT5tAZ8m6fDET2F_POC7gYh0kZA&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinformation.com%2Farticles%2Famazon-acquires-robotics-startup-boosting-efforts-streamline-deliveries" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Information;elmt:;cpos:1;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/amazon-acquires-robotics-startup-boosting-efforts-streamline-deliveries"><em>The Information</em></a>.</p><p>Amazon has been working toward introducing automations and robotics at various stages of its shopping business. It deployed its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/operations/amazon-million-robots-ai-foundation-model" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">1 millionth robot</a> last summer and has future goals for automating <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/new-report-leaks-amazons-proposed-mass-automation-plans-144822790.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">75 percent</a> of all its operations.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-acquires-autonomous-robotics-startup-rivr-212839750.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>DoorDash has launched a new option for its gig economy workers to earn some extra cash. The delivery service introduced <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/introducing-doordash-tasks" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">Tasks</a>, which it describes as &quot;short activities Dashers can complete between deliveries or in their own time.&quot; It gives taking pictures of restaurant dishes or recording video of unscripted conversations in languages other than English as examples. These materials will be used to train artificial intelligence and robotics models.&nbsp;</p><p>A representative from DoorDash told <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-19/doordash-s-new-paid-tasks-turn-couriers-into-ai-and-robot-trainers?utm_campaign=twitte&amp;utm_medium=share&amp;utm_source=website&amp;embedded-checkout=true" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1"><em>Bloomberg News</em></a> that it will use Tasks content for evaluating its in-house AI models as well as those made by its partner companies in retail, insurance, hospitality and tech. DoorDash is piloting a standalone app for Tasks where Dashers will submit their content. The blog post notes that pay will be displayed upfront, and compensation will vary based on the complexity of the activity.</p><p>This idea isn&#39;t new. We&#39;ve seen <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-startups-robotics-pay-film-chores-encord-micro1-scale-2025-10" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">other</a> <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-03-12/why-people-in-la-are-strapping-cameras-on-their-bodies-to-do-chores" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">startups</a> in AI and robotics offering payment for content filmed by regular people. Considering how many lawsuits are underway against AI companies that have already benefited from <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/encyclopedia-britannica-sues-openai-for-copyright-and-trademark-infringement-164747991.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">unauthorized</a> use of <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/metadata-company-gracenote-is-the-latest-to-sue-openai-for-copyright-infringement-200347812.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">copyrighted</a> <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/judge-rejects-anthropics-record-breaking-15-billion-settlement-for-ai-copyright-lawsuit-033512498.html" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">materials</a>, at least this approach lets people be directly compensated for training content. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/doordash-will-start-paying-gig-workers-for-creating-content-to-train-ai-models-204048743.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Google is testing a version of its Gemini app for macOS, <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-19/google-begins-testing-gemini-mac-app-to-match-chatgpt-and-claude" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1"><em>Bloomberg</em> reports</a>. The app would bring the AI assistant to uncharted territory, and in more direct competition with OpenAI&#39;s <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/chatgpt-for-macos-no-longer-requires-a-subscription-204959264.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">ChatGPT</a> and Anthropic&#39;s <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/1852003248208552331?s=20" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">Claude</a>, both of which offer standalone Mac apps.</p><p>Gemini remains accessible through the web, and it sounds like the macOS app offers the same set of features, with the ability to respond to prompts, search the web and generate text, images and code. The major differentiator of the Mac app could be a feature called &quot;Desktop Intelligence,&quot; which gives Gemini a new source of information and context for its responses. According to a message in the app&#39;s code viewed by <em>Bloomberg</em>, &quot;when you enable apps for Desktop Intelligence you are enabling Gemini to see what you see (such as screen context) and pull content directly from these apps to improve and personalize your experience only when Gemini is in use.&quot;</p><p>The ability to refer to information in apps and what&#39;s currently on your screen is offered by both the Claude and ChatGPT macOS apps, and something Gemini is <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/screen-and-camera-sharing-in-gemini-live-is-heading-to-all-android-and-ios-devices-174547592.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">capable of on mobile devices</a>. It&#39;s not clear if Gemini for macOS will be able to actually take action in the apps it can view — like, for example, Anthropic&#39;s popular <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-launches-claude-cowork-a-version-of-its-coding-ai-for-regular-people-193000849.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">Claude Cowork</a> feature — but Google has already started offering that experience in <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-announces-new-android-ai-features-coming-to-the-galaxy-s26-and-pixel-10-series-180039674.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">a limited form on smartphones</a>, so who&#39;s to say that couldn&#39;t come to desktop operating systems, too.</p><p><em>Bloomberg</em> reports that the Gemini app is being tested with non-Google employees, which could be a sign it&#39;s making its way to a public release. Thanks to Apple and Google&#39;s AI partnership, whether the app sees the light of day or not, some of the technology that makes Gemini possible will run on macOS in the future. Google and Apple <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/apples-siri-ai-will-be-powered-by-gemini-153636649.html" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">announced in January</a> that Google&#39;s Gemini models would power future versions of Apple Intelligence. Apple is also reportedly <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/apple-is-reportedly-overhauling-siri-to-be-an-ai-chatbot-205303818.html" data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1">overhauling Siri into more of a chatbot</a>, an experience likely made possible by Gemini.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-reportedly-testing-a-gemini-app-for-mac-203703372.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Google <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/android-developer-verification.html">has detailed</a> how users will be able to sideload apps from unverified developers once it implements its <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-will-block-sideloading-of-unverified-android-apps-124521174.html">more restrictive policy towards</a> downloading software on Android. The company originally planned to require all developers to be &quot;verified&quot; to distribute on Android, but <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-will-allow-experienced-users-to-sideload-unverified-android-apps-130000130.html">softened its stance in November 2025</a> to allow carveouts for Android power-users and hobbyist developers.</p> <p>For the average Android users, the ability to sideload apps will now be locked behind a multi-step one-time process. Users will first have to enable developer mode in settings, confirm they&#39;re not being coached into disabling security, restart their phone (to cut off any phone calls), then wait a day and confirm their identity with biometric authentication or a pin before installing any apps. Google says you can enable the ability to install apps from unverified developers for seven days or indefinitely, but regardless of what you&#39;ll choose, you&#39;ll still have to dismiss a warning telling you the app you&#39;re installing is from an unverified developer.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>For hobbyist developers or students who want people to try their app but don&#39;t want to create a verified developer account, Google also plans to offer free &quot;limited distributions accounts&quot; that let you share apps without being verified. These accounts will let you share apps with up to 20 devices without having &quot;to provide a government-issued ID or pay a registration fee.&quot;</p> <p>Google is implementing its new verification process in the name of security, and has likened the requirements being asked of developers to &quot;an ID check at the airport, which confirms a traveler&#39;s identity but is separate from the security screening of their bags.&quot; Neither the verification nor this new approach to sideloading entirely closes off getting apps from unverified developers onto your Android device, they just make it harder to download something dangerous directly from the internet onto your phone.&nbsp;</p> <p>Google appears to be trying to split the difference on Android, tightening up what apps can be distributed via verification, while <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-ends-its-30-percent-app-store-fee-and-welcomes-third-party-app-stores-185248647.html">cutting its own Play Store fees</a> and changing its stance towards third-party app stores. Requiring verification to distribute software extends Google&#39;s influence outside of its own apps and app store, which is why some developers and digital rights organizations have <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://keepandroidopen.org/open-letter/">publicly pushed back</a> on the company&#39;s plan.&nbsp;</p> <p>Developers can <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://developer.android.com/developer-verification">sign-up for early access</a> to the developer verification process now. Google says its new workflow for enabling sideloading and small distributions of apps will go live in August.</p> <p><strong>Correction, March 19, 2026, 3:44PM ET: </strong>The headline has been change to clarify that the new procedure does not apply to all app sideloading.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/android-will-hide-app-sideloading-behind-a-new-one-time-security-process-184651171.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://store.steampowered.com" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">Steam Spring Sale</a> is underway and as usual, there&#39;s plenty of good stuff to add to your library. The seasonal discounts will run through Thursday, March 26 at 1PM ET. If there&#39;s anything you&#39;ve been waiting to buy, it&#39;s worth checking to see if it&#39;s on sale now, because huge chunks of the Steam catalog are at least a little bit off.&nbsp;</p><p>Recent releases don&#39;t usually receive big price cuts during Steam sales, but you can save at least a couple bucks on several 2025 hits this time. The excellent <em>Arc Raiders</em> is $32, <em>Doom: The Dark Ages</em> is about $23 and <em>Battlefield 6</em> is $42. <em>Silent Hill f</em> is half off at $35 for the horror fans, and indie appreciators can snag <em>Hades 2</em> for less than $23.</p><p><em>No Man&#39;s Sky</em> is $24 for endless space adventures. Check out <em>Ghost of Tsushima</em> on PC for $36 or be the meanest cowboy in the west in <em>Red Dead Redemption 2</em> for $15.&nbsp;</p><p>We usually spy some indie excellence on the sale list and this year is no different. <em>Is This Seat Taken?</em> is a few bucks off, as is <em>Megabonk</em>. Explore the islands of <em>Tchia</em> for 75 percent off. <em>No Rest for the Wicked</em>, a newer title from the team behind <em>Ori and the Blind Forest</em>, is $28. Perennial Steam Sale fave <em>Stardew Valley</em> is half off for the five of you who don&#39;t already own it.</p><p>This spring, the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://store.steampowered.com/sale/special_deals" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">steep discount</a> section has a few especially notable titles. <em>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate</em>, <em>Fallout New Vegas</em> and <em>Totally Accurate Battle Simulator</em> are among the games that are 90 percent off.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Now you&#39;ll just need to play everything you buy before the Summer Sale.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-steam-spring-sale-is-here-with-discounts-on-arc-raiders-hades-2-and-much-more-184000691.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>A little more than a year after ditching third-party fact checkers and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-ditching-third-party-fact-checkers-on-facebook-instagram-142330246.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">rolling back</a> much of its proactive content moderation, the company says it will further &quot;transform&quot; its approach by <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/boosting-your-support-and-safety-on-metas-apps-with-ai/" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">drastically reducing</a> the number of human moderators in favor of AI-based systems. The company says the change will happen &quot;over the next few years,&quot; and will allow the company to catch more issues faster than its current approach.&nbsp;</p><p>Meta didn&#39;t say how much of its contract workforce might be cut as it makes this transition. The company employs thousands of contractors around the world to review content flagged by its AI systems and user reports among other tasks. The company said that as it shifts its approach humans will &quot;play a key role&quot; in &quot;critical decisions&quot; and aid in training and other tasks.</p><p>&quot;Experts will design, train, oversee, and evaluate our AI systems, measuring performance and making the most complex, high‑impact decisions,&quot; Meta said in an update. &quot;For example, people will continue to play a key role in how we make the highest risk and most critical decisions, such as appeals of account disablement or reports to law enforcement.&quot;</p><p>The company has been testing LLM-based systems <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/facebook-sees-rise-in-violent-content-and-harassment-after-policy-changes-182651544.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">for content moderation</a> for a while and says that early tests have had &quot;promising&quot; results. Another advantage is that its AI can handle languages used by &quot;98% of people online,&quot; compared with the 80 languages currently supported by its moderation capabilities.&nbsp;</p><p>While Meta says its underlying rules aren&#39;t changing, the new approach could dramatically change users&#39; perception of how Meta enforces its policies. The company already relies heavily on AI for certain rules, and many users believe that these systems make <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/how-an-oregon-court-became-the-stage-for-a-115000-showdown-between-meta-and-facebook-creators-150000952.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">too many mistakes</a> and make it difficult for their appeals to reach a set of human eyes. On the other hand, Meta, which stands to save a lot of money if it significantly downsizes its contract workforce, says its new systems make &quot;fewer over-enforcement mistakes&quot; and catch more of the most &quot;severe&quot; violations.&nbsp;</p><p>In the nearer term, Meta is introducing an AI powered &quot;support assistant&quot; that will help users with certain types of account issues. The chatbot, which is rolling out now in the Facebook and Instagram app, will be able to help users report content and manage appeals, reset passwords and manage other account settings. It will also be able to help people who get locked out of their accounts &quot;starting with select cases in the US and Canada.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-will-move-away-from-human-content-moderators-in-favor-of-more-ai-183000435.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p><a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-fbi-confirms-its-buying-americans-location-data-230835196.html"><ins>The FBI has confirmed to the Senate</ins></a> it is once again buying data which can be used to track the locations of US citizens. That may have surprised the people who thought the precedent in <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States"><em><ins>Carpenter v. United States</ins></em></a> prohibited it. But while that case examined if it was legal for law enforcement to obtain location data from mobile networks without a warrant, here the FBI and other agencies have found a way to skirt the Fourth Amendment entirely. Over the last few years, they have taken to just buying location data from the same companies which power the enormous online advertising ecosystem.</p> <h3 id="jump-link-where-does-this-data-come-from">Where does this data come from?</h3> <p>When your phone is connected to the internet, it broadcasts about itself, and so do the apps and platforms you use. That information includes your IP address and device type, as well as your longitude and latitude if your device has GPS. This data, known as Bidstream, alongside any third party cookies tied to your device, enables the process of <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/appeals-court-confirms-that-tracking-based-online-advertising-is-illegal-in-europe-223714124.html"><ins>Real Time Bidding (RTB)</ins></a>. RTB is the process where your attention is auctioned off to the highest bidder in the milliseconds after you’ve loaded a page. In order to make the auctions work, these platforms need to know as much about you as they can.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>As <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/europe-tracking-consent-iccl-iab-eu-gdpr-153055765.html"><ins>I explained in depth back in 2021</ins></a>, data such as your location and IP address is broadcast over the ad networks. This information can also be aggregated, licensed or sold to data brokers who can pair this with any “deterministic data” available. For instance, if you sign up to a platform and tell them your name, email address and annual income, that data could be licensed to a data broker. Even banks looking for new revenue streams are planning to <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Telegraph UK;elmt:;cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=1e9b353f-2483-466c-93ba-e142a13fe4a3&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=0d685d0d-754e-44c3-89c1-d184d7e765ab&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Telegraph+UK&amp;linkText=license+anonymized+customer+data&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy50ZWxlZ3JhcGguY28udWsvYnVzaW5lc3MvMjAyNi8wMy8wNi9sbG95ZHMtdW5kZXItZmlyZS1mb3Itc2VsbGluZy1jdXN0b21lci1kYXRhLyIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiMGQ2ODVkMGQtNzU0ZS00NGMzLTg5YzEtZDE4NGQ3ZTc2NWFiIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy50ZWxlZ3JhcGguY28udWsvYnVzaW5lc3MvMjAyNi8wMy8wNi9sbG95ZHMtdW5kZXItZmlyZS1mb3Itc2VsbGluZy1jdXN0b21lci1kYXRhLyJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAd5W5PcMEzFJ2qJttCGsOt1auqFtkafwlrZrZzwFTgU0&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2026%2F03%2F06%2Flloyds-under-fire-for-selling-customer-data%2F" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/06/lloyds-under-fire-for-selling-customer-data/"><ins>license anonymized customer data</ins></a> to these companies. Data brokers can easily combine the two streams of information to build out a fairly extensive picture of you as a person, and what advertisers will be the most interested in you. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to opt out of this and, even if it were, it would be even more difficult to destroy the data already in circulation.</p> <p>In 2018 French company Vectaury, which acted as an ad sales intermediary for mobile apps, was inspected by the French data protection regulator. <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/cnil/id/CNILTEXT000037594451/"><ins>Officials found</ins></a> the company had built a database containing the personal data of 67.6 million people without proper consent.</p> <p>Data brokers don’t just harvest and hoard this data to make online ad sales, however, they will also license and sell its databases to others. Lawmakers believe that these brokers have sold this data to rival nations looking for ways to <a data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1" href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/congress-foreign-intelligence-agencies-bidstream-real-time-bidding/"><ins>spy on US citizens</ins></a>.</p> <h3 id="jump-link-how-are-law-enforcement-agencies-getting-it">How are law enforcement agencies getting it?</h3> <p>In January, <a data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1" href="https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/"><em><ins>404Media</ins></em></a> revealed the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) bought access to tools supplied by cybersecurity company Penlink. Specifically, it purchased access to tools named Tangles and Webloc, which can be used to surveil large numbers of people at once. The latter tool reportedly has the power to identify smartphones in a given area and time, and can then follow them on their journey through the day and back to their home at night.</p> <p>Given the secretive nature of its business, Penlink does not reveal much about how its tools operate. A since-removed marketing page says Webloc automatically analyzes “location based information” available in “endless digital channels from the web ecosystem.” And <em>404Media’</em>s report says these tools access “commercially available smartphone location data,” supplied by third-party data brokers. <a data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/18/ice-spends-millions-on-social-media-spy-tech-banned-by-meta-facebook/"><em><ins>Forbes</ins></em></a> reports the system can also pull together data from a variety of sources, including social media, to offer a real-time view of an event. <a data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1" href="https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-police-invest-tangles-sheriff-surveillance/"><em><ins>The Texas Observer</ins></em></a> says Webloc can use this information to enable “warrantless device tracking.”</p> <p>A number of other US law enforcement agencies have also purchased location data from data brokers, including the <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Wall Street Journal;elmt:;cpos:11;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=2f007401-3eaa-4237-b69b-54ccbe125502&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=0d685d0d-754e-44c3-89c1-d184d7e765ab&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Wall+Street+Journal&amp;linkText=Department+of+Homeland+Security&amp;custData=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&amp;signature=AQAAAR8EEb4Z22IFKe7tjh1K37wLBIxiOTL7nVOLCYhuLDrr&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Ffederal-agencies-use-cellphone-location-data-for-immigration-enforcement-11581078600%3Fgaa_at%3Deafs%26gaa_n%3DAWEtsqdrrqTKqRhi1NYtcWP6emef7Ufespjq9xE3jYCOi9_OQ_-hVK797tB4hUtkXP0%253D%26gaa_ts%3D69bc1cdf%26gaa_sig%3D6SKxgpAvgE8IqePyYXVIWM_vqHpcEuARW1PpK0sPa2QKPbUvHznk-mSb_Fk3HJUhvTVLhBfI4mmhj5TejOt0tw%253D%253D" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-agencies-use-cellphone-location-data-for-immigration-enforcement-11581078600?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=AWEtsqdrrqTKqRhi1NYtcWP6emef7Ufespjq9xE3jYCOi9_OQ_-hVK797tB4hUtkXP0%3D&amp;gaa_ts=69bc1cdf&amp;gaa_sig=6SKxgpAvgE8IqePyYXVIWM_vqHpcEuARW1PpK0sPa2QKPbUvHznk-mSb_Fk3HJUhvTVLhBfI4mmhj5TejOt0tw%3D%3D"><ins>Department of Homeland Security</ins></a>, <a data-i13n="cpos:12;pos:1" href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-cbp022-bss-september2018.pdf"><ins>Customs and Border Protection</ins></a>, the <a data-i13n="cpos:13;pos:1" href="https://www.techdirt.com/2020/08/24/secret-service-latest-to-use-data-brokers-to-dodge-warrant-requirements-cell-site-location-data/"><ins>Secret Service</ins></a> and the <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Wall Street Journal;elmt:;cpos:14;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=2f007401-3eaa-4237-b69b-54ccbe125502&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=0d685d0d-754e-44c3-89c1-d184d7e765ab&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Wall+Street+Journal&amp;linkText=Internal+Revenue+Service&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53c2ouY29tL2FydGljbGVzL2lycy11c2VkLWNlbGxwaG9uZS1sb2NhdGlvbi1kYXRhLXRvLXRyeS10by1maW5kLXN1c3BlY3RzLTExNTkyNTg3ODE1IiwiY29udGVudFV1aWQiOiIwZDY4NWQwZC03NTRlLTQ0YzMtODljMS1kMTg0ZDdlNzY1YWIiLCJvcmlnaW5hbFVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndzai5jb20vYXJ0aWNsZXMvaXJzLXVzZWQtY2VsbHBob25lLWxvY2F0aW9uLWRhdGEtdG8tdHJ5LXRvLWZpbmQtc3VzcGVjdHMtMTE1OTI1ODc4MTUifQ&amp;signature=AQAAAS_lLxEM2vmd5F3iApPmK1XS6iCEhkfXwOY9RXSSnYSR&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Firs-used-cellphone-location-data-to-try-to-find-suspects-11592587815" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-used-cellphone-location-data-to-try-to-find-suspects-11592587815"><ins>Internal Revenue Service</ins></a>. This isn’t just limited to government agencies, however, as <a data-i13n="cpos:15;pos:1" href="https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-reveals-phone-data-used-to-target-abortion-misinformation-at-visitors-to-hundreds-of-reproductive-health-clinics"><ins>anti-abortion groups</ins></a> did similar while targeting people visiting Planned Parenthood clinics.</p> <h3 id="jump-link-how-can-this-be-legal">How can this be legal?</h3> <p>The <a data-i13n="cpos:16;pos:1" href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/"><ins>Fourth Amendment</ins></a> guarantees the right of the people to be protected from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” made without probable case. But, as Dori H. Rahbar wrote in the <a data-i13n="cpos:17;pos:1" href="https://www.columbialawreview.org/content/laundering-data-how-the-governments-purchase-of-commercial-location-data-violates-carpenter-and-evades-the-fourth-amendment/"><ins>Columbia Law Review</ins></a>, “the Fourth Amendment does not regulate open market transactions.” Aaron X Sobel, writing in the <a data-i13n="cpos:18;pos:1" href="https://yalelawandpolicy.org/end-running-warrants-purchasing-data-under-fourth-amendment-and-state-action-problem"><ins>Yale Law and Policy Review</ins></a>, described the practice as “end-running warrants,” and urged legislators to close this loophole. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is also pushing for legislation under the <a data-i13n="cpos:19;pos:1" href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/tell-congress-support-fourth-amendment-not-sale-act"><ins>Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act</ins></a>.</p> <p>It’s not likely that such legislation will be passed for a long time, and a cynic would suggest it’s not possible under the current administration. But, even if it is, it won’t address the bigger issue of the ad tech industry and its partners vacuuming up as much information about us as it can. When these companies — many of which aren’t even known to the public — are able to store up enough information on us that, if they were so motivated, they could follow our path through the day, it’s a sign something is very rotten indeed. If we’re concerned about governments having this sort of access, then we should be equally nervous about anyone else having it as well.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/dont-be-surprised-that-the-fbi-is-buying-your-location-data-182047627.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p><em>Stranger Things</em> fans will soon have permanent access to the Upside Down, as a full DVD set <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.arrowvideo.com/c/stranger-things/"><ins>is now available to preorder</ins></a>. <em>Stranger Things: The Complete Series</em> comes in Blu-Ray and 4K UHD editions.</p> <p>This collection includes all five seasons of the hit show, which totals 25 discs. It&#39;ll be available at brick-and-mortar and online retailers beginning on July 28. Prices range from $200 to $260, depending on the media type and edition.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><div id="dae0e85d922d48bf9fa4fa11a66d9b54"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Return to Hawkins this July with STRANGER THINGS: THE COMPLETE SERIES, available in Special and Deluxe Editions on Blu-ray and 4K UHD. <br> <br>Pre-order in the US via Arrow: <a href="https://t.co/wJbH9FJvo1">https://t.co/wJbH9FJvo1</a><br>Pre-order in the UK via Arrow: <a href="https://t.co/yXi3HBPA42">https://t.co/yXi3HBPA42</a> <a href="https://t.co/ddYQVcB04J">pic.twitter.com/ddYQVcB04J</a></p>— Arrow Video (@ArrowFilmsVideo) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArrowFilmsVideo/status/2034646294027804858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2026</a></blockquote> </div> <p>To that end, there&#39;s a deluxe edition available for true diehards. This includes the complete series, of course, but also bonus content like bloopers, interviews with the cast and crew and various behind-the-scenes featurettes. It also comes with a bunch of doodads, like a self-adhesive Hellfire Club patch, five posters, 25 smaller art cards, a fold-out map of Hawkins and a branded twenty-sided die.</p> <p>There&#39;s a collector&#39;s box and each season comes in reversible sleeves with new artwork. Finally, this edition ships with a large artbook that includes original design sketches, concept art, storyboards and more. This is a pretty cool and comprehensive package.</p> <p>The price might seem high, but <em>Stranger Things</em> consists of 42 episodes and they get pretty lengthy in seasons four and five. In any event, owning physical media of stuff you like is never a bad idea, given that <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-prodigy-will-be-pulled-from-paramount-next-week-191704393.html"><ins>everything on streaming</ins></a> <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/hbo-max-removing-shows-discovery-plus-203029015.html"><ins>is subject to the whims</ins></a> <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://deadline.com/2023/05/disney-remove-series-streaming-disney-plus-hulu-big-shot-willow-y-dollface-turner-hooch-pistol-1235372512/"><ins>of executives looking</ins></a> <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://deadline.com/2022/12/raised-by-wolves-the-time-travelers-wife-among-other-titles-being-removed-from-hbo-max-as-warner-bros-discovery-lines-up-fast-plans-1235199433/"><ins>to avoid paying residuals</ins></a> <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://medium.com/@TeckPlanet/the-disappearing-act-why-streaming-platforms-keep-removing-classic-content-b696bbd6be3f"><ins>or whatever</ins></a>.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/the-complete-stranger-things-dvd-set-includes-25-discs-and-costs-around-200-172222577.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Ubisoft is ceasing game development at its studio, Red Storm Entertainment, best known for its work on the Tom Clancy’s series. While the studio is set to remain open, 105 people will be laid off, a Ubisoft source told <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="http://gamesindustry.biz/"><em><ins>GamesIndustry.biz</ins></em></a>.</p> <p>Those who survive the cull will reportedly continue to work on the Snowdrop engine, used in many of Ubisoft’s tentpole games over the last decade, including <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/i-really-want-to-like-star-wars-outlaws-160032476.html"><em>Star Wars Outlaws</em></a><em>&nbsp;</em>and <em>Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora </em>more recently. Red Storm had been working on an untitled Splinter Cell VR game that was canceled in 2022, as well as the also-canceled <em>The Division Heartland</em>.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>The studio was co-founded by the author Tom Clancy himself in 1996 (taking its name from Clancy&#39;s novel <em>Red Storm Rising</em>), and in its 30 years has worked on a large number of Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games, among others. It also developed 2023’s broadly well-received <em>Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR</em>.</p> <p>According to <em>GamesIndustry.biz</em>’s source, the layoffs at Red Storm are part of Ubisoft’s wider cost-saving <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-launches-its-new-tencent-backed-subsidiary-194750403.html"><ins>reorganization</ins></a>, which has resulted in <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-proposes-even-more-layoffs-after-last-weeks-studio-closures-and-game-cancellations-192703241.html"><ins>sweeping</ins></a> job <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-lays-off-40-staff-working-on-splinter-cell-remake-says-game-remains-in-development-151139753.html"><ins>cuts</ins></a> and game <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-prince-of-persia-the-sands-of-time-remake-among-six-games-canceled-by-ubisoft-175801132.html"><ins>cancellations</ins></a> across the French publisher&#39;s portfolio.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/ubisoft-ends-development-at-tom-clancy-studio-red-storm-170847892.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Meta is backtracking on its plans to shut down the VR version of its metaverse. The company now plans to support Horizon Worlds in VR for the &quot;foreseeable future,&quot; though users shouldn&#39;t expect new games, CTO Andrew Bosworth said in an update.</p><p>&quot;We will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR for existing games, to support the fans who&#39;ve reached out,&quot; Bosworth said in a post on Instagram. &quot;For people who already have games they like that they&#39;re using in Horizon Worlds, [they] will be able to download the Horizon Worlds app and use it in VR for the foreseeable future.&quot;</p><p>The reversal comes after Meta said earlier this week that Horizon Worlds in VR would no longer be accessible <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-will-shut-down-vr-horizon-worlds-access-in-june-222028919.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">after June 15</a> as the company pivots its metaverse experiences to mobile. Though Horizon never gained mass appeal, even among VR enthusiasts, Meta&#39;s move to shut it down was just the latest sign of how the company has pivoted away from its metaverse ambitions as it chases <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/mark-zuckerberg-shares-a-confusing-vision-for-ai-superintelligence-153944322.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">AI &quot;superintelligence.&quot;</a>&nbsp;</p><p>In his post on Instagram, Bosworth said there was &quot;a lot of misinformation&quot; about the company&#39;s plans. &quot;We announced, &#39;hey, we&#39;re moving away from Horizon Worlds in VR,&#39; and the headline is that Horizon is dead,&quot; he said. &quot;It&#39;s not. And likewise, VR is not dead. We&#39;re continuing to invest tremendously.&quot; The company laid off more than <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-refocuses-on-ai-hardware-as-metaverse-layoffs-begin-145924706.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">1,000 employees</a> from its metaverse division and shut down <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-has-closed-three-vr-studios-as-part-of-its-metaverse-cuts-202720670.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">three VR studios</a> earlier this year. Bosworth said that the company is still working on its next two generations of VR headsets.</p><p>He described the metaverse as a &quot;misunderstood concept&quot; that was never meant to only encompass virtual reality. He said that AR is also part of the vision and that even people scrolling their phones could be part of the metaverse. &quot;When somebody is using their phone and you&#39;re physically with them, they&#39;re at the dinner table with you, and yet when you talk to them, they hear nothing because they&#39;ve transported themselves through the glowing rectangle into a digital space,&quot; he said. &quot;Maybe that they&#39;re scrolling media, maybe that they&#39;re in the text world, but like they have transported themselves. So we&#39;ve always had this internally — at least me and Mark — this very expansive construct of the metaverse.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-isnt-shutting-down-its-vr-metaverse-after-all-165520696.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/best-nintendo-switch-2-games-070007467.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">Switch 2 ports</a> keep on coming. This time it's <em>Kena: Bridge of Spirits</em>, the award-winning 2021 title from Ember Lab. Previously <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/kena-bridge-of-spirits-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-2-this-spring-132839640.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">announced for spring 2026</a>, the visually striking title now has an official release date of March 26.</p><p><em>Kena: Bridge of Spirits</em> won Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2021. It's already available for <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/kena-bridge-of-spirits/" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">PS5 / PS4</a>, PC (<a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1954200/Kena_Bridge_of_Spirits/" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">Steam</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/kena-bridge-of-spirits" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">Epic</a>) and <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=5f41950e-8ca3-4481-8466-a22b28b80e32&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=b44a4e7f-4eac-4388-a5ca-824e1d0273d9&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=Xbox&amp;linkText=Xbox+Series+X%2FS+and+One&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy54Ym94LmNvbS9lbi1VUy9nYW1lcy9zdG9yZS9rZW5hLWJyaWRnZS1vZi1zcGlyaXRzLzlORE5NM0hYNzdSMCIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiYjQ0YTRlN2YtNGVhYy00Mzg4LWE1Y2EtODI0ZTFkMDI3M2Q5Iiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy54Ym94LmNvbS9lbi1VUy9nYW1lcy9zdG9yZS9rZW5hLWJyaWRnZS1vZi1zcGlyaXRzLzlORE5NM0hYNzdSMCJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAUUWU6XWD9ayISJpG8H4ZVtR4zzoMhTJ71xEarKs54pf&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.xbox.com%2Fen-US%2Fgames%2Fstore%2Fkena-bridge-of-spirits%2F9NDNM3HX77R0" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:Xbox;elmt:;cpos:6;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/kena-bridge-of-spirits/9NDNM3HX77R0">Xbox Series X/S and One</a>.</p><p>You play as Kena, a young spirit guide on a quest to a sacred mountain shrine. Gameplay has a Zelda-like flair. (That could make it a solid next play after <em>Breath of the Wild</em> and <em>Tears of the Kingdom</em>.) Like in Link’s adventures, you’ll find plenty of exploration, puzzles and fast-paced combat. That encompasses whacking bad guys with Kena's staff, firing arrows and flinging bombs.</p><p><em>Kena: Bridge of Spirits</em> launches for Switch 2 on March 26 in North America, Europe and Asia. Meanwhile, folks in Thailand can get it a day earlier, on March 25. Details about Taiwan will be announced "soon." You can preorder the game today in North America and Europe and get a taste of its Pixar-esque art style in the trailer below.</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Uljrg4__sRc?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/kena-bridge-of-spirits-launches-for-switch-2-on-march-26-163540229.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Rivian and Uber <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2026/Uber-and-Rivian-Partner-to-Deploy-up-to-50000-Fully-Autonomous-Robotaxis-2026-TViR4R05gi/default.aspx"><ins>have entered into a major partnership</ins></a>, with the former to provide the latter with 50,000 robotaxis <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/uber-and-rivian-partner-to-deploy-up-to-50000-fully-autonomous-robotaxis"><ins>in a deal worth $1.25 billion</ins></a> in funding. This starts with Uber purchasing 10,000 Rivian R2 robotaxis, which will be deployed in San Francisco and Miami by 2028.</p> <p>If all goes well, Uber will scoop up 40,000 more robotaxis by 2030. The company plans to scale the initiative to 25 major cities by 2031. The full $1.25 billion investment is contingent on several autonomous milestones, <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-investing-up-to-125-billion-in-rivian-eyes-50000-car-expansion-of-robotaxi-fleet-120000004.html"><ins>according to a report by </ins><em><ins>Yahoo Finance</ins></em></a>. However, Uber has already committed $300 million as an initial investment, though this is subject to regulatory approval.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><div id="8b1e4076d4484b6689ec2438fff0f359"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A fleet of R2 Robotaxis is coming exclusively to <a href="https://twitter.com/Uber?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Uber</a>. ⚡🌿<br><br>Today, we announced a partnership to help both companies accelerate their autonomous vehicle plans across 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031. <a href="https://t.co/6WazhobMyr">https://t.co/6WazhobMyr</a> <a href="https://t.co/9fzgmIsOd5">pic.twitter.com/9fzgmIsOd5</a></p>— Rivian (@Rivian) <a href="https://twitter.com/Rivian/status/2034601020647485576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2026</a></blockquote> </div> <p>The announcement actually caused Rivian&#39;s stock to surge by ten percent before <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RIVN/">settling down to around four percent</a>. This speaks to optimism surrounding the deal, given that just about every other stock is on the downswing at the moment due to <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/iran-war-trump-neoconservativism/"><ins>certain geopolitical concerns</ins></a>.</p> <p>This isn&#39;t Uber&#39;s only partnership for this type of thing. It&#39;s a giant company with robotaxi hands in a number of cookie jars. The rideshare platform recently unveiled its own in-house robotaxi fleet, which is a <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/transportation/uber-reveals-the-design-of-its-robotaxi-at-ces-2026-230056302.html"><ins>design partnership with Lucid and Nuro</ins></a>.</p> <div id="d7e628555bc24395add9bca28d8ec644"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Our partner <a href="https://twitter.com/nvidia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@nvidia</a> has long helped power the AV ecosystem<br><br>Now we’re working together to bring fully NVIDIA-driven L4 robotaxis to the <a href="https://twitter.com/Uber?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Uber</a> platform across 28 cities by 2028, starting in LA and SF next year <a href="https://t.co/CeaxZ7dL8Z">https://t.co/CeaxZ7dL8Z</a> <a href="https://t.co/2d2Fhol5S0">pic.twitter.com/2d2Fhol5S0</a></p>— Andrew Macdonald (@andrewgordonmac) <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewgordonmac/status/2033647875981201905?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2026</a></blockquote> </div> <p>It also announced a partnership with NVIDIA to <a data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1" href="https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2026/NVIDIA-to-Launch-L4-Software-Driven-Robotaxis-on-Uber-Across-28-Cities-by-2028/default.aspx"><ins>develop software-driven autonomous vehicles</ins></a>, which will begin deployment in Los Angeles and San Francisco by the first half of 2027. Uber even <a data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/transportation/waymo-and-uber-launch-robotaxi-service-in-atlanta-110056091.html"><ins>teamed up with Waymo</ins></a> to bring robotaxis to cities like Atlanta and Austin.</p> <p>As for Rivian, the company <a data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1" href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-april-could-turning-point-120500776.html"><ins>is slowly but surely</ins></a> becoming the &quot;cool&quot; American EV maker, a position once held by Tesla. It just announced pricing and availability <a data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/rivians-r2-ev-arrives-this-spring-with-a-58000-price-tag-150000363.html"><ins>for the long-anticipated R2 electric SUV</ins></a>. It arrives this spring, with a starting cost of $58,000. A cheaper model is expected to go on sale in 2027.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/rivian-will-provide-50000-robotaxis-to-uber-in-a-deal-worth-125-billion-153856638.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p><a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/darksword-ios-exploit-chain" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:1;pos:1">Google</a> and cybersecurity companies <a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://www.lookout.com/threat-intelligence/article/darksword" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:2;pos:1">Lookout</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://iverify.io/press-releases/iverify-details-darksword-second-mass-attack-against-ios-disclosed-in-two-weeks" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">iVerify</a> have detailed a new hacking technique that potentially puts a significant portion of iPhone users in danger, just by visiting the wrong web page. The hack is called "DarkSword" and it currently targets iOS 18 releases between iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.6.2. </p><p>For its part, an Apple spokesperson told Engadget that the company had patched the underlying vulnerabilities in iOS versions 15 through 26 last year; the company also issued an emergency update for devices running iOS 15 and 16 that are unable to run newer versions of iOS. The company does note that users running iOS 13 or iOS 14 would need to update to at least iOS 15 to be protected; those operating systems were released in 2019 and 2020, respectively. </p><p>In response to this threat, Apple <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/126776" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">has also published details</a> on what users can do to make sure they’re fully protected, which are essentially the same as what the company shared with Engadget. Even if you’re not running iOS 26, updates are and have been available to protect users from this particular threat. Apple also notes that the URLs detected and published in <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=53056deb-0e54-4c87-964d-2e7d085829e8&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=b9ddde10-8d6b-41b8-9abf-bb9fd8ba0175&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=Google+Cloud+-+North+America&amp;linkText=Google%E2%80%99s+security+blog&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2Nsb3VkLmdvb2dsZS5jb20vYmxvZy90b3BpY3MvdGhyZWF0LWludGVsbGlnZW5jZS9kYXJrc3dvcmQtaW9zLWV4cGxvaXQtY2hhaW4iLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6ImI5ZGRkZTEwLThkNmItNDFiOC05YWJmLWJiOWZkOGJhMDE3NSIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9jbG91ZC5nb29nbGUuY29tL2Jsb2cvdG9waWNzL3RocmVhdC1pbnRlbGxpZ2VuY2UvZGFya3N3b3JkLWlvcy1leHBsb2l0LWNoYWluIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAeVDfkYVplUG-w7vlmVMr3cnLCgkcyZsJ8uXKZlcN1DA&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fcloud.google.com%2Fblog%2Ftopics%2Fthreat-intelligence%2Fdarksword-ios-exploit-chain" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:Google Cloud - North America;elmt:;cpos:5;pos:1" data-original-link="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/darksword-ios-exploit-chain">Google’s security blog</a> are blocked by its Safe Browsing features in Safari. </p><p>DarkSword is a "fileless" hack that leverages a collection of exploits to access sensitive data when an iPhone visits an infected website. Rather than install spyware that hangs around on a user's phone after messages and other private information are stolen, fileless hacks like DarkSword take control of "the legitimate processes in an iPhone's operating system to steal data," according to <em>Wired</em>. Even more troubling, DarkSword deletes any evidence it was running on an iPhone after it finishes stealing your information.</p><p>The hack starts as soon as an iOS device encounters an "malicious iframe embedded in a web page," after which it works its way through your iPhone, gathering sensitive information like passwords before deleting itself. DarkSword can abscond with things like messages and iCloud content, but it's also specifically designed to access crypto currency wallets, Lookout says, which could indicate who was using DarkSword before it became widely available.</p><p>DarkSword has reportedly been used in Ukraine, Saudi Arabia,&nbsp;Malaysia, Turkey and Russia, and its origins could be tied to a different hacking toolkit called <a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/coruna-powerful-ios-exploit-kit" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:6;pos:1">Coruna</a> that <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/10/us-military-contractor-likely-built-iphone-hacking-tools-used-by-russian-spies-in-ukraine/" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1"><em>TechCrunch </em>reports</a> may have been created for the US government by a company called Trenchant. Regardless of where DarkSword came from, the tool didn't become widely available until its Russian users left DarkSword's source code on a website for anyone to access, "complete with explanatory comments in English that describe each component and include the 'DarkSword' name for the tool," <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=fc65353f-45dc-4cd0-89be-ac2071680abb&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=b9ddde10-8d6b-41b8-9abf-bb9fd8ba0175&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=WIRED&amp;linkText=Wired+writes&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53aXJlZC5jb20vc3RvcnkvaHVuZHJlZHMtb2YtbWlsbGlvbnMtb2YtaXBob25lcy1jYW4tYmUtaGFja2VkLXdpdGgtYS1uZXctdG9vbC1mb3VuZC1pbi10aGUtd2lsZC8iLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6ImI5ZGRkZTEwLThkNmItNDFiOC05YWJmLWJiOWZkOGJhMDE3NSIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2lyZWQuY29tL3N0b3J5L2h1bmRyZWRzLW9mLW1pbGxpb25zLW9mLWlwaG9uZXMtY2FuLWJlLWhhY2tlZC13aXRoLWEtbmV3LXRvb2wtZm91bmQtaW4tdGhlLXdpbGQvIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAccFg1qs7NHfv5TQo_86IKWODIbDd9K4106Vvh5KDfJZ&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fhundreds-of-millions-of-iphones-can-be-hacked-with-a-new-tool-found-in-the-wild%2F" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:WIRED;elmt:;cpos:8;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.wired.com/story/hundreds-of-millions-of-iphones-can-be-hacked-with-a-new-tool-found-in-the-wild/"><em>Wired</em> writes</a>.</p><p>Apple patched the exploits that DarkSword and Coruna used in recent updates to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/ios-26-beta-preview-liquid-glass-is-better-than-you-think-172155402.html" data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1">iOS 26</a>, the yearly software release from 2025 that followed iOS 18. DarkSword currently targets iOS 18 releases between iOS 18.4 and iOS 18.6.2, and according to Apple's latest <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/" data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1">iOS usage stats for developers</a>, around 24 percent of iOS devices are still on some version of iOS 18. </p><p>However, Apple simultaneously released iOS 26 <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/121161" data-i13n="cpos:11;pos:1">and iOS 18.7</a> on September 15, 2025. So even if people didn’t want to upgrade to iOS 26, Apple has released patches to mitigate the vulnerability. Apple’s stats indicate that about 24 percent of iPhone users are still on iOS 18, the actual number of potentially vulnerable phones is lower. Still, it’s a good reminder to stay on top of software updates if only for the security features if nothing else.</p><p><strong>Update, March 19, 2026, 11:19AM ET:</strong> This story has been updated with details from Apple about what versions of iOS had been proactively patched to mitigate this vulnerability. </p><p><strong>Update, March 19, 2026, 10:10AM ET:</strong> This story has been updated to note that while this vulnerability targets iOS 18, Apple released iOS 18 updates over the last six months that are secure against this attack.</p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/a-new-iphone-hacking-tool-puts-some-ios-18-users-at-risk-203745666.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jaAEKYGnxrA?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>Poncle could be about to ruin the planet’s productivity all over again now that <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/a-vampire-survivors-roguelike-deckbuilder-spinoff-is-coming-in-2026-183841289.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1"><em>Vampire Crawlers</em></a><em> </em>has a release date for PC and consoles. The dungeon-crawling roguelike deckbuilder — which is a <em>Vampire Survivors </em>spinoff — is coming to Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and Nintendo Switch on April 21. It’ll cost $10. Alternatively, you’ll be able to check it out via Xbox Game Pass on day one. </p><p><em>Vampire Crawlers </em>is on the way to iOS and Android as well. However, you’ll have to wait until sometime later this year to play it on mobile devices.</p><p><em>Vampire Crawlers </em>is set in the same world as <em>Vampire Survivors </em>and it features many of the same playable characters and enemies. The action takes place from a first-person perspective this time around. Instead of firing weapons automatically, you play cards to use your attacks or boost your stats. Each card has a mana cost, so there’s more of a strategic element to combat. Cards can be modified and weapons can be evolved. </p><p>Poncle made <em>Vampire Crawlers </em>with the help of Nosebleed Interactive. It’s the first of several <em>Vampire Survivors </em>spinoffs that Poncle has planned. There’s also a licensed <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vampire-survivors-and-warhammer-join-forces-in-a-new-roguelite-game-161352281.html" data-i13n="slk:Warhammer take on Vampire Survivors;cpos:2;pos:1">Warhammer take on the original title</a> coming soon. </p><p>While I didn’t get deep enough into it to experiment with some truly wild combos, I enjoyed what I played of the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/steam-next-fest-a-different-flavor-of-the-witcher-and-other-new-indie-games-worth-checking-out-120000900.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1"><em>Vampire Crawlers </em>demo</a>. If you need me, I’ll be busy cancelling all of my other plans for late April. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/vampire-survivors-spinoff-vampire-crawlers-is-coming-to-pc-and-consoles-on-april-21-151217962.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Amazon’s next-generation <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/alexa-is-a-smarter-more-conversational-ai-version-of-amazons-digital-assistant-154349563.html">smart assistant</a> has entered its Early Access program in the UK, marking Alexa+’s European debut following rollouts in the US, Canada and Mexico. Starting March 19, invitations to start using the smarter, more conversational <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/alexa-preview-an-almost-philosophical-exercise-130012573.html"><ins>Alexa</ins></a> will be sent out to "hundreds of thousands" of willing participants, Amazon said in a <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/alexa-plus-international-launch"><ins>press release</ins></a>, adding that Alexa is the most popular voice assistant in the UK.</p> <p>As well as its more natural communication, agentic capabilities, contextual awareness and ability to remember previous conversations across devices, Amazon that users across the pond are getting an "authentically British" AI-powered assistant. It understands slang terms like "cuppa" and might even accuse you of taking the mick in the middle of a conversation. Can we rule out some cringe-inducing cockney impersonations? Absolutely not. It also distinguishes between, for example, how people in the UK say the date — "the 1st of April" — versus how it’s said in the US.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>Amazon said that engineers, linguists and speech scientists have worked together at the company’s Cambridge-based Tech Hub to ensure the voice assistant understands British users, with naturally flowing conversations being a crucial part of the Alexa+ experience.</p> <p>On the agentic side of things, the current lineup of UK partners will include OpenTable and, soon, JustEat, alongside existing partnerships with services like Spotify, Philips and Apple Music. Amazon also sources news from the likes of <em>The Guardian </em>and Future Publishing.</p> <p>UK-based customers who purchase a new supported Echo device will automatically qualify for Early Access, and if you already own one you can register <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:Amazon UK;elmt:;cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=ee9b4694-91af-4476-bd66-52f71d265624&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=9ddc319d-573e-4fae-b95c-a6ddf9d83083&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=Amazon+UK&amp;linkText=here&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwOi8vd3d3LmFtYXpvbi5jby51ay9uZXdhbGV4YT90YWc9Z2RndDBjLTIwIiwiY29udGVudFV1aWQiOiI5ZGRjMzE5ZC01NzNlLTRmYWUtYjk1Yy1hNmRkZjlkODMwODMiLCJvcmlnaW5hbFVybCI6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cuYW1hem9uLmNvLnVrL25ld2FsZXhhIiwiZHluYW1pY0NlbnRyYWxUcmFja2luZ0lkIjp0cnVlLCJzaXRlSWQiOiJ1cy1lbmdhZGdldCIsInBhZ2VJZCI6IjFwLWF1dG9saW5rIiwiZmVhdHVyZUlkIjoidGV4dC1saW5rIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAQWLk9j13HxI5wqHh1x0qM1zxQIvlB50T0siQF4f0aNL&amp;gcReferrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fnewalexa" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="http://www.amazon.co.uk/newalexa"><ins>here</ins></a> to receive an invite. You can also try Alexa+ on select Fire TV devices and in a web browser.</p> <p>During the Early Access period, which ran for nearly a year in the US before its <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/alexa-is-now-available-nationwide-with-a-free-text-based-version-for-non-prime-members-to-try-155550342.html"><ins>nationwide</ins></a> rollout last month, Alexa+ will be free, and will remain free for Prime members. On its own it will cost £20 per month. As a reminder, Prime costs £9 per month in the UK (£95 annually) so it makes no sense whatsoever to pay more for Alexa+ exclusively when it's included in the main membership anyway.&nbsp;</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/alexa-launches-in-the-uk-141058988.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Nothing takes a different tack with its phone series. For the second time in a row, its midrange entry-level A-series smartphones debuted ahead of its next flagship device. The company has even warned that we won’t be getting the Nothing Phone 4 until next year. Until then, the <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-phone-4a-pro-hands-on-price-launch-date-123053485.html">Phone 4a Pro</a> is here to make an impact, with a more restrained design, a less obtrusive camera bump and specs that beat out last year’s Nothing Phone 3 — all for <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothings-phone-4a-pro-picks-up-flagship-features-and-an-even-brighter-display-for-499-111500926.html">$499</a>. In 2026, Nothing is truly aiming to dethrone the Pixel 10a.</p> <p> <core-commerce id="dfe39b89348e48ca949c255bc1026a6b" data-type="product-list" data-original-url="https://nothing.tech/products/phone-4a-pro?Colour=Silver&amp;Capacity=8%2B128GB”"></core-commerce></p> <h2 id="jump-link-hardware">Hardware</h2> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/37cc74b0-22e4-11f1-beee-fd4122e12097" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/37cc74b0-22e4-11f1-beee-fd4122e12097" style="height:1440px;width:2560px;" alt="Nothing Phone 4a Pro review" data-uuid="d7177931-f9f4-3c75-9e78-3301a2c51fbc"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Mat Smith for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>It’s a new look. That’s often the case with Nothing’s smartphones as the company typically reimagines or rejigs what you can see through the clear back panel. This year, however, Nothing is making bigger changes: this is its first metal (aluminum) unibody phone.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span> <p>With a new periscope telephoto camera design, the jarringly thick camera bump of last year’s <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-phone-3a-and-3a-pro-review-rising-above-the-boring-competition-120014496.html">Phone 3a Pro</a> is thankfully gone, resulting in a slice of smartphone that feels — and to some, looks — more premium and more refined than Nothing’s “flagship” Phone 3.</p> <p>However, compared to the Nothing phones that came before, it also feels muted, and a little safe. The playfulness of Nothing has been hemmed in a little. You might prefer it, but I’m not sure I do.</p> <p>Those identifiable Nothing design flourishes — red details, visible screens, lots and lots of circles — are now squeezed into a camera panel. This oblong area with curved corners houses a trio of cameras, a “Now Recording” red light and a tweaked Glyph Matrix, which we last saw on the Nothing Phone 3.</p> <p>This new Glyph Matrix is bigger and brighter, but at a lower “resolution,” that’s made of 137 mini-LEDs. That’s fewer than the Nothing Phone 3’s 489-strong dot-matrix, but the LEDs here are 100 percent brighter. So bright, in fact, that I had to turn them down to their lowest brightness when I was using them.The 4a Pro, however, lacks the rear button on the Phone 3 that lets you cycle through Glyph functions. Does this mean the company has made it easy to switch between Glyph toys and notifications in the phone’s UI? Sadly not.</p> <p>You can dip into the Glyph options through the main settings menu, but to change what the Glyph displays is hidden in a sub-tab. I also noticed that the offering of “toys” was limited, with fewer items than even the Nothing Phone 3 had at launch. Hopefully, this will expand once the phone officially launches.</p> <p>The 4a Pro packs a bigger screen than the company’s flagship, with a 6.83-inch AMOLED screen running at 1.5K resolution. It also has a higher refresh rate than the 6.67-inch Phone 3. And on top of that, the Phone 4a Pro’s display has a peak brightness of 5,000 nits, making it Nothing’s brightest smartphone yet.</p> <p>I’ve handled so many phones over the last four weeks that it’s often hard to discern the difference between brighter displays. Fortunately, I have the Nothing Phone 3 (and 3a Pro) to compare against the Phone 4a Pro. It’s noticeably brighter, and as we slowly get into sunnier weather, a smartphone that’s easier to read outdoors is always very welcome.</p> <p>The Phone 4a Pro also has improved IP65 water and dust resistance, while Nothing says it's 42 percent more bend-resistant than the Phone 3a Pro as well. It’s also almost 0.5mm thinner, if you ignore the camera bump for those measurements. Factor that in and the Phone 4a Pro is almost 1.5mm thinner than its predecessor. This design change also makes Nothing’s newest phone feel far less top-heavy than the 3a Pro. Regardless of the aesthetic changes, this is unmistakably refined hardware.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-cameras">Cameras</h2> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/379fe670-22e4-11f1-bb6f-959d3ac80474" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/379fe670-22e4-11f1-bb6f-959d3ac80474" style="height:1440px;width:2560px;" alt="Nothing Phone 4a Pro review" data-uuid="94fd69f6-66f5-3fa6-91f1-fb6331b09ec9"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Mat Smith for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>Besides the streamlined camera unit, with a new tetraprism periscopic lens that takes up less space, the Phone 4a Pro has improved imaging capabilities (almost) across the board. The new 50-megapixel periscope telephoto lens (which Nothing says also uses less power) has a 3.5x optical zoom, plus computational photography magic that can now crank it up to a (mostly unusable) 140x hybrid zoom.</p> <p>The main 50MP sensor also features a bigger sensor for improved low-light performance. With an f/1.88 lens though, it doesn’t quite match the Phone 3’s main camera (f/1.68), both on paper and in practice. The array is rounded out with an 8MP ultrawide camera, which sounds like the weakest link, but I rarely use the ultrawide cameras on any phone aside from review testing. Oddly, the selfie camera is a technical downgrade in resolution, with a 32MP sensor on the 4a Pro, down from 50MP on the 3a Pro.</p> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/df311620-22e4-11f1-999d-53655b867bef" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/df311620-22e4-11f1-999d-53655b867bef" style="height:1440px;width:2560px;" alt="Nothing Phone 4a Pro sample photos" data-uuid="8b6cce79-89fd-3b21-9daa-c2b99cfbf506"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Mat Smith for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>One new addition was co-developed by Google. Ultra XDR blends Android’s native HDR processing with Nothing’s own approach, capturing 13 RAW frames at different exposures and combining them to deliver greater dynamic range and detail. However, as proof of how <em>new</em> they are, your Ultra XDR images can’t be shared as easily. They do work with Google Photos and Instagram, at least. If it’s any consolation, Ultra XDR so far doesn’t seem hugely far away from typical HDR capture. I’ll keep testing the cameras and if I figure out where it really shines, I’ll update this review.</p> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/df46e810-22e4-11f1-9efb-f5bbc8b7f82f" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/df46e810-22e4-11f1-9efb-f5bbc8b7f82f" style="height:1440px;width:2560px;" alt="Nothing Phone 4a Pro sample photos" data-uuid="e29ebd7c-346d-30fa-ab66-2f435c2bc6ed"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Mat Smith for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>If one thing disappoints on the 4a Pro, it’s recording video. Switching between zoom levels will often completely derail exposure settings. Even if you record on a single camera at the same focal length, exposure levels seem extremely sensitive and struggle to stay locked. Footage is often muddy and low-light performance isn’t great, even if using the Ultra XDR video mode. You aren’t forced to endure this with the Pixel 10a, but then again, there’s no zoom on Google’s mid-range phone — just a lossless crop. In more forgiving lighting, video is adequate, but quality drops off beyond the 3.5x optical zoom. Still, the versatility and quality of the still images from both the main camera and the telephoto lens put it above every other smartphone at this price.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-performance-and-software">Performance and software</h2> <p>The Phone 4a Pro is now powered by a more capable processor: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4. Nothing claims that, in addition to its own on-device optimizations, it improved CPU performance by 27 percent, GPU performance by 30 percent and AI performance by 65 percent compared to the Phone 3a series.</p> <p>There’s certainly a big difference in performance while gaming. While the 3a series struggled with more complex games, the 4a Pro kept up with <em>Red Dead Redemption </em>and<em> Diablo Immortal</em>. It’s not the most polished interpretation of Decard Cain and the lands of Sanctuary, but it's responsive and playable, even at 60 fps, with only a few frame drops.</p> <p>The Phone 4a has a 5,080mAh battery, roughly equivalent to its predecessor. It supports up to 50W fast charging, a tad faster than the Pixel 10a, though it lacks wireless charging support, unlike Google’s midranger. It’s one of the few signs that this isn’t Nothing’s “true” flagship, even if it looks the part.</p> <p>I was pleasantly surprised by the battery life, too. Typically, phones are getting increasingly bigger batteries, but as I mentioned, that’s not the case here.. However, the 4a Pro lasted 24 hours in our battery rundown test, five hours more than last year’s model.</p> <p>The Phone 4a Pro has all the software features either present or teased in older Nothing Phones. Essential Search is a system-wide search that can find terms in messages, files and the rest of your phone. There’s also a new Breathing Break widget; we definitely need that in 2026.</p> <p>Essential Memory is Nothing’s name for its background algorithms and analysis, scrutinizing your phone’s contents as well as whatever’s saved in <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-phone-3a-essential-spaces-ai-powered-app-done-right-163042976.html">Essential Space</a>. Nothing has added cloud storage for Space, aimed at devoted upgraders, meaning everything you saved on older compatible Nothing phones can be transferred over. Sure, it’s a little niche, but it was an early frustration while testing the Phone 3 after the 3a series. If, for some reason, you have to reset your device, keeping everything in Space backed up elsewhere is a boon.</p> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/3883b6c2-22e4-11f1-bfb8-dde9226d172f" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/3883b6c2-22e4-11f1-bfb8-dde9226d172f" style="height:1440px;width:2560px;" alt="Nothing Phone 4a Pro review" data-uuid="0a9a8216-5ef2-3cf3-a922-81b4ba715b7d"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Mat Smith for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>Also, while it’s technically a hardware tweak, Nothing has also moved the Essential Key to the left edge of the phone, making it far less likely to be triggered when you’re adjusting the volume and more in line with other phones and my own smartphone muscle memory.</p> <p>One caveat from previous Nothing devices remains. The company says it will deliver three years of Android updates and an additional three years of security patches. Compare that to Samsung’s seven years of Android updates for this year’s S26 series (and Google’s Pixel 10a), and you can see how it falls short.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-wrap-up">Wrap-up</h2> <p>The Phone 4a Pro punches well above its $499 price tag. Nothing has successfully refined its hardware into a more premium, all-metal unibody, losing the jarring camera bump of its predecessor in favor of a sleek design that houses a genuinely impressive camera. The improved camera versatility, coupled with its class-leading 24-hour battery life and a more capable processor, makes this a serious threat to the Pixel 10a.</p> <p>However, some of Nothing's signature playfulness has been dialed back. The Glyph Matrix, while brighter, is lower-resolution and its “toys” are disappointingly limited at launch. The lack of wireless charging is another nod to its midrange status.</p> <p>Nothing’s Phone 4a Pro is a device with a clear identity, delivering on the essentials for half the price of many rivals.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/nothing-phone-4a-pro-review-glyph-matrix-130042005.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

<p>UK’s Ofcom has <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/investigation-into-4chan-and-its-compliance-with-duties-to-protect-its-users-from-illegal-content" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">fined</a> 4chan a total of £520,000 ($690,000) over the website’s failure to comply with the rules of <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/uk-internet-watchdog-gives-social-media-companies-three-months-to-improve-safety-or-face-huge-fines-130018908.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">Online Safety Act 2023</a>. The biggest chunk of the amount came from 4chan’s failure to ensure children cannot encounter pornographic content on its website by implementing an effective age check mechanism. For that violation, the website has received a penalty of £450,000 ($598,000) and an order to apply an age check system by April 2. It carries a daily rate penalty of £500 ($664) until the website is compliant or until June 1, whichever comes sooner. </p><p>Ofcom also found that 4chan has failed to carry out sufficient illegal content risk assessment on its website and has fined it £50,000 ($66,400) for that violation. 4chan has until April 2 to conduct a risk assessment, or it has to pay an additional £200 ($266) per day. Finally, the regulator has determined that 4chan failed to include provisions in its terms of service that specify how it protects users from illegal content. That carries a fine of £20,000 ($26,600), with a daily rate penalty of £100 ($133) a day from its compliance deadline of April 2 to June 1. </p><p>The regulator started investigating 4chan, famous for its anonymous and unmoderated messaging boards, in June 2025 to determine if it was failing to meet its obligations under the law. In October, Ofcom <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/uk-regulator-fines-4chan-for-ignoring-online-safety-act-demands-045026169.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">announced its decision</a> for some of the investigations it opened. It slapped 4chan with a £20,000 ($26,700) fine for ignoring its requests for a copy of the website’s illegal harms risk assessment and to provide information about its qualifying worldwide revenue. The regulator has confirmed to Engadget that 4chan has yet to pay that previous fine, which also earned cumulative daily punishment fees for 60 days. </p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/uk-fines-4chan-nearly-700000-for-failing-its-online-safety-act-obligations-115106264.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>During a Senate hearing, FBI Director Kash Patel <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/fbi-buying-data-track-people-patel-00834080" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">confirmed</a> that his agency has bought information that could be used to track individuals' movement and location. "We do purchase commercially available information that’s consistent with the Constitution and the laws under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and it has led to some valuable intelligence for us," he said.&nbsp;</p><p>Law enforcement is required to obtain a warrant in order to get location data from cell service providers following the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">Carpenter v United States</a> ruling from 2018. But why bother with all that hassle when they can just buy the information from the open market?</p><p>"Doing that without a warrant is an outrageous end run around the Fourth Amendment, it’s particularly dangerous given the use of artificial intelligence to comb through massive amounts of private information," Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.) said during the Intelligence Committee hearing. Wyden is one of several lawmakers pushing for an overhaul of when and how the government can obtain citizens' personal information.&nbsp;</p><p>It's an overhaul that's badly needed. Patel already has a history of <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=c813ae39-7d58-41cb-ac66-ad830606ceef&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=1b7edd18-70a5-44f1-b9b1-ece36fcd6f93&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+New+York+Times&amp;linkText=dubious+use+of+government+resources&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAyLzI0L3VzL3BvbGl0aWNzL2thc2gtcGF0ZWwtZmJpLW9seW1waWNzLW1pbGFuLmh0bWw_c2VhcmNoUmVzdWx0UG9zaXRpb249MSIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiMWI3ZWRkMTgtNzBhNS00NGYxLWI5YjEtZWNlMzZmY2Q2ZjkzIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAyLzI0L3VzL3BvbGl0aWNzL2thc2gtcGF0ZWwtZmJpLW9seW1waWNzLW1pbGFuLmh0bWw_c2VhcmNoUmVzdWx0UG9zaXRpb249MSJ9&amp;signature=AQAAARHeBhlOTVweYOpZIGTxiILwG7kJ-yFPqeYrnMjXoaJj&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2026%2F02%2F24%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fkash-patel-fbi-olympics-milan.html%3FsearchResultPosition%3D1" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The New York Times;elmt:;cpos:3;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/us/politics/kash-patel-fbi-olympics-milan.html?searchResultPosition=1">dubious use of government resources</a>, such as ordering SWAT protections for his girlfriend and somehow horning in on men's hockey victory celebrations at the recent winter Olympics, so one would hope he's not also stretching the limits of the few privacy protections that do exist. Then outside the FBI, we have the Department of Homeland Security being sued for <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.npr.org/2026/02/23/nx-s1-5722988/dhs-lawsuit-biometrics-domestic-terrorism" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">illegally tracking immigration raid protestors</a> and the Pentagon's labeling of Anthropic as a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/defense-department-says-anthropic-poses-unacceptable-risk-to-national-security-094328717.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">supply-chain risk</a> after the AI company refused to let its products be used for mass surveillance of Americans.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-fbi-confirms-its-buying-americans-location-data-230835196.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p><a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=ba0a4cdc-cec8-416a-9e93-e11b8179129c&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=7cccd3b0-9598-4f97-81d1-38ca7e7bd126&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Information&amp;linkText=The+Information&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVpbmZvcm1hdGlvbi5jb20vYXJ0aWNsZXMvaW5zaWRlLW1ldGEtcm9ndWUtYWktYWdlbnQtdHJpZ2dlcnMtc2VjdXJpdHktYWxlcnQiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6IjdjY2NkM2IwLTk1OTgtNGY5Ny04MWQxLTM4Y2E3ZTdiZDEyNiIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlaW5mb3JtYXRpb24uY29tL2FydGljbGVzL2luc2lkZS1tZXRhLXJvZ3VlLWFpLWFnZW50LXRyaWdnZXJzLXNlY3VyaXR5LWFsZXJ0In0&amp;signature=AQAAAS0XRF905Tqi3avEsNhlEJsYHg__B31H7kqc-o0N57PJ&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theinformation.com%2Farticles%2Finside-meta-rogue-ai-agent-triggers-security-alert" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Information;elmt:;cpos:1;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-meta-rogue-ai-agent-triggers-security-alert"><em>The Information</em></a> reported that an AI agent within Meta took unauthorized action that led to an employee creating a security breach at the social company last week. According to the publication, an employee used an in-house agentic AI to analyze a query from a second employee on an internal forum. The AI agent posted a response to the second employee with advice even though the first person did not direct it to do so.&nbsp;</p><p>The second employee took the agent's recommended action, sparking a domino effect that led to some engineers having access to Meta systems that they shouldn't have permission to see. A representative from the company confirmed the incident to <em>The Information</em> and said that "no user data was mishandled." Meta's internal report indicated that there were unspecified additional issues that led to the breach. A source said that there was no evidence that anyone took advantage of the sudden access or that the data was made public during the two hours when the security breach was active. However, that may be the result of dumb luck more than anything else.&nbsp;</p><p>Many tech leaders and companies have touted the benefits of artificial intelligence, this is just the latest incident where human employees have lost control over an AI agent. Amazon Web Services experienced a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/13-hour-aws-outage-reportedly-caused-by-amazons-own-ai-tools-170930190.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">13-hour outage earlier</a> this year that also (apparently coincidentally) involved its Kiro agentic AI coding tool. Moltbook, the social network for AI agents recently <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-is-buying-moltbook-the-ridiculous-social-network-populated-by-ai-bots-152732453.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">acquired</a> by Meta, had <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/moltbook-the-ai-social-network-exposed-human-credentials-due-to-vibe-coded-security-flaw-230324567.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">a security flaw</a> that exposed user information thanks to an oversight in the vibe-coded platform.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/a-meta-agentic-ai-sparked-a-security-incident-by-acting-without-permission-224013384.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The White House has been promising <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/trump-orders-creation-of-litigation-task-force-to-challenge-state-ai-laws-022657022.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">a set of national rules</a> to guide artificial intelligence since late last year, and today Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fired the first volley. The senator shared a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/2026/3/technology/blackburn-releases-discussion-draft-of-national-policy-framework-for-artificial-intelligence" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">discussion draft</a> for codifying the executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December calling for an AI bill. Her stated goal is a policy that &quot;protects children, creators, conservatives and communities from harm.&quot; </p><p>Blackburn has called for tougher policies for AI safety, and one of the core messages in this discussion draft is that it &quot;places a duty of care on AI developers in the design, development and operation of AI platforms to prevent and mitigate foreseeable harm to users.&quot; It also draws a line on the many copyright infringement questions raised by creative industries: &quot;an AI model&#39;s unauthorized reproduction, copying, or processing of copyrighted works for the purpose of training, fine-tuning, developing, or creating AI does not constitute fair use under the Copyright Act.&quot;&nbsp;</p><p>Some of the other notable provisions are:</p><ul><li><p>Requires covered online platforms, including social media platforms, to implement tools and safeguards to protect users under the age of 17 against online harms.</p></li><li><p>Protects the voice and visual likenesses of individuals and creators from the proliferation of digital replicas without their consent.</p></li><li><p>Sets new federal transparency guidelines for marking, authenticating and detecting AI-generated content.</p></li><li><p>Requires certain companies and federal agencies to issue reports on AI-related job effects, including layoffs and job displacement to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) on a quarterly basis.</p></li></ul><p>It includes ending Section 230, marking the latest attempt to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/a-bipartisan-bill-is-looking-to-end-section-230-protections-for-tech-companies-055356915.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">retire a law</a> that has been questioned as a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/senate-bill-would-hold-ai-companies-liable-for-harmful-content-212340911.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">possible loophole</a> for AI companies to escape liability when their tools cause harm. While AI critics might see positive signs here, remember that this is just the initial version of the framework. Lawmakers will likely spend a lot of time negotiating over the eventual result, which may be notably de-fanged from its current state. It could wind up with a lot more requirements echoing this Republican complaint: &quot;Combats the consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by AI systems by requiring third-party audits to prevent discrimination based on political affiliation.&quot; Despite the claims of suppression and censorship, we’ve consistently <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/judges-drop-social-media-anti-conservative-case-175623139.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">seen</a> this conservative argument to be <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to-protect-conservatives-220229959.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">false</a> — or at the very least misleading. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/senator-blackburn-introduces-the-first-draft-of-a-federal-ai-bill-202509852.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>A recent change in how the US Postal Service handles shipping partners appears to have forced Amazon to make alternative plans. The company reportedly plans to cut the number of packages it ships through USPS by at least two-thirds later this year. It says the decision came after USPS ended negotiations “at the eleventh hour” in favor of a new bidding process.</p><p>On Tuesday, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=2f007401-3eaa-4237-b69b-54ccbe125502&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=82a9da7c-4e82-4786-9dcf-7ec59e39a90b&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+Wall+Street+Journal&amp;linkText=reported&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy53c2ouY29tL2J1c2luZXNzL3JldGFpbC9hbWF6b24tdXNwcy1wYWNrYWdlLXZvbHVtZS1jaGFuZ2UtOTNkMGY2ZGIiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6IjgyYTlkYTdjLTRlODItNDc4Ni05ZGNmLTdlYzU5ZTM5YTkwYiIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud3NqLmNvbS9idXNpbmVzcy9yZXRhaWwvYW1hem9uLXVzcHMtcGFja2FnZS12b2x1bWUtY2hhbmdlLTkzZDBmNmRiIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAR3ZxcCmver1uvWobIpwGY5s66jlFWXZIoodwu6dw61n&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Fbusiness%2Fretail%2Famazon-usps-package-volume-change-93d0f6db" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The Wall Street Journal;elmt:;cpos:1;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-usps-package-volume-change-93d0f6db">reported</a> that Amazon plans to reduce the shipments it hands off to USPS. Last year, the company accounted for nearly 15 percent of the Postal Service’s package deliveries. Cutting that by nearly two-thirds diminishes one of the USPS’s most reliable sources of revenue. In fiscal 2025, the agency reported a net loss of $9 billion.</p><p>Amazon’s current contract with USPS ends on September 30. In a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-packages-usps-postal-volume" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">public response</a> to the <em>WSJ</em> story, the company said it notified USPS in October 2025 that it would need to complete a new deal by December. “You can't add capacity for hundreds of millions of packages overnight — it requires major capital investment, long-term infrastructure planning, hiring, and logistics coordination,” Amazon wrote.</p><p>According to Amazon, USPS then pulled the plug on negotiations at the last second. “We negotiated with [USPS] in good faith for more than a year to reach a deal that would bring them billions in revenue and believed we were heading toward an agreement,” Amazon wrote in a statement. “Our goal was to increase our volumes with USPS, not reduce them — until USPS abruptly walked away at the eleventh hour in December.”</p><figure><img src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/2026-03/bb69146d-4b4a-4bf0-acff-08149cd8b262" data-crop-orig-src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/2026-03/bb69146d-4b4a-4bf0-acff-08149cd8b262" style="height:3677px;width:5527px;" alt="FILE - Postmaster General David Steiner speaks at an event marking the 250th anniversary of postal service's founding, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)" data-uuid="2097c42c-2a8a-37e5-8522-c0ebe37dc847"><figcaption>Postmaster General David Steiner (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)</figcaption><div class="photo-credit">ASSOCIATED PRESS</div></figure><p>That’s when Postmaster General David Steiner <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://news.usps.com/2025/12/17/usps-announces-bid-solicitation-for-access-to-last-mile-delivery-network/" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">implemented</a> a new bidding process for last-mile deliveries, replacing a long-established one where USPS negotiated with shipping partners individually. He described the move as “a fair bidding process that enables the marketplace to find the best mix of local shipping attributes for the best volume-driven pricing.” Steiner was appointed to the post in May 2025, following the departure of former head Louis DeJoy.</p><p>Amazon said it submitted a bid in February using the new system but hasn’t heard back. “This creates significant uncertainty for our long-term network planning,” the company said. “Despite this, we participated in good faith and submitted a bid in February 2026. We've received no response.”</p><p>USPS plans to announce the bidding results in Q2 2026. Contracts are expected to be finalized by Q3. Despite apparently moving forward with the contingency plan, Amazon said it’s still “ready to continue this partnership.”</p><p>As for Postmaster Steiner, he spent Tuesday <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.npr.org/2026/03/17/nx-s1-5750419/usps-running-out-of-money-postal-service-david-steiner" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">asking Congress</a> to loosen USPS regulations and let him raise prices. Warning that the agency will “run out of cash” in about a year, he told a House subcommittee that he wants to raise the agency’s current $15 billion debt cap. He also asked for the ability to increase postage prices and reform its retiree pension obligations.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-will-reportedly-cut-its-usps-shipments-by-at-least-two-thirds-200915702.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p><strong>Update, 4:05PM ET:</strong> A few hours after this story was published, Google reached out to retract the news. The company provided Engadget with the following statement:</p><p><em>&quot;Search Live has not rolled out globally to all users. It remains available in the US and India, with testing currently underway in additional markets. We apologize for the earlier miscommunication.&quot;</em></p><p>Given that the company says it is testing in more markets, it seems entirely possible that the global Search Live release will happen sooner than later. But, for now, it’s on hold.</p><p>The original, unedited article follows below:</p><p>After rolling out Search Live to all US Google app users <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/googles-ai-search-live-is-now-available-to-all-us-app-users-151849371.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">last September</a>, Google is now bringing the feature to every place where it offers its AI Mode chatbot. Search Live, if you need a reminder, allows you to point your phone&#39;s camera at an object or scene and ask questions about what you see in front of you. Google <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-search-live-will-let-you-ask-questions-about-what-your-camera-sees-174532593.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">debuted the tool at I/O 2025</a> before it began rolling it out to users. With today&#39;s expansion, Search Live is available in more than 200 countries and territories.&nbsp;</p><p>What&#39;s more, Google has updated the feature to run off its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/googles-new-gemini-3-model-arrives-in-ai-mode-and-the-gemini-app-160054273.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">Gemini 3.1 Flash model</a>, an upgrade the company says should translate to more natural conversations, in addition to a faster and more reliable experience. The new model is also natively multilingual. You can access Search Live from the Google app on Android and iOS. Tap the &quot;Live&quot; button below the search bar to get started. You can also access Search Live through Google Lens. As in the Google app, look for the &quot;Live&quot; icon, here located near the bottom of the screen, to start chatting. </p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/google-is-testing-search-live-in-more-markets-150000316.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>NASA and ESA have released <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://esahubble.org/news/heic2606/?lang" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">new images</a> from the Hubble Space Telescope of a comet breaking up as it exits the solar system, captured as part of study recently <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001910352600062X?via%3Dihub" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">published in the journal <em>Icarus</em></a>. The images are notable not only because they offer a more detailed view of the inside of a comet, which could offer new information about the early days of the universe, but also because they were taken by accident.</p><p>Photographing K1, or &quot;Comet C/2025 K1&quot; as it&#39;s officially known, wasn&#39;t the original intention of the study. &quot;This comet [was] observed because our original comet was not viewable due to some new technical constraints after we won our proposal,&quot; John Noonan, a research professor in the Department of Physics at Auburn University in Alabama said. &quot;We had to find a new target — and right when we observed it, it happened to break apart, which is the slimmest of slim chances.&quot;</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eK2AwphKC6A?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>The comet broke up over a period of days into &quot;at least four pieces,&quot; each with a &quot;fuzzy envelope of gas and dust&quot; around them, with Hubble specifically capturing the disassembly from November 8 through November 10, 2025. K1 was interesting before it started to crumble because at &quot;around 8 kilometers across&quot; (about 5 miles), it&#39;s larger than the average comet, and having footage of it shattering will likely offer new insights into the physics of comets in general. Additionally, the lack of carbon in the gases released by the comet as it broke is apparently &quot;chemically very strange,&quot; which suggests the composition of K1 could bear scientific fruit, too.</p><p>Hubble has tracked comets of <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/hubble-space-telescope-largest-comet-ever-172504556.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">different sizes</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-28-oumuamua-comet-asteroid.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">compositions</a> for years. Studying them remains a focus because comets are frequently made of ice and rock from the primordial period when solar systems were first forming. The ESA hopes to dramatically expand our understanding of that period with its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-19-european-space-agency-flyby-comet-interceptor.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">&quot;Comet Interceptor&quot;</a> mission, which is supposed to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Comet_Interceptor" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">launch in 2028 or 2029</a>, and aims to use photos captured from multiple angles to create a 3D model of a comet.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/hubble-catches-rare-view-of-a-comet-crumbling-185817544.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Perplexity's Comet AI browser <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:;elmt:;cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=bd6f109f-be2d-4fe8-9bc4-b9ae2090673d&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;linkText=is+now+available+as+a+standalone+app&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2FwcHMuYXBwbGUuY29tL3VzL2FwcC9jb21ldC1haS1icm93c2VyLWFzc2lzdGFudC9pZDY3NDg2MjI0NzEiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6ImJkNmYxMDlmLWJlMmQtNGZlOC05YmM0LWI5YWUyMDkwNjczZCIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9hcHBzLmFwcGxlLmNvbS91cy9hcHAvY29tZXQtYWktYnJvd3Nlci1hc3Npc3RhbnQvaWQ2NzQ4NjIyNDcxIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAd3q2iIRxw9KWennkG5SJD-OACwuOhB_kSBgWro5J-NZ&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fcomet-ai-browser-assistant%2Fid6748622471" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/comet-ai-browser-assistant/id6748622471"><ins>is now available as a standalone app</ins></a> for iPhone users. The tool initially debuted last summer on PCs, <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-is-available-now-for-200-per-month-180955616.html"><ins>but cost $200 a month</ins></a>. The new app is free, as is the <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-is-now-on-android-184500885.html"><ins>recently-released Android version</ins></a>.</p> <p>Comet is an AI-powered browser, which has become a hot product category <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/operas-new-fully-agentic-browser-can-surf-the-web-for-you-145035874.html"><ins>throughout the past year or so</ins></a>. This is basically a web browser combined with a chatbot that can perform some tasks on a user's behalf. Like related tools, people can ask it to summarize a webpage or conduct additional research for more context about a subject.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><div id="89f4e1b702e14049b1618897e598c94c"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Comet is now available for iOS.<br><br>Download on the App Store: <a href="https://t.co/JCfCIO3Fdw">https://t.co/JCfCIO3Fdw</a> <a href="https://t.co/DitCKlmg65">pic.twitter.com/DitCKlmg65</a></p>— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) <a href="https://twitter.com/perplexity_ai/status/2034315813105103082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2026</a></blockquote> </div> <p>Perplexity says that Comet "acts as a personal assistant and thinking partner" to "turn curiosity into momentum." Those are certainly words. The company boasts that folks can use the tool to shop and make schedules. I advise some caution for both of these tasks, given that AI browsers are notorious marks <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/ai-browsers-may-be-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-scammers-220315936.html"><ins>that easily fall for various online scams</ins></a>.</p> <p>One cool thing here is that the app takes full advantage of Apple's Liquid Glass technology. It certainly looks easy on the eyes and that address bar really pops. The iOS version does suffer from some limitations inherent to Apple's walled-garden approach, <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://www.macstories.net/news/comet-is-the-first-agentic-browser-for-ios-worth-trying/"><ins>according to a preview by </ins><em><ins>MacStories</ins></em></a>. Users cannot install third-party extensions here, though it can be made the default browser.</p> <p>Finally, there's a privacy concern worth considering. Perplexity has been open about the fact that it uses browsers in part to <a data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/perplexity-is-building-a-browser-in-part-to-collect-customer-data-for-targeted-ads-230132091.html"><ins>collect customer data for ad targeting</ins></a>. There's a reason why something that used to cost $200 <a data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1" href="https://bryanalexander.org/digital-literacy/you-are-the-product-one-interesting-source-for-the-meme/"><ins>is now available for free</ins></a>.</p> <p>The Comet browser is now available for iPhones, Android devices, Windows PCs and Macs. There isn't a native iPad app yet, but the standard Perplexity app is available for Apple's tablets so maybe the browser will follow suit.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/perplexitys-comet-ai-browser-is-now-available-for-iphones-183947569.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Chalk up a win for creative artists against AI companies. On Wednesday, the UK government <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg1gr5v333o" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">abandoned</a> its previous position on copyrighted works. It’s currently working on a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/uk-parliament-opts-not-to-hold-ai-companies-accountable-over-copyright-material-180234550.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">data bill</a> that, if unaltered, would have allowed AI companies like Google and OpenAI to train models on copyrighted materials without consent. Artists and other copyright holders would only have been offered a mere opt-out clause.</p><p>After <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/uk-government-delays-ai-copyright-rules-amid-artist-outcry-113937154.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">significant backlash</a>, the UK backed off from that position. "We have listened," Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said on Wednesday. However, the government’s new stance is, well, not a stance at all. It currently "no longer has a preferred option" about how to handle the issue.</p><p>Still, backpedaling from its previous position is viewed as a win for artists. UK Music CEO Tom Kiehl described the decision as "a major victory," while promising to work with the government on the next steps.</p><figure><img src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/2026-03/b1789ee5-c748-4578-8015-abebf6741b28" data-crop-orig-src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/2026-03/b1789ee5-c748-4578-8015-abebf6741b28" style="height:4000px;width:6000px;" alt="WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 15: (Exclusive Coverage) (L-R) Elton John and Dua Lipa attend Elton John AIDS Foundation's 34th Annual Academy Awards Viewing Party on March 15, 2026 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Elton John AIDS Foundation)" data-uuid="51c334e9-4e7d-3780-bbdd-e80116297f51"><figcaption>Elton John and Dua Lipa spoke out against the government's previous stance. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Elton John AIDS Foundation)</figcaption><div class="photo-credit">Kevin Mazur via Getty Images</div></figure><p>Last year, some of Britain's highest-profile artists objected to the government's position. <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=34e37b9c-8975-48da-aa39-df8bcd5badc3&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=215e66e6-8d05-4681-8e48-978ebfc0e221&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=CNBC&amp;linkText=Sir+Elton+John+and+Dua+Lipa&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jbmJjLmNvbS8yMDI1LzA1LzEyL3VrLWFpLWNvcHlyaWdodC1zaGFrZXVwLWhhcy1lbHRvbi1qb2huLWR1YS1saXBhLWZpZ2h0aW5nLWJhY2suaHRtbCIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiMjE1ZTY2ZTYtOGQwNS00NjgxLThlNDgtOTc4ZWJmYzBlMjIxIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5jbmJjLmNvbS8yMDI1LzA1LzEyL3VrLWFpLWNvcHlyaWdodC1zaGFrZXVwLWhhcy1lbHRvbi1qb2huLWR1YS1saXBhLWZpZ2h0aW5nLWJhY2suaHRtbCJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAQ_6C4V7_kup80ypXaAQCF6Cx0FibKxVi7_xS-8tvATd&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2025%2F05%2F12%2Fuk-ai-copyright-shakeup-has-elton-john-dua-lipa-fighting-back.html" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:CNBC;elmt:;cpos:4;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/uk-ai-copyright-shakeup-has-elton-john-dua-lipa-fighting-back.html">Sir Elton John and Dua Lipa</a> were among those speaking out. Even Sir Paul McCartney <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xqv9g8442o" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">weighed in</a>, warning that the AI industry could "rip off" artists and lead to a "loss of creativity."</p><p>"You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don't own it, and they don't have anything to do with it," McCartney told the <em>BBC</em> in 2025. "And anyone who wants can just rip it off. The truth is, the money's going somewhere… somebody's getting paid."</p><p>The government will now weigh its options, taking "the time needed" to balance the wishes of artists and the tech industry. "We will not introduce reforms to copyright law until we are confident that they will meet our objectives for the economy and UK citizens," it wrote in a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69ba692226909a14239612e4/CP2602959_-_Report_on_Copyright_and_Artificial_Intelligence_web.pdf" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">report</a>. "This means protecting the UK's position as a creative powerhouse, while unlocking the extraordinary potential of AI to grow the economy and improve lives."</p><p>"Any reform must ensure that right holders can be fairly rewarded for the economic value their work creates, and that they are protected against unlawful and unfair use of their work. It must also ensure that AI developers can access high-quality content."</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/uk-reverses-course-on-ai-copyright-position-after-backlash-175630732.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Microsoft is rolling out a number of Xbox Series X|S <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/03/18/xbox-insiders-april-2026-console-features/?ocid=Platform_soc_omc_xbo_tw_Text_lrn_3.18.1"><ins>updates</ins></a> to those on its Xbox Insiders program, and one of them has been requested by the community for years. You’ll soon be able to disable the Quick Resume feature for specific games, meaning they&#39;ll boot up fresh each time you launch them.</p> <p>As a reminder, Quick Resume is a feature that Microsoft introduced with its <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-series-x-review-2024-unfulfilled-potential-203025192.html">current generation</a> of consoles. It lets you suspend a number of games simultaneously so they’re running in the background even when the console is turned off. When you want to return to a game that supports Quick Resume, it&#39;ll drop you back in exactly where you left it within a few seconds, often even when it’s been months since you last played that game. It’s a pretty neat feature, and still impressive more than five years since the Series X|S launched.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>But over the years, players have discovered that Quick Resume isn’t ideal for every title, particularly always-online games. When you take these out of their suspended state, they’ll often shout at you for letting them disconnect, forcing you to manually close the game down properly and then relaunch it. Other games just don&#39;t seem to get on with it for a variety of other reasons. You can manually close any game you want at any time, but it takes a few more button presses than Quick Resume, so it’s easy to forget.</p> <p>The latest Xbox update finally addresses this, letting you turn off the feature on a game-by-game basis by selecting &quot;More Options&quot; and then &quot;Manage Quick Resume&quot; on a game tile. That way you can ensure it’s only enabled for single-player titles in which the ability to instantly pick up where you left off is very appealing. It’s a change that has gone down well with ex-Xbox icon Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, who said on X that he first requested it five years ago when still employed by Microsoft.</p> <div id="4c37c629348a400295c4f8ec473487ca"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Love this. I filed a feature request to make Quick Resume per title in 2021. Great to finally see it happen. <a href="https://t.co/eDn56MIMSu">https://t.co/eDn56MIMSu</a></p>— Larry Hryb, Gamer Emeritus 📱⌨️🖱️🎮 (@majornelson) <a href="https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/2034301418920939560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 18, 2026</a></blockquote> </div> <p>Microsoft is also adding more customization options to the Xbox dashboard in the upcoming update. You’ll be able to create custom background colors, rather than having to select one of the existing color options, while the amount of Groups you can add to your Home screen has been increased from two to 10. These can be reordered in the same way you reorder individual game tiles.</p> <p>Select Xbox Insiders can start using the new features now, before they’re eventually made available to everyone.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/microsoft-will-finally-let-you-turn-off-quick-resume-for-individual-games-174639730.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Double Fine is following up on <em>Keeper</em> — one of our <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/engadgets-favorite-games-of-2025-153000109.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">favorite games of 2025</a> — with <em>Kiln</em>, a “multiplayer online pottery party brawler.” The game was <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/double-fine-announces-delightful-looking-multiplayer-pottery-game-kiln-195837155.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">showcased</a> during Xbox’s Developer Direct stream in January and now it has a release date. It’s coming to Xbox Series X/S, Xbox on PC, Xbox Cloud, PlayStation 5 and Steam on April 23. Xbox <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/03/18/kiln-release-date/" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">said</a> <em>Kiln </em>will be <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/asus-rog-xbox-ally-x-review-an-extra-life-for-xbox-130050224.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">Handheld Optimized</a> from the jump.&nbsp;</p><p>In <em>Kiln</em>, you&#39;ll use a virtual pottery wheel to shape a piece of clay into a vessel and then decorate it. The size and shape will determine how much health you have, the water capacity of your vessel and your speed. For instance, smaller pots will be able to attack faster, while a larger, slower pot might be more powerful. The shape you opt for (bowl, bottle, chalice and so on) determines which special ability you have. The decorations are purely cosmetic.</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_7mbE05CMYQ?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>In the main Quench mode, the aim is to gather water and be the first team of four to put out the other side&#39;s kiln three times (which sounds a bit like a MOBA to me). Doing so won&#39;t exactly be straightforward, of course. When you run into an enemy vessel, you can try to smash it, and they&#39;ll probably attempt to do the same to you.</p><p>In one map, you&#39;ll be able to pour water onto sponges to create barriers. In another, there&#39;s a &quot;disco dance floor that compels players to dance on the flashing squares for a short while.&quot; There&#39;s no in-game voice chat, but players could easily get around that using their console&#39;s built-in party features or the likes of Discord.</p><p>An open beta will take place on Steam from April 9 to 11. Pre-orders will go live at that time as well. The base version of the game is $20. A $30 &quot;Fired Up&quot; edition includes premium cosmetic options as well as extra chips, the in-game currency that&#39;s used to unlock customizations. Otherwise, chips can only be earned through gameplay.</p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/double-fines-kiln-pops-out-of-the-oven-and-onto-pc-xbox-and-ps5-on-april-23-171433966.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>We just got our <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBlsrtxuwss"><ins>first trailer for </ins><em><ins>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</ins></em></a><em>,</em> the next big Marvel film. This is the fourth installment led by Tom Holland and follows the multiversal shenanigans of <em>Spider-Man: No Way Home</em>.</p> <p>I&#39;m about to get into some spoilers, for those still working through the MCU catalog. <em>No Way Home</em> ended with the entire world forgetting about the existence of Peter Parker, so this new movie will deal with the fallout from that. His whole support system is gone, though it looks like he still checks in on besties MJ and Ned from time to time.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><div id="61638e8e48a14dc0bcbda96d9bed8bf5"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aBlsrtxuwss?si=5zfZQQgLzFh_0vfM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <p>Peter Parker may be lonely, but he&#39;s not alone in the film. He&#39;s teaming up with the Punisher, who is still played by Jon Bernthal after returning to the role in <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em>. In the comics, Spider-Man and the Punisher are long-time work buddies and occasional sparring partners. As a matter of fact, Frank Castle made his introduction in a Spider-Man comic that was published in 1974.</p> <p>Bruce Banner also shows up in the trailer, potentially as Parker&#39;s professor. Mark Ruffalo is returning to the role, but we don&#39;t have any confirmation that he&#39;ll turn into the Hulk. It&#39;s worth pointing out that this is the regular human Banner, and not the hybrid version that&#39;s been popping up in recent MCU projects.</p> <p>The trailer even highlights an iconic Spider-Man villain. Michael Mando is playing Scorpion, which is a pretty deep MCU cut. The character was teased all the way back in <em>Spider-Man: Homecoming</em>. The footage also shows Spidey battling ninjas that look suspiciously like the Hand, who were <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-03-marvel-the-defenders-netflix-full-trailer.html"><ins>last seen in </ins><em><ins>The Defenders</ins></em><ins> on Netflix</ins></a>. This lends credence to rumors that Daredevil <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/spider-man-brand-new-day-looks-to-directly-tie-into-daredevil-born-again/"><ins>could be appearing in the film</ins></a>.</p> <div id="50f7e6d2fc3d475d90a6dd64058c4cd2"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/399Ez7WHK5s?si=Z_cPuUwCL4STr0ct" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <p>We don&#39;t have all that long to wait. <em>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</em> premieres in theaters on July 31. This is the final MCU film before the long-awaited <em>Avengers: Doomsday</em>, which hits cinemas in December.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-spider-man-brand-new-day-trailer-is-filled-with-mcu-cameos-170215452.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Stop me if you&#39;ve heard this before: Meta has a new program to lure top creator talent to Facebook and it comes with hefty bonus payments. The company is launching a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://about.fb.com/news/2026/03/creator-fast-track-grow-your-audience-earn-money-on-facebook/" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">new initiative</a> aimed at popular creators who already have large followings on TikTok, YouTube or Instagram and offering them bonuses up to $3,000 a month just for posting on Facebook.</p><p>Meta&#39;s goal is to draw more top talent to its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-wants-to-make-it-easy-for-creators-to-earn-on-facebook-150037046.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">Content Monetization</a> program, which pays creators based on views and other engagement metrics across Stories, Reels and posts. The new bonuses will be part of an initiative Meta has dubbed &quot;<a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://creators.facebook.com/fb-creator-fast-track" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">Creator Fast Track</a>,&quot; which is meant to make the onboarding process easier — and more enticing — to Facebook newcomers.</p><p>Under the new &quot;Fast Track&quot; program, Meta is offering monthly bonuses of $1,000 to creators who have at least 100,000 followers on another platform and $3,000 for those that have a million or more. Creators who join will need to post a minimum number of Reels per month to earn the bonuses, but aren&#39;t required to meet engagement targets or post exclusive content to earn. They also aren&#39;t limited to video content as Facebook also rewards text and photo posts, as well <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/facebook-creators-can-now-monetize-their-stories-221139957.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">as Stories</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>That may sound like a pretty good deal (it is), but it&#39;s also a limited one. The fast track bonuses will only last for three months. Creators should think of the bonuses as payment &quot;for the hassle of starting on a new platform,&quot; not the central part of the program, Meta&#39;s VP of Product for Creators, Yair Livne, tells Engadget. &quot;Our hope is that within a few months … the earnings that you see from Facebook Content Monetization will become the more important thing.&quot; He also notes that Meta will boost the reach of creators it fast-tracks, which should help them speed up their earning potential.&nbsp;</p><figure><img src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/user-uploaded/creator_fast_track_meta__3363.jpg" data-crop-orig-src="https://d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net/images/user-uploaded/creator_fast_track_meta__3363.jpg" style="height:1080px;width:1920px;" alt="Creators can apply for the new program in Facebook&#39;s app." data-uuid="3863ba1b-9097-4330-9a28-062c20196bb7"><figcaption>Creators can apply for the new program in Facebook&#39;s app.</figcaption><div class="photo-credit">Meta</div></figure><p>It&#39;s far from the first time Facebook has sought to lure big names with big checks. It promised publishers big payouts when it launched <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-06-25-facebook-hollywood-shows-3-million-per-episode.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">Facebook Watch</a> nearly a decade ago. It once <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/neymar-jr-facebook-gaming-livestream-exclusive-163020478.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">courted game streamers</a> for its (now defunct) Twitch competitor. A year after launching Reels to take on TikTok, it invested <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-billion-dollars-creators-instagram-live-streams-gaming-172537889.html" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">$1 billion</a> in a bonus program that offered creators as much <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-introduces-a-new-professional-mode-for-creators-140006876.html" data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1">as $35,000</a> a month only to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/meta-is-pausing-bonus-payouts-for-reels-creators-000040951.html" data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1">pull the plug</a> in 2023.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Livne acknowledged that it &quot;took us a long time to find our path&quot; to a more sustainable creator program. &quot;We don&#39;t have a pool structure so you&#39;re not competing with other creators for dollars. It really is based on your performance.&quot;&nbsp;</p><p>There are already signs that the Facebook Content Monetization program, which it introduced in the fall of 2024, is working — at least for some. Meta says it paid Facebook creators nearly $3 billion in 2025, a new high for the social network. Creators have also reported that the new streamlined program is paying off.&nbsp;</p><p>One political news creator told the newsletter <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.chaoticera.news/p/on-facebook-it-now-pays-to-post-about-politics" data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1"><em>Chaotic Era</em></a> that they made $250,000 from Facebook in January alone. Publishers told <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://digiday.com/media/is-facebook-quietly-becoming-a-new-revenue-stream-for-publishers-again/" data-i13n="cpos:11;pos:1">Digiday</a> last year that they expected to make &quot;between six and seven figures&quot; in 2025 thanks to the program. There are numerous recent posts in Reddit&#39;s r/passiveincome forum where users report making five figures a month from the program, which is still invitation only.&nbsp;</p><p>Livne agrees that Facebook&#39;s monetization program has been something of a &quot;well kept secret&quot; in the creator community. &quot;We&#39;re trying to make it less well kept and less of a secret.&quot;&nbsp;</p><p><em>Are you in Facebook&#39;s Content Monetization Program, Creator Fast Track or another creator program at Meta? You can reach Karissa by </em><a target="_blank" class="link" href="mailto: [email protected]" data-i13n="cpos:12;pos:1"><em>email</em></a><em>, on </em><a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://x.com/karissabe" data-i13n="cpos:13;pos:1"><em>X</em></a><em>, </em><a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://bsky.app/profile/karissabe.bsky.social" data-i13n="cpos:14;pos:1"><em>Bluesky</em></a><em>, </em><a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.threads.com/@karissabe" data-i13n="cpos:15;pos:1"><em>Threads</em></a><em>, or send a message to @karissabe.51 to chat confidentially on Signal.</em></p><p><br></p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/metas-latest-creator-push-comes-with-3000-bonuses-for-posting-on-facebook-160000283.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>A coalition of Big Tech companies is working on a more comprehensive solution to combat <a data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:1;pos:1" class="no-affiliate-link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-eu-wants-apple-google-and-microsoft-to-clamp-down-on-online-scams-145333226.html">online scams</a>. As first reported by <a data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:2;pos:1" class="no-affiliate-link" href="https://www.axios.com/2026/03/16/tech-companies-scam-accord-google-meta-amazon"><em>Axios</em></a>, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Adobe, Levi Strauss &amp; Co, Target, Pinterest and Match Group announced the signing of the Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud. The new agreement is meant to put up a united industry-wide front against online fraud and scams, particularly those from sophisticated criminal networks that use multiple platforms.</p> <p>According to the <em>Axios </em>report, the measures will include adding fraud detection tools, introducing new user security features, and requiring more robust verification for financial transactions. The agreement will also set up best practices for scam detection, prevention and reporting, while encouraging the sharing of information between companies and law enforcement. On the policy side, the coalition will call on the governments to "declare scam prevention a national priority," according to <em>Axios</em>. While these measures are extensive, the report noted that they're all voluntary since the accord doesn't mention any penalties if the companies don't follow through.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>Many of the companies involved in the new accord already have experience in dealing with scams found on their own platforms. Earlier this month, Meta announced several <a data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:3;pos:1" class="no-affiliate-link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-rolls-out-new-features-for-scam-protection-110000173.html">new features</a> across Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp that would alert users about suspicious friend requests or accounts. Last year, <a data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:4;pos:1" class="no-affiliate-link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/linkedin-will-require-recruiters-and-executives-to-verify-their-identity-to-cut-down-on-scams-130040435.html">LinkedIn</a> introduced a new verification requirement for company recruiters or executives to address scams targeting job seekers on its platform.</p> <p><strong>Update, March 18, 2026, 9:40AM: </strong>This article has been updated to add additional members of the accord and to include its full name, the Industry Accord Against Online Scams and Fraud.&nbsp;</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/tech-companies-are-teaming-up-to-combat-scammers-144616545.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Ever since making the jump to the Nintendo Switch, there&#39;s something that&#39;s bugged me about practically every modern Pokémon game, a feeling that has only intensified after spending countless hours in <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pokemon-pokopia-review-possibly-the-most-charming-pokemon-game-yet-183000812.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1"><em>Pokopia</em></a>. For titles based in big, open worlds and filled with adorable polygonal characters and lovely music, why is nearly every pokémon still saddled with a call that sounds like a dial-up internet connection?&nbsp;</p><p>As someone who played <em>Pokémon Red</em> and <em>Blue </em>at launch, I&#39;m very aware that the origin of these sounds is tied directly back to those original titles on <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">Game Boy</a>, which was powered by an 8-bit SM83 processor from Sharp. Back then, it was a herculean challenge to fit the entire game into a single <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue_Versions" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">512KB cartridge</a>. So as a way to save space, the voice (or cry as they are more commonly known) of each of the original 151 Pokémon came from <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Cry" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">just 38 base cries</a>, which then had their <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7ry8tSuj2Q" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">pitch or duration</a> modified to create more unique sounds.&nbsp;</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fi9u8v7Blks?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>Naturally, this tradition of lo-fi cries continued throughout Pokémon&#39;s run on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance and onto the Nintendo DS and 3DS. And despite the higher-res graphics we got in subsequent titles, the use of sprite-based icons and other nostalgic touches made those bitcrushed calls sound right at home. However, when the series moved to the Switch and Switch 2 and embraced larger 3D worlds, those cries began to feel disconnected, especially for newer players without years of nostalgia to draw from.&nbsp;</p><p>The first issue is one of identifiability. They all kind of sound the same, especially in earlier titles like <em>Red</em> and <em>Blue</em> or <em>Gold</em> and <em>Silver, </em>where around one hundred new Pokémon are represented by just 30 base cries. Ideally, a monster&#39;s voice would be just as recognizable as <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZCftBSm8kA" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">its</a> silhouette. Unfortunately, the current lo-fi cries just don&#39;t fit the bill.&nbsp;</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lIVH84d5AvA?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>The second problem is that the continued use of the old-school cries feels out of place in the grand scheme of Pokémon. When you watch the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3hMX65Khtg&amp;list=PLRcHmntfmJ8CnSmj4C284-a1euH518aQa" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">Pokémon anime</a>, monsters don&#39;t use the same crunchy screams. Same goes for the movies, including big theatrical releases like <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1roy4o4tqQM" data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1"><em>Detective Pikachu</em></a>. At this point, pretty much every new piece of Pokémon media except the games (and the TCG for obvious reasons) features proper voice acting, which sort of brings us to the biggest reasons to ditch the audio clips from the Game Boy era: Pokémon that actually say their name is just super fun and easy to understand.&nbsp;</p><p>Sure, it&#39;s a bit of a gimmick, but it works. Plus, it kind of resonates with the philosophy that many vexillologists hold that says flags should be simple enough for a child to draw. Kids can say &quot;Charmander,&quot; &quot;Greninja&quot; and even &quot;<a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Alomomola_(Pok%C3%A9mon)" data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1">Alomolola</a>.&quot; But there ain&#39;t no way they are pronouncing <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ4aRjdQ6hs" data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1">this</a>. For a game that&#39;s intended to be played by younger audiences, having the reinforcement of hearing a pokémon say its name while also seeing it written out in text isn&#39;t just easier to comprehend, it can also be a learning exercise. Also, just ask yourself, when you think of Squirtle, what do you hear in your head: <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFHCunY4Gwo" data-i13n="cpos:11;pos:1">this</a> or <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOXyk31Jzfo" data-i13n="cpos:12;pos:1">this</a>?&nbsp;</p><p> </p><p>Now, there are several reasons why Game Freak hasn&#39;t made this leap already. The first is obviously money. Granted, localization costs only make up a fraction of the budget for a Pokémon game, but it&#39;s still a lot of work to translate things for various regions across the world, especially with modern titles available in at least nine different languages. This includes adjusting the names of specific monsters to better suit a specific market. For example, in Japanese, Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee are named <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroyuki_Ebihara" data-i13n="cpos:13;pos:1">Ebiwalar</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadashi_Sawamura" data-i13n="cpos:14;pos:1">Sawamular</a> as a tribute to some of the country&#39;s most famous boxers. So when you consider the need to get different voice actors across the world to perform all of these variations, things get expensive.&nbsp;</p><p>Furthermore, there&#39;s an argument that creating a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://youtu.be/2kaaebcD0nE?t=172" data-i13n="cpos:15;pos:1">canonical voice for a main character like Victor or Gloria from <em>Sword</em> and <em>Shield</em></a><em> </em>takes away from players&#39; ability to imagine their own. Pokémon is an RPG after all. However, I don&#39;t think that reasoning flies when it comes to each monster&#39;s individual cry, even though many of them have been <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIVH84d5AvA&amp;t=182s" data-i13n="cpos:16;pos:1">upgraded or refined in recent years</a>. Same goes for the idea that a Pokémon that says its name sounds less natural than whatever <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6skNEAf99U" data-i13n="cpos:17;pos:1">this is</a>. At the end of the day, these monster calls are iconic, and the Pokémon devs know this, because they&#39;ve given proper cries to characters like <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-14-pokemon-lets-go-pikachu-e3-impressions.html" data-i13n="cpos:18;pos:1">Pikachu and Eevee</a> in certain situations.</p><div><div style="left:0;width:100%;height:0;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xFHCunY4Gwo?rel=0" style="top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;position:absolute;border:0;" allowfullscreen scrolling="no" data-embed-domain="youtube.com" data-provider-name="youtube"></iframe></div></div><p>Regardless, for a franchise that&#39;s one of, if not the most valuable <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises" data-i13n="cpos:19;pos:1">media property on the planet</a>, I really hope that one day we can get proper vocal performances in Pokémon games, even if it costs Game Freak and Nintendo a little extra money. To be clear, I don&#39;t hate the old 8-bit cries and I don&#39;t think Game Freak needs to delete them entirely. They can simply be an alternate choice for anyone who prefers them over their actual voices. I just feel like after recently celebrating its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/the-pokemon-tcg-is-celebrating-30-years-with-special-worldwide-releases" data-i13n="cpos:20;pos:1">30th birthday,</a> it&#39;s time for Pokémon to move on and celebrate some of the voice acting that helped make the franchise so popular in the first place.</p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/its-time-for-game-freak-to-finally-give-pokemon-some-proper-voice-acting-130000851.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>After letting us drive a prototype <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/bmws-i3-prototype-conquers-the-ice-with-power-and-technology-130000610.html">around in the snow</a> earlier this month, BMW has fully unveiled its all-new i3 electric vehicle. It&#39;s a far cry from the original <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3">funky</a> hatch <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/2013-07-29-bmw-unveils-i3-electric-car-in-the-carbon-fiber-flesh-video.html">launched</a> way back in 2013, offering more of everything including power, range and space. It also looks like you&#39;d hope a 3-series EV would: a sporty sedan, minus the polarizing grille on the gas-powered M3.&nbsp;</p> <p>The i3 uses BMW&#39;s Neue Klasse platform and indeed borrows inspiration from the company&#39;s <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/bmws-vision-neue-klasse-concept-teases-high-efficiency-evs-120045748.html">Vision Neue Klasse concept</a> unveiled in 2023. With motors on the front and rear in the 50 xDrive configuration, along with the 800-volt electrical system, it delivers a combined 463 HP and 476 lb-ft of torque, just a touch less than BMW&#39;s G80 M3.&nbsp;</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><figure><img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/554d11b0-22c2-11f1-9ffc-2eee7516c187" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/554d11b0-22c2-11f1-9ffc-2eee7516c187" style="height:1920px;width:3162px;" alt="BMW&#39;s i3 has been reborn as a sporty 440 mile range EV" data-uuid="1d673bfd-f720-3a82-84bb-e4fc8a76b242"><figcaption></figcaption><div class="photo-credit">BMW</div></figure> <p>That will make the BMW quick (the automaker didn&#39;t say how quick yet), but it will also be efficient. BMW estimates that the i3 will go 440 miles on a charge according to EPA guidelines and offer quick energy replenishment as well via DC charging speeds up to 400kW — up to 30 percent faster than its previous Gen5 tech. The battery pack will also be directly integrated into the chassis to reduce weight and increase torsional rigidity, while allowing bidirectional charging so you&#39;ll be able to use it as a battery on wheels to power your home in a blackout.&nbsp;</p> <p>Styling-wise, the i3 is much simpler up front with the grille and headlights incorporated as a single unit. A recess down the center of the hood draws your eye to the badge, while giving the EV muscle car allure. The side intakes add to that impression, as do the bulgy fenders, &quot;Le Catellet Blue&quot; metallic paint and optional lighting animations (Relaxed, Excited and Balanced).</p> <figure><img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/fa921c90-22c4-11f1-9f7c-d23c3a7f40b8" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/fa921c90-22c4-11f1-9f7c-d23c3a7f40b8" style="height:1868px;width:2800px;" alt="BMW&#39;s i3 has been reborn as a sporty 440 mile range EV" data-uuid="2f378d34-b4f7-36a5-a06b-cf8cfffa0290"><figcaption></figcaption><div class="photo-credit">Fabian Kirchbauer Photography</div></figure> <p>On the tech side, the i3 supports BMW&#39;s Digital Key Plus so you can open the doors or trunk with a smartphone or smartwatch. The interior, meanwhile, looks as futuristic as I&#39;ve seen in any recent EV thanks to the 17.9-inch Panoramic Vision display that&#39;s angled toward the driver, along with an optional 3D heads-up display. The system features a self-learning voice assistant with Amazon Alexa+ AI and supports customizable themes, colors and background images. It also includes a wireless charging pad for your smartphone or other devices.</p> <p>Inside, you can choose between multifunction and M Sport seats trimmed in different themes, including imitation leather in Agave Green, Digital White, Castanea or Black, or an M Design World theme in Black Veganza with M Performtex material. Alternatively, you can go for the BMW Individual scheme with real black Merino leather. For controls, BMW is using a hybrid system with physical buttons for the hazard lights and parking brake and &quot;Shy Tech&quot; buttons on the steering wheel that activate only when required.&nbsp;</p> <p>BMW will start i3 production in August 2026 and deliveries later in the fall, with pricing set to be revealed around that time. From what we&#39;ve seen so far it&#39;s going to offer outstanding performance and range, but don&#39;t expect it to be cheap.</p> <figure><img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/002d16e0-22c6-11f1-bbb0-33c7b6fed2c9" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/002d16e0-22c6-11f1-bbb0-33c7b6fed2c9" style="height:1453px;width:2800px;" alt="BMW&#39;s i3 has been reborn as a sporty 440 mile range EV" data-uuid="e5f2d104-32fd-37fd-b736-a143b5af49c9"><figcaption></figcaption><div class="photo-credit">Fabian Kirchbauer Photography</div></figure> <p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/bmws-i3-is-reborn-as-a-sporty-440-mile-range-ev-sedan-124614369.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The Pentagon is making plans to have AI companies train versions of their models specifically for military use on classified information, according to the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/17/1134351/the-pentagon-is-planning-for-ai-companies-to-train-on-classified-data-defense-official-says/" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1"><em>MIT Technology Review</em></a>. If true, it wouldn’t come as a surprise, seeing as the US is aiming to become an “AI-first&quot; warfighting force, based on the <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/12/2003855671/-1/-1/0/ARTIFICIAL-INTELLIGENCE-STRATEGY-FOR-THE-DEPARTMENT-OF-WAR.PDF" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">statement</a> [PDF] released by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this year. </p><p>The department is already using AI models in the military: For instance, the US reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude to help with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and with its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-us-reportedly-used-anthropics-ai-for-its-attack-on-iran-just-after-banning-it-172908929.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">attack on Iran</a>, even after President Trump ordered federal agencies to ban its technology. But models trained on actual classified data could give more accurate and detailed responses, say, for situations similar to what happened in the past that aren’t public information. </p><p><em>MIT Tech Review</em> says the department is looking to conduct the training in a secure data center that’s allowed to host classified government projects. The Pentagon would train copies of AI models, but it would remain the only owner of any data used for training. In rare cases, someone from the AI company could be granted the appropriate security clearance to see classified information. </p><p>Aalok Mehta, who previously led AI policy efforts at Google and OpenAI, told the publication that training models on classified data carries certain risks. It’s not that the information could go public, since the the models trained would be versions made specifically for military purposes. However, if the same model is used across the whole Defense Department, for instance, personnel without the correct clearance level could end up getting information that they weren’t supposed to have access to. </p><p>If the initiative pushes through, the department would likely be training models from <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-strikes-a-deal-with-the-defense-department-to-deploy-its-ai-models-054441785.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">OpenAI</a> and xAI, which recently signed agreements with the agency. Anthropic, which has long worked with the government, might not be part of this project. The company refused to allow its technology to be used for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons, and Trump <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/trump-orders-federal-agencies-to-drop-anthropic-services-amid-pentagon-feud-222029306.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">ordered all federal offices</a> to ban it as a result. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/the-defense-department-reportedly-plans-to-train-ai-models-on-classified-military-data-120332113.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>There was once a time in which many people couldn&#39;t wait to toss their smartphone aside every two years (and sometimes even more frequently) in order to get the latest model as soon as it hit shelves. But that world has faded for the most part now as shoppers demand devices that last for years so they can hold on to them for longer. And when the time finally comes to upgrade, many are being more conscientious about what happens to their old gadgets.</p> <p>You may want to trade in your smartphone or <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/where-to-sell-used-electronics.html">sell it</a> when you&#39;re ready to upgrade; either option can keep your device out of a landfill in addition to scoring you some extra cash. There are also options to <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/where-to-recycle-electronics.html">recycle</a> part or all of your phone if it&#39;s too old to make a trade-in worthwhile. Whatever path you choose, there are important steps to take to prepare a phone you&#39;re about to get rid of. These instructions apply to any model you might have, including both iPhones and Android phones. Here&#39;s what you need to know.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><h2 id="jump-link-back-up-your-data">Back up your data</h2> <p>Let&#39;s start with a very important reminder to do regular backups for all of your gear, not just your phone. It&#39;s a task you should keep up with routinely even when you aren&#39;t about to recycle or trade-in a device.</p> <p>Most hardware manufacturers have an automatic cloud backup system, but you&#39;ll like your new phone a lot less if it doesn&#39;t have your full, up-to-date library of contacts, photos and other information. This is the time to manually back everything up with all of your latest data.</p> <p>Also, before you get any further into the process, make sure that you know the critical details for your phone and the main accounts associated with it. Halfway through is the worst time to lose access to your device because you can&#39;t remember your username or password.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-unpair-wireless-accessories">Unpair wireless accessories</h2> <p>Most people connect their phone to many other gadgets via Bluetooth. There are obvious ones, like <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/wearables/best-smartwatches-153013118.html">smartwatches</a> and <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/best-headphones-wireless-bluetooth-120543205.html">wireless headphones</a>, but you might also have your phone paired with something like a car stereo or a <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/audio/speakers/best-portable-bluetooth-speakers-133004551.html">portable speaker</a>. All of them should be unpaired from the phone you&#39;re about to trade in.</p> <p>If you use your phone in two-factor authentication for sensitive accounts, you&#39;ll want to make sure that you disconnect the device from those services, too.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-log-out-of-apps-and-services">Log out of apps and services</h2> <p>Next, you&#39;ll sign out of the device&#39;s cloud-based service. For iPhone owners, that&#39;s iCloud, and on Android, it&#39;s the Google suite. This will avoid any confusion with your new device. You&#39;ll also want to turn off Find My on iPhones or Find My Device on Android phones. iPhone users should also <a data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/102455">deregister iMessage</a> on their old iPhone, particularly if they’re moving to a non-Apple smartphone. These steps might seem unnecessary when you&#39;ll end up wiping your device entirely, but you don&#39;t want to risk having your personal information accidentally made available to whoever might get your phone next.</p> <p>Also, if you are under a plan that protects your phone, such as Apple Care or Preferred Care, you can usually cancel that coverage early. You&#39;ll get a refund on any unexpired coverage, and given how expensive gadgets can be now, it&#39;s worth getting that money back if you can.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-swap-to-the-new-device">Swap to the new device</h2> <p>At this point, your to-do list will vary. If you&#39;re planning to trade up to a newer model from the same manufacturer and you already have your new phone, then you&#39;ll want to transfer your data before moving on to wiping your old phone. Either in the store or on your own, in most cases you can wirelessly migrate your data from the old device to the new one.</p> <p>If you&#39;re changing lanes between the Apple and Google universes, you can also do most data swapping yourself. There&#39;s a Google Play app called <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:;elmt:;cpos:7;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=47d19231-a0a5-407f-9b03-98202b1f4c52&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;linkText=Move+to+iOS&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3BsYXkuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS9zdG9yZS9hcHBzL2RldGFpbHM_aWQ9Y29tLmFwcGxlLm1vdmV0b2lvcyIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiNDdkMTkyMzEtYTBhNS00MDdmLTliMDMtOTgyMDJiMWY0YzUyIiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3BsYXkuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS9zdG9yZS9hcHBzL2RldGFpbHM_aWQ9Y29tLmFwcGxlLm1vdmV0b2lvcyJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAYejKl_IVc8DHOTl9055gfKenXFnTp4bH6VBkRumgcYz&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fplay.google.com%2Fstore%2Fapps%2Fdetails%3Fid%3Dcom.apple.movetoios" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.movetoios">Move to iOS</a> and one in the App Store called <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:;elmt:;cpos:8;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=47d19231-a0a5-407f-9b03-98202b1f4c52&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;linkText=Android+Switch&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL2FwcHMuYXBwbGUuY29tL3VzL2FwcC9hbmRyb2lkLXN3aXRjaC9pZDY0NDk5ODcxNjYiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6IjQ3ZDE5MjMxLWEwYTUtNDA3Zi05YjAzLTk4MjAyYjFmNGM1MiIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9hcHBzLmFwcGxlLmNvbS91cy9hcHAvYW5kcm9pZC1zd2l0Y2gvaWQ2NDQ5OTg3MTY2In0&amp;signature=AQAAASGfYoY8NiL8IvakpEsj2245OyETraloAdmt2u9SeWS3&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.apple.com%2Fus%2Fapp%2Fandroid-switch%2Fid6449987166" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/android-switch/id6449987166">Android Switch</a> that can walk you through the process. Just be sure that your device meets the requirements to use those programs.</p> <p>However, if you aren&#39;t immediately setting up a new device, then you can skip this and move on to the next phase.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-factory-reset-your-old-device">Factory reset your old device</h2> <p>Once you double-check that you have everything backed up (seriously, don&#39;t take chances on this), then it&#39;s time to perform a factory reset. This will remove all of your data and apps, and bring the phone back to its original state. It’s ideal to do this reset as the final step of trading in, selling or recycling a device.</p> <p>Whatever phone model you have, the reset option will be in the Settings app. It will commonly be nested under a tab like General or About, or you can search “reset” within Settings to find exactly where it is on your device.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-remove-any-accessories">Remove any accessories</h2> <p>This might seem obvious, but right before handing off your phone, make sure that you remove any accessories. Cases, grips and screen protectors should stay with you, not with the phone when it goes to its new home.</p> <p><em>Check out more from our </em><a data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/tag/spring-cleaning/"><em>spring cleaning</em></a><em> guide.</em></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/how-to-prepare-your-phone-for-trade-in-120000724.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>It’s hard for most people to justify spending $3,299 on a monitor, but creative pros will gladly do so if it makes their jobs easier. Apple’s 27-inch 5K <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/apples-new-studio-display-xdr-monitor-has-limited-functionality-on-older-silicon-macs-082212069.html">Studio Display XDR</a> is aimed straight at those folks and it costs considerably less than the company’s previous high-end monitor, the <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-03-apple-retina-6k-display.html">6K Pro Display XDR</a>.</p> <p>Thanks to the Mini LED IPS panel, the Studio Display XDR has higher brightness and color accuracy than nearly any other monitor on the market. It also has tech that boosts contrast to outperform similar displays. With its unique combination of features, the Studio Display XDR isn’t as overpriced as you might think, and it has high appeal for me as a video editor. I do, however, wish it was bigger.</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span> <p> <core-commerce id="eb3619497ca7499a8b5e261aa9b2cb52" data-type="product-list" data-original-url="https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Studio-Display-XDR-Height-Adjustable/dp/B0GR1FQ6JQ/ref=sr_1_1"></core-commerce></p> <h2 id="jump-link-design-and-features">Design and features</h2> <p>If you’re familiar with Apple’s previous Studio Display, you’ll have a good idea of the Studio Display XDR’s design. The body has a high-quality brushed aluminum finish, with small holes across the top and bottom designed to vent heat from the built-in, nearly silent fan.</p> <p>It has enough internal hardware to be a standalone computer, as it’s equipped with an A19 Pro processor and 12GB (!) of RAM — more than Apple’s new MacBook Neo laptop. That extra horsepower is required for all of the image processing, dimming algorithms, webcam operation and HDR tone-mapping.</p> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/9b536cc0-2206-11f1-bfba-6a947dff87f0" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/9b536cc0-2206-11f1-bfba-6a947dff87f0" style="height:1676px;width:2800px;" alt="Apple Studio Display XDR review: Expensive, but there’s no monitor like it" data-uuid="60416d35-205e-322e-ba6f-e8b7881410c8"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Steve Dent for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>A tilt- and height-adjustable stand was a cool $1,000 option on the more expensive Pro Display XDR, but it’s thankfully included with this new model. The stand’s motion is delightfully smooth, with just a slight amount of pressure required to move it up and down. However, it only offers four inches of height adjustment and no ability to swivel the screen. You can also get this monitor with a VESA mount instead at the same base price, in case you want to mount it on your own stand or a wall.</p> <p>The Studio Display XDR comes with two high-speed 120Gbps Thunderbolt ports to connect your Mac, storage or another display, along with two 10Gbps USB-C inputs, but there’s no HDMI port in sight. One of the Thunderbolt ports supports 140W charging, which can replenish a 16-inch MacBook Pro at the maximum possible speed. Apple has also thrown in a Thunderbolt 5 cable that is thicker than any USB-C cable I’ve seen. The power cable also looks nice, but is not removable.</p> <p>Up front, the monitor has surprisingly thick bezels (0.75 inches) that detract from the otherwise sleek design. In comparison, my ASUS ProArt PA32UCX display’s bezels are just a quarter of an inch thin. Built into the top bezel is a 12-megapixel camera with Apple’s Center Stage feature that keeps your face front and center during Zoom calls. Note that if you prefer less glare, you can get nano-texturing on the display for an extra $300.</p> <p>The Studio Display XDR is designed mainly for use with Macs, and recent ones at that. Mac models with M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2 and M3 chips only <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/apples-new-studio-display-xdr-monitor-has-limited-functionality-on-older-silicon-macs-082212069.html">support this monitor</a> at up to 60Hz — not the maximum 120Hz. Apple doesn’t mention support for Intel Macs or Windows PCs, but I tested the monitor on both and it worked fine at the 60Hz limit.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-image-quality">Image quality</h2> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/c0969c00-2206-11f1-baf3-591e183d3397" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/c0969c00-2206-11f1-baf3-591e183d3397" style="height:1724px;width:2800px;" alt="Apple Studio Display XDR review: Expensive, but there’s no monitor like it" data-uuid="a85377ac-df3a-38ff-840f-98f7aea1df83"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Steve Dent for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>Apple has largely stuck with Mini LED and quantum dot technology for its MacBook Pro laptop screens and monitors because of the higher brightness levels and lack of “burn in” compared to OLED displays. The tradeoff for that is lower contrast, as I <a data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/what-are-micro-rgb-tvs-and-why-are-they-everywhere-at-ces-2026-182441543.html">explained here</a>. Mini LED displays also show a phenomenon called “blooming” not present in OLED panels, which is caused by light bleed from neighboring pixels.</p> <p>However, Apple has largely solved those issues on the Studio Display XDR by boosting the number of local dimming zones (individual LED backlights) to 2,304, four times as many as the XDR Display Pro. That allows not only more brightness, but higher contrast and minimal blooming.</p> <p>This model doesn’t offer 6K like the Pro Display XDR, but its 5K resolution is still higher than most rivals. That’s a big benefit for designers, animators, photographers and others who want the sharpest image possible. The higher 120Hz refresh rate is also easier on the eyes and better for gaming. However, creators used to screens that are 32 inches or larger may be turned off by the Studio Display XDR’s smaller size.</p> <p>Brightness is where this monitor really shines; XDR stands for “extended dynamic range,” after all. Apple promises a peak level of 1,000 nits in SDR and 2,000 nits in HDR mode. I was able to verify those claims: I measured 1,991 nits on a Calibrite colorimeter in a 25 percent window and 988 nits at full screen — making this the brightest monitor I’ve ever tested. When I watched <a data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jci_nhleoXA">HDR material </a>on YouTube and Netflix graded for brightness levels over 1,000 nits, I didn’t see any of the highlight clipping that occurs on my 1,400-nit ASUS ProArt display.</p> <p>What’s more, the Studio Display XDR’s 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio is among the highest of any non-OLED display (though not infinite like OLED displays). On top of that, I saw virtually no blooming with bright light points against black. Finally, this monitor has the best off-axis performance I’ve seen with very little drop in gamma even at fairly sharp viewing angles.</p> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/05510fb0-2207-11f1-9687-11be136533db" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/05510fb0-2207-11f1-9687-11be136533db" style="height:1630px;width:2800px;" alt="Apple Studio Display XDR review: Expensive, but there’s no monitor like it" data-uuid="388ad47c-37f2-3b20-a516-980f8bdae32e"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Steve Dent for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>Color accuracy is also a strong point. Apple promises a Delta E of less than one, and my measurements (around 0.8) bore that out. And like the Pro Display XDR, this model has a true 10-bit IPS panel, which means you get one billion colors total. Apple notes that the Studio Display XDR is the first Apple monitor to include both the P3 wide color Adobe RGB primaries, unlocking "deeper greens and cyans than P3 alone," it said in a <a data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:Apple;elmt:;cpos:6;pos:1" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=4130e2f0-a14f-4c5e-bdab-cd52ac7d8e79&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=1bfe12c8-cdf1-444b-bcc5-a94a6b2ea695&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=Apple&amp;linkText=white+paper&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5hcHBsZS5jb20vc3R1ZGlvLWRpc3BsYXkteGRyL3BkZi9TdHVkaW9fRGlzcGxheV9YRFJfVGVjaG5vbG9neV9PdmVydmlld19XaGl0ZV9QYXBlci5wZGYiLCJjb250ZW50VXVpZCI6IjFiZmUxMmM4LWNkZjEtNDQ0Yi1iY2M1LWE5NGE2YjJlYTY5NSIsIm9yaWdpbmFsVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYXBwbGUuY29tL3N0dWRpby1kaXNwbGF5LXhkci9wZGYvU3R1ZGlvX0Rpc3BsYXlfWERSX1RlY2hub2xvZ3lfT3ZlcnZpZXdfV2hpdGVfUGFwZXIucGRmIn0&amp;signature=AQAAAXRutBwhEIse2zQ2SSrGAxx6RQQx8tsVokMYJqw7_OLw&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fstudio-display-xdr%2Fpdf%2FStudio_Display_XDR_Technology_Overview_White_Paper.pdf" class="rapid-with-clickid" data-original-link="https://www.apple.com/studio-display-xdr/pdf/Studio_Display_XDR_Technology_Overview_White_Paper.pdf">white paper</a>. For HDR work, it covers 81 percent of the challenging BT.2020 color gamut, which is excellent though a bit below some OLED monitors.</p> <p>The Studio Display XDR can handle a variety of work thanks to the huge number of color profiles included with the display, which total 16 in all. Those include HDR profiles, P3 Digital Cinema, Photography, HDR photography, Design and Print and even Medical Imaging. To verify that, I tested it with several apps including Lightroom Classic and DaVinci Resolve, and was astounded by the color accuracy and brightness. Unlike some rivals, most notably ASUS, it doesn’t support Dolby Vision, however.</p> <p>On top of being an excellent content creation monitor, the Studio Display XDR is solid for entertainment and gaming. I watched scenes from movies and TV shows including <em>Spider-Man No Way Home</em>, <em>Game of Throne</em>s and <em>Tenet</em>, and enjoyed the extra brightness, high color accuracy and contrast ratio that allowed me to see what the heck was going on in the Night King battle in <em>GoT.</em> For gaming I tried <em>Cyberpunk 2077</em> for Mac, and the 120Hz refresh rate (it also supports Adaptive Sync 47-120Hz refresh rates), along with the brightness and color accuracy, makes it Apple’s best display yet for gaming.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-camera-and-speakers">Camera and speakers</h2> <p>Though it has the same name, the 12MP Center Stage webcam is much improved from the previous Studio Display. The resolution may be the same, but the new camera provides a much brighter and sharper image in dim conditions. However, to use the Desk View feature I needed to tilt the screen forward more than I’d like.</p> <p>The built-in six speaker sound system is surprisingly good too, offering what is easily the best sound I’ve ever heard coming from a monitor. It supports Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos sound as before, but now offers deeper bass. It still can’t match a dedicated soundbar or separate speakers, of course, but the audio on this display is clear and surprisingly loud.</p> <h2 id="jump-link-wrap-up">Wrap-up</h2> <figure> <img src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/25905f10-2207-11f1-aff6-ccd98a0ada58" data-crop-orig-src="https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2026-03/25905f10-2207-11f1-aff6-ccd98a0ada58" style="height:1595px;width:2800px;" alt="Apple Studio Display XDR review: Expensive, but there’s no monitor like it" data-uuid="e484fc2c-e139-3617-9eeb-98308f17fcdf"> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="photo-credit"> Steve Dent for Engadget </div> </figure> <p>As I said at the outset of this review, Apple’s Studio Display XDR <em>is</em> overpriced, but not by a lot. It’s the brightest monitor I’ve measured and has among the highest number of dimming zones for a Mini LED display for maximum contrast. At the same time, it offers superb color accuracy out of the box, supports up to 5K 120Hz resolution and oozes quality. Few monitors in any category and price range, whether Mini LED or OLED, can boast all of that.</p> <p>There are cheaper options that can do some of those things. If you prefer OLED, the ASUS ProArt PA27 4K model offers 1,000 nits of max brightness and similar color performance, with better contrast and double the refresh rate for $1,299. And if you want a bigger display that’s nearly as bright as the Studio Display XDR, ASUS also makes the $3,199 PA32UCG-K Mini LED 32-inch monitor with 1,600 nits peak brightness, albeit with half the number of dimming zones.</p> <p>However, if you require the best image quality possible and don’t mind a 27-inch display, Apple’s Studio Display is the best choice. It will never be a mainstream product, but thanks to its versatility and better value than the Pro Display XDR, I think it will be a surprisingly popular option.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/apple-studio-display-xdr-review-expensive-but-theres-no-monitor-like-it-120018426.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p><em>MindsEye</em> developer Build a Rocket Boy (BARB) has gone through serious drama recently including <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/mindseye-dev-warns-staff-about-layoffs-amid-talk-of-saboteurs-and-relaunch-183934780.html">layoffs and accusations of sabotage</a>. Now, the company is parting ways with its <em>MindsEye</em> co-publisher IOI Partners (the company behind <em>Hitman</em> publisher IO Interactive) and assuming sole publishing responsibilities going forward. It also means that a planned <em>MindsEye</em> and <em>Hitman</em> collaboration will be cancelled, the companies announced in a <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/bastion-uk/pressreleases/ioi-partners-and-build-a-rocket-boy-announce-transition-of-mindseye-publishing-rights-3438129">press release</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>&quot;IOI Partners’ involvement with MindsEye comes to an end, except for any essential transitional functions required to transfer publisher-of-record status to Build A Rocket Boy,&quot; the companies stated. &quot;In light of this separation, the Hitman mission announced in June 2025, planned as a crossover event within MindsEye, will no longer be released.&quot; They acknowledged that the announcement is likely to spur disappointment among funs and thanked the community for its support.&nbsp;</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><p>The publishing deal was a first for IOI partners and looked promising, considering the pedigree of BARB&#39;s co-CEO Leslie Benzies as a former Rockstar North president and GTA producer. However, <em>MindsEye</em> was widely criticized upon release due to bugs, a lackluster story and mediocre gameplay.&nbsp;</p> <p>At the same time, employees penned an open letter <a data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzn34gwvwo">accusing</a> Benzies of mismanaging the game and bungling layoffs. In response, Benzies and co-CEO Mark Gerhard said that negative pre-release feedback came about to due internal and external sabotage, a claim that employees reportedly doubted. In any case, BARB is now on its own and has a tall order to save <em>MindsEye</em>, particularly after recent layoffs.&nbsp;</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/io-interactive-splits-with-mindseye-developer-and-ends-hitman-collab-110028292.html?src=rss

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The Department of Defense said giving Anthropic continued access to its warfighting infrastructure would “introduce unacceptable risk” to its supply chains in a <a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=c813ae39-7d58-41cb-ac66-ad830606ceef&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=4b9dfc03-dd59-4506-8b63-c15620368225&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+New+York+Times&amp;linkText=court+filing+submitted&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE3L3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvYW50aHJvcGljLXBlbnRhZ29uLW5hdGlvbmFsLXNlY3VyaXR5LXJpc2suaHRtbCIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiNGI5ZGZjMDMtZGQ1OS00NTA2LThiNjMtYzE1NjIwMzY4MjI1Iiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE3L3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvYW50aHJvcGljLXBlbnRhZ29uLW5hdGlvbmFsLXNlY3VyaXR5LXJpc2suaHRtbCJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAdE6fQeDvGRI7Jl9750TXWmyWobp7Pwl6_hN9gD7yNtb&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2026%2F03%2F17%2Ftechnology%2Fanthropic-pentagon-national-security-risk.html" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The New York Times;elmt:;cpos:1;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/technology/anthropic-pentagon-national-security-risk.html">court filing submitted</a> in response to the AI company’s lawsuit. If you’ll recall, Anthropic <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-sues-us-government-over-supply-chain-risk-designation-152838128.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">sued the government</a> to challenge the supply chain risk designation it received for refusing to allow its model to be used for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons. </p><p>In its filing, the department explained that its secretary, Pete Hegseth, had a provision incorporated into AI service contracts, allowing the agency to use their technologies for any lawful purpose. Anthropic refused its terms and apparently, the company’s behavior caused the Pentagon to question whether it truly was a “trusted partner” that it could work with when it comes to “highly sensitive” initiatives. “After all, AI systems are acutely vulnerable to manipulation, and Anthropic could attempt to disable its technology or preemptively alter the behavior of its model either before or during ongoing warfighting operations, if Anthropic — in its discretion — feels that its corporate “red lines” are being crossed,” the Pentagon wrote in its filing. “DoW deemed that an unacceptable risk to national security,” it added, referring to the agency as the Department of War, which is the Trump administration’s preferred name for it. </p><p>It was due to those concerns that President Trump <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/trump-orders-federal-agencies-to-drop-anthropic-services-amid-pentagon-feud-222029306.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">ordered federal agencies</a> to stop using its technology, the filing reads. The company is asking the court to issue a preliminary injunction and put a pause on a ban while it’s challenging its supply chain risk designation in court. While Anthropic’s clients could continue working with the company on non-defense-related projects, it says the label could cause it to lose billions of dollars in revenue. It’s not quite clear if Anthropic is still trying to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropic-is-reportedly-back-in-talks-with-the-defense-department-125045017.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">reach a new deal</a> with the government, as was reported before it filed its lawsuit. As <em>The </em><a target="_blank" class="link rapid-with-clickid" href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=c813ae39-7d58-41cb-ac66-ad830606ceef&amp;siteId=us-engadget&amp;pageId=1p-autolink&amp;contentUuid=4b9dfc03-dd59-4506-8b63-c15620368225&amp;featureId=text-link&amp;merchantName=The+New+York+Times&amp;linkText=New+York+Times&amp;custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsImxhbmRpbmdVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE3L3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvYW50aHJvcGljLXBlbnRhZ29uLW5hdGlvbmFsLXNlY3VyaXR5LXJpc2suaHRtbCIsImNvbnRlbnRVdWlkIjoiNGI5ZGZjMDMtZGQ1OS00NTA2LThiNjMtYzE1NjIwMzY4MjI1Iiwib3JpZ2luYWxVcmwiOiJodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDI2LzAzLzE3L3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvYW50aHJvcGljLXBlbnRhZ29uLW5hdGlvbmFsLXNlY3VyaXR5LXJpc2suaHRtbCJ9&amp;signature=AQAAAdE6fQeDvGRI7Jl9750TXWmyWobp7Pwl6_hN9gD7yNtb&amp;gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2026%2F03%2F17%2Ftechnology%2Fanthropic-pentagon-national-security-risk.html" data-i13n="elm:affiliate_link;sellerN:The New York Times;elmt:;cpos:5;pos:1" data-original-link="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/technology/anthropic-pentagon-national-security-risk.html"><em>New York Times</em></a><em> </em>notes, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI had filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Anthropic since then.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/defense-department-says-anthropic-poses-unacceptable-risk-to-national-security-094328717.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p><em>Subnautica 2</em> has weathered the storm and has rescheduled its early access release. <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.ign.com/articles/subnautica-2-will-finally-enter-early-access-in-may-following-year-of-delays-and-legal-drama" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1"><em>IGN</em></a> reported today that the sequel to the underwater survival game will begin early access on PC and Xbox in May, although a more specific date was not provided.&nbsp;</p><p>The news comes a day after a judge <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/judge-rules-that-krafton-must-rehire-fired-subnautica-director-184702823.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">ruled</a> that former Unknown Worlds Entertainment CEO Ted Gill should be rehired at the game studio. That decision capped off <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-subnautica-2-212928022.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">a dramatic year</a> for the team behind <em>Subnautica</em>, which was acquired by Krafton in 2021. The studio and its new owners entered a legal battle because the purchase of Unknown Worlds included a promise of an up to $250 million payout from Krafton if the team met certain performance goals by the end of 2025. In July of that year, however, Krafton fired several studio leaders and then delayed the sequel&#39;s early access launch. The court case has raised questions about which side was trying to either secure or avoid making that multi-million payment.&nbsp;</p><p>With yesterday&#39;s ruling, a rep from Krafton said that &quot;we are evaluating our options as we determine our path forward.&quot; It&#39;s unclear if that path, or the other litigation still underway over the project, will create further delays to the planned early access date.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/subnautica-2-might-finally-be-entering-early-access-in-may-223747369.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Horizon Worlds, Meta's first pass at a metaverse, will be inaccessible via virtual reality headset after June 15, 2026. The company <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/metas-metaverse-is-going-mobile-first-233030532.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">shared plans</a> to separate Horizon Worlds from Quest VR platform and focus exclusively on the smartphone version of the app in February, and now in <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://communityforums.atmeta.com/blog/AnnouncementsBlog/updates-to-your-meta-quest-experience-in-2026/1369435" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">a new post</a> on its community forums, Meta detailed when the VR version of Horizon Worlds will be deprecated.</p><p>By March 31, Meta says individual Horizon Worlds and Events will no longer be listed in the Quest's Store and headset owners will be unable to visit worlds like "Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju and Bobber Bay." Then, after June 15, the app will be removed from Quest headsets and worlds will be completely unavailable to visit in VR. From that point on, the easiest place to visit Horizon Worlds will be in the Meta Horizon app for iOS and Android.</p><p>Additionally, <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-now-lets-you-invite-people-for-virtual-hangouts-in-hyperscape-capture-spaces-231152311.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">Hyperscape Capture</a>, a recently added beta feature that allows Quest headset owners to capture, share and visit each other in detailed 3D scans of real-life locations, is also being removed from Horizon Worlds. Meta says users will still be able to capture and view Hyperscapes, "but sharing, inviting, and co-experiencing Hyperscapes with others will no longer be supported."</p><p>While Meta's <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://developers.meta.com/horizon/blog/2026-vr-state-of-the-union-horizon-mobile-focus/" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">original blog</a> detailing its 2026 VR strategy left open the possibility that a committed Quest owner might still be able to access some part of Meta's original VR metaverse, that apparently was never the company's plan. Meta saw enough "positive momentum" focusing on supporting the mobile version of Horizon Worlds in 2025 that it made sense to completely abandon the VR one in 2026. While that seems to run contrary to Meta’s positioning as a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-new-name-meta-182151399.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">"metaverse company,"</a> it does reflect where the company is <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-says-it-will-invest-600-billion-in-the-us-with-ai-data-centers-front-and-center-195000377.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">spending the most money</a> and <a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/11/ray-ban-maker-essilorluxottica-triples-sales-of-meta-ai-glasses.html" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:7;pos:1">seeing the most (relative) success</a>: AI and smart glasses.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ar-vr/meta-will-shut-down-vr-horizon-worlds-access-in-june-222028919.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Apple has started <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/102657" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">providing</a> small security updates to iOS, iPadOS and macOS devices. These are dubbed Background Security Improvements that will offer minor system updates between the larger software updates. According to the company, these are meant to &quot;deliver lightweight security releases for components such as the Safari browser, WebKit framework stack, and other system libraries that benefit from smaller, ongoing security patches between software updates.&quot;</p><p>These updates should download in the background, as the name implies, although the device will need to be restarted to complete the process. In practice, we found that applying a Background Security Improvement was faster than a typical software update from Apple. On an iPhone, the restart was more of a power cycle taking under a minute compared with the 5 to 10 minutes a standard update takes a device out of commission.&nbsp;</p><p>The inaugural Background Security Improvement was <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/111333" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">released</a> today with a patch for WebKit. These updates will be supported and enabled on devices running iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1 and macOS 26.1. Details can be reviewed under the Privacy &amp; Security section of the Settings menu.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/apple-releases-its-first-background-security-improvement-for-macos-ios-and-ipados-214052311.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>What a short, strange journey it&#39;s been for <em>FBC: Firebreak</em>; Remedy <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2272540/view/508481950670914554" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">announced</a> that the final update for the online multiplayer game is available today. But while this Open House update will be the end of new content, the studio said it plans to keep the game available.</p><p>&quot;<em>FBC: Firebreak</em> will stay online and continue to be playable for years to come,&quot; Remedy said. &quot;We have done engineering work to ensure we can sustain the upkeep of the relay servers when the player volume is lower.&quot;</p><p>Remedy has won lots of fans for creating the eerie, surreal world where its hits <em>Control</em> and <em>Alan Wake</em> are set. <em>FBC: Firebreak</em>, which was released last year, is also based in that universe. However, this multiplayer game took a beating in reviews, largely due to its <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/remedy-is-trying-to-fix-fbc-firebreak-in-response-to-middling-reviews-and-player-feedback-203805921.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">poorly received onboarding experience</a> and Remedy <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/remedy-lays-out-its-plan-to-fix-fbc-firebreak-which-includes-improved-onboarding-182301518.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">shared plans</a> to improve the first few hours of the game. Its CEO also <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/remedys-ceo-is-out-amid-the-struggles-of-fbc-firebreak-151023995.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">left the company</a> last year and sparked a shakeup in the leadership at the studio.&nbsp;</p><p>The Open House update will add some new in-game content, but the more interesting changes seem aimed at making FBC: Firebreak more accessible. The base price has been dropped to $20, and the game has added a feature called Friend&#39;s Pass that will allow people who don&#39;t own the game to accept match invites from players who do own it.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/remedy-releases-its-final-content-update-for-fbc-firebreak-212000463.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Spotify is introducing a way for subscribers to get bit-perfect playback of songs if they listen on Windows. The company's newly announced <a target="_blank" class="no-affiliate-link link" href="https://community.spotify.com/t5/Community-Blog/Desktop-Exclusive-Mode-now-available/ba-p/7371590" data-i13n="elm:context_link;elmt:doNotAffiliate;cpos:1;pos:1">"Exclusive Mode"</a> gives the music streaming app complete control of audio processing on your PC so you can listen to songs exactly as they were mastered.</p><p>"Without Exclusive Mode turned on, your computer may alter audio before it reaches your DAC by resampling it, mixing other system sounds in, and changing the volume," Spotify writes. With the mode enabled, all other sounds from your computer are disabled so Spotify can deliver the highest quality and most accurate version of a song possible. Exclusive Mode will help maintain fidelity while you’re playing a song, but to make sure you're not losing quality anywhere else in the chain, you'll still want to listen with wired headphones connected to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/audio/ifis-new-go-link-2-dac-is-a-cheap-way-to-reap-the-lossless-benefits-of-your-spotify-plan-231535369.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">a DAC</a> or digital-to-analog converter, and opt to use Spotify’s lossless streaming option.</p><p>Exclusive Mode is only available on Windows for now, but Spotify says it'll come to the macOS version of the Spotify app "in a future release." Provided you're a Spotify Premium subscriber, enabling the feature is fairly simple:</p><ol><li><p>Open<strong> Spotify</strong>.</p></li><li><p>Click on <strong>Settings</strong>.</p></li><li><p>Scroll down to <strong>Playback</strong>.</p></li><li><p>Toggle <strong>Exclusive Mode</strong> to <strong>"On"</strong> under the <strong>Output</strong> section.</p></li></ol><p>Spotify <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-lossless-streaming-is-finally-here-and-its-included-with-a-premium-plan-131009528.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">launched its Lossless streaming option</a> as a perk for Premium subscribers in September 2025. The company was rumored to be working on the feature <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/2017-03-01-spotify-hi-fi-leak.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">as far back as 2017</a> and even formally announced it as <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/spotify-hifi-select-markets-premium-cd-quality-audio-2021-165438547.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">Spotify HiFi</a> in 2021, opening up the possibility it could be a more expensive add-on to a normal subscription. Now both lossless audio and “bit-perfect” playback are included as part of the same $13 per month you pay for a Premium subscription.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-rolls-out-bit-perfect-playback-in-windows-app-211036176.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>It&#39;s only been two years since <em>Dune: Part Two</em> <a data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1" href="https://www.engadget.com/dune-2-review-dolby-cinema-194415814.html"><ins>took over multiplexes,</ins></a> but we already have a trailer for the third installment. The appropriately-named <em>Dune: Part Three</em> is an adaptation of Frank Herbert&#39;s <em>Dune Messiah</em> book from 1969.</p> <p>Just like the book, the latest film takes place a number of years after <em>Dune: Part Two</em>. &quot;If the first movie was contemplation, a boy exploring a new world, and the second one is a war movie, this one is a thriller,&quot; <a data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1" href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dune-3-zendaya-robert-pattinson-trailer-1236535615/"><ins>according to </ins><em><ins>The Hollywood Reporter</ins></em></a>. &quot;It is action-packed and tense. More muscular.”</p> <span id="end-legacy-contents"></span><div id="eae407777d954764a900b2da68973302"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3_9vCamtuPY?si=lK_jMDXIJBq2rQQG" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <p>Despite the time jump, most primary actors are returning. This includes Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Javier Bardem. Anya Taylor-Joy, who briefly appeared in the second film, is also coming back. The same goes for Jason Momoa, despite his Duncan Idaho character dying in the first film. Book readers will likely understand what that means.</p> <p>The trailer also highlights the antagonist Scytale, as portrayed by Robert Pattinson. He should be a more nuanced villain than Baron Harkonnen, though that&#39;s not exactly a high bar.</p> <p>The release date is coming up fast. <em>Dune: Part Three</em> hits theaters on December 18. That&#39;s this year. Villeneuve had intended to take a break after making the second one to focus on a smaller and more personal film, but said that he kept &quot;waking in the middle of the night&quot; with potential images from the third installment.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-dune-part-three-trailer-introduces-robert-pattinsons-villainous-new-character-173758393.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Kalshi has been sued by Arizona&#39;s attorney general for operating an illegal gambling business in the state and unlawfully ‌allowing people to place bets on elections. &quot;Kalshi may brand itself as a &#39;prediction ⁠market,&#39; but what it&#39;s actually doing is running an illegal gambling operation ​and taking bets on Arizona elections, both of which violate Arizona law,&quot; the state&#39;s Attorney General Kris Mayes <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/kalshi-charged-criminally-arizona-operating-illegal-gambling-business-2026-03-17/" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">said</a>.&nbsp;</p><p>The company defines itself as a prediction markets platform, where users make bets on the outcomes of events ranging from sporting matches to political actions. Kalshi has claimed that it operates under the auspices of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and shouldn&#39;t be faced with the state-level charges of running unlicensed gambling.&nbsp;</p><p>The case follows a similar action against Kalshi filed <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/nevada-sues-kalshi-for-operating-a-sports-gambling-market-without-a-license-175721982.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">in Nevada</a> last month. Kalshi also made headlines this year when an employee of popular YouTuber MrBeast was <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/kalshi-fined-a-mrbeast-editor-for-insider-trading-191027814.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">accused of insider trading</a> on the platform. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/arizona-attorney-general-sues-kalshi-on-illegal-gambling-charges-172006290.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>FIFA is turning to streaming platforms to maximize its return on the 2026 World Cup. Two months after announcing a <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-will-broadcast-some-unknown-portion-of-the-2026-world-cup-live-192035507.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">&quot;Preferred Platform&quot; partnership with TikTok</a>, the organization has now <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/fifa-world-cup-2026-youtube-partnership/" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">struck</a> a similar deal with YouTube.</p><p>Broadcasting rights are FIFA’s <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://publications.fifa.com/en/annual-report-2022/finances/2023-2026-cycle-budget-and-2024-detailed-budget/" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">largest</a> revenue stream for the tournament — and media companies pay top dollar for that access. So, deals like this with streaming platforms help sweeten the package for broadcasters looking to boost their reach.</p><p>What does that look like for those watching from home? FIFA says its media partners will have the option of streaming &quot;a select number of matches in full&quot; on their YouTube channels. They can also live-stream the first 10 minutes of every match, presumably serving as a hook to coax viewers to finish the match on television. In addition, FIFA&#39;s media partners will get access to &quot;every angle&quot; of match footage to craft custom content.</p><p>&quot;As the world&#39;s attention turns to the action in Canada, Mexico and the United States, this collaboration with YouTube reinforces our ambition to maximise the tournament&#39;s impact across the ever-evolving media landscape,&quot; FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström said. He says the partnership will offer &quot;fans everywhere easy access to an immersive view of the biggest single-sport event in history.&quot;</p><p>The World Cup runs from June 11 to July 19. Matches will take place in 16 cities across Canada, Mexico, and the US.</p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/youtube-and-fifa-partner-up-for-the-2026-world-cup-170200470.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Now that Epic Games and Google have made up — or at least found a way to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/google-reportedly-muzzles-epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-until-2032-105501644.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">resolve their long-running disputes</a> — everyone with a compatible Android device can get back to the business of playing <em>Fortnite</em>. The game will return to the Play Store globally on March 19, the same day that the next <em>Fortnite </em>season goes live. It previously <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-is-back-on-the-google-play-store-195507458.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">dropped back onto the Play Store</a> in the US in December.</p><p>Google <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/fortnite-android-225437892.html" data-i13n="cpos:3;pos:1">pulled <em>Fortnite</em> from the Play Store</a> back in 2020 after Epic tried to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/epic-games-fortnite-direct-payment-discounts-143422257.html" data-i13n="cpos:4;pos:1">bypass the 30 percent cut</a> of all in-app purchases that the storefront too. Apple <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/apple-removes-fortnite-190920925.html" data-i13n="cpos:5;pos:1">did the same thing</a> with the App Store version of <em>Fortnite</em>. Epic swiftly sued <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/fortnite-google-play-lawsuit-035741548.html" data-i13n="cpos:6;pos:1">Google</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/fortnite-maker-epic-games-sues-apple-195415590.html" data-i13n="cpos:7;pos:1">Apple</a>, kickstarting years-long legal battles with both companies.&nbsp;</p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" style="width:640px;height:616px;"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">No matter where you are, we’ve got you covered. Fortnite is back on Google Play.<br><br>3.19.26: <a href="https://t.co/8M0MjZcvDI">https://t.co/8M0MjZcvDI</a> <a href="https://t.co/QWyR1TEJzX">pic.twitter.com/QWyR1TEJzX</a></p>— Fortnite (@Fortnite) <a href="https://twitter.com/Fortnite/status/2033891349582516709?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2026</a></blockquote> </div><p>The dispute with Apple ultimately led to the company having to open up the App Store in certain markets, including the US and EU. <em>Fortnite </em>returned to the App Store <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-returns-to-ios-in-the-eu-as-the-epic-games-store-debuts-on-mobile-142457411.html" data-i13n="cpos:8;pos:1">in the EU in 2024</a> and <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/mobile/fortnite-is-finally-back-in-the-us-app-store-222946133.html" data-i13n="cpos:9;pos:1">in the US last year</a>.</p><p>Google and Epic <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-and-epic-games-reach-settlement-for-antitrust-lawsuit-120019374.html" data-i13n="cpos:10;pos:1">reached a settlement</a> in November. Earlier this month, Google announced that it was <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-ends-its-30-percent-app-store-fee-and-welcomes-third-party-app-stores-185248647.html" data-i13n="cpos:11;pos:1">lowering the cut</a> it takes of in-app payments from 30 percent to between 10 and 20 percent. At that time, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney (who <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/google-reportedly-muzzles-epic-games-ceo-tim-sweeney-until-2032-105501644.html" data-i13n="cpos:12;pos:1">reportedly agreed</a> not to publicly talk smack about the Play Store until 2032 as part of the settlement) confirmed that <em>Fortnite</em> would return to Google&#39;s mobile storefront. </p><p>Epic <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/epic-is-increasing-the-price-of-fortnites-v-bucks-currency-185800744.html" data-i13n="cpos:13;pos:1">recently announced</a> a price increase for the in-game V-Bucks currency. It also confirmed that <em>Fortnite Save the World </em>— the game&#39;s original mode — is <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnites-original-save-the-world-mode-will-be-free-to-play-starting-on-april-16-160757693.html" data-i13n="cpos:14;pos:1">going free-to-play in April</a>.</p><p><br></p><p></p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/fortnite-will-return-to-googles-play-store-globally-on-march-19-170200794.html?src=rss

Mar 17, 2026

<p>When OpenAI released <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/i-hope-you-like-spreadsheets-because-gpt-54-loves-them-180000444.html" data-i13n="cpos:1;pos:1">GPT-5.4 at the start of March</a>, the company said the new model was designed primarily for professional work like programming and data analysis. Now OpenAI is launching GPT-5.4 mini and nano, and while it is once again highlighting the usefulness of these new systems for tasks like coding, one of the new models is available to <a target="_blank" class="link" href="https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-is-bringing-ads-to-chatgpt-192831449.html" data-i13n="cpos:2;pos:1">Free and Go users</a>. What&#39;s more, that model, GPT-5.4 mini, even offers performance that approaches GPT-5.4 in a handful of areas.</p><p>As a Free or Go user, you can access 5.4 mini by selecting &quot;Thinking&quot; from ChatGPT&#39;s plus menu. For paid users, the model is the new fallback for when you&#39;ve hit your rate limit with 5.4 proper. OpenAI says 5.4 mini offers better performance than GPT-5.0 mini in a few different key areas, including reasoning, multimodal understanding and tool use. That means 5.4 mini is better at parsing non-text inputs such as images and audio, and has a more nuanced understanding of how to do things like search the web. It does all of this while running more than twice as fast as its predecessor.&nbsp;</p><p>As for GPT-5.4 nano, OpenAI says it&#39;s ideal for tasks such as data classification and extraction where speed and cost-efficiency are top of mind. If you&#39;re a ChatGPT user, you won&#39;t find the new model in the chatbot. Instead, OpenAI is making it only available through its API service. The company envisions developers using more advanced models to delegate tasks to AI agents running GPT-5.4 nano, and that&#39;s reflected in the cost of the new model, which OpenAI has priced starting at $0.20 per million input tokens. </p>This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/gpt-54-mini-brings-some-of-the-smarts-of-openais-latest-model-to-chatgpt-free-and-go-users-170000585.html?src=rss

Mar 19, 2026

Ars Technica <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/google-details-new-24-hour-process-to-sideload-unverified-android-apps/">describes the ritual</a> that will be required before a future Android device will deign to install apps from somewhere other than the Play Store. It is not for the impatient. <p> <blockquote class="bq"> Here are the steps:</p> <ul> <li>Enable developer options by tapping the software build number in About Phone seven times</li> <li>In Settings &gt; System, open Developer Options and scroll down to "Allow Unverified Packages."</li> <li>Flip the toggle and tap to confirm you are not being coerced</li> <li>Enter device unlock code</li> <li>Restart your device</li> <li>Wait 24 hours</li> <li>Return to the unverified packages menu at the end of the security delay</li> <li>Scroll past additional warnings and select either "Allow temporarily" (seven days) or "Allow indefinitely."</li> <li>Check the box confirming you understand the risks.</li> <li>You can now install unverified packages on the device by tapping the "Install anyway" option in the package manager.</li> </ul> </blockquote>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the release of the <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1063724/">6.19.9</a> and <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1063725/">6.18.19</a> stable kernels. As usual, each has important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.</p> <p></p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p><a href="https://radicle.xyz/2026/03/18/radicle-1.7.0">Version 1.7.0</a> ("Daffodil") of the Radicle peer-to-peer, local-first code collaboration stack has been released. Some of the changes in this release include improved I/O usage, the ability to block nodes at the connection level, and clearer errors for <tt>rad&#160;id</tt> updates. See the release notes for a full list of changes and bug fixes.</p> <p></p>

Mar 19, 2026

The kernel project has a unique approach to tooling that avoids many commonly used development systems that do not fit the community's scale and ways of working. Another way of looking at the situation is that the kernel project has often under-invested in tooling, and sometimes seems bent on doing things the hard way. In recent times, though, the amount of effort that has gone into development tools for the kernel has increased, with some interesting results. Recent developments in this area include the Sashiko code-review system, a patch-review manager built into b4, and a new attempt at a framework for the specification and verification of kernel APIs.

Mar 19, 2026

Security updates have been issued by <b>Debian</b> (freetype), <b>Fedora</b> (aqualung, kiss-fft, libtasn1, mac, and vim), <b>Red Hat</b> (libarchive, osbuild-composer, and rhc), <b>Slackware</b> (expat), <b>SUSE</b> (ca-certificates-mozilla, chromium, cockpit, cockpit-machines, cockpit-podman, curl, docker, docker-compose, docker-stable, gnutls, gstreamer-rtsp-server, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, gstreamer- plugins-rs, gstreamer-plugins-libav, gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins- base, gstreamer-plugins-bad, gstreamer-docs, gstreamer-devtools, gstreamer, gvfs, helm, kernel, krb5-appl, libsoup, libxslt, libxml2, openssh, python-cryptography, python-django, python-pypdf2, python-simpleeval, python311, qemu, ruby4.0-rubygem-sprockets, ruby4.0-rubygem-thor, ruby4.0-rubygem-web-console, ruby4.0-rubygem-websocket-extensions, skaffold, smb4k, tomcat, ucode-intel, util-linux, virtiofsd, and zlib), and <b>Ubuntu</b> (bouncycastle, exiv2, freerdp3, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-xilinx-zynqmp, linux-aws-fips, python2.7, roundcube, and valkey).

Mar 19, 2026

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition: <p> <ul> <li> <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1062571/">Front</a>: Privacy battles; page-cache-timing protections; null filesystems; Fedora Sandbox; safer kmalloc(); BPF in io_uring. <li> <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1062573/">Briefs</a>: AppArmor vulnerabilities; snapd vulnerability; Sashiko; DPL election; Fedora Asahi 43; GIMP 3.2; Marknote 1.5; Quotes; ... <li> <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1062574/">Announcements</a>: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more. </ul>

Mar 18, 2026

Cindy Cohn is the executive director of the <a href="https://www.eff.org/">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a> (EFF) and she gave the Saturday morning keynote at <a href="https://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/23x">SCALE 23x</a> in Pasadena about some of the work she and others have done to help protect online rights, especially digital privacy. The talk recounted some of the history of the court cases that the organization has brought over the years to try to dial back privacy invasions. One underlying theme was the role that attendees can play in protecting our rights, hearkening back to earlier efforts by the technical community.

Mar 18, 2026

Version 4.24.0 of the Samba SMB filesystem implementation has been released. There are a number of significant changes, including audit support for authentication information, remote password management, a number of Kerberos improvements, asynchronous-I/O rate limiting, and more.

Mar 18, 2026

<p><a href="https://release.gnome.org/50/">GNOME&#160;50</a> has been released. Notable changes in this release include enhancements to the Orca screen-reader application, interface and performance improvements for GNOME's file manager (Files), a "<q>massive set of stability and performance updates</q>" for its display-handling technologies, and much more. See also the "<a href="https://release.gnome.org/50/developers/index.html">What's new for developers</a>" article that covers changes of interest to GNOME and GNOME application developers.</p> <p></p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Qualys has <a href="https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2026/03/17/cve-2026-3888-important-snap-flaw-enables-local-privilege-escalation-to-root">discovered a local-privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability</a> affecting Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 and later:</p> <blockquote class="bq"> This flaw (CVE-2026-3888) allows an unprivileged local attacker to escalate privileges to full root access through the interaction of two standard system components: snap-confine and systemd-tmpfiles. </blockquote> <p>More details are available in the <a href="https://cdn2.qualys.com/advisory/2026/03/17/snap-confine-systemd-tmpfiles.txt">security advisory</a>. Canonical has published updated packages as well as <a href="https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/snapd-local-privilege-escalation-cve-2026-3888/78627">instructions</a> for verifying if a system is vulnerable and how to upgrade if so.</p> <p></p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Fedora Asahi&#160;Remix&#160;43 <a href="https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-asahi-remix-43-is-now-available/">is now available</a>:</p> <blockquote class="bq"> <p>This release incorporates all the exciting improvements brought by <a href="https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-linux-43/">Fedora Linux&#160;43</a>. Notably, package management is significantly upgraded with <a href="https://rpm.org/releases/6.0.0">RPM&#160;6.0</a> and the new DNF5 backend for PackageKit for Plasma Discover and GNOME Software ahead of Fedora Linux&#160;44. It also continues to provide extensive device support. This includes newly added support for the Mac Pro, microphones in M2 Pro/Max MacBooks, and&#160;120Hz refresh rate for the built-in displays for MacBook Pro&#160;14/16 models.</p> </blockquote>

Mar 18, 2026

<p> The kernel's asynchronous <a href="https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/io_uring.7.html"> io_uring interface</a> maintains two shared ring buffers: a submission queue for sending requests to the kernel, and a completion queue containing the results of those requests. Even with shared memory removing much of the overhead of communicating with user space, there is still some overhead whenever the kernel must switch to user space to give it the opportunity to process completion requests and queue up any subsequent work items. A <a href="https://lwn.net/ml/all/[email protected]/"> patch set</a> from Pavel Begunkov minimizes this overhead by letting programmers extend the io_uring event loop with a BPF program that can enqueue additional work in response to completion events. The patch set has <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/847951/">been in development</a> for a long time, but has finally been accepted. </p>

Mar 18, 2026

Security updates have been issued by <b>AlmaLinux</b> (.NET 10.0, .NET 9.0, compat-openssl11, container-tools:rhel8, grub2, and libvpx), <b>Debian</b> (ansible, gst-plugins-base1.0, and nodejs), <b>Fedora</b> (chromium, forgejo, and systemd), <b>Oracle</b> (container-tools:rhel8, grub2, kernel, libpng, libvpx, nginx, opencryptoki, python3.12, and vim), <b>Red Hat</b> (firefox, python-wheel, python3.12-wheel, and thunderbird), <b>SUSE</b> (389-ds, chromium, clamav, container-suseconnect, curl, freerdp, gvfs, kea, kubernetes, ruby4.0-rubygem-minitar, ruby4.0-rubygem-multi_xml, ruby4.0-rubygem-nokogiri, ruby4.0-rubygem-puma, ruby4.0-rubygem-rack, ruby4.0-rubygem-rack-session, ruby4.0-rubygem-rails, ruby4.0-rubygem-rails-html-sanitizer, ruby4.0-rubygem-railties, ruby4.0-rubygem-rubyzip, vim, and xen), and <b>Ubuntu</b> (flask, libssh, linux-aws-5.15, linux-gcp-5.15, linux-gke, linux-hwe-5.15, linux-intel-iotg-5.15, linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.15, linux-oracle-5.15, linux-gcp-6.17, linux-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-realtime, linux-realtime-6.8, snapd, and vim).

Mar 17, 2026

Roman Gushchin has <a href="https://lwn.net/ml/all/[email protected]">announced</a> the existence of an LLM-driven patch-review system named <a href="https://sashiko.dev/">Sashiko</a>. It automatically creates reviews for all patches sent to the linux-kernel mailing list (and some others). <p> <blockquote class="bq"> In my measurement, Sashiko was able to find 53% of bugs based on a completely unfiltered set of 1,000 recent upstream issues using "Fixes:" tags (using Gemini 3.1 Pro). Some might say that 53% is not that impressive, but 100% of these issues were missed by human reviewers. </blockquote> <p> Sashiko is built on Chris Mason's review prompts (<a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/1041694/">covered here</a> in October 2025), but the implementation has evolved considerably.

Mar 17, 2026

<p>The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is <a href="https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260316-01.en.html">reporting</a> that payment provider Nexi has terminated its contract without prior notice, which means that a number of FSFE supporters' recurring payments have been halted:</p> <blockquote class="bq"> <p>Over the past few months, our former payment provider Nexi S.p.A. ("Nexi") requested access to private data, which we understood to be specifically the usernames and passwords of our supporters. We have refused this request. All our attempts to clarify Nexi's request, or to understand how their need for such information was necessary and legal, were met with what we consider to be vague and unsatisfactory explanations relating to a general need for risk analysis.</p> <p>[...] The decisions that Nexi has made are incomprehensible to us. Over the last months, as part of a security audit that Nexi claimed to be conducting, we have provided them with large amounts of the FSFE's financial documentation, which even included private information of our executive staff. We have answered all of their questions. But we have to draw a line when private companies like Nexi demand access to the sensitive and private data of our supporters.</p> </blockquote> <p>According to the blog post, more than 450 supporters have been affected by this. The FSFE's donation pages have been updated with its new payment provider.</p> <p></p>

Mar 19, 2026

Kimi K2.5 is now on Workers AI, helping you power agents entirely on Cloudflare’s Developer Platform. Learn how we optimized our inference stack and reduced inference costs for internal agent use cases.

Mar 18, 2026

We are expanding Regional Services with new pre-defined regions and the launch of Custom Regions. Customers can now define precise geographical boundaries for data processing, tailored to meet their compliance and performance needs.

Mar 16, 2026

Cloudflare is appealing a €14 million fine from Italian regulators over "Piracy Shield," a system that forces providers to block content without oversight. We are challenging this framework to protect the Internet from disproportionate overblocking and lack of due process.

Mar 13, 2026

Learn how Cloudflare and CDW de-risk SASE migrations with a blueprint that treats legacy debt as an application modernization project.

Mar 12, 2026

Blocking bots isn’t enough anymore. Cloudflare’s new fraud prevention capabilities — now available in Early Access — help stop account abuse before it starts.

Mar 11, 2026

Cloudflare now returns RFC 9457-compliant structured Markdown and JSON error payloads to AI agents, replacing heavyweight HTML pages with machine-readable instructions. This reduces token usage by over 98%, turning brittle parsing into efficient control flow.

Mar 11, 2026

Cloudflare AI Security for Apps is now generally available, providing a security layer to discover and protect AI-powered applications, regardless of the model or hosting provider. We are also making AI discovery free for all plans, to help teams find and secure shadow AI deployments.

Mar 10, 2026

Log Explorer customers can now identify and investigate multi-vector attacks. Log Explorer supports 14 additional Cloudflare datasets, enabling users to have a 360-degree view of their network.

Mar 10, 2026

Cloudflare's new Security Overview dashboard transforms overwhelming security data into prioritized, actionable insights, empowering defenders with contextual intelligence on vulnerabilities.

Mar 10, 2026

Cloudflare will be integrating Mastercard’s RiskRecon attack surface intelligence capabilities to help you eliminate Internet-facing blind spots while continuously monitoring and closing security gaps.

Mar 9, 2026

Today we’re disclosing request smuggling vulnerabilities when our open source Pingora service is deployed as an ingress proxy and how we’ve fixed them in Pingora 0.8.0.

Mar 9, 2026

Cloudflare’s new Web and API Vulnerability Scanner helps teams proactively find logic flaws. By using AI to build API call graphs, we identify vulnerabilities that standard defensive tools miss.

Mar 9, 2026

Discover how Cloudflare partners TachTech and Adapture are shattering the 18-month migration myth, deploying agile SASE for global enterprises in weeks by treating security as software.

Mar 6, 2026

Cloudflare One unifies data security from endpoint to prompt: RDP clipboard controls, operation-mapped logs, on-device DLP, and Microsoft 365 Copilot scanning via API CASB.

Mar 5, 2026

The Cloudflare One Client now features the ability to actively probe and adjust packet sizes. This update eliminates the problems caused by tunnel layering and MTU differences, providing more stability and resiliency.

Mar 5, 2026

Automatic Return Routing (ARR) solves the common enterprise challenge of overlapping private IP addresses by using stateful flow tracking instead of traditional routing tables. This userspace-driven approach ensures return traffic reaches the correct origin tunnel without manual NAT or VRF configuration.

Mar 5, 2026

By transitioning the Cloudflare One Client to use QUIC streams for Proxy Mode, we eliminated the overhead of user-space TCP stacks, resulting in a 2x increase in throughput and significant latency reduction for end users.

Mar 4, 2026

Cloudflare is introducing Attack Signature Detection and Full-Transaction Detection to provide continuous, high-fidelity security insights without the manual tuning of traditional WAFs. By correlating request payloads with server responses, we can now identify successful exploits and data exfiltration while minimizing false positives.

Mar 4, 2026

Cloudflare’s mandatory authentication and independent MFA protect organizations by ensuring continuous enforcement, from the moment a machine boots until sensitive resources are accessed.

Mar 4, 2026

Cloudflare One is partnering with Nametag to combat laptop farms and AI-enhanced identity fraud by requiring identity verification during employee onboarding and via continuous authentication.

Mar 20, 2026

The latest strikes come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel would "hold off on future attacks" on Iran's energy infrastructure, following Trump's request.

Mar 20, 2026

Once a futuristic shopping mall, El Helicoide became one of Venezuela's most feared prisons. Now, as the country changes, so does its fate — erase it, rebuild it, or remember what happened inside.

Mar 20, 2026

What could be more delightful than cannibal invertebrates and food-related weather events? A lot of things!

Mar 20, 2026

President Trump has slashed the number of people on the Board of Immigration Appeals and stacked it with his appointees, tightening the due process available for immigrants, an NPR analysis shows.

Mar 20, 2026

From waiving the Jones Act to rerouting oil through the Red Sea, governments are doing their best to make up for the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, but prices are still rising.

Mar 20, 2026

We asked our audience to share the creative ways they limit their own phone use. They range from the practical (keep your phone in another room) to the creative (pair your phone with a fun paperback).

Mar 20, 2026

Royer Perez-Jimenez is the second person to die in ICE custody this week.

Mar 20, 2026

Cuba is preparing to receive its first shipment of Russian oil this year, just days after the government announced it was operating on natural gas, solar power and thermoelectric plants as severe power outages continue to hit it.

Mar 20, 2026

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said it had approved the merger of local television giants Nexstar Media Group and rival Tegna, the same day that two lawsuits trying to block the deal were announced.

Mar 20, 2026

The vote by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members are supporters of the Republican president, clears the way for the U.S. Mint to begin production on the coin, whose size and denomination are still under discussion.

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/trump-repeats-false-claim-that-iranians-produce-oil-from-bodies-like-bees/">Trump Repeats False Claim That Iranians Produce Oil From Bodies Like Bees</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>CHICAGO—Sources confirmed Thursday that more than two dozen employees of logistics company LQR Freight had reluctantly agreed to participate in their office’s March Madness pool, thus marking their single annual interaction with one another. “Mike was in the kitchen handing everyone printouts, and it was the first time we&#8217;d spoken since I told him ‘I [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/office-ncaa-bracket-marks-yearly-interaction-with-coworkers/">Office NCAA Bracket Marks Yearly Interaction With Coworkers</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/strait-of-hormones/">Strait of Hormones</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>WASHINGTON—Hailing the Midwestern school as one of the best places to pursue and then abandon an undergraduate education, U.S. News &#38; World Report announced Thursday that it had selected the University of Toledo as the best college to attend for a semester before dropping out to do hair for a living. “For students who take [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/university-of-toledo-named-best-college-to-attend-for-semester-before-dropping-out-to-do-hair/">University Of Toledo Named Best College To Attend For Semester Before Dropping Out To Do Hair</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>PASADENA, CA—In what many have hailed as a groundbreaking discovery in the field of genetics, scientists at the California Institute of Technology published a study Thursday revealing that up to 93% of American baby boomers were fathered by a single virile milkman. “Our extensive DNA analysis shows that one hyper-fertile dairy deliveryman going about his [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/study-93-of-baby-boomers-fathered-by-single-virile-milkman/">Study: 93% Of Baby Boomers Fathered By Single Virile Milkman</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/dhs-ice-can-enter-homes-without-pants/">DHS: ICE Can Enter Homes Without Pants</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Ryan Gosling stars in Project Hail Mary, an adaptation of the popular sci-fi novel by Andy Weir. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the film.  Q: Who does Ryan Gosling play? A: Ryland Grace, an eighth grade science teacher somehow still determined to save humanity despite having spent decades surrounded by middle [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/what-to-know-about-project-hail-mary/">What To Know About ‘Project Hail Mary’</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>U.S. Circuit Judge Pauline Newman, the oldest active federal judge at 98 years old, asked the Supreme Court to step in after being suspended by colleagues over concerns about her mental acuity. What do you think?</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/98-year-old-federal-judge-appeals-suspension-for-mental-fitness/">98-Year-Old Federal Judge Appeals Suspension For Mental Fitness</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>MILWAUKEE—Dashing his hopes of taking on the new opportunity, local job applicant Mark McCarthy was reportedly informed by email Wednesday that the role of pig boy had already been filled. &#8220;While we appreciate your obvious skill at eating up slop and rolling around in the mud on your fat, pink belly, we have moved forward [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/job-applicant-informed-role-of-pig-boy-has-been-filled/">Job Applicant Informed Role Of Pig Boy Has Been Filled </a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>While leading OpenAI, Sam Altman has weathered leaked internal memos, an attempt to oust him as CEO, and widespread skepticism about artificial intelligence’s role in society. The Onion sat down with the entrepreneur to hear his vision for the technology’s future. The Onion: Good morning, Sam. How are you doing today?Altman: Certainly! Here are some [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/the-onions-exclusive-interview-with-sam-altman/">The Onion&#8217;s Exclusive Interview With Sam Altman</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>THE HEAVENS—Expressing frustration with the sky-rise apartment complex going up right outside His celestial home, God Almighty, Supreme Leader of the Universe, confirmed Wednesday that He was angry about the new construction blocking His view of creation. “I worked hard to have a Heavenly Kingdom from which I can gaze down upon all the beasts [&#8230;]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/god-angry-after-new-construction-blocks-view-of-creation/">God Angry After New Construction Blocks View Of Creation</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The post <a href="https://theonion.com/sabrina-carpenter-sends-especially-hot-concertgoer-to-fuzzy-pink-electric-chair/">Sabrina Carpenter Sends Especially Hot Concertgoer To Fuzzy Pink Electric Chair</a> appeared first on <a href="https://theonion.com">The Onion</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

Climate activist and author Rebecca Solnit tells Rowan Hooper why she still has hope, even in these "catastrophic" times

Mar 19, 2026

Tweaking our skin's microbiome via a probiotic cream could prevent frostbite and hypothermia in extreme environments

Mar 19, 2026

Gerd Faltings shocked mathematicians around the world for his 1983 proof of the Mordell conjecture, which brought together seemingly disparate mathematical fields

Mar 19, 2026

When you fold a flexible material such as a pancake or a tortilla, its behaviour depends on a competition between gravity and elasticity

Mar 18, 2026

The Perseverance rover has found tiny crystals that seem to be rubies or sapphires inside pebbles on Mars, where they have never been seen before

Mar 19, 2026

We are constantly told to watch out for the health risks of eating ultra-processed food, but should you be worried every time you sit down for a meal? Sam Wong takes a look at the evidence

Mar 18, 2026

Feedback discovers an accounting firm has unveiled its latest "lunar market assessment", which predicts huge profits to be had. Suit up, lunar entrepreneurs!

Mar 11, 2026

Space scientist Maggie Aderin talks telescopes, neurodiversity and being underestimated with Rowan Hooper on the New Scientist podcast, as her memoir Starchild comes out

Mar 18, 2026

The neurodegenerative condition chronic traumatic encephalopathy appears to be driven by damage to the blood-brain barrier due to repetitive head injuries, like those that occur in boxing. This suggests that drugs that strengthen this barrier could prevent or slow the condition

Mar 18, 2026

Tar made from birch tree bark is commonly found at Neanderthal sites, and experiments show that it kills some bacteria that cause skin infections

Mar 18, 2026

Abigail Marsh has found that many psychopaths don’t want to be cruel and uncaring, and argues that they deserve support to help them get there

Mar 18, 2026

Disruption to shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has led to a spike in oil and natural gas prices, which could spur countries to boost the rollout of renewable energy and electric vehicles

Mar 18, 2026

When particles in volcanic ash cloud rub together, some pick up positive charge and others negative – now physicists have finally elucidated how these different charges are determined

Mar 18, 2026

For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

Mar 18, 2026

Drugs like psilocybin that induce psychedelic effects have shown promise for treating depression. Now, a review of the evidence suggests that they are effective, but no more so than traditional antidepressants

Mar 18, 2026

A weather-forecasting AI was used to recommend routes for American Airlines flights between the US and Europe to reduce the formation of contrails, which contribute to global warming

Mar 17, 2026

Physicists working on the LHCb experiment have spotted an elusive and fleeting particle, a heavier and more charming cousin to the proton, that has been sought for decades

Mar 17, 2026

Two lawsuits are being brought against giant tech firms for the dangers their apps pose to young people. Columnist Annalee Newitz says the outcome of those cases could dramatically change social media for the better

Mar 17, 2026

You can now buy a humanoid robot housekeeper for less than the price of a second-hand car. But before splashing out, there’s something you need to know

Mar 17, 2026

People who share a bed with a partner are woken by them multiple times per night, but don’t remember most of these disturbances

Mar 16, 2026

Ancient DNA reveals that the Goths of eastern Europe, some of whom would ultimately sack the city of Rome, may have been a mix of peoples from three continents

Mar 17, 2026

The levels of a heavy form of hydrogen in 3I/ATLAS are 30 to 40 times higher than in Earth's oceans, suggesting the comet has a cold and distant origin

Mar 16, 2026

A radical idea that resolves many quantum paradoxes suggests there is no objective view of reality. How can the cosmos be stitched together from interlocking perspectives?

Mar 16, 2026

All five of the canonical nucleobases – the underpinnings of DNA, RNA and life on Earth – have been found in samples from the asteroid Ryugu

Mar 16, 2026

Scientists disagree whether human-made climate change or natural fluctuations are mostly to blame for worse-than-expected heat in recent years

Mar 16, 2026

With the Trump administration’s attacks on so-called woke AI it is becoming even harder to make the technology we use fairer and more diverse. Leading voices are speaking out, reports Catherine de Lange

Mar 10, 2026

Most of us don’t worry about our health in old age until we get there, but research is increasingly showing that how you live in your mid-50s can have a real impact in your 90s

Mar 13, 2026

A trumpet-shaped, single-celled organism seems able to predict one thing will follow another, hinting that such associative learning emerged long before multicellular nervous systems

Mar 16, 2026

Dimensions beyond the four we’re familiar with could solve a host of problems in physics and cosmology. Columnist Leah Crane explores what a higher-dimensional universe might be like – and how we could find out if we live in one

Mar 11, 2026

Samantha King and Gavin Weedon's new book Protein digs deep into the nutrient's role in our health. But can it tell you how much you should be eating? Alexandra Thompson explores

Mar 14, 2026

In a randomised trial, men who experience premature ejaculation benefitted from using an app to learn techniques for extending intercourse

Mar 9, 2026

We’re learning that frailty can quietly arrive decades before old age, with some people in their 30s or 40s unknowingly in a pre-frail state. There are surprising ways to stay strong – and it’s not all about weight training

Mar 13, 2026

Simulations of Australopithecus hominins’ anatomy suggest that when they gave birth, they may have exerted tremendous pressure on their pelvic floors, putting them at risk of tearing

Mar 13, 2026

There are a few simple things you can do to make your digital life much more secure, says cybersecurity expert Jake Moore - follow these tips to tighten up your passwords

Mar 13, 2026

Toys powered by AI show a worrying lack of emotional understanding. But we need to understand the risks and benefits of the technology so the industry can be regulated, not outright banned

Mar 11, 2026

The "world smells different" for people with Parkinson's disease, a discovery that could help doctors spot the condition sooner

Mar 11, 2026

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Mar 13, 2026

A growing body of research shows that we tend to discount a person’s good deeds if they stand to benefit from them. Columnist David Robson explores where this instinct comes from – and whether we should resist it

Mar 11, 2026

Photographer Jonas Kako travelled to Greenland to explore how mining for the rare earth elements and minerals that are vital for new green technologies is impacting locals

Mar 13, 2026

The errors that quantum computers make are holding the technology back. But recent progress in quantum error correction has excited many researchers

Mar 12, 2026

Body mass index (BMI) is used as a global standard for measuring health, but does it actually tell you anything about how healthy you are on an individual level? Carissa Wong explains the problems with this flawed tool

Mar 12, 2026

The story of a wildflower that adapted to a severe drought in California raises hopes that evolution will come to the rescue of species hit by climate change, but there are limits

Mar 12, 2026

Two popular quantum computing algorithms for problems in chemistry may have very limited use even as quantum hardware improves

Mar 12, 2026

Fentanyl-related overdose deaths fell by nearly 30 per cent in the space of a year in the US, which could represent a significant turning point in the country's opioid addiction crisis

Mar 9, 2026

Their species name is well known, but until recently we’ve understood very little for certain about Homo habilis. Columnist Michael Marshall reveals what new fossils are telling us about the hominins that have been considered the first humans

Mar 12, 2026

Star Nathan Fillion is stoking rumours that cult western-in-space television series Firefly could be rebooted. Emily H. Wilson realises she is being toyed with – but is still praying for its return

Mar 12, 2026

Teenagers are being bombarded with highly targeted commercial content on TikTok, despite an EU law that prohibits profiling minors for advertising

Mar 11, 2026

Strong magnets tend to be large and power-hungry, but a new design has produced a powerful magnet that fits in the palm of your hand, making it more practical and affordable

Mar 10, 2026

The speed at which artificial intelligence is gaining in mathematical ability has taken many by surprise. It is rewriting what it means to be a mathematician

Mar 11, 2026

Longer summers are allowing more king penguin chicks to bulk up and survive the winter, but the penguins' main fishing area is shifting further away as temperatures rise

Mar 11, 2026

Deep canyons in the Andes are the perfect location to catch the most energetic particles in the universe. Carlos Argüelles-Delgado reveals how these intergalactic envoys could help prove the quantum nature of gravity

Mar 11, 2026

The reliable internet connections provided by Starlink offer a huge advantage on the battlefield. But as access is dependent on the whims of controversial billionaire Elon Musk, militaries are looking to build their own version

Mar 10, 2026

Cortical Labs is building two data centres that will house its neuron-filled chips. The technology is still in the very early stages of development

Mar 11, 2026

Two mass strandings involving hundreds of dolphins in Argentina probably happened because the pods were being hunted by orcas, highlighting the role of predators in these mysterious events

Mar 10, 2026

When New Scientist reporter James Woodford was assigned to a story about a virus designed to kill rabbits, he never expected to be accused of spreading it

Mar 10, 2026

Statistics that quantify a person’s predisposition to diseases such as diabetes and cancer can be reverse-engineered to reveal the underlying genetic data, prompting privacy concerns

Mar 10, 2026

A rapidly brightening burst of light called AT 2024wpp, or "the Whippet", is baffling astronomers. One explanation is that it is the result of an exotic star falling into a black hole

Mar 10, 2026

Ryan Gosling stars in the latest adaptation of an Andy Weir novel, another tale of a lone genius battling to survive in space. Bethan Ackerley thoroughly approves

Mar 10, 2026

Figuring out what really counts as a galaxy could give us insights into dark matter and potentially shake up astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics, says columnist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Mar 10, 2026

An analysis of ancient and modern DNA suggests the extent of convergent evolution in different peoples around the world is even greater than we thought

Mar 9, 2026

US-Israeli strikes on oil facilities have caused black rain to fall on Tehran, but the black smoke filling the air is likely to be a bigger health risk

Mar 9, 2026

Taking a multivitamin every day might slightly slow the rate of ageing, but the extent to which this is relevant to our health is unclear

Mar 9, 2026

Some Samoyeds adjust the pitch of their howls depending on the music being played, showing a form of vocal ability they might have inherited from their wolf ancestors

Mar 7, 2026

Chris Maddison was just an intern when he started working on the Go-playing AI that would eventually become AlphaGo. A decade later, he talks about that match against Lee Sedol and what came next

Mar 9, 2026

A single femur found in Bulgaria appears to represent an ape or early hominin that walked on two legs before any known African hominin, but the evidence is far from conclusive

Mar 9, 2026

SETI has spent decades listening for a sharp, well-defined radio signal that could indicate it was sent by distant intelligent life. Now researchers believe that space weather could distort and blur such signals – meaning SETI has been scanning for the wrong thing

Mar 7, 2026

It's been 10 years since Go champion Lee Sedol lost to DeepMind's AlphaGo. Has the technology lived up to its potential?

Mar 4, 2026

Whether you call it a vibe shift or a paradigm shift, physicists must be ready to challenge their fundamental understanding of the universe without fear or nostalgia

Mar 6, 2026

Models show that as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation gets weaker, the Gulf Stream will drift northwards. There are signs that this is already happening, and a more abrupt shift could warn of more severe climate impacts

Mar 6, 2026

Everyone knows Yuri Gagarin as the first person to go to space. But was he? Literary historian Vladimir Brljak tells the tale of the intrepid balloonists who first flew beyond the blue terrestrial sky, challenging the definition of where our world begins to end

Mar 9, 2026

Sonselasuchus cedrus, discovered in fossils from Arizona, was a crocodile relative from the Triassic period that grew into an ostrich-like adult

Mar 3, 2026

From the cost of childcare to the housing crisis, there’s no shortage of explanations for the dramatic global fall in the number of babies being born. These analyses, though, are all missing something, says cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist Paula Sheppard

Mar 4, 2026

This International Women's Day, we should prioritise groundbreaking research into women's health, such as strengthening the reproductive system's natural defences, says Anita Zaidi

Mar 2, 2026

Black holes that turn matter into energy could explain dark energy and answer two other cosmic questions. Now, the challenge is to find them

Mar 2, 2026

Physicists are scrambling to understand why dark energy is weakening. In a surprising twist, we must now reconsider the possibility that our reality contains extra dimensions

Mar 4, 2026

The latest novel in this entirely original science-fiction series features a human-size mantis shrimp as an "uplifted" species. It's ambitious and fantastic, says sci-fi columnist Emily H. Wilson

Mar 2, 2026

Last year, our most detailed map of the universe yet suggested our understanding of dark energy has been wrong for decades. The shock result is reigniting the search for a better cosmic story

Mar 6, 2026

NASA’s DART mission slammed into the small asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, and the impact slowed its orbit around the larger Didymos – and also the pair’s path around the sun

Mar 6, 2026

Looking for molecular evidence of life on other worlds is tricky, but a test based on the reactivity of carbon compounds could be a useful indicator

Mar 6, 2026

Persistent inflammation in the gut, lungs and skin might lead to Alzheimer's disease, but lifestyle choices - from getting vaccinated to eating well - can keep inflammation under control

Mar 6, 2026

A new book from Rebecca Solnit, promising to bring us hope in these “difficult times”, is among our pick of popular science titles out this month – along with a guide on how to talk to AI, and a look at modern warfare

Mar 6, 2026

Since 2014, the planet has been warming by about 0.36°C per decade, according to an analysis of five temperature datasets, raising fears that climate tipping points could be crossed earlier than expected

Mar 6, 2026

What do a 20th-century physicist, an 18th-century statistician and an ancient Greek philosopher have in common? They all knew how to extrapolate with incredible accuracy. Columnist Jacob Aron explains how to combine their methods to improve your ability to guess

Mar 4, 2026

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Mar 5, 2026

The Alzheimer’s field is being turned on its head as mounting evidence points to the disease beginning outside the brain many years before symptoms start. This may mean we have to totally rethink how we approach preventing and treating the condition

Mar 5, 2026

A ring of 13 carbon atoms and two chlorine atoms has a remarkable molecular structure that means you would have to go around the loop four times to return to your starting position

Mar 4, 2026

Microplastics have been found accumulating everywhere from our water to our body tissues, but many of the claims have come under fresh scrutiny. Chelsea Whyte cuts through the research to tell you whether you really need to worry

Mar 5, 2026

Taking psilocybin – the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms – eased symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder among people who did not respond to conventional treatments, and the effects lasted at least several months

Mar 5, 2026

Indigenous people in Papua, Indonesia, have helped scientists track down two animals that were thought to have gone extinct thousands of years ago: a relative of Australia’s greater glider and a palm-sized possum with a bizarre, elongated finger

Mar 4, 2026

Feedback is pleased to discover another delightfully unconventional unit of measurement, which is used to convey amounts of snow on Ottawa's Rideau canal

Mar 4, 2026

If up to 20 per cent of us really do score highly on traits related to psychopathy, we are going to need all the help offered by a compelling new book. Start by admitting your own dark traits, finds Sally Adee

Mar 4, 2026

An exceptionally flexible region of the spine enables falling cats to twist the front and back halves of their body sequentially to ensure a safe landing

Mar 4, 2026

Most coastal risk assessments have underestimated current sea levels, meaning tens of millions of people face losing their homes to rising waters earlier than expected

Mar 4, 2026

The end-Permian extinction 252 million years ago wiped out over 80 per cent of marine species, but many ecosystems still had complex food webs despite the losses

Mar 4, 2026

AI chatbot Claude going down is just one example of a recent IT outage. One of the main vulnerabilities of the modern internet is to blame for the growing number of incidents

Mar 3, 2026

A method for making quantum computers less error-prone could let them run complex programs such as simulations of materials more efficiently, thus making them more useful

Mar 3, 2026

Analysing the births of a Utah family over seven generations has revealed that their disproportionate number of boys could be caused by a selfish Y chromosome

Mar 3, 2026

The microbes that live in our mouth and gut may influence whether an allergic reaction to peanuts is mild or life-threatening, and could be harnessed to ward off a severe attack

Mar 3, 2026

The US and Iran are trading blows in the Gulf with a simple drone that costs as little as $50,000 to make. But why is a slow, cheap and relatively primitive drone seeing use in 2026 alongside hypersonic missiles and stealth jets?

Mar 3, 2026

The science writer delves into the vast subject of consciousness in his new book A World Appears – and draws some surprising conclusions, finds Grace Wade

Mar 20, 2026

The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It's the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth's warming builds.

Mar 20, 2026

NASA on Thursday began returning its towering SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to its Florida launch pad ahead of a planned flyby of the moon, after completing necessary repairs.

Mar 20, 2026

New research reveals that "foundation models" trained on vast, general time-series data may be able to forecast river flows accurately, even in regions with little or no local hydrological records. The approach could improve flood warnings, drought planning and water-resource management in parts of the world where monitoring data is limited.

Mar 20, 2026

Meteorite hunters fanned out across a wide swath of Ohio on Thursday, hoping to collect fragments of an estimated 7-ton (6,350 kilograms) space rock that crashed into Earth this week after a dazzling fireball that was seen from hundreds of miles away.

Mar 20, 2026

Pets encounter a variety of everyday risks, from outdoor threats like animals or parasites to physical dangers like vehicles or sharp objects and household toxins like plants or cleaners. However, many owners may underestimate the invisible dangers—such as poisonous metals—that their pets could also come across in their daily lives.

Mar 20, 2026

A new Macquarie University study reveals Sydney suburbs are shifting to denser streetscapes with fewer trees. A typical knock-down rebuild in Sydney's suburbs is wiping out nearly half the front garden and more than 60% of the tree canopy, according to new research published in the journal Cities. Driveways are also expanding—up 57%—as larger houses and double garages increasingly dominate suburban streets.

Mar 20, 2026

South Africa is the 30th driest country in the world. Over 400 towns, especially in the western and central parts of the country, rely on water from aquifers that they pump out of the ground (groundwater).

Mar 20, 2026

Sudden drop in milk production, thickened milk, and cows under movement restrictions. Since 2024, American farmers have had bitter experiences with the feared bird flu (H5N1), which in several cases has been introduced to cattle—and then spread rapidly among cattle herds. In some instances, humans have been infected as well. The contagious virus is increasingly being transmitted from wild birds to mammals—such as cattle.

Mar 20, 2026

You check your credit score before applying for an apartment. Your fitness watch tells you whether you slept well enough. A workplace dashboard measures your productivity. Parents can buy devices that track their baby's breathing and heart rate while they sleep.

Mar 20, 2026

Inequality in wealth between men and women has not always received the same attention as similar disparities in employment and earnings. This is perhaps because wealth—things like property, savings and investments—is seen as a private matter. This issue has become known as the "gender wealth gap" and it is a damaging and persistent feature of the economy.

Mar 20, 2026

With 76% of adults now reporting stress levels that impede daily function, a new Cornell study points to a low-cost intervention hiding in plain sight: nature. The study, published in March 2026 in ScienceDirect, found that changes or improvements in workplace policy, culture and outdoor amenities could facilitate more time outdoors to aid well-being for staff at large organizations like universities.

Mar 19, 2026

NASA's Artemis II mission plans to fly around the moon and back this April. Four astronauts will board the mammoth Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for the test flight, spending 10 days off-Earth. They won't be touching down—this mission is intended to pave the way for humans to once again place their boots in the sticky, clumpy soil of our closest celestial neighbor.

Mar 19, 2026

Hungry gulls do not only steal our chips and sandwiches. They learn our habits, and look for reliable sources of food. That includes waste treatment centers, landfill or anywhere food waste is concentrated. Many gull populations have moved inland from the coast to exploit these sources of food.

Mar 19, 2026

Animal studies often fail to predict human tissue responses to new drugs or newly developed therapies. Besides generating tremendous costs for clinical studies, it also raises significant ethical concerns. Therefore, novel approaches to mimicking natural human environments like vascular system growth control, are broadly developed to deliver a reproducible model to test novel drugs.

Mar 19, 2026

A newly identified disease affecting corn and sorghum can closely resemble iron deficiency, potentially leading farmers to apply costly nutrient treatments that do not address the underlying problem. New research published in Plant Health Progress documents the discovery and identification of a bacterial pathogen responsible for the symptoms.

Mar 19, 2026

Researchers at UCLA have discovered a way to dramatically improve how electrical current enters perovskite semiconductors, an emerging class of materials with enormous potential for next-generation electronics. Their research is published in the journal Nature Materials.

Mar 19, 2026

As an astrophysicist, my world revolves around the wonders of space and the mysteries of the universe. This means I can be a tough critic of science fiction books and films that explore these topics.

Mar 19, 2026

The Nanomedicine and Nanotoxicology Group (GNano) at the University of São Paulo's São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC-USP) in Brazil has discovered a way to transform hydroxyapatite, a bioceramic material, into a nanoparticle with enhanced intrinsic luminescence. This paves the way for the use of biocompatible, low-cost nanomaterials in biomedical imaging techniques.

Mar 19, 2026

Controlling light at the micro- and nanoscale opens up opportunities for a better understanding of the world and the development of technology. As modern electronics approaches the limits of its capabilities, photonics comes into play. Instead of manipulating relatively heavy and slow electrons, we can use light and fast photons to encode information. This will make it possible to create devices that are not only faster but also even smaller than those currently in use.

Mar 19, 2026

People often seem to understand language before they have actually heard enough words to determine its structure. In everyday conversation, listeners react immediately, anticipate what others will say, and rarely wait for a sentence to finish. This raises the question of how the brain is able to keep up with such rapid communication.

Mar 19, 2026

When the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus was discovered on a poultry farm in Asia in 1996, there was little indication that it would become so widespread and so destructive. Within 30 years, it reached every continental region except Oceania, infecting more than 400 million poultry, tens of thousands of elephant seals and sea lions, about 1,000 people and many other mammals and wild birds.

Mar 19, 2026

After a wildfire, the flames may fade, but the danger does not. A new study by UBC researchers reveals that burned landscapes remain vulnerable for years, with large areas still bare and at risk of invasion by fast-growing, fire-prone grasses. The research, one of the largest vegetation trajectory studies in the world, monitored landscapes two years after major wildfires in interior British Columbia (BC). While some native plants returned, recovery was slower and more fragile than expected.

Mar 19, 2026

Sang Won Han, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Sungkyunkwan University (co-first author), in collaboration with Shinjae Won, an Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at Ewha Womans University, has published a study in the Strategic Management Journal. The paper, titled "Hiring at the Tip of the Funnel: Externalizing the Work of Integrating and Coordinating Diverse Human Capital," introduces a new perspective on how firms can resolve a core challenge in talent recruitment.

Mar 19, 2026

Imagine that plants could tell us exactly when they're stressed, infected, or being eaten by insects, by lighting up. A new study led by Dr. Karen Sarkisyan, Head of the Synthetic Biology group at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS), has borrowed molecular machinery from mushrooms and inserted it into plants to do just that. In a paper published in Nature Communications, the scientists engineered plants that could glow in the dark whenever their natural immune systems switch on.

Mar 19, 2026

Researchers from Skoltech, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, the Research Center for Cereal and Industrial Crops in Italy, and other international organizations have developed new durum wheat lines capable of surviving freezing temperatures while maintaining the grain quality required for premium pasta production. The study, published in Frontiers in Plant Science, presents a new breeding framework that could help make durum wheat production more resilient to climate variability.

Mar 19, 2026

It's been six years since the COVID pandemic swept the world, and by now we are all familiar with the pros and cons of remote working. As the protracted battle over return-to-office (RTO) mandates suggests, a number of personal and professional factors—including your standing in the organizational hierarchy—can determine whether your overall experience of telework is positive or negative. And the Big Four accounting firms are no different, according to Steven Maex, assistant professor of accounting at Costello College of Business at George Mason University.

Mar 19, 2026

Rendering a drug effective or ineffective in a flash at the appropriate location—this is the focus of research in photopharmacology. The goal is to develop drugs that can be switched on and off with light of a specific wavelength. Orally administered medications could then be selectively activated by irradiating only a specific part of the body with light; the medication would remain ineffective in the rest of the body—thus reducing side effects. For example, a drug intended to lower blood pressure in the heart could then be activated only there; other organs with identical binding sites for the active ingredient would remain unaffected.

Mar 19, 2026

Researchers at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) have developed a revolutionary new method to improve compact gene-editing tools known as base editors, which enable smaller, more precise DNA correction tools that may be safer for future gene therapies.

Mar 19, 2026

Since the 1960s, boron–dipyrromethene dyes, commonly called BODIPY dyes, have been widely used for their strong fluorescence, especially in bioimaging, molecular and ion sensing, and as photosensitizers. Researchers especially like how, with simple modifications to BODIPY molecules, their emission color can be tuned—an indispensable quality for multicolor imaging applications.

Mar 19, 2026

Milkweed has found a new strategy in its epic evolutionary battle with monarch butterflies: upgrading its toxins to outmaneuver the monarch's resistance. In a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers find that adding a small structural element containing nitrogen and sulfur to milkweed's toxins circumvents monarchs' ability to block them. The research sheds light on an underappreciated evolutionary tactic for plants: that not only can they increase their levels of toxicity, they can also structurally innovate to create new classes or subclasses of toxins.

Mar 18, 2026

Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-cryptography-pioneers-win-turing-award-20260318/" target="_blank">Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>

Mar 16, 2026

The central limit theorem started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers. Now scientists rely on it every day. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-that-explains-why-bell-curves-are-everywhere-20260316/" target="_blank">The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>

Mar 13, 2026

The last decade has seen vast improvements in humanoid robots, but graduating to widespread use might require going back to the fundamentals. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-humanoid-robots-still-struggle-with-the-small-stuff-20260313/" target="_blank">Why Do Humanoid Robots Still Struggle With the Small Stuff?</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>

Mar 11, 2026

Pushed down to a certain scale, the laws of physics seem to fall apart. Astrid Eichhorn, a leader in an area of study called asymptotic safety, thinks we just need to push a little further. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-some-see-strings-she-sees-a-space-time-made-of-fractals-20260311/" target="_blank">Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>

Mar 9, 2026

Every second, hundreds to thousands of molecules move through thousands of nuclear pores in each of your cells. A new high-definition view reveals the machine in action. <p>The post <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/disorder-drives-one-of-natures-most-complex-machines-20260309/" target="_blank">Disorder Drives One of Nature’s Most Complex Machines</a> first appeared on <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org" target="_blank">Quanta Magazine</a></p>

Mar 20, 2026

Take it easy, enjoy the ride.

Mar 20, 2026

If you want some fancy, exclusive cosmetics, you'll need to wait a bit longer.

Mar 20, 2026

If you haven't played New Vegas yet, there's no longer any excuses.

Mar 20, 2026

"The consumer doesn't really know what to buy for their computer," Garriott said in 1989, while also pointing to the popularity of Nintendo's newfangled game console.

Mar 20, 2026

Hoarder is a bit like Powerwash Simulator, except you might be in a sort of Cthulhu-esque hell.

Mar 19, 2026

Plus the questing requirements to unlock and redeem codes.

Mar 19, 2026

Here's what you need to take down each of Monster Hunter Stories 3's toughest bosses.

Mar 19, 2026

Be kind and rewind.

Mar 19, 2026

I've been waiting for Moves of the Diamond Hand for a long time.

Mar 19, 2026

The game's paragon system is on the list of things to change.

Mar 19, 2026

What to do with the stranger's mysterious letter.

Mar 19, 2026

Use these shiny crystals to craft and refine your jewellery.

Mar 19, 2026

Break some rocks for this towering shopkeep.

Mar 19, 2026

Solve the skybridge puzzle and turn the power on.

Mar 19, 2026

Move the grid, match the symbols.

Mar 19, 2026

Get some fine timber for the local smithy.

Mar 19, 2026

Match the melody to steal the stuff.

Mar 19, 2026

Crack open some locked doors.

Mar 19, 2026

Say it with (or without) your chest.

Mar 19, 2026

Snag this saddler a Tench so she can use the scales.

Mar 19, 2026

Use the Abyss Nexus and track down Mysterious Energy.

Mar 19, 2026

Unravel the secret of the ancient ruins.

Mar 19, 2026

Change dreary night into bright daytime.

Mar 19, 2026

Track down the location of the treasure map outside Hernand.

Mar 19, 2026

Kliff, stop. I'm warning you. Don't open it. NO. DON'T YOU DA-

Mar 19, 2026

It's a big, big world.

Mar 19, 2026

Rustle up a meal for the town butcher.

Mar 19, 2026

It's free money.

Mar 19, 2026

Help the distressed villagers in the Actions Speak Louder than Words quest.

Mar 19, 2026

Turn the three dials to their rightful positions.

Mar 19, 2026

Use your starting skill points wisely.

Mar 19, 2026

Get some free skills just by watching enemies.

Mar 19, 2026

Teach Kliff some new moves.

Mar 19, 2026

And where to find more Faded Abyss Artifacts.

Mar 19, 2026

Dress to impress and find your way into the heart of Hernand.

Mar 19, 2026

Use your lantern where it reacts.

Mar 19, 2026

The devil's in the details.

Mar 19, 2026

Get health, stamina, and unlock new skills.

Mar 19, 2026

Trounce Kailok in a one-on-one duel.

Mar 19, 2026

Complete these challenges to earn some rewards.

Mar 19, 2026

Defeat this terrifying machine in Karin Quarry.

Mar 19, 2026

Fix the three kilns for Grimnir to get the workshop up and running.

Mar 19, 2026

Bring these criminals to justice across Hernand.

Mar 19, 2026

Get past the Pororin Patrol without being sleep darted.

Mar 19, 2026

Turn on the elevator so you can head up.

Mar 19, 2026

Uncover the map by ringing some bells.

Mar 19, 2026

Recruit an ally to fight alongside you.

Mar 19, 2026

Befriend your mount to unlock new horse skills.

Mar 19, 2026

I hope you like birds and pistons.

Mar 19, 2026

Refine your gear with this red rock.

Mar 19, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-small-group-of-nigerian-men-unloading-an-suv-from-the-back-of-a-semi-truck.jpg?id=65317758&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/><br/><br/><p><span>A growing number of Nigerian companies are turning to kit-based assembly to bring electric vehicles to market in Africa. Lagos-based </span><a href="https://saglev.com/" target="_blank">Saglev Micromobility Nigeria</a><span> recently partnered with </span><a href="https://www.dongfeng-global.com/" target="_blank">Dongfeng Motor Corporation</a><span>, in Wuhan, China, to assemble 18-seat electric passenger vans from imported kits.</span></p><p>Kit-based assembly allows Nigerian firms to reduce costs, create jobs, and develop local technical expertise—key steps toward expanding EV access. Fully assembled and imported EVs face high tariffs that put them out of reach for many African consumers, whereas kit-based approaches make electric mobility more affordable today. Saglev’s initiative reflects a broader trend: <a href="https://cigmotors.com.ng/" target="_blank">CIG Motors</a>, <a href="https://nev-electric.com/" target="_blank">NEV Electric</a>, and regional players in Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, and Kenya are also leveraging imported kits to build local EV ecosystems, signaling that parts of West Africa are intent on catching up with global electrification efforts.</p><p><br/></p><h2>Expanding the Local EV Ecosystem</h2><p>CIG Motors operates a kit-assembly plant in Lagos producing vehicles from Chinese automakers <a href="https://gac.com.bd/" target="_blank">GAC Motor</a> and <a href="https://www.wuling.com.hk/" target="_blank">Wuling Motors</a>. These vehicles include the <a href="https://wulingcars.com/product/wuling-binguo/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wuling Bingo</a>, a compact five-door electric hatchback, and the <a href="https://wulingcars.com/product/wuling-hongguang-mini-ev/" target="_blank">Hongguang Mini EV Macaron</a>, a microcar with roughly 200 kilometers of range aimed at ride-share operators looking for ultralow-cost urban transport. NEV Electric focuses on electric buses and three-wheelers for urban transit and last-mile delivery.</p><p>Saglev’s CEO, Olu Faleye, emphasizes that Nigeria’s <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/collections/the-ev-transition-explained/" target="_self">EV transition</a> addresses both practical economic needs in addition to environmental goals. Beyond passenger transport, electric vehicles could help reduce one of Nigeria’s persistent agricultural challenges: post-harvest spoilage. Nigeria loses an estimated 30–40 million tonnes of food annually because of weak logistics and limited refrigeration infrastructure, according to the <a href="https://www.otaccwa.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Organization for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa</a>.</p><p>Electric vans, mini-trucks, and three-wheel cargo vehicles could help close this gap because their batteries can power refrigeration systems during transport without relying on costly diesel fuel. As EV adoption grows and charging infrastructure expands, temperature-controlled transport could become more affordable, reducing spoilage, improving farmer incomes, and helping stabilize food supplies, the organization says.</p><p>“I don’t believe that the promised land is making a fully built EV on the ground here.” <br/>–Olu Faleye, Saglev CEO</p><p>Beyond Nigeria, Mombasa, Kenya–based <a href="https://ava.co.ke/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Associated Vehicle Assemblers</a> has begun assembling electric taxis and minibuses from imported kits, and Ghana’s government is spurring kit-car assembly there under its national <a href="https://ghanaautodevcentre.org/ghana-automotive-development-policy-gadp/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Automotive Development Plan</a>. In Ghana, assemblers benefit from import-duty exemptions on kits and equipment, corporate tax breaks, and access to industrial infrastructure. Saglev is already availing itself of those benefits, at its kit-assembly plant in Accra. The company says it also plans to expand its assembly operations to Cote D’Ivoire. </p><p><br/></p><h2>Infrastructure Challenges and Workarounds</h2><p>Despite these signs that West Africa’s EV ecosystem is gaining traction, limited <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/multiphysics-simulation-power-grid" target="_self">grid reliability</a> and sparse <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ev-charging-2671242103" target="_self">public charging</a> infrastructure remain major barriers to widespread EV adoption. Urban households in Nigeria experience roughly <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DCtddkBiu9E/?img_index=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">six or seven blackouts per week</a>, each lasting about 12 hours, according to Nigeria’s <a href="https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">National Bureau of Statistics</a>. That’s more downtime each <em>day</em> than <a href="https://thesiliconreview.com/2025/12/the-silicon-reviewdec-2025us-power-outages-decade-high-eia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the average U.S. household experiences in a year.</a> More than <a href="https://guardian.ng/features/exploring-renewable-energy-options-to-nigerias-electricity-production-crisis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">40 percent of households rely on generators</a>, which supply about 44 percent of residential electricity, according to research by <a href="https://www.stears.co/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stears</a> and <a href="https://sterling.ng/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sterling Bank</a>.</p><p>Many early EV adopters therefore charge vehicles using gasoline or diesel generators. Faleye notes that Nigerians have long relied on such workarounds and expects fossil fuels to remain part of the EV charging equation for the foreseeable future—at least until falling costs for <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-and-energy-storage-combine-for-one-power-energy-solution" target="_self">solar panels and battery storage</a> make cleaner charging viable.</p><p>He acknowledges that charging EVs using hydrocarbons is fraught from an environmental perspective, but he points out that the practice at least brings other benefits of EVs, including lower maintenance costs and the EVs’ synergies with <a href="https://www.patheon.com/us/en/our-capabilities/clinical-trial-services/cold-chain-management-logistics.html?s_kwcid=AL%2117512%213%21791829838484%21e%21%21g%21%21cold+chain+logistics%2111440275260%21110252175325&ef_id=Cj0KCQjwsdnNBhC4ARIsAA_3heiAWTA0V0-sSl4MYLG_Ev-X88zuSFdP2LLLauvyDE92yAacdt-RM_MaArtVEALw_wcB%3AG%3As&utm_campaign=paid-search&utm_campaignchild=Clinical-Trial-Services&utm_specialty=Cold-Chain&utm_campaignregion=global&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid-search&utm_campaignassettype=web-page&utm_term=cold+chain+logistics&KW=cold+chain+logistics&AG=110252175325&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=11440275260&gbraid=0AAAAADkPZ_WxWM0ynkiLfuuw8bFTR0b-K&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsdnNBhC4ARIsAA_3heiAWTA0V0-sSl4MYLG_Ev-X88zuSFdP2LLLauvyDE92yAacdt-RM_MaArtVEALw_wcB" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">refrigeration and transportation logistics</a>. And he points to a 2020 <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020SJRUE..24..669A/abstract" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">peer-reviewed study</a> in the journal <em>Environmental and Climate Technologies</em> that compared the overall efficiency of internal combustion vehicles and electric vehicles across the full well-to-wheel energy chain. The study’s conclusion: Even after accounting for conversion losses, generating electricity with a diesel or gasoline generator to power an electric vehicle can remain just as efficient overall as burning the same fuel directly in a vehicle’s internal combustion engine.</p><p><br/></p><h2>Scalable EV Adoption in Nigeria</h2><p>The approach taken by Saglev and other Nigerian kit-car builders shows how local assembly can advance EV adoption even where infrastructure remains unreliable. By starting with kits, companies can deploy practical electric mobility solutions now while building the supply chains and technical expertise needed for more resource-intensive localized production.</p><p>Still, when asked whether Saglev plans to eventually move beyond kit assembly to independent design and manufacturing of EVs, Faleye calls such a move impractical.</p><p>“I don’t believe that the promised land is making a fully built EV on the ground here,” he says. “For me to do efficient vehicle manufacturing, I’d need a lot of <a href="https://www.ibm.com/think/news/ai-robots-auto-industry" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">robotics</a> and <a href="https://www.3dsystems.com/automotive" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">3D printing</a>. That expense is unnecessary—it would just increase costs and make EVs more expensive.”</p><p>In a country where electricity can disappear for days, Nigeria’s kit-based EV strategy highlights a practical truth: incremental progress and ingenuity may matter more than perfect infrastructure. For Saglev, every kit-based vehicle rolling off the line is not just a van or bus—it’s a step toward an EV ecosystem that works for Nigeria’s realities today.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-color-coded-computer-simulations-of-a-human-heart-the-simulation-on-the-left-shows-the-muscle-structure-and-the-simulation.png?id=65278129&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C415%2C0%2C416"/><br/><br/><p><strong>One morning in May </strong>2019, a cardiac surgeon stepped into the operating room at Boston Children’s Hospital more prepared than ever before to perform a high-risk procedure to rebuild a child’s heart. The surgeon was experienced, but he had an additional advantage: He had already performed the procedure on this child dozens of times—virtually. He knew exactly what to do before the first cut was made. Even more important, he knew which strategies would provide the best possible outcome for the child whose life was in his hands.</p><p>How was this possible? Over the prior weeks, the hospital’s surgical and cardio-engineering teams had come together to build a fully functioning model of the child’s heart and surrounding vascular system from MRI and CT scans. They began by carefully converting the medical imaging into a 3D model, then used physics to bring the 3D heart to life, creating a dynamic <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/virtual-hearts-improve-cardiac-surgery" target="_self">digital replica</a> of the patient’s physiology. The mock-up reproduced this particular heart’s unique behavior, including details of blood flow, pressure differentials, and muscle-tissue stresses.</p><p>This type of model, known as a virtual twin, can do more than identify medical problems—it can provide detailed diagnostic insights. In Boston, the team used the model to predict how the child’s heart would respond to any cut or stitch, allowing the surgeon to test many strategies to find the best one for this patient’s exact anatomy.</p><p>That day, the stakes were high. With the patient’s unique condition—a heart defect in which large holes between the atria and ventricles were causing blood to flow between all four chambers—there was no manual or textbook to fully guide the doctors. The condition strains the lungs, so the doctors planned an open-heart surgery to reroute deoxygenated blood from the lower body directly to the lungs, bypassing the heart. Typically with this kind of surgery, decisions would be made on the fly, under demanding conditions, and with high uncertainty. But in this case, the plan had been tested in advance, and the entire team had rehearsed it before the first incision. The surgery was a complete success.</p><p>Such procedures have become routine at the Boston hospital. Since that first patient, nearly 2,000 procedures have been guided by virtual-twin modeling. This is the power of the technology behind the <a href="https://www.3ds.com/3dexperiencelab/portfolio/living-heart" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Living Heart Project</a>, which I launched in 2014, five years before that first procedure. The project started as an exploratory initiative to see if modeling the human heart was possible. Now with more than 150 member organizations across 28 countries, the project includes dozens of multidisciplinary teams that regularly use multiscale virtual twins of the heart and other vital organs.</p><p>This technology is reshaping how we understand and treat the human body. To reach this transformative moment, we had to solve a fundamental challenge: building a digital heart accurate enough—and trustworthy enough—to guide real clinical decisions.</p><h2>A father’s concern</h2><p>Now entering its second decade, the Living Heart Project was born in part from a personal conviction. For many years, I had watched helplessly as my daughter Jesse faced endless diagnostic uncertainty due to a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4557-0599-3.00039-9" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rare congenital heart condition</a> in which the position of the ventricles is reversed, threatening her life as she grew. As an engineer, I understood that the heart was an array of pumping chambers, controlled by an electrical signal and its blood flow carefully regulated by valves. Yet I struggled to grasp the unique structure and behavior of my daughter’s heart well enough to contribute meaningfully to her care. Her specialists knew the bleak forecast children like her faced if left untreated, but because every heart with her condition is anatomically unique, they had little more than their best guesses to guide their decisions about what to do and when to do it. With each specialist, a new guess.</p><p>Then my engineering curiosity sparked a question that has guided my career ever since: Why can’t we simulate the human body the way we <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/selfdriving-cars-learn-about-road-hazards-through-augmented-reality" target="_self">simulate a car</a> or a plane?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="woman facing away and looking at a wall where the simulated interior of a heart is projected" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="442abe00bb6d81b4be0ad13e4ec3880e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="09f25" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/woman-facing-away-and-looking-at-a-wall-where-the-simulated-interior-of-a-heart-is-projected.png?id=65301974&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">At a visualization center in Boston, VR imagery helps the mother of a young girl with a complex heart defect understand the inner workings of her child’s heart. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Dassault Systèmes</small></p><p>I had spent my career developing powerful computational tools to help engineers build digital models of complex mechanical systems, using models that ranged from the interactions of individual atoms to the components of entire vehicles. What most of these models had in common was the use of physics to predict behavior and optimize performance. But in medicine today, those same physics-based approaches rarely inform decision-making. In most clinical settings, treatment decisions still hinge on judgments drawn from static 2D images, statistical guidelines, and retrospective studies.</p><p>This was not always the case. Historically, physics was central to medicine. The word “physician” itself traces back to the Latin <em><em>physica</em></em>, which translates to “natural science.” Early doctors were, in a sense, applied physicists. They understood the heart as a pump, the lungs as bellows, and the body as a dynamic system. To be a physician meant you were a master of physics as it applied to the human body.</p><p>As medicine matured, biology and chemistry grew to dominate the field, and the knowledge of physics got left behind. But for patients like my daughter, that child in Boston, and millions like them, outcomes are governed by mechanics. No pill or ointment—no chemistry-based solution—would help, only physics. While I did not realize it at the time, virtual twins can reunite modern physicians with their roots, using engineering principles, simulation science, and artificial intelligence.</p><h2>A decade of progress</h2><p>The LHP concept was simple: Could we combine what hundreds of experts across many specialties knew about the human heart to build a digital twin accurate enough to be trusted, flexible enough to personalize, and predictive enough to guide clinical care?</p><p>We invited researchers, clinicians, device and drug companies, and government regulators to share their data, tools, and knowledge toward a common goal that would lift the entire field of medicine. The Living Heart Project launched with a dozen or so institutions on board. Within a year, we had created the first fully functional virtual twin of the human heart.</p><p>The Living Heart was not an anatomical rendering, tuned to simply replicate what we observed. It was a first-principles model, coupling the network of fibers in the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/medtronics-cardioinsight-electrode-vest-maps-hearts-electrical-system" target="_self">heart’s electrical system</a>, the biological battery that keeps us alive, with the heart’s mechanical response, the muscle contractions that we know as the heartbeat.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"> <span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="85d721660928d134fc0039fb17d76716" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ae_IqlxgCME?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Living Heart virtual twin simulates how the heart beats, offering different views to help scientists and doctors better predict how it will respond to disease or treatment. The center view shows the fine engineering mesh, the detailed framework that allows computers to model the heart’s motion. The image on the right uses colors to show the electrical wave that drives the heartbeat as it conducts through the muscle, and the image on the left shows how much strain is on the tissue as it stretches and squeezes. </small> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Dassault Systèmes</small> </p><p>Academic researchers had long explored computational models of the heart, but those projects were typically limited by the technology they had access to. Our version was built on industrial-grade simulation software from <a href="https://www.3ds.com/" target="_blank">Dassault Systèmes</a>, a company best known for modeling tools used in aerospace and automotive engineering, where I was working to develop the engineering simulation division. This platform gave teams the tools to personalize an individual heart model using the patient’s MRI and CT data, blood-pressure readings, and echocardiogram measurements, directly linking scans to simulations.</p><p>Surgeons then began using the Living Heart to model procedures. Device makers used it to design and test implants. Pharmaceutical companies used it to evaluate drug effects such as toxicity. Hundreds of publications have emerged from the project, and because they all share the same foundation, the findings can be reproduced, reused, and built upon. With each application, the research community’s understanding of the heart snowballed.</p><p>Early on, we also addressed an essential requirement for these innovations to make it to patients: regulatory acceptance. Within the project’s first year, the U.S Food and Drug Administration <a href="https://www.3ds.com/newsroom/press-releases/dassault-systemes-signs-research-agreement-food-and-drug-administration-its-living-heart-project" target="_blank">agreed to join the project</a> as an observer. Over the next several years, methods for using virtual-heart models as scientific evidence began to take shape within regulatory research programs. In 2019, we formalized a second five-year collaboration with the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health with a specific goal.</p><p>That goal was to use the heart model to create a virtual patient population and re-create a pivotal trial of a previously approved device for repairing the heart’s mitral valve. This helped our team learn how to create such a population, and let the FDA experiment with evaluating virtual evidence as a replacement for evidence from flesh-and-blood patients. In August 2024, we <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39188879/" target="_blank">published the results</a>, creating the first FDA-led guidelines for in silico clinical trials and establishing a new paradigm for streamlining and reducing risk in the entire clinical-trial process.</p><p>In 10 years, we went from a concept that many people doubted could be achieved to regulatory reality. But building the heart was only the beginning. Following the template set by the heart team, we’ve expanded the project to develop virtual twins of other organs, including the lungs, liver, brain, eyes, and gut. Each corresponds to a different medical domain, which has its own community, data types, and clinical use cases. Working independently, these teams are progressing toward a breakthrough in our understanding of the human body: a multiscale, modular twin platform where each organ twin could plug into a unified virtual human.</p><h2>How a digital twin of the heart is constructed</h2><p>A cardiac digital twin starts with medical imaging, typically MRI, CT, or both. The slices are reconstructed into the 3D geometry of the heart and connected vessels. The geometry of the whole organ must then be segmented into its constituent parts, so each substructure—atria, ventricles, valves, and so on—can be assigned their unique properties.</p><p>At this point, the object is converted to a functional, computational model that can represent how the various cardiac tissues deform under load—the mechanics. The complete digital twin model becomes “living” when we integrate the electrical fiber network that drives mechanical contractions in the muscle tissue.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="two computer simulations of a heart. The simulation on left shows the left ventricle with a triangular grid across the 3D surface. The simulation on right shows the exterior of a heart including vasculature and fat. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8b175dd3f95e87ac7f36ab39b38f9784" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="deda7" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/two-computer-simulations-of-a-heart-the-simulation-on-left-shows-the-left-ventricle-with-a-triangular-grid-across-the-3d-surfac.png?id=65301904&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Each part of the heart, such as the left ventricle [left], is superimposed with a detailed digital mesh to re-create its physiology. These pieces come together to form an anatomically accurate rendering of the whole organ [right].</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Dassault Systèmes</small></p><p>To simulate circulation, the twin adds computational models of hemodynamics, the physics of blood flow and pressure. The model is constrained by boundary conditions of blood flow, valve behavior, and vascular resistance set to closely match human physiology. This lets the model predict blood flow patterns, pressure differentials, and tissue stresses.</p><p>Finally, the model is personalized and calibrated using available patient data, such as how much the volume of the heart chambers changes during the cardiac cycle, pressure measurements, and the timing of electrical pulses. This means the twin reflects not only the patient’s anatomy but how their specific heart functions.</p><h2>Building bigger cohorts with generative AI</h2><p>When the <a href="https://discover.3ds.com/fda-enrichment-clinical-trial" target="_blank">FDA in silico clinical trial initiative</a> launched in 2019, the project’s focus shifted from these handcrafted virtual twins of specific patients to cohorts large enough to stand in for entire trial populations. That scale is feasible today only because virtual twins have converged with generative AI. Modeling thousands of patients’ responses to a treatment or projecting years of disease progression is prohibitively slow with conventional digital-twin simulations. Generative AI removes that bottleneck.</p><p>AI boosts the capability of virtual twins in two complementary ways. First, machine learning algorithms are unrivaled at integrating the patchwork of imaging, sensor, and clinical records needed to build a high-fidelity twin. The algorithms rapidly search thousands of model permutations, benchmark each against patient data, and converge on the most accurate representation. Workflows that once required months of manual tuning can now be completed in days, making it realistic to spin up population-scale cohorts or to personalize a single twin on the fly in the clinic.</p><p>Second, enriching AI models’ training sets with data from validated virtual patients grounds the AI simulations in physics. By contrast, many conventional AI predictions for patient trajectories rely on statistical modeling trained on retrospective datasets. Such models can drift beyond physiological reality, but virtual twins anchor predictions in the laws of hemodynamics, electrophysiology, and tissue mechanics. This added rigor is indispensable for both research and clinical care—especially in areas where real-world data are scarce, whether because a disease is rare or because certain patient populations, such as children, are underrepresented in existing datasets.</p><h2>Enabling in silico clinical trials</h2><p>On the research side, the FDA-sponsored In Silico Clinical Trial Project that we completed in 2024 opened a new world for medical innovations. A conventional clinical trial may take a decade, and 90 percent of new drug treatments fail in the process. Virtual twins, combined with AI methods, allow researchers to design and test treatments quickly in a simulated human environment. With a small library of virtual twins, AI models can rapidly create expansive virtual patient cohorts to cover any subset of the general population. As clinical data becomes available, it can be added into the training set to increase reliability and enable better predictions.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="3D simulations of the brain, foot, and lungs. A quadrant of the brain is cut out, showing a dense network of connections between color-coded sections of the brain. The foot shows a gray outline of bones and points of soft tissue strain in red at the ankle and heel. In the lung model, the trachea is colored green flowing into blue bronchi. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6c65f028c501081d47120dbb37f2d816" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="90af6" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/3d-simulations-of-the-brain-foot-and-lungs-a-quadrant-of-the-brain-is-cut-out-showing-a-dense-network-of-connections-between.png?id=65302220&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">The Living Heart Project has expanded beyond the heart, modeling organs throughout the body. The 3D brain reconstruction [top] shows major pathways in the brain’s white matter connecting color-coded regions of the brain. The lung virtual twin [middle] combines the organ’s geometry with a physics-based simulation of air flowing down the trachea and into the bronchi. And the cross section of a patient’s foot [bottom] shows points of strain in the soft tissue when bearing weight. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Dassault Systèmes</small></p><p>Virtual twin cohorts can represent a realistic population by building individual “virtual patients” that vary by age, gender, race, weight, disease state, comorbidities, and lifestyle factors. These twins can be used as a rich training set for the AI model, which can expand the cohort from dozens to hundreds of thousands. Next the virtual cohort can be filtered to identify patients likely to respond to a treatment, increasing the chances of a successful trial for the target population.</p><p>The trial design can also include a sampling of patient types less likely to respond or with elevated risk factors, thus allowing regulators and clinicians to understand the risks to the broader population without jeopardizing overall trial success. This methodology enhances precision and efficiency in clinical research, providing population-level insights previously available only after many years of real-world evidence.</p><p>Of course, though today’s heart digital twins are powerful, they’re not perfect replicas. Their accuracy is bounded by three main factors: what we can measure (for example, image resolution or the uncertainty of how tissue behaves in real life), what we must assume about the physiology, and what we can validate against real outcomes. Many inputs, like scarring, microvascular function, or drug effects are difficult to capture clinically, so models often rely on population data or indirect estimation. That means predictions can be highly reliable for certain questions but remain less certain for others. Additionally, today’s digital twins lack validation for predicting long-term outcomes years in the future, because the technology has been in use for only a few years.</p><p>Over time, each of these limitations will steadily shrink. Richer, more standardized data will tighten personalization of the models. AI tools will help automate labor-intensive steps. And the collection of longitudinal data will improve the model’s ability to reliably predict how the body will evolve over time.</p><h2>How virtual twins will change health care</h2><p>Throughout modern medicine, new technologies have sharpened our ability to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-doctor" target="_self">diagnose</a>, providing ever-clearer images, lab data, and analytics that tell physicians what is presently happening inside a patient’s body. Virtual twins shift that paradigm, giving clinicians a predictive tool.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" rel="float: left;" style="float: left;"> <img alt="gif of a lung simulation. The lungs are blue when deflated then grow and become green with points of red. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="99cdfc0b66a34d7bf081125259464d73" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="499fe" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/gif-of-a-lung-simulation-the-lungs-are-blue-when-deflated-then-grow-and-become-green-with-points-of-red.gif?id=65302107&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">This “Living Lung” virtual-twin simulation shows strain patterns during breathing. </small> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit..."> Mona Eskandari/UC Riverside </small> </p><p>Early demonstrations are already appearing in many areas of medicine, including cardiology, orthopedics, and oncology. Soon, doctors will also be able to collaborate across specialties, using a patient-specific virtual twin as the common ground for discussing potential interactions or side effects they couldn’t predict independently.</p><p>Although these applications will take some time to become the standard in clinical care, more changes are on the horizon. Real-time <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/wearable-health-data-standards" target="_self">data from wearables</a>, for example, could continuously update a patient’s personalized virtual twin. This approach could empower patients to understand and engage more deeply in their care, as they could see the direct effects of medical and lifestyle changes. In parallel, their doctors could get comprehensive data feeds, using virtual twins to monitor progress.</p><p><span>Imagine a digital companion that shows how your particular heart will react to different amounts of salt intake, stress, or sleep deprivation. Or a visual explanation of how your upcoming surgery will affect your circulation or breathing. Virtual twins could demystify the body for patients, fostering trust and encouraging proactive health decisions.</span></p><h3>How are virtual twins being used in medicine?</h3><br/><ul><li>Virtual twins have guided <strong>cardiovascular surgeries</strong>, providing predictions and exposing hidden details that even expert clinicians might miss, such as subtle tissue responses and flow dynamics.<br/></li><li><strong>Oncologists</strong> are modeling tumor growth and the body’s response to different therapies, reducing the uncertainty in choosing the best treatment path for both medical and quality-of-life metrics.<br/></li><li><strong>Orthopedic</strong> specialists are personalizing implants to deliver custom-made solutions, considering not only the local environment but also the overall body kinematics that will govern long-term outcomes.</li></ul><h2>A new era of healing</h2><p>With the Living Heart Project, we’re bringing physics back to physicians. Modern physicians won’t need to be physicists, any more than they need to be chemists to use pharmacology. However, to benefit from the new technology, they will need to adapt their approach to care.</p><p>This means no longer seeing the body as a collection of discrete organs and considering only symptoms, but instead viewing it as a dynamic system that can be understood, and in most cases, guided toward health. It means no longer guessing what might work but knowing—because the simulation has already shown the result. By better integrating engineering principles into medicine, we can redefine it as a field of precision, rooted in the unchanging laws of nature. The modern physician will be a true physicist of the body and an engineer of health. <span class="ieee-end-mark"></span></p>

Mar 19, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/logo-of-murata-in-red-with-text-innovator-in-electronics-below.png?id=65106483&width=980"/><br/><br/><p><span>A technical examination of the sensing, motion control, power, and thermal challenges facing humanoid robotics engineers — with component-level design strategies for real-world deployment.</span></p><p><span>What Attendees will Learn</span></p><ol><li><span>Why motion control remains the hardest unsolved problem — Explore the modelling complexity, real-time feedback requirements, and sensor fusion demands of maintaining stable bipedal locomotion across dynamic environments.</span></li><li><span>How sensing architectures enable perception and safety — Understand the role of inertial measurement units, force/torque feedback, and tactile sensing in achieving reliable human-robot interaction and collision avoidance.</span></li><li><span>What power and thermal constraints mean for system design — Examine the trade-offs in battery chemistry selection (LFP vs. NCA), DC/DC converter topologies, and thermal protection strategies that determine operational endurance.</span></li><li><span>How the industry is transitioning from prototype to mass production — Learn about the shift toward modular architectures, cost-driven component selection, and supply chain readiness projected for the late 2020s.</span></li></ol><p><a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/engineering-challenges-and-component-strategies-in-humanoid-robotics-from-prototype-to-production/" target="_blank">Download this free whitepaper now!</a></p>

Mar 18, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/wide-view-of-men-and-women-working-on-the-eniac-in-the-1940s-all-four-walls-from-floor-to-ceiling-host-different-pieces-of-t.jpg?id=65315846&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/><br/><br/><p>Happy 80th anniversary, ENIAC! The <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penns-eniac-worlds-first-electronic-computer-turns-80" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer</a>, the first large-scale, general-purpose, programmable electronic digital computer, helped shape our world.</p><p>On 15 February 1946, ENIAC—developed in the <a href="https://facilities.upenn.edu/maps/locations/moore-school-building" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Moore School of Electrical Engineering</a> at the <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Pennsylvania</a>, in Philadelphia—was publicly demonstrated for the first time. Although primitive by today’s standards, ENIAC’s purely electronic design and programmability were breakthroughs in computing at the time. ENIAC made high-speed, general-purpose computing practicable and laid the foundation for today’s machines.</p><p>On the eve of its unveiling, the <a href="https://www.war.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">U.S. Department of War</a> issued a<a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/pr1.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> news release</a> hailing it as a new machine “expected to revolutionize the mathematics of engineering and change many of our industrial design methods.” Without a doubt, electronic computers have transformed engineering and mathematics, as well as practically every other domain, including politics and spirituality.</p><p>ENIAC’s success ushered the modern computing industry and laid the foundation for today’s digital economy. During the past eight decades, computing has grown from a niche scientific endeavor into an engine of economic growth, the backbone of billion-dollar enterprises, and a catalyst for global innovation. Computing has led to a chain of innovations and developments such as stored programs, semiconductor electronics, integrated circuits, networking, software, the Internet, and distributed large-scale systems.</p><h2>Inside the ENIAC</h2><p>The motivation for developing ENIAC was the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt45en.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">need for faster computation</a> during World War II. The U.S. military wanted to produce extensive artillery firing tables for field gunners to quickly determine settings for a specific weapon, a target, and conditions. Calculating the tables by hand took “<a href="https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/computers-were-originally-humans/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">human computers</a>” several days, and the available mechanical machines were far too slow to meet the demand.</p><h3>80 Years of Electronic Computer Milestones </h3><br/><h4>1946</h4><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/ENIAC" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>ENIAC operational</strong></a></p><p>Birth of electronic computing</p><h4>1951</h4><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/UNIVAC" target="_blank"><strong>UNIVAC I</strong></a></p><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/UNIVAC" target="_blank"></a>Start of commercial computing</p><h4>1958</h4><p><a href="https://www.synopsys.com/glossary/what-is-integrated-circuit.html" target="_blank"><strong>Integrated circuit</strong></a></p><p>Foundation for modern computer hardware</p><h4>1964</h4><p><a href="https://www.ibm.com/history/system-360" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>IBM System/360</strong></a></p><p>Popular mainframe computer</p><h4>1970</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Programmed Data Processor (PDP-11)</strong></a></p><p>Popular 16-bit minicomputer</p><h4>1971</h4><p><a href="https://computer.howstuffworks.com/microprocessor.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Intel 4004</strong></a></p><p>Beginning of the microprocessor and microcomputer era</p><h4>1975</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Cray-1</strong></a></p><p>First supercomputer</p><h4>1977</h4><p><a href="https://www.stromasys.com/resources/vax-computer-systems-an-in-depth-guide/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>VAX</strong></a></p><p>Popular 32-bit minicomputer</p><h4>1981</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>IBM PC</strong></a></p><p>Personal and small-business computing</p><h4>1989</h4><p><a href="https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>World Wide Web</strong></a></p><p>Digital communication, interaction, and transaction (e-commerce)</p><h4>2002</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Amazon Web Services</strong></a></p><p>Beginning of the cloud computing revolution</p><h4>2010</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Apple iPad</strong></a></p><p>Handheld computer/tablet</p><h4>2010</h4><p><a href="https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/industry-4-0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Industry 4.0</strong></a></p><p>Delivered real-time decision-making, smart manufacturing, and logistics</p><h4>2016</h4><p><a href="https://www.livescience.com/55642-reprogrammable-quantum-computer-created.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>First reprogrammable quantum computer demonstrated</strong></a></p><p>Ignited interest in quantum computing</p><h4>2023</h4><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Generative AI boom</strong></a></p><p>Widespread use of GenAI by individuals, businesses, and academia</p><h4>2026</h4><p><a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penns-eniac-worlds-first-electronic-computer-turns-80" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>ENIAC’s 80th anniversary</strong></a></p><p>80 years of computing evolution</p><h3></h3><br/><p>In 1942 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Mauchly" target="_blank">John Mauchly</a>, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Penn’s Moore School, suggested using vacuum tubes to speed up computer calculations. Following up on his theory, the U.S. Army <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Research_Laboratory" target="_blank">Ballistic Research Laboratory</a>, which was responsible for providing artillery settings to soldiers in the field, commissioned Mauchly and his colleagues<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/J-Presper-Eckert-Jr" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://ethw.org/J._Presper_Eckert" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">J. Presper Eckert</a> and <a href="https://ethw.org/Adele_Katz_Goldstine" target="_blank">Adele Katz Goldstine</a>, to work on a new high-speed computer. Eckert was a lab instructor at Moore, and Goldstine became one of ENIAC’s programmers. It took them a year to design ENIAC and 18 months to build it.</p><p>The computer contained about 18,000 vacuum tubes, which were cooled by 80 air blowers. More than 30 meters long, it filled a 9 m by 15 m room and weighed about 30 kilograms. It consumed as much electricity as a small town.</p><p>Programming the machine was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt45en.html" target="_blank">difficult</a>. ENIAC did not have stored programs, so to reprogram the machine, operators manually reconfigured cables with switches and plugboards, a process that took several days.</p><p>By the 1950s, large universities either had acquired or built their own machines to rival ENIAC. The schools included <a href="https://www.cam.ac.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cambridge</a> (EDSAC), <a href="https://www.mit.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT</a> (Whirlwind), and <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Princeton</a> (IAS). Researchers used the computers to model physical phenomena, solve mathematical problems, and perform simulations.</p><p>After almost nine years of operation, ENIAC officially was decommissioned on 2 October 1955.</p><p><a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535175/eniac-in-action/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer</em></a>, a book by <a href="https://uwm.edu/history/about/directory/haigh-thomas/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Thomas Haigh</a>, <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/mark-priestley-15374/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mark Priestley</a>, and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Crispin-Rope-2045495041" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Crispin Rope</a>,<em> </em>describes the design, construction, and testing processes and dives into its afterlife use. The book also outlines the complex relationship between ENIAC and its designers, as well as the revolutionary approaches to computer architecture.</p><p>In the early 1970s, there was a controversy over who invented the electronic computer and who would be assigned the patent. In 1973 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_R._Larson" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Judge Earl Richard Larson</a> of U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand_Corp." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Honeywell <em><em>v.</em></em> Sperry Rand</a> case that Eckert and Mauchly did not invent the automatic electronic digital computer but instead had derived their subject matter from a <a href="https://jva.cs.iastate.edu/operation.php" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">computer</a> prototyped in 1939 by <a href="https://history-computer.com/people/john-vincent-atanasoff-complete-biography/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John Vincent Atanasoff</a> and Clifford Berry at Iowa State College (now <a href="https://www.iastate.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Iowa State University</a>). The ruling granted Atanasoff legal recognition as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer.</p><h2>IEEE’s ENIAC Milestone</h2><p>In 1987 IEEE<a href="https://ethw.org/Milestones:Electronic_Numerical_Integrator_and_Computer,_1946" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> designated ENIAC</a> as an IEEE Milestone, citing it as “a major advance in the history of computing” and saying the machine “established the practicality of large-scale electronic digital computers and strongly influenced the development of the modern, stored-program, general-purpose computer.”</p><p>The commemorative Milestone plaque is displayed at the Moore School, by the entrance to the classroom where ENIAC was built.</p><h3></h3><br/><p>“The ENIAC legacy heralded the computer age, transforming not only science and industry but also education, research, and human communication and interaction.”</p><h3></h3><br/><p><br/></p><p>A <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/476557" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">paper on the machine</a>, published in 1996 in <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/476557" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>IEEE Annals of the History of Computing</em></a> and available in the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6461145" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Xplore Digital Library</a>, is a valuable source of technical information.</p><p>“<a href="https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2006/02/man2006020004/13rRUB6Sq2p" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Second Life of ENIAC</a><em>,”</em> an article published in the annals in 2006, covers a lesser-known chapter in the machine’s history, about how it evolved from a static system—configured and reconfigured through laborious cable plugging—into a precursor of today’s stored-program computers.</p><p>A classic <a href="https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~mfeldman/csci1030/summer08/eniac2.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">history paper on ENIAC</a> was published in the December 1995 <a href="https://technologyandsociety.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>IEEE Technology and Society Magazine</em></a>.</p><p>The IEEE <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ebooks/ieee-anniversary-book/" target="_self"><em>Inspiring Technology: 34 Breakthroughs</em></a> book, published in 2023, features an ENIAC chapter.</p><h2>The women behind ENIAC</h2><p>One of the most remarkable aspects of the ENIAC story is the pivotal role women played, according to the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Proving-Ground-Untold-Programmed-Computer/dp/1538718286" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer</em></a><em>, </em>highlighted in an <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-women-behind-eniac" target="_self">article</a> in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-institute/" target="_self"><em>The Institute</em></a>. There were no “programmers” at that time; only schematics existed for the computer. Six women, known as the ENIAC 6, became the machine’s first programmers.</p><p>The ENIAC 6 were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Antonelli" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kathleen Antonelli</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bartik" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jean Bartik</a>, <a href="https://ethw.org/Betty_Holberton" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Betty Holberton</a>, <a href="https://ethw.org/Marlyn_Meltzer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Marlyn Meltzer</a>, <a href="https://ethw.org/Frances_Spence" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Frances Spence</a>, and <a href="https://ethw.org/Ruth_Teitelbaum" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ruth Teitelbaum</a>.</p><p>“These six women found out what it took to run this computer, and they really did incredible things,” a Penn professor, <a href="https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mitch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mitch Marcus</a>, said in a <a href="https://www.phillyvoice.com/70-years-ago-six-philly-women-eniac-digital-computer-programmers/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2006 PhillyVoice article</a>. Marcus teaches in Penn’s computer and information science department.</p><p>In 1997 all six female programmers were<a href="https://www.witi.com/halloffame/298369/ENIAC-Programmers-Kathleen---/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> inducted</a> into the <a href="https://www.witi.com/halloffame/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Women in Technology International Hall of Fame</a>, in Los Angeles.</p><p>Two other women contributed to the programming. Goldstine wrote ENIAC’s five-volume manual, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kl%C3%A1ra_D%C3%A1n_von_Neumann" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Klára Dán von Neumann</a>, wife of <a href="https://ethw.org/John_von_Neumann" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">John von Neumann</a>, helped train the programmers and debug and verify their code.</p><p>To honor the<a href="https://www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/pioneer/about-women-of-eniac" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> women of ENIAC</a>, the <a href="https://www.computer.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Computer Society</a> established the annual<a href="https://www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/pioneer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Computer Pioneer Award</a> in 1981. Eckert and Mauchly were among the award’s first recipients. In 2008 Bartik was honored with the award. Nominations are open to all professionals, regardless of gender.</p><h2>An ENIAC replica</h2><p>Last year a group of 80 autistic students, ages 12 to 16, from<a href="https://www.psacademyarizona.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> PS Academy Arizona</a>, in Gilbert, <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/how-80-autistic-students-built-an-amazing-replica-of-the-ginormous-eniac-computer/ar-AA1UMKKE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">recreated the ENIAC</a> using 22,000 custom parts. It took the students almost six months to assemble.</p><p>A ceremony was held in January to display their creation. The full-scale <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/eniac_model_build/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">replica features</a> actual-size panels made from layered cardboard and wood. Although all electronic components are simulated, they are not electrically active. The machine, illuminated by hundreds of LEDs, is accompanied by a soundtrack that simulates the deep hum of ENIAC’s transformers and the rhythmic clicking of relays.</p><p><strong></strong></p><h3></h3><br><img alt="A white woman using a computer-adding machine in the 1940\u2019s. The device resembles a bulky typewriter and prints large stacks of paper with tabulated answers." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fea0fb9da93e75542fd5b85964251c33" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="36a08" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-white-woman-using-a-computer-adding-machine-in-the-1940-u2019s-the-device-resembles-a-bulky-typewriter-and-prints-large-stack.jpg?id=65315890&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>“Every major unit, accumulators, function tables, initiator, and master programmer is present and placed exactly where it was on the original machine,” Tom Burick, the teacher who mentored the project, said at the ceremony.</p><p>The replica, still on display at the school, is expected to be moved to a more permanent spot in the near future.</p><h2>ENIAC’s legacy</h2><p>ENIAC’s significance is both technical and symbolic. Technically, it marks the beginning of the chain of innovations that created today’s computational infrastructure. Symbolically, it made governments, militaries, universities, and industry view computation as a tool for improvement and for innovative applications that had previously been impossible. It marked a tectonic shift in the way humans approach problem-solving, modeling, and scientific reasoning.</p><p>The ENIAC legacy heralded the computer age, transforming not only science and industry but also education, research, and human communication and interaction.</p><p>As Eckert is reported to have said, “There are two epochs in computer history: Before ENIAC and After ENIAC.”</p><h2>Coevolution of programming languages</h2><p>The remarkable evolution of computer hardware during the past 80 years has been sparked by advances in programming languages—the essential drivers of computing.</p><p>From the manual rewiring of ENIAC to the orchestration of intelligent, distributed systems, programming languages have steadily evolved to make computers more powerful, expressive, and accessible.</p><h3>Lessons From Computing’s Remarkable Journey</h3><br/><p>Computing history teaches us that flexibility, accessibility, collaboration, sound governance, and forward thinking are essential for sustained technological progress. In a <a href="https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/what-past-computing-breakthroughs-teach-us-about-ai/" target="_blank">recent <em><em>Communications of the ACM</em></em> article</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/richa28gupta/" target="_blank">Richa Gupta</a> identified four historic shifts that led to computing’s rapid, transformative progress:</p><ol><li>Programmable machines taught us that flexibility is key; technologies that adapt and are repurposed scale better.</li><li>The Internet showed that connection and standard protocols drive explosive growth but also bring new risks such as data security issues, invasion of privacy, and misuse.</li><li>Personal computers illustrated that accessibility and usability matter more than raw power. When nonexperts can use a tool easily, adoption rises.</li><li>The open-source movement revealed that collaborative innovation accelerates growth and helps spot problems early.</li></ol></br><h2>Predictions for computing in the decades ahead</h2><p>The evolution of computing will continue along multiple trajectories, with the emphasis moving from generalization to specialization (for AI, graphics, security, and networking), from monolithic system design to modular integration, and from performance-centric metrics alone to energy efficiency and sustainability as primary objectives.</p><p>Increasingly, security will be built into hardware by design. Computing paradigms will expand beyond traditional deterministic models to embrace probabilistic, approximate, and hybrid approaches for certain tasks.</p><p>Those developments will usher in a new era of computing and a new class of applications.</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-illustration-of-a-man-looking-at-his-phone-while-a-camera-protruding-from-a-gps-tracker-icon-looks-on.jpg?id=65297053&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C408%2C0%2C409"/><br/><br/><p><em><strong>Every time you unlock</strong> your smartphone or start your connected car, you are generating a trail of digital evidence that can be used to track your every move.</em></p><p><span><em>In </em></span><a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479838295/your-data-will-be-used-against-you/" target="_blank">Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance</a><span>,<em> just published by </em></span><em><a href="https://nyupress.org/" target="_blank">NYU Press</a></em><span>, law professor </span><em><a href="https://www.law.gwu.edu/andrew-guthrie-ferguson" target="_blank">Andrew Guthrie Ferguson</a></em><span><em> exposes how the Internet of Things has quietly transformed into a vast surveillance network, turning our most personal devices into digital informants. The following excerpt explores the concept of “sensorveillance,” detailing the specific mechanisms—such as Google’s Sensorvault, geofence warrants, and vehicle telemetry—that allow law enforcement to repurpose consumer technology into powerful tools for investigation and control.</em></span></p><h3></h3><br/><img alt='Book cover: "Your Data Will Be Used Against You" with text columns on black background.' class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="714f35ba5ad04fb2a7ee1701b5b42d1c" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="dcb33" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/book-cover-your-data-will-be-used-against-you-with-text-columns-on-black-background.jpg?id=65296338&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>A man walked into a bank in Midlothian, Va., his black bucket hat pulled low over dark sunglasses. He handed a note to the teller, brandished a gun, and walked away with US $195,000. Police had no leads—but they knew that the robber had been holding a smartphone when he entered the bank. Guessing that the smartphone, like most smartphones, had some Google-enabled service running, police ordered Google to turn over information about all the phones near the bank during the holdup. In response to a series of warrants, Google produced information about 19 phones that had been active near the bank at the time of the robbery. Further investigation directed the police to Okelle Chatrie, who was ultimately <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/man-sentenced-armed-robbery-credit-union" target="_blank">charged with the crime</a>.</p><p>Cathy Bernstein had a tough time explaining why her own car <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/woman-arrested-after-her-car-calls-cops-2015-12" target="_blank">reported an accident to police</a>. Bernstein had been driving a Ford equipped with 911 Assist, which was automatically enabled when she struck another vehicle. Rather than stick around to trade insurance information, she sped away. But her smart car had registered the bump—and called the police dispatcher, leading to a fairly awkward conversation:</p><h3></h3><br/><p><strong>Computer-Generated Voice: </strong>Attention, a crash has occurred. Line open.</p><p><strong>911 Operator: </strong>Hello. Can anyone hear me?</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman:</strong> Yes, yes.</p><p><strong>911 Operator:</strong> Okay. This is 911. You’ve been involved in an accident.</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman:</strong> No.</p><p><strong>911 Operator:</strong> Well, your car called in to us because it said you’d been involved in an accident. Are you sure everything’s okay?</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman:</strong> Everything’s okay.</p><p><strong>911 Operator:</strong> Okay. Are you broke down?</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman:</strong> No, I’m fine. The guy that hit me—he did not turn.</p><p><strong>911 Operator:</strong> Okay, so you have been involved in an accident.</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman: </strong>No, I haven’t.</p><p><strong>911 Operator:</strong> Did you hit a car?</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman:</strong> No, I didn’t.</p><p><strong>911 Operator: </strong>Did you leave the scene of an accident?</p><p><strong>Unidentified Woman: </strong>No. I would never do anything like that.</p><p><span>Apparently, Bernstein did do something “like that.” She was soon caught and cited for leaving the scene of the accident. Her own car provided evidence of her guilt.</span></p><h2>The Rise of “Sensorveillance”</h2><p>Once upon a time, our things were just things. A bike was a tool for biking. It got you from one location to another, but it didn’t “know” more about your travels than any other inanimate object did. It was dumb in a comforting way, and we used it as intended. Today, a top-of-the-line bike can track your route and calculate your average speed along the way. Hop on an e-bike from a commercial bike share, and it will collect data for your trip, plus the trips of everyone else who used it that month.</p><p>These “smart” objects belong to what technologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Ashton" target="_blank">Kevin Ashton</a> named the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/internet-of-things" target="_self">Internet of Things</a>. Ashton proposed adding radio-frequency identification (<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/rfid" target="_self">RFID</a>) tags and sensors to everyday objects, allowing them to collect data that could be fed into networked systems without human intervention. A sensor in a river could monitor the cleanliness of the water. A tag on a bottle of shampoo could trace its journey throughout the supply chain. Add enough sensors to enough objects and you can model the health of an entire ecosystem—or learn whether you’re sending too much of your inventory to Massachusetts and too little to Texas.</p><p>Ashton first theorized the Internet of Things (IoT) in the late 1990s. Today, the IoT goes well beyond his initial vision, including not only RFID tags but also sensors with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, and GPS connections. These small, low-cost sensors record data about movement, heat, pressure, or location and can engage in two-way communication.</p><p>Of course, such a system is also, by necessity, a system of surveillance. “Sensorveillance”—a term I created to highlight the intersection of sensors and surveillance—is slowly becoming the default across the developed world.</p><h2>Cellphone Surveillance Networks</h2><p>Let’s start with phones. You’re probably not surprised that your cellphone company tracks your location; that’s how cellphones work. Both smartphones and “dumb” mobile phones use local cell towers, owned by cellphone companies, to connect you to your friends and family, which means those companies know which towers you are near at all times.</p><p>If you always carry your phone with you, your phone’s whereabouts—recorded as cell-site location information (<a href="https://www.defendyouthrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Cell-Phone-Location-Tracking-or-CSLI-A-Guide-for-Criminal-Defense-Attorneys.pdf" target="_blank">CSLI</a>)—reveal yours. One man, Timothy Carpenter, found this out the hard way after he and a group of associates set out to rob a series of electronics stores. Carpenter was the alleged ringleader, but he didn’t enter the stores himself. He served as the lookout, waiting in the car while his associates stuffed merchandise into bags.</p><p>It might have been hard for investigators to tie him to the crimes—if not for the fact that every minute he kept watch, his cellphone was pinging a local tower, logging his location. Using that information, the FBI was able to determine that he had been near each store during the exact moment of each robbery.</p><p>Cell signals are the tip of the proverbial data iceberg. If you have a smartphone, you’re almost certainly using something created by Google. Google makes money off advertising. The more Google knows about users, the better it can target ads to them. Google’s location services are on all Android phones, which use the company’s operating system, but they’re also on Google apps, including Google Maps and Gmail.</p><p>For years, all that location information ended up in what the company called <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/googles-sensorvault-can-tell-police-where-youve-been" target="_blank">the Sensorvault</a>. The Sensorvault, as the name suggests, combined data from GPS, Bluetooth, cell towers, IP addresses, and Wi-Fi signals to create a powerful tracking system that could identify a phone’s location with great precision. As you might imagine, police saw it as a digital evidence miracle. In 2020, Google received more than 11,500 warrants from law enforcement seeking information from the Sensorvault.</p><p class="pull-quote">“Sensorveillance”—a term I created to highlight the intersection of sensors and surveillance—is slowly becoming the default across the developed world.</p><p>In 2024, Google announced that it would <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2024/10/08/google-to-stop-sharing-location-data-with-law-enforcement/" target="_blank">no longer retain all of this data in the cloud</a>. Instead, the geolocation information would be stored on individual devices, requiring police to get a warrant for a specific device. The demise of the Sensorvault came about through a change in corporate policy, which could be reversed. But at least for now, Google has made it significantly harder for police to access its data.</p><p>And while the Sensorvault was the biggest source of geolocational evidence, it is far from the only one. Even apps that have nothing to do with maps or navigation might nonetheless be collecting your location data. In one Pennsylvania case, prosecutors learned that a burglar used an iPhone flashlight app to search through a home, and they used the data from the app to prove he was in the home at the time of the break-in. These apps might be advertised as “free,” but they come with a hidden cost.</p><p>Cars, increasingly, <a href="https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-wheels-every-car-brand-reviewed-by-mozilla-including-ford-volkswagen-and-toyota-flunks-privacy-test/" target="_blank">collect almost as much information</a> as phones. Mobile extraction devices can collect digital forensics about a car’s speed, when its airbags deployed, when its brakes were engaged, and where it was when all that happened. If you connect your phone to play Spotify or to read out your texts, then your call logs, contact lists, social media accounts, and entertainment selections can be downloaded directly from your vehicle. Because cars are involved in so many crimes (either as the instrument of the crime or as transportation), searches of this data are becoming more commonplace.</p><p>Even without physically extracting information from the car, police have other ways to get the data. After all, the car’s built-in telemetry system is sharing information with third parties. In addition to the usual personal information you give up when buying a car (name, address, phone number, email, Social Security number, driver’s license number), when you own a Stellantis-brand car, the company collects how often you use the car, your speed, and instances of acceleration or braking. Nissan asserts the right to collect information about “sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic [data]” in addition to “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.” Nissan’s privacy policy specifically reserves the right to provide this information to both data brokers and law enforcement.</p><h2>The Law of Smart Things</h2><p>The fact that government agents can glean so much information from our things does not mean that they should be able to do so at any time or for any reason. The <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/" target="_blank">U.S. Fourth Amendment</a>—drafted in an era without electricity—protects “persons, houses, papers, and effects” against unreasonable search and seizure, but is naturally silent on the question of location data.</p><p>The first question is whether the data from our smart things should be constitutionally protected from police. In the language of the constitutional text, the smart device itself is an “effect”—a movable piece of personal property. But what about the data collected by the effect? Is the location data collected by your smartwatch considered part of the watch, or part of the person wearing the watch? Neither? Both?</p><p>To its credit, the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed some of the hard questions around digital tracking. In two cases, the first involving GPS tracking of a car and the second involving the CSLI tracking of Timothy Carpenter’s cellphone, the court has placed limits on the government’s ability to collect location data over the long term.</p><p><a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2011/10-1259" target="_blank"><em><em>United States v. Jones</em></em></a> involved GPS tracking of a car. Antoine Jones owned a nightclub in Washington, D.C. He also sold cocaine and found himself under criminal investigation for a large-scale drug distribution scheme. To prove Jones’s connection to “the stash house,” police placed a GPS device on his wife’s Jeep Cherokee. This was before GPS came standard in cars, so the device was physically attached to the undercarriage of the vehicle.</p><p>Data about Jones’s travels was recorded for 28 days, during which he visited the stash house multiple times. The prosecutors introduced the GPS data at trial, and Jones was found guilty. Jones appealed his conviction, arguing that the warrantless use of a GPS device to track his car violated his Fourth Amendment rights.</p><p class="pull-quote">“When the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance.” <strong>— the Supreme Court</strong></p><p>In 2012, the Supreme Court held that a warrant was required, based on the reasoning that the physical placement of the GPS device on the Jeep was itself a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed regarding the physical search but went further, discussing the harms of long-term GPS tracking: “GPS monitoring generates a precise, comprehensive record of a person’s public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”</p><p>Timothy Carpenter’s ill-fated robbery spree gave the Supreme Court another chance to address the constitutional harms of long-term tracking. In their attempts to connect Carpenter to the six electronics stores that had been robbed, federal investigators requested 127 days of location data from two mobile phone carriers. The problem for the police, however, was that they had obtained the information on Carpenter without a judicial warrant.</p><p>Carpenter challenged the FBI’s acquisition of his CSLI, claiming that it violated his reasonable expectation of privacy. In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-402" target="_blank">a 5–4 opinion</a>, the Supreme Court determined that the acquisition of long-term CSLI was a Fourth Amendment search, which required a warrant. As the Court stated in its 2018 ruling: “A cell phone faithfully follows its owner beyond public thoroughfares and into private residences, doctor’s offices, political headquarters, and other potentially revealing locales.... [W]hen the Government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance.”</p><p><em><em>Jones</em></em> and <em><em>Carpenter</em></em> are helpful for setting the boundaries of location-based searches. But, in truth, the cases generate a lot more questions than answers. What about surveillance that is not long-term? At what point does the aggregation of details about a person’s location violate their reasonable expectation of privacy?</p><h2>The Warrant According to Google</h2><p>Okelle Chatrie’s case, in which police used Google’s location data to identify him as the mystery bank robber, offers a stark warning about the limits of Fourth Amendment protections under these circumstances. It’s also a terrific example of why <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/capitol-riot" target="_self">“geofence” warrants</a>, which request information within a certain geographic boundary, are appealing to police. From surveillance footage, detectives could see that the suspect had a phone to his ear when he walked into the bank. A geofence could identify who the suspect was, and likely where he came from and where he went. Google held the answer in its virtual vault. A warrant gave investigators the key.</p><p>The police cast a broad net. The geofence warrant asked for data on all the cellphones within a 150-meter radius, an area, as the court described it, “about three and a half times the footprint of a New York city block.” After receiving the police’s initial request for information on all the phones in the area, Google returned 19 anonymized numbers. Over the course of a three-step warrant process, the company narrowed those 19 phones down to three and then to one, which it revealed as belonging to Okelle Chatrie.</p><p class="pull-quote">If the police wish to buy the data, just like an insurer or marketing firm might, how can you object? It’s not your data.</p><p>The three-step warrant process is a unique innovation in the digital evidence space. Google’s lawyers developed a procedure whereby detectives seeking targeted geolocation data had to file three separate requests, first requesting identifying numbers in an area, then narrowing the request based on other information, and finally obtaining an order to unmask the anonymous number (or numbers) by providing a name.</p><p>To be clear, Google—a private company—required the government to jump through these hoops because Google considered it important to protect its customers’ data. It was the company’s lawyers—not the courts or the government—who demanded these warrants.</p><h2>Buying Data</h2><p>Warrants provide at least some procedural barrier to data collection by police. If government agencies want to avoid that minor hassle, they can simply buy the data instead. By contracting with data-location services, several federal agencies have already done so.</p><p>The logic for this Fourth Amendment loophole is straightforward: You gave your data to a third-party company, and the company can use it as it wishes. If you own a car that is smart enough to collect driving analytics, you clicked some agreement saying the car company could use the data—study it, analyze it, and, if it wants, sell it. If you don’t want to give them data in the first place, that is okay (although it will likely result in less optimal functionality), but you cannot rightly complain when they use the data you gave them in ways that benefit them. If the police wish to buy the data, just like an insurer or marketing firm might, how can you object? It’s not your data.</p><h2>Who Is to Blame?</h2><p>Fears about the amount of personal information that could be revealed with long-term GPS surveillance have become reality. Today, police don’t need to plant a device to track your movements—they can rely on your car or phone to do it for them.</p><p>This happened because companies sold convenience and consumers bought it. So it might be tempting to blame ourselves. We’re the ones buying this technology. If we don’t want to be tracked, we can always go back to using paper maps and writing down directions by hand. If few of us are willing to make that trade, that’s on us.</p><p>But it’s not that easy. You may still be able to choose a dumb bike over a smart one, but a car that tracks you will soon be the only type of car you can buy. And while cars and data can, in theory, be separated, that’s not true for all our smart things. Without cell-signal tracking capabilities, a cellphone is just a paperweight. And in today’s world, living without a phone or a car is simply not practical for many people.</p><p>There are technological steps we can take toward protecting privacy. Companies can localize the data the sensors generate within the devices themselves, rather than in a central location like the Sensorvault. Similarly, the information that allows you to unlock your Apple iPhone via <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/facial-recognition" target="_self">facial recognition</a> stays localized on the phone. These are technological fixes, and positive ones. But even localized data is available to police with a warrant.</p><p>This is the puzzle of the digital age. We can’t—or don’t want to—avoid creating data, but that data, once created, becomes available for legal ends. The power to track every person is the perfect tool for authoritarianism. For every wondrous story about catching a criminal, there will be a terrifying story of tracking a political enemy or suppressing dissent. Such immense power can and will be abused. <span class="ieee-end-mark"></span></p>

Mar 17, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-thin-transparent-material-laid-on-top-of-a-vintage-penn-state-university-sticker.jpg?id=65297326&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/><br/><br/><p>As electronics demand higher energy density, one component has proved challenging to shrink: the capacitor. Making a smaller capacitor usually requires thinning the dielectric layer or electrode surface area, which has often resulted in a reduction of power. A new polymer material could help change that.</p><p>In a study published 18 February in <em>Nature</em>, a Pennsylvania State University-led team <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10195-2" target="_blank">reported a capacitor</a> crafted from a polymer blend that can operate at temperatures up to 250 °C while storing roughly four times as much energy as conventional polymer capacitors. Today’s advanced polymer capacitors typically function only up to about 100 °C, meaning engineers often rely on bulky cooling systems in high-power electronics. The research team has filed a patent for the polymer capacitors and plans to bring them to market.</p><p>Capacitors deliver rapid bursts of energy and stabilize voltage in circuits, making them essential in applications ranging from electric vehicles and aerospace electronics to power-grid infrastructure and AI data centers. Yet while <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-density" target="_blank">transistors have steadily shrunk</a> with advances in semiconductor manufacturing, passive components such as capacitors and inductors have not scaled at the same pace.</p><p>“Capacitors can account for 30 to 40 percent of the volume in some power electronics systems,” says <a href="https://www.matse.psu.edu/directory/qiming-zhang" target="_blank">Qiming Zhang</a>, an electrical engineering researcher at Penn State and study author, explaining why it’s important to make smaller capacitors.</p><h2>A plastics blend more powerful than its parts</h2><p>The research team combined two commercially available engineered plastics: polyetherimide (PEI), originally developed by General Electric and widely used in industrial equipment, and PBPDA, known for strong heat resistance and electrical insulation. <span>When processed together under controlled conditions, the polymers self-assemble into nanoscale structures that form thin dielectric films inside capacitors. Those structures help suppress electrical leakage while allowing the material to polarize strongly in an electric field, allowing greater energy storage.</span></p><p>The resulting material exhibits an unusually <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/high-k-dielectric" target="_blank">high dielectric constant</a>—a measure of how much electrical energy a material can store. Most polymer dielectrics have values around four, but the blended polymer dielectric in the new work had a value of 13.5.</p><p>“If you look at the literature up to now, no one has reached this level of dielectric constant in this type of polymer system,” Zhang says. “Putting two commonly used polymers together and seeing this kind of performance was a surprise to many people.”</p><p>Because the material can remain operational even at elevated temperatures—such as <strong></strong>those from extreme environmental heat or <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/hot-chips" target="_blank">hot spots</a> in densely built components—capacitors built from this polymer could potentially store the same amount of energy in a smaller package.<strong> </strong></p><p>“With this material, you can make the same device using about [one-fourth as much] material,” Zhang says. “Because the polymers themselves are inexpensive, the cost does not increase. At the same time, the component can become smaller and lighter.”</p><h2>How the polymer mix improves capacitors</h2><p>The researchers’ finding is “a big advancement,” says <a href="https://www.chee.uh.edu/faculty/karim" target="_blank">Alamgir Karim</a>, a polymer research director at the University of Houston who was not involved in the Penn State development. “Normally when you mix polymers, you don’t expect the dielectric constant to increase.”</p><p>Karim says the effect likely arises from nanoscale interfaces created when the polymers partially separate. <span>“At about a 50–50 mixture, the polymers don’t fully mix and instead create a very large interfacial area,” he says. “Those interfaces may be where the unusual electrical behavior comes from.”</span></p><p>If the material can be produced at scale, it could help address a key bottleneck in high-power electronics. Higher-temperature capacitors could reduce cooling requirements and allow engineers to pack more power into smaller systems—an advantage for aerospace platforms, electric vehicles, the electric grid, and other high-temperature environments.</p><p>But translating the concept from laboratory methods to commercial manufacturing may present challenges, says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zongliang-xie-255b3b27a/" target="_blank">Zongliang Xie</a>, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. <span>The Penn State team is now </span><span>producing small dielectric films, but industrial capacitor manufacturing typically requires continuous rolls of material that can extend for kilometers.</span></p><p>“Industry generally prefers extrusion-based processing because it’s easier and cheaper to control,” Xie says. “Scaling to produce great lengths of film while maintaining the same structure and performance could complicate matters. There’s potential, but it’s also challenging.”</p><p>Still, researchers say the discovery demonstrates that new performance limits may still be unlocked using familiar materials. <span>“Developing the material is only the first step,” Zhang says. “But it shows people that this barrier can be broken.”</span></p>

Mar 17, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/abstract-pixelation-of-the-european-union-s-flag.jpg?id=65298877&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><p>Looming over the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/free-space-optical-link-taara" target="_self">internet lasers</a> and <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/hands-on-with-oukitel-wp63-mwc-2026" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">firestarting phones</a> companies were touting at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month, was a more nebulous but much larger announcement: a pan-European cloud called <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/03/03/europe-unites-to-build-sovereign-cloud-and-ai-infrastructure-to-stop-reliance-on-us" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EURO-3C</a>.</p><p>EURO-3C’s backers – Spanish telecoms giant Telefónica, dozens of other European companies, and the European Commission (EC) – aim to fill a gap. U.S.-based cloud giants dominate in the EU, and European policymakers want their growing portfolio of digital government services on a “sovereign cloud” under full EU control.</p><p>But the EU lacks a real equivalent to the likes of AWS or Microsoft Azure. Indeed, any effort to build one will inevitably run up against the same U.S. cloud giants.</p><p>Just four U.S.-based hyperscalers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud – together account for<a href="https://www.ceps.eu/disk-backup-to-the-cloud-is-a-gaping-vulnerability-in-the-eus-security/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> some 70 percent of EU cloud services</a>. This is despite the fact that the 2018 U.S. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CLOUD Act</a> allows U.S. federal law enforcement – at least in theory – to compel U.S.-based firms to hand over data that’s stored abroad. </p><h2>Who do you trust?</h2><p>But those hypothetical risks to digital services have become more real as transatlantic relations have soured under the second Trump administration. The U.S. has <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/greenland-us-trump-canada-governor-general-mary-simon-9.7119074" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">openly threatened</a> to invade an EU member state and <a href="https://euobserver.com/19745/eu-rejects-us-claims-of-censorship-over-tech-rules-after-visa-bans/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">sanctioned</a> a European Commissioner for passing legislation the White House dislikes. </p><p>After the White House sanctioned the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court in February 2025, Court staffers <a href="https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-court-a4b4c02751ab84c09718b1b95cbd5db3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">claimed</a> Microsoft locked the Court’s chief prosecutor out of his email (Microsoft<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-services-international-criminal-court-president-american-sanctions-trump-tech-icc-amazon-google/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> has denied this</a>). Around the same time, the U.S. <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/us-threatens-to-shut-off-starlink-if-ukraine-wont-sign-minerals-deal-sources-tell-reuters/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportedly threatened</a> to sever EU ally Ukraine’s access to crucial Starlink satellite internet as leverage during trade negotiations.</p><p>“The geopolitical risk isn’t just the most extreme form of a doomsday ‘kill switch’ where Washington turns off Europe’s internet,” <a href="https://fermigier.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stéfane Fermigier</a> of <a href="https://euro-stack.com/pages/about" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">EuroStack</a>, an industry group that supports European digital independence. “It is the selective degradation of services and a total lack of retaliatory leverage.”</p><p>What, then, is the EU to do? <a href="https://blog.datacenter-paris.com/2026/01/24/liste-des-datacenters-secnumcloud-en-france-hebergement-souverain-pour-donnees-sensibles/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">France</a> offers an example. Even before 2025, France implemented <a href="https://www.spscommerce.com/eur/blog/what-is-secnumcloud-and-does-my-company-need-to-qualify/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">harsh restrictions</a> on non-EU cloud providers in public services – providers must locate data in the EU, rely on EU-based staff, and may not have majority-non-EU shareholders. Now, EU policymakers are following France’s lead.</p><p>In October 2025, the EC issued a two-part <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/document/09579818-64a6-4dd5-9577-446ab6219113_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">framework</a> for judging cloud providers bidding for public sector contracts. In the first part, the framework lays out a sort of sovereignty ladder. The more that a provider is subject to EU law, the higher its sovereignty level on this ladder. Any prospective bidder must first meet a certain level, depending on the tender.</p><p>Qualifying bidders then move to the second part, where their “sovereignty” is scored in more detail. Using too much proprietary software; over-relying on supply chains from outside the EU; having non-EU support staff; liability to non-EU laws like the CLOUD Act: all hurt a bidder’s score. </p><p>The framework was created for <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/commission-moves-forward-cloud-sovereignty-eur-180-million-tender-2025-10-10_en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one tender</a>, but observers say it sets a major precedent. Cloud providers bidding for state contracts across Europe may need to follow it, and it may influence legislation on both national and EU-wide levels.</p><h2>A question of scale</h2><p>Who, then, will receive high marks? At the moment, the answer is not simple. The EU cloud scene is quite fragmented. Numerous modest EU providers offer “sovereign cloud” services – such as Scaleway, OVHcloud, and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems – but <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/poi3.358" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">none are on the scale</a> of AWS or Google Cloud.</p><p>Inertia is on the side of the U.S. cloud giants, who can invest in their infrastructure and services on a far grander scale than their European counterparts. Some U.S. providers <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-european-sovereign-cloud-achieves-first-compliance-milestone-soc-2-and-c5-reports-plus-seven-iso-certifications/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">now offer</a> cloud services they say comply with the Commission’s “cloud sovereignty” demands.</p><p>Some European observers, like EuroStack, <a href="https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/10/cloud-sovereignty-framework-comparison" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">say</a> such promises are hollow so long as a provider’s parent company is subject to the likes of the CLOUD Act, and loopholes in the Commission’s process remain open. An AWS spokesperson told <em>Spectrum</em> it had not disclosed any non-US enterprise or government data to the U.S. government under the CLOUD Act; a Google spokesperson said that its most sensitive EU offerings “are subject to local laws, not US law”.</p><p>Even if a project like EURO-3C can offer a large-scale alternative, the US cloud giants have another sort of inertia. Many developers – and many public purchasers of their services – will need convincing to leave behind a familiar environment.</p><p>“If you look at AWS, you look at Google, they’ve created some super technology. It’s very convenient, it’s easy to use,” says <a href="https://nl.linkedin.com/in/arnoldjuffer" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Arnold Juffer</a>, CEO of the Netherlands-based cloud provider <a href="https://nebul.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nebul</a>. “Once you’re in that platform, in that ecosystem, it’s very hard to get out.”</p><p><a href="https://bisi.org.uk/martyna-chmura" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Martyna Chmura</a>, an analyst at the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute, a London-based think tank, sees some EU developers taking a mixed approach. “Many organizations are already moving toward multi-cloud setups, using European or sovereign providers for sensitive workloads while still relying on hyperscalers for certain services,” she says.</p><p>In that case, the EU’s top-down demands may encourage developers to use EU providers for sensitive applications – like government services, transport, autonomous vehicles, and some industrial automation – even if it’s inconvenient in the short term, or if it causes even more fragmentation of the EU cloud scene. “Running systems across different platforms can increase integration costs and make security and data governance more complicated. In some cases, organisations could lose some of the efficiency and cost advantages that come from using large hyperscale platforms,” Chmura says.</p><p>“Overall, the EU appears willing to accept some of these trade-offs,” Chmura says.</p>

Mar 16, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-white-adult-man-in-a-reflective-jacket-standing-in-front-of-a-power-plant-on-a-sunny-winter-day.jpg?id=65296919&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><p>In the fictional nation of Beryllia, the 2026 World Chalice Games <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a>were set to begin as the country faced an unrelenting heat wave. The grid, already under strain from the circumstances, was dealt a further blow when a coordinated set of attacks including vandalism, drone, and ballistic attacks by an adversary, Crimsonia, crippled the grid’s physical infrastructure.</p><p>This scenario, inspired by the upcoming 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, was an exercise in studying how utilities can prevent and mitigate, among other dangers, physical attacks on power grids. Called GridEx, the exercise was hosted by the <a href="https://www.nerc.com/programs/e-isac" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span>Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center</span></a> (E-ISAC) from 18 to 20 November, 2025. GridEx has been held every two years since 2011.</p><p>“We know that threat actors look to exploit certain circumstances,” says <a href="https://www.sans.org/profiles/michael-ball" target="_blank"><span>Michael Ball</span></a>, CEO of E-ISAC, which is a program of the <a href="https://www.nerc.com/" target="_blank"><span>North American Electric Reliability Corporation</span></a> (NERC), about designing the Beryllia scenario. “The Chalice Games became a good example of how we could build a scenario around a threat actor.”</p><p>Physical attacks on the grid are rising in the U.S., and GridEx attendance was up in November as utilities grapple with how to prevent and mitigate attacks. Participation in the exercise was at its highest level since 2019, according to a <a href="https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/programs/electricity-isac/gridex/gridex-viii-lessons-learned-report-tlp_clear_final.pdf" target="_blank"><span>report</span></a> released on 2 March. Given the number of organizations present, GridEx estimates that more than 28,000 individual players participated, including utility workers and government partners, an all-time high since the exercise began.</p><h2>Rising Physical Threats to Power Grids</h2><p>The U.S. and Canadian grids face growing security issues from physical threats, including vandalism, assault of utility workers, intrusion of property, and theft of components, like copper wiring. NERC’s 2025 E-ISAC end of year <a href="https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/programs/electricity-isac/2025-e-isac-end-of-year-report.pdf" target="_blank"><span>report</span></a> cites more than 3,500 physical security breaches that calendar year, about 3 percent of which disrupted electricity. That’s up from 2,800 events <a href="https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/programs/electricity-isac/2023-e-isac-end-of-year-report.pdf" target="_blank"><span>cited</span></a> in the 2023 report (3 percent of those also resulted in electricity disruptions). Yet despite a number of recent high-profile attacks in the U.S., physical attacks on the grid are happening worldwide.</p><p>“They’re not uniquely a U.S. thing,” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-russo-3a1b2664" target="_blank"><span>Danielle Russo</span></a>, executive director of the Center for Grid Security at <a href="https://secureenergy.org/" target="_blank"><span>Securing America’s Future Energy</span></a>, a nonpartisan organization focused on advancing national energy security. Russo says that while <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-killer-drones" target="_blank">attacks are common</a> in places like <a href="https://www.review-energy.com/otras-fuentes/europe-s-power-grid-exposed-55-at-risk-of-blackouts-from-poor-interconnection" target="_blank"><span>Ukraine</span></a>, they’re not limited to wartime scenarios. “Other countries that are not experiencing direct conflict are experiencing increasing amounts of physical attacks on their energy infrastructure,” she says. Take Germany for example: On 3 January, an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/07/how-is-it-possible-berliners-demand-answers-after-sabotage-causes-blackout" target="_blank"><span>arson attack</span></a> by left-wing activists in Berlin caused a five-day blackout impacting 45,000 households. That comes after a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/suspected-arson-attack-berlin-leaves-50000-homes-without-power-2025-09-09/" target="_blank"><span>suspected arson attack</span></a> on two pylons in September 2025 left 50,000 Berlin households without power. Some German officials cite domestic extremism and fears of Russian sabotage in recent years as reasons for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/01/10/berlin-blackout-germany-vulernable-infrastructure/" target="_blank"><span>heightened security concerns</span></a> over critical infrastructure.</p><p>The uptick in attacks on the U.S. grid has been anchored by a number of incidents in recent years. In December 2025, an engineer in San Jose, California was sentenced to 10 years in prison for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/san-jose-engineer-sentenced-10-years-prison-bombings-pge-transformers-causing-property" target="_blank"><span>bombing electric transformers</span></a> in 2022 and 2023. A Tennessee man was arrested in November 2024 for <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/man-arrested-and-charged-attempting-use-weapon-mass-destruction-and-destroy-energy-facility" target="_blank"><span>attempting to attack</span></a> a Nashville substation using a drone armed with explosives. And in 2023, a neo-Nazi leader was among two arrested in a plot to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-arrests-2-suspects-accused-planning-attack-baltimore-power-grid-rcna69324" target="_blank"><span>attack five substations around Baltimore</span></a> with firearms, part of an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/us/white-supremacist-power-grid-attacks.html#:~:text=Sign%20up%20for%20the%20Race,substation%20in%20Oregon%20in%202022." target="_blank"><span>increasing trend</span></a> in white supremacist groups planning to attack the U.S. energy sector.</p><p>“Since [E-ISAC] started publishing data back in 2016, we’ve seen a large and consistent increase in the number of reported physical security incidents per year,” says <a href="https://www.publicpower.org/people/michael-coe" target="_blank"><span>Michael Coe</span></a>, the vice president of physical and cyber security programs at the <a href="https://www.publicpower.org/" target="_blank"><span>American Public Power Association</span></a>, a trade group that works with E-ISAC to plan GridEx. While not all data is publicly available, Coe says there’s been a “tenfold” increase over the past decade in the number of reported physical attacks on the grid.</p><h2>Drone Attacks: A Growing Security Challenge</h2><p>During the fictional World Chalice Games scenario, drone attacks destroyed Beryllia’s substation equipment, highlighting a threat that’s gained traction as more drones enter the airspace.</p><p>“The question we get all the time is, how do you tell if it’s a bad actor, or if it’s a 12-year-old kid that got the drone for their birthday?” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-willis-26940513" target="_blank"><span>Erika Willis</span></a>, the program manager for the substations team at the <a href="https://www.epri.com/" target="_blank"><span>Electric Power Research Institute</span></a> (EPRI).</p><p>One strategy to track and alert utilities to potential threats such as drones is called sensor fusion. The system includes a pan-tilt-zoom camera capable of 360-degree motion mounted on top of a tripod or pole with four installed radars. The radars combine with the camera for a dual system that can track drones even if they’re obstructed from view, says Willis. For instance, if a nearby drone flies behind a tree, hidden from the camera, the radars will still pick up on it. The technology is currently being tested at EPRI’s labs in Charlotte, North Carolina and Lenox, Massachusetts.</p><p>EPRI is also exploring how robotics and AI can improve security systems, Willis says. One approach involves integrating AI analysis into robotic technology already surveilling substation perimeters. Using AI can improve detection of break-ins and damage to fencing around substations, Willis says. “As opposed to a human having to go through 200 images of a fence, you can have the AI overlays do some of those algorithms…If the robot has done the inspection of the substation 100 times, it can then relay to you that there’s an anomaly,” Willis says.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="A fiber sensing technology unit, roughly the size and shape of a filing cabinet." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3e850defecdfdc7b783b6d9666651831" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="ee5de" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-fiber-sensing-technology-unit-roughly-the-size-and-shape-of-a-filing-cabinet.jpg?id=65296931&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Prisma Photonics deploys fiber sensing technology that uses reflected optical signals to detect perturbations from vehicles and other sources near underground fiber cable.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Prisma Photonics</small></p><p>Already, a number of utilities in the U.S. are using AI integrations in their security and monitoring processes. That’s thanks in part to the Tel Aviv, Israel-based <a href="https://www.prismaphotonics.com/" target="_blank"><span>Prisma Photonics</span></a>, a software company that launched in 2017 and has since deployed its fiber sensing technology across thousands of miles of transmission infrastructure in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Israel. A file-cabinet-sized unit plugs into a substation and sends light pulses down existing <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/earthquake" target="_self"><span>fiber optic cables</span></a> 30 miles in each direction. As the pulses travel down the cables, a tiny fraction of the light is reflected back to the substation unit. An AI model processes the results and can classify events based on patterns in the optical signal as a result of perturbations happening around the fiber cable.</p><p>“If we identify an event that we don’t have a classification for, and we get a feedback from a customer saying, ‘oh, this was a car crash,’ then we can classify that in the model to say this is actually what happened,” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-menhorn-82451249/" target="_blank"><span>Tiffany Menhorn</span></a>, Prisma Photonics’ vice president of North America.</p><p>As preparations get underway for the ninth GridEx in 2027, Ball says participation in the exercises alone isn’t enough to bolster grid security. Instead, he wants utilities to take what they learn from the training and apply it in their own operations. “It’s the action of doing it, versus our statistic of saying, ‘here’s what our growth was.’ That growth should relate to the readiness and capability of the industry.”</p><a target="_blank"></a><p>I changed the tense on this because the subsequent sentences use past tense. It seemed weird to switch from present tense in the first sentence to past tense in the rest of the paragraph, but I could be mistaken.</p>

Mar 16, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-middle-aged-adult-man-speaking-behind-a-podium-on-a-small-stage-at-the-new-jersey-institute-of-technology.jpg?id=65296916&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C292%2C0%2C292"/><br/><br/><p>The <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/2025/08/Americas-Talent-Strategy-Building-the-Workforce-for-the-Golden-Age.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">America’s Talent Strategy: Building the Workforce for the Golden Age</a> report, published last year by the U.S. Departments of <a href="https://www.commerce.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Commerce</a>, <a href="https://www.ed.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Education</a>, and <a href="https://www.dol.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Labor</a>, identified a significant engineering and skills gap. The 27-page report concluded that the shortage of talent in essential areas—including advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and cybersecurity—poses significant risks to U.S. economic and technological <a data-linked-post="2668949920" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/leadership-skills-ieee-courses" target="_blank">leadership</a>.</p><p>To help attract talent in those fields, the Labor Department last month introduced incentives for apprenticeships, including a US $145 million “<a href="https://www.apprenticeship.gov/investments-tax-credits-and-tuition-support/open-funding-opportunities" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">pay for performance</a>” grant program. The funding aims to develop registered apprenticeships in high-demand fields including artificial intelligence and information technology.</p><p>Reacting to the urgent national need for targeted workforce development were members of <a href="https://students.ieee.org/membership-benefits/young-professionals/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Young Professionals</a>, led by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aloktibrewala" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Alok Tibrewala</a>, an IEEE senior member. He is a cochair of the <a href="https://ieeenjyp.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE North Jersey Section’s Young Professionals</a> group.</p><p>“As a software engineer, this impending shortage concerns me because I believe that the U.S. AI and cybersecurity skills gap would show up first in the early-career pipeline,” Tibrewala says. “Students will be entering the U.S. workforce without enough hands-on experience building secure AI-enabled enterprise and cloud systems, and this gap will persist without practical, mentor-led training before graduation.”</p><p>Tibrewala led a strategic planning session with representatives from the <a href="https://www.njit.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New Jersey Institute of Technology</a>,<strong> </strong><a href="https://www.ieee.org/communities/geographic-activities" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Member and Geographic Activities</a>, and IEEE Young Professionals to discuss holding an event that would provide practical, industry-relevant training by experts and IEEE leaders.</p><p>“I was able to establish a partnership with NJIT, recruit speakers, design the event’s agenda, and promote the event to ensure it was aligned with the strategy outlined in the workforce report,” he says. “This effort aligns with broader U.S. workforce development priorities focused on industry-driven skills training in critical technology areas.”</p><p>The <a href="https://yp.ieee.org/event/ieee-buildathon-2025/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Buildathon</a> event was held on 1 November at NJIT’s Newark campus. More than 30 students and early-career engineers heard from 11 speakers. Through interactive workshops, live demonstrations, and networking opportunities, they left with practical, employer-aligned skills and clearer career pathways for AI-era skills-building.</p><p>Tibrewala chaired the event and also serves as chair of the IEEE Buildathon program.</p><h2>Session takeaways</h2><p><a href="https://ieeer1.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Region 1</a> Director <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-bod-july-2026" target="_self">Bala S. Prasanna</a>, a life senior member, gave the keynote address. He emphasized the need for universities, industry practitioners, and IEEE volunteer leaders to collaborate on programs to enhance technical skills.</p><p>IEEE Member <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalyani-matey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kalyani Matey</a>, cochair of the IEEE North Jersey Section’s Young Professionals, conducted a workshop on how to build one’s personal brand and a responsive network. Participants received valuable insights about résumé building, effective communication strategies, and enhancing their visibility and employability.</p><p class="pull-quote">“Over time, this kind of structured, employer-aligned training will help increase confidence, employability, and technical readiness across the country. With sustained support, programs like the IEEE Buildathon can become a practical bridge from education to industry in the AI era.” <strong>—Alok Tibrewala</strong></p><p>Tibrewala led the Unlocking AI’s Potential: Solving Big Challenges With Smart Data and <a href="https://ieee-dataport.org/" target="_blank">IEEE DataPort</a> session. The web-based DataPort platform allows researchers to store, share, access, and manage their research datasets in a single, trusted location. He discussed needed skills including AI literacy, strong data handling and dataset stewardship, and turning data into actionable insights.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaitali-ladikkar/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chaitali Ladikkar</a>, a senior software engineer, delivered the insightful Brains Behind the Game seminar. Ladikkar, an IEEE member, highlighted the transformative impact AI is having on gaming and game engine technologies. She explained how AI is reshaping game development. She also covered how machine learning is being used for animation, faster content generation and testing of new titles. Her seminar received enthusiastic feedback from participants.</p><p>The Building Better Business Relationships <a href="https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DiSC</a> workshop provided insights into enhancing professional relationships and communication within an engineering workforce. DiSC is a behavioral self-assessment used to understand an individual’s communication style and to adapt to others.</p><h2>Participant experience and testimonials</h2><p>The event received high praise from participants for its practical and industry-relevant content, according to Tibrewala.</p><p>“This training significantly enhanced my understanding and readiness for industry roles, filling gaps my regular academic coursework did not fully address,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/humna-sultan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Humna Sultan</a>, an IEEE student member who is a senior studying computer science at <a href="https://www.stevens.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stevens Institute of Technology</a>, in Hoboken, N.J.</p><p>“The Buildathon was structured around real engineering challenge scenarios that deepened my understanding of AI and cloud technologies,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-fc/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Carlos Figueredo</a>, an IEEE graduate student member who is studying data science at the <a href="https://umich.edu" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Michigan</a>, in Ann Arbor. “It boosted my confidence and practical skills essential for the industry.”</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bavani-karthikeyan-janaki/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bavani Karthikeyan Janaki</a> said “it was incredible to see how technology and sustainability came together to drive real-world impact, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the organizers including Tibrewala, Matey, and the IEEE North Jersey Young Professionals.” Janaki is pursuing a master’s degree in computer and information science at <a href="https://www.liu.edu/post" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Long Island University</a>, in New York.</p><h2>Funding and collaborative efforts</h2><p>The Buildathon was made possible through grants from the IEEE Young Professionals group and funding from the IEEE North Jersey Section and IEEE Member and Geographic Activities. Their support shows how IEEE’s professional organizations can collaborate to address workforce needs by supporting the delivery of technical sessions that strengthen early-career pipelines.</p><h2>Future plans and a call to action</h2><p>Building on the event’s success, Tibrewala and Matey plan to make the IEEE Buildathon an ongoing initiative. They are exploring ways to expand it to additional university campuses and IEEE communities.</p><p>Tibrewala says they plan to refine the format based on participant feedback and lessons learned. To support consistent quality, he and Matey say, they are working on a playbook for organizers that will include a repeatable agenda, a workshop template, speaker guidelines, and post-event feedback forms.</p><p>The approach depends on continued coordination among host universities, local IEEE sections, and Young Professional volunteers, Tibrewala says.</p><p>“Enabling other groups to run similar events,” he says, “can help more students and early-career engineers gain practical exposure to AI, data, cloud, cybersecurity, and other key emerging technologies in a structured setting.</p><p>“Efforts like this help translate national workforce priorities into real training that students and early-career engineers can apply immediately to their projects. This also helps close the gap between classroom learning and the realities of building secure, reliable systems in production environments. Over time, this kind of structured, employer-aligned training will help increase confidence, employability, and technical readiness across the country.</p><p>“With sustained support, programs like the IEEE Buildathon can become a practical bridge from education to industry in the AI era.”</p>

Mar 13, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/rolling-cannon-distant-cityscape-trees-and-water.gif?id=65282014&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C147%2C0%2C147"/><br/><br/><p><span>Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at </span><em>IEEE Spectrum</em><span> robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please </span><a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Robotics%20event%20suggestion%20for%20Video%20Friday">send us your events</a><span> for inclusion.</span></p><h5><a href="https://2026.ieee-icra.org/">ICRA 2026</a>: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA</h5><p>Enjoy today’s videos!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><div style="page-break-after: always"><span style="display:none"> </span></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="8vksx1zsg7q"><em>All legged robots deployed “in the wild” to date were given a body plan that was predefined by human designers and could not be redefined in situ. The manual and permanent nature of this process has resulted in very few species of agile terrestrial robots beyond familiar four-limbed forms. Here, we introduce highly athletic modular building blocks and show how they enable the automatic design and rapid assembly of novel agile robots that can “hit the ground running” in unstructured outdoor environments.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="508a07a4b7d915c6cfd07081bdc63e86" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8VKSx1zSg7Q?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://robotics.northwestern.edu/news-events/index.html" target="_blank">Northwestern UniversityCenter for Robotics and Biosystems</a> ] [ <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2519129123">Paper</a> ] via [ <a href="https://gizmodo.com/these-self-configuring-modular-robots-may-one-day-rule-the-world-2000731381">Gizmodo</a> ] </p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="l2q3kpl4mjq">If you were going to develop the ideal urban delivery robot more or less from scratch, it would be this.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ba83a841b32a7807384eeb10bc2c6b03" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2q3kPl4mJQ?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.rivr.ai/rivr-two">RIVR</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="cadtjepdbfc">Don’t get me wrong, there are some clever things going on here, but I’m still having a lot of trouble seeing where the unique, sustainable value is for a <a data-linked-post="2666662286" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid-robots" target="_blank">humanoid robot</a> performing these sorts of tasks.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b6313fcff2b0315bed664e00897cf53a" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CAdTjePDBfc?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.figure.ai/news/helix-02-living-room-tidy">Figure</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="xyhob9__qk0">One of those things that you don’t really think about as a human, but is actually pretty important.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="53ef3877dae03acc90a17fd9dcba1e6b" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xYhOb9__Qk0?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05760">Paper</a> ] via [ <a href="https://rsl.ethz.ch/" target="_blank">ETH Zurich</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="wi6u8bvofvc"><em>We propose TRIP-Bag (Teleoperation, Recording, Intelligence in a Portable Bag), a portable, puppeteer-style teleoperation system fully contained within a commercial suitcase, as a practical solution for collecting high-fidelity manipulation data across varied settings.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4d39bbac7f62958700b13bfd53bc8bfd" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wi6U8bvoFvc?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://uiuckimlab.github.io/TRIP-Bag-pages/">KIMLAB</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="nuouwhuzpwq"><em>We propose an open-vocabulary semantic exploration system that enables robots to maintain consistent maps and efficiently locate (unseen) objects in semi-static real-world environments using LLM-guided reasoning.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1724903fcd3e1d57df45824508205a87" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nUouwHUZPWQ?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/search-robot-thinks-for-itself">TUM</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="vrxamllkjko">That’s it folks, we have no need for real pandas anymore—if we ever did in the first place. Be honest, what has a <a data-linked-post="2675288239" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/robot-martial-arts" target="_blank">panda</a> done for you lately?</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="af51d3f513d68d80617dd0b62738a1bb" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VRxAMLlkjko?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.magiclab.top/en/">MagicLab</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="uhd6o6dem_o"><em>RoboGuard is a general-purpose guardrail for ensuring the safety of LLM-enabled robots. RoboGuard is configured offline with high-level safety rules and a robot description, reasons about how these safety rules are best applied in robot’s context, then synthesizes a plan that maximally follows user preferences while ensuring safety.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bfc2abc33b815af7c16c37617a485a87" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uhd6O6DEM_o?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://robo-guard.github.io/">RoboGuard</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="5ekki51q1sk"><em>In this demonstration, a small team responds to a (simulated) radiation contamination leak at a real nuclear reactor facility. The team deploys their reconfigurable robot to accompany them through the facility. As the station is suddenly plunged into darkness, the robot’s camera is hot-swapped to thermal so that it can continue on. Upon reaching the approximate location of the contamination, the team installs a Compton gamma-ray camera and pan-tilt illuminating device. The robot autonomously steps forward, locates the radiation source, and points it out with the illuminator.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7928c582f10167b05ca04c694c729b67" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ekKI51q1Sk?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11078050">Paper</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="zcnmhsg5bpw"><em>On March 6th, 2025, the Robomechanics Lab at CMU was flooded with 4 feet of black water (i.e. mixed with sewage). We lost most of the robots in the lab, and as a tribute my students put together this “In Memoriam” video. It includes some previously unreleased robots and video clips.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e1739161841c3f7f5fb2ae563d8b15bc" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zcnMHsg5Bpw?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.cmu.edu/me/robomechanicslab/">Carnegie Mellon University Robomechanics Lab</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="i3goczr4ya0">There haven’t been a lot of successful <a data-linked-post="2650267089" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/your-kid-wants-a-thymio-ii-education-robot" target="_blank">education robots</a>, but here’s one of them.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="971e1ccf67faed9fa1a9a5292d6b5b49" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i3goCzr4YA0?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://sphero.com/collections/all/products/rvr?variant=42004659142701">Sphero</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="35i9m-jc0oc">The opening keynote from the 2025 Silicon Valley Humanoids Summit: “Insights Into Disney’s Robotic Character Platform,” by Moritz Baecher, Director, Zurich Lab, Disney Research.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a7fc3671608ce481554dac55c022d319" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/35i9M-jc0Oc?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://humanoidssummit.com/">Humanoids Summit</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div>

Mar 13, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-adult-white-woman-with-short-dark-hair-and-crossed-arms-leaning-her-back-against-the-door-of-a-semi-truck.jpg?id=65278377&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raquel_Urtasun" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span>Raquel Urtasun</span></a> has spent 16 years in the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/self-driving-cars-2662494269" target="_self"><span>self-driving space</span></a>, long enough to <span>navigate</span> every <span>metaphorical glorious </span>hill and plunging valley<span>. </span> <span>She took the trip from the </span>early “pipe dream” dismissals, to the “we’re <em>this</em> close” certainty, and back again.</p><p>The industry is <span>now </span>riding a new wave of optimism and investment, including at <a href="https://waabi.ai/" target="_blank"><span>Waabi Innovation Inc.</span></a>, the autonomous trucking company that Urtasun founded in 2021. The Spanish-Canadian professor at the <a href="https://www.utoronto.ca/" target="_blank"><span>University of Toronto</span></a>, and former chief scientist of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, has helped make Waabi a key player. Beginning in fall 2023, theToronto-based startup has been running geofenced cargo routes from Dallas to Houston in a fleet of retrofitted Peterbilt semis, navigating even residential streets in loaded, <span>36,000-kilogram (</span>80,000-pound<span>)</span> behemoths with a human “safety observer” on board.</p><p>In October, the company reached a milestone by integrating its <a href="https://waabi.ai/insights/introducing-the-waabi-driver" target="_blank"><span>“Waabi Driver”</span></a> physical-AI system in Volvo’s new VNL Autonomous truck, which the Swedish automaker is building in Virginia. That self-driving solution uses Nvidia’s <a href="https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/solutions/autonomous-vehicles/in-vehicle-computing/" target="_blank"><span>Drive AGX Thor</span></a>, <span>an </span>AI-based platform for autonomous and software-defined vehicles. </p><p>In January, the Toronto-based startup raised $750 million in its latest funding round to accelerate commercial development in autonomous trucking, and expand its system into the fiercely competitive robotaxi space. Backers include <a href="https://www.khoslaventures.com/" target="_blank"><span>Khosla Ventures</span></a>, <a href="https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/" target="_blank"><span>Nvidia</span></a>, and <a href="https://www.volvo.com/en/" target="_blank"><span>Volvo</span></a>.</p><p>Urtasun says the <a href="https://waabi.ai/insights/introducing-the-waabi-driver" target="_blank"><span>Waabi Driver</span></a> can scale across a full range of vehicles, geographies and environments—<span>although</span> snowstorms <span>can </span>still create a no-go zone for now. It’s powered by what Urtasun calls the industry’s most advanced neural simulator. The verifiable, end-to-end AI model will be a “shared brain” that partners can transplant into cars, trucks, <span>and pretty much anything on wheels</span>. The idea is to grab a chunk of a global autonomous trucking business that McKinsey estimates could be worth more than <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/will-autonomy-usher-in-the-future-of-truck-freight-transportation" target="_blank"><span>$600 billion a year</span></a> by 2035; with autonomous haulers responsible for 15 percent of total U.S. trucking miles as early as 2030.</p><p>Backed by an additional <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2026/01/28/robot-trucker-waabi-wades-into-robotaxi-battle-with-billion-dollar-raise/" target="_blank"><span>$250 million from Uber</span></a>, Waabi plans to deploy at least 25,000 autonomous taxis through <span>Uber’s </span>ride-hailing service, whose world-dominating reach encompasses 70 countries, about 15,000 cities and more than 200 million monthly users.</p><p>Urtasun spoke with <em><span>IEEE Spectrum</span></em> about how Waabi is <span>counting </span>on sensors and simulation to prove real-world safety; and why the move to autonomy is a moral imperative that outweighs the disruption for human drivers—<span>whether they’re driving trucks or family sedans</span>. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.</p><h2>The Shift to Next-Gen Autonomous Vehicles</h2><p><strong><em><span>IEEE Spectrum</span></em></strong><strong>: Until quite recently, autonomous tech seemed to have hit a wall, at least in the public’s mind. Now investors are flooding the zone again, and companies are all-in. What happened?</strong></p><p><strong>Raquel Urtasun:</strong> There were a lot of empty promises, or <span>[people] </span>not realizing the complexity of the problem. There was a realization that actually, this problem is harder than people anticipated. It’s also because of the type of technology that was developed at the time, what we call “AV 1.0”. These are hand-engineered systems that need to be brute-forced by humans. You need lots of capital and a massive amount of miles on the road just to get to the first deployment.</p><p>What you see with the next generation—<a href="https://medium.com/data-science-collective/the-local-optimum-of-autonomy-de1969b77769" target="_blank">AV 2.0</a> and systems that can reason—is that you finally have a solution that scales. When we started the company, this was a very contrarian view. But today, the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/artificial-intelligence/" target="_blank">breakthroughs in AI</a> have made it clear that this is the next big revolution. It’s not just about more compute; it’s about building a brain that can generalize. That is the “aha moment” the industry is having now.</p><p><strong>Even for someone who believes in the tech, seeing </strong> <strong><span>a driverless</span></strong><strong> semi-trailer in your rear-view mirror might be unsettling. Now you’ve integrated your tech into the aerodynamic, diesel-powered Volvo VNL Autonomous truck. How do you convince regulators and the public that these trucks belong on the street? </strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> Safety, when you think about carrying 80,000 pounds on this massive rig, is definitely top of mind. We believe the only way to do this safely is with a redundant platform that is fully developed and validated by the OEM, not with a retrofit. The OEM does a special type of truck that has all the redundant steering, power, and braking, so that no matter what happens, there is always a way we can interface and activate that truck in a safe manner. Then we are responsible for the sensors, the compute, and obviously the brain that drives those trucks.</p><h2>AI’s Impact on Trucking Jobs</h2><p><strong>One of the biggest points of contention is the displacement of human drivers. As AI disrupts a range of workplaces, how do respond to people who say this will eliminate good-paying, blue-collar jobs?</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> The way we see this is that everybody who’s a truck driver today, and wants to retire as a truck driver, will be able to do so. This is physical AI; this is not like the digital world where suddenly you can switch immediately to this technology. That adoption and scaling is going to take time. There will also be many jobs created with this technology; remote operations, terminal operations, and other things. You have time to change the form of labor of being on the road, which is for weeks at a time—and it’s a really difficult and dehumanized job, let’s be honest—to something you can do locally. There was an interesting <span>[U.S.] </span>Department of Transportation study that showed because of this gradual adoption, there will be more jobs created than actually removed.</p><p><strong>You’ve spoken about a personal motivation behind this. Why do you believe the advantages of autonomy outweigh any growing pains, including the potential for unexpected accidents or even deaths?</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> There are 2 million deaths on the road globally per year, and nobody’s questioning that. That’s the status quo. If you think the machines have to be perfect to deploy, you are actually sacrificing many humans along the way that you could have saved. Human error in accidents is between <a href="https://www.cbmclaw.com/what-percentage-of-car-accidents-are-caused-by-human-error/" target="_blank">90 percent and 96 percent</a>. Those could be preventable accidents. Some accidents will always be unavoidable; a tire could blow for a machine the same as it could for a human. But the important comparison is how much safer we are. This technology is the answer to many, many things.</p><p><strong>Most of the industry is focused on “hub-to-hub” highway driving. But you’ve argued that Waabi’s AI can handle the complexity of </strong> <strong><span>local </span></strong><strong>streets.</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> The rest of the industry has gone with this business model where you need hubs next to the highway. This adds a lot of friction and cost. Thanks to our verifiable end-to-end AI system, we can drive in surface <span>[local] </span>streets. We can do unprotected lefts, traffic lights, and tight turns. These core capabilities enable us to drive all the way to the end customer. We are already hauling commercial loads for customers like Samsung through our Uber Freight partnership.</p><p><strong>You’ve mentioned that Waabi doesn’t like to talk about “number of miles” driven as a metric. For an engineering audience, that sounds counterintuitive. How does your “simulation-first” approach replace the need for real-world road time?</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> In the industry, miles have been used as a proxy for advancement. How many miles does <a href="https://www.tesla.com/about" target="_blank">Tesla</a> need to drive to see any of these situations? But we are a simulation-first company. Waabi World can simulate all the sensors, the behaviors of humans, everything. It is the only simulator where you can mathematically prove that testing and driving in simulation is the same as driving in the real world. You can expose the system to billions of simulations in the cloud. This is what allows us to be so capital efficient and fast.</p><h2>Verifiable AI vs. Black Box Systems</h2><p><strong>What is the difference between your “interpretable” AI and the “black box” systems we see elsewhere?</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> We’ve seen an evolution on passenger cars for level<span>- </span>2+ systems to end-to-end, black box architectures. But those are not verifiable. You cannot validate and verify those systems, which is a massive problem when you think about regulators and OEMs trusting that technology.</p><p>What Waabi has built is end-to-end, but fully verifiable. The system is forced to interpret what it is perceiving and use those interpretations for reasoning, so that it can understand the consequences of every action. It is much more akin to how our brain actually works; your “Type 2” thinking, where you start thinking about cause and effect and consequences, and then you typically do a much better choice in your maneuver.</p><p><strong>Tesla is famously, and controversially, relying on camera data almost exclusively to run and improve its self-driving systems. You’re not a fan of that approach?</strong></p><p><strong>Urtasun:</strong> We use multiple sensors: lidar, camera, and radar. That’s very important because failure modes of those sensors are very different and they’re very complementary. We don’t compromise safety to reduce the <span>bill- of- materials </span>cost today.</p><p>Those (passenger car) l<span>evel-</span>2+ systems are not architected for <a href="https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/levels-of-autonomous-driving-explained" target="_blank">level 4</a>, where there’s no human on board. People don’t necessarily realize there is a huge difference in terms of the bar when there is no human to rely on. It’s not, “Well, if I don’t have a lot of system interventions, I’m almost there.” That’s not a metric. We are native level 4. We decide which areas the system can drive in, and in what conditions. We are building technology that can drive different form factors—trucks or robotaxis—with the same brain.</p><p><em><strong>Editor’s note: </strong>This article was updated on 13 March to correct an error in the original post. Contrary to what was stated in the original post, the trucks being driven from Dallas to Houston do have a human observer on board.</em></p>

Mar 12, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/older-male-professor-teaching-a-group-of-post-graduate-college-students-about-robotics-hands-on.jpg?id=65181840&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><p>Engineering is so much more than solving problems or writing efficient code. It is about creating solutions that affect billions of lives and contributing to a profession built on innovation, responsibility, and collaboration. Although technical skills remain critical, what truly will accelerate the growth of the next generation of engineers is community and professional involvement.</p><h2>Learning from communities</h2><p>University programs provide a strong foundation in theory and practice, but they cannot capture the complexity of real-world engineering. As an IEEE senior member, I believe professional communities such as IEEE can help bridge the gap by offering:</p><ul><li>Practical experience through <a href="https://ieee-ai-dev-hack-2025.devpost.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">hackathons</a>, open-source projects, and <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6461145" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">collaborative research</a>.</li><li>Exposure to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/epics-in-ieee-student-projects" target="_self">diverse perspectives</a>, with young engineers learning from peers across industries and cultures.</li><li><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-collabratec-mentoring-program" target="_self">Mentorship opportunities</a> that accelerate career growth and instill professional values early.</li></ul><p>I have served as a mentor and judge for a variety of hackathons across different age groups, including high school competitions <a href="https://unitedhacksv5.devpost.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">United Hacks</a> and <a href="https://nextstep2025.devpost.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NextStep Hacks</a>, as well as graduate-level events such as <a href="https://hhuh.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">HackHarvard</a>.</p><p>The experiences demonstrate how transformative community-driven opportunities can be for young engineers. They provide exposure to teamwork, innovation, and the realities of solving problems at scale.</p><h2>The power of mentorship</h2><p>Engineers don’t develop skills in isolation. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/advice-leading-mentoring-greater-innovation" target="_self">Mentorship</a>, whether formal or informal, plays a pivotal role in shaping careers. Senior professionals who invest in guiding students and early-career engineers pass on more than technical knowledge. They share decision-making approaches, ethical considerations, and strategies for navigating careers, thereby expanding the engineering field.</p><p>As a keynote speaker at conferences, I have seen how sharing real-world experiences can ignite students’ curiosity and confidence. What they often value most is not a lecture on technology but candid insights into how to be resilient, grow their career, and learn about the different engineering paths.</p><h2>Building ethical awareness</h2><p>With the rise of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other high-impact innovations, engineers’ <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/two-new-ai-ethics-certifications" target="_self">ethical responsibilities</a> are more important than ever. Professional organizations such as IEEE and <a href="https://www.acm.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ACM</a> emphasize <a href="https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">codes of ethics</a> and <a href="https://standards.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">standards</a> to help ensure that technology is developed responsibly.</p><p>Through my work as a peer reviewer and committee member for IEEE and ACM conferences, including those at the university level, I have seen how the organizations promote rigor and accountability.</p><p>When students engage with such communities early, they can not only expand their technical knowledge but also build an understanding of responsible innovation.</p><h2>Networking as a catalyst for innovation</h2><p>Engineering breakthroughs often emerge at the intersections of different fields. Professional communities create the space for such interactions. A student working on computer vision, for example, might discover health care applications by collaborating with biomedical engineers.</p><p>While reviewing papers for conferences, I have seen how interdisciplinary ideas spark promising innovations.</p><p>I bring the same perspective to my role as an <a href="https://ieee-collabratec.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Collabratec</a> mentor, connecting with innovators across different disciplines and industries.</p><p class="pull-quote">“When we invest in the community, we invest in the future of engineering.”</p><p>By collaborating on projects and expanding your reach, you can find the mentors or partners you need to inspire your next breakthrough.</p><p>Participating in forums allows students and professionals alike to broaden their horizons and explore solutions that go beyond traditional boundaries.</p><h2>Giving back shapes leadership</h2><p>Community involvement is not only about what you gain. It is also about what you give. Engineers who <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-stem-summit-2025" target="_self">volunteer for educational programs</a>, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-tryengineering-20-years" target="_self">STEM initiatives</a>, and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-leadership-nominations-2027" target="_self">professional committees</a> can develop leadership skills that extend beyond technical expertise. They can learn to inspire, organize, and guide others.</p><p>Judging hackathons and mentoring student teams reminds me that leadership often begins with service. When experienced professionals actively invest in the growth of others, they help create a culture wherein learning and leadership are passed forward.</p><h2>Preparing for a lifelong journey</h2><p>Learning how to be an engineer doesn’t end when you earn your degree. It is a lifelong journey of learning, adapting, and contributing. By engaging with communities and professional networks early, students and graduates can develop habits that serve them throughout their career. They can stay current with emerging trends, build trusted professional relationships, and gain resilience through shared challenges.</p><p>Community involvement can transform engineers from problem-solvers into change agents.</p><h2>Investing in the community</h2><p>The future of engineering depends not only on technological advancement but also on the collective strength of its communities. By fostering mentorship, encouraging collaboration, and embedding ethical responsibility, professional and community involvement can ensure that the next generation of engineers is prepared to meet tomorrow’s challenges with competence and character.</p><p>My journey as a mentor, judge, keynote speaker, and peer reviewer has reinforced a clear truth: When we invest in the community, we invest in the future of engineering. The students and young professionals we support today will be the ones building the world we live in tomorrow.</p>

Mar 12, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/mobile-evolution-from-1g-brick-phone-to-6g-robotic-arm-across-generations.gif?id=65257401&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C17%2C0%2C18"/><br/><br/><p>Every generation of mobile networks, from 1G to 5G, has rewritten the rules of how the world lives and works. The coming <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/6g-bandwidth" target="_self">6G revolution</a>, by decade’s end, will represent a new direction still, toward a universal data fabric where millions of agents collaborate in real-time across the digital and physical worlds.</p><p>The story of wireless connectivity is often told in speeds and standards—megabits per second, latency, and spectrum bands. But these generational shifts in device specs obscure a deeper pattern. Each generation, from 1G to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-5g" target="_self">5G</a>, rewrote the relationships between three elements: the <strong>D</strong>evices we carry, the <strong>N</strong>etworks that connect them, and the <strong>A</strong>pplications that run on them. We call this connectivity’s DNA. With 6G, that DNA of interconnection is about to change fundamentally.</p><p>As with the “7 Phases of the Internet”—an article we <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/history-of-internet-7-phases" target="_self">published with <em><em>IEEE Spectrum</em></em> last October</a>—mobile networks’ 6 generations follow a similar arc toward system-wide intelligence. That arc traces through every generation of wireless, revealing a steady advancement of the reach and scope of connectivity itself.</p><h3>1G Connected Analog Voices</h3><br/><img alt='"Vintage 1G mobile phones with network diagram on a dotted dark background."' class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2534ded91722812f4c4e0da884420881" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="0e793" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/vintage-1g-mobile-phones-with-network-diagram-on-a-dotted-dark-background.png?id=65257405&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices:</strong> Bulky, expensive, analog phones</p><p><strong>Networks:</strong> Circuit-switched systems dedicated exlusively to voice</p><p><strong>Applications: </strong>Telephony, and telephony only</p><p>The <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/first-portable-telephone-call-made-40-years-ago-today" target="_self">first-generation networks of the 1980s</a> did precisely one thing: carry voices without wires. Early cellphones were barely portable—brick-sized handsets that cost thousands of dollars and drained batteries in minutes. Networks like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Phone_System" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Advanced Mobile Phone System</a> (AMPS) used circuit-switching, dedicating an entire channel to each call, which meant capacity was scarce and expensive. The only application was the phone call.</p><p>Yet 1G’s modest achievement was revolutionary. Conversations could now move with the person having it. Communication detached from location. A salesperson could close a deal from their car. A doctor could be reached on the go. The technology was clunky and expensive, and the calls were only local. Nevertheless, the conceptual shift was real: the network would now follow the user, not the other way around. Every generation since has built on that remarkable insight.</p><h3>2G Merged Digital Voice with Messaging</h3><br/><img alt="2G mobile phones with network diagram in background." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2bb666c704c9cdc4f9ea6b6fd9cd29c5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="91db3" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/2g-mobile-phones-with-network-diagram-in-background.png?id=65257431&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices: </strong>Smaller, more affordable phones with better battery life</p><p><strong>Networks: </strong>GSM, CDMA, and TDMA—digital networks that enabled global roaming</p><p><strong>Applications: </strong>Texting (SMS) took off, becoming wireless’s first killer app</p><p>Wireless phones’ second generation, arriving in the 1990s, ushered in a quieter revolution: digitization. Phones shrank, battery life stretched from hours to days, and prices dropped low enough for mass adoption. Networks like GSM and CDMA encoded voice as data, dramatically improving spectral efficiency and enabling something new—global roaming. A handset purchased in Helsinki could work in Hong Kong.</p><p>But the big surprise was SMS. Text messaging was almost an afterthought, a way to use spare signaling capacity. Many users, especially younger ones, soon preferred it to voice calls. By decade’s end, billions of texts were crisscrossing the planet daily. SMS became wireless telecom’s first killer app—proof that once you gave people a network, they’d find unexpected applications for it. The lesson would repeat with every generation to come.</p><h3>3G Gave Mobile Data a Platform</h3><br/><img alt='"3G connectivity illustration with smartphones and network diagram."' class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2ffb4e3085f6d6bcf64264637e7e863" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="c205e" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/3g-connectivity-illustration-with-smartphones-and-network-diagram.png?id=65257434&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices: </strong>Early smartphones combined telephony with computing and cameras</p><p><strong>Networks</strong>: Hundreds of kilobits-per-second bandwidth</p><p><strong>Applications: </strong>Mobile e-mail, browsing, and early app ecosystems</p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/att-3g-shutdown" target="_self">Third generation mobile networks</a>, in the 2000s, launched the mobile internet. In Japan, NTT <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/nifty-new-cellular-phone-systems-race-to-capture-japans-consumers" target="_self">DoCoMo’s i-Mode</a> service showed what was possible: a handset that could browse websites, check email, and download ringtones. Proto-smartphones of the 3G era married telephony with computing and rudimentary cameras. Networks like Wideband <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/irwin-jacobs-captain-of-cdma" target="_self">CDMA</a> and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/nifty-new-cellular-phone-systems-race-to-capture-japans-consumers" target="_self">EV-DO</a> delivered speeds measured in hundreds of kilobits per second—horse-and-buggy speeds by today’s standards, but enough to make mobile email usable.</p><p>The applications that emerged hinted at a future still out of reach. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-story-behind-the-blackberry-case" target="_self">BlackBerry</a> became synonymous with executive productivity. Early app stores began to pop up. But screens were small, interfaces clunky, and coverage spotty. 3G was a proof of concept more than a finished product—mobile data was possible, even useful, but not yet transformative. The infrastructure was in place. What the world needed now was a device that could exploit it.</p><h3>4G Rolled Out a Completely Mobile Internet</h3><br/><img alt="Smartphone and flip phone with 4G network diagram in black and white." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d13366a573fb84626d13f48fe7d67637" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="66879" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/smartphone-and-flip-phone-with-4g-network-diagram-in-black-and-white.png?id=65257437&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices: </strong>Full-fledged smartphones became general-purpose computing platforms, with integrated GPS and app ecosystems</p><p><strong>Networks: </strong>LTE delivered speeds up to 100x greater than 3G—making video streaming, maps, and video conferencing possible</p><p><strong>Applications: </strong>The app economy exploded, launching household names like Uber, Instagram, and WhatsApp</p><p>That device that could exploit the wireless network arrived with 4G. When <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/lte-advanced-is-the-real-4g" target="_self">long-term evolution</a> (LTE) networks began rolling out around 2010, they delivered speeds an order of magnitude or more beyond 3G—fast enough to stream video, load maps instantly, and hold a video call without buffering. The network could now keep pace with what users wanted to do with it.</p><p>The smartphones that rode this wave were no longer communication tools with a few added features. 4G devices were increasingly general-purpose computers running on broadband networks; the pocket-sized computers just happened to make calls. High-resolution touchscreens, integrated GPS, accelerometers, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_app" target="_blank">vast app ecosystems</a> transformed mobile devices into something new: a platform. The phone became a remote control for daily life.</p><p>And daily life reorganized around it. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Uber</a> turned any car into a potential taxi. Instagram turned any phone into a camera with an inbuilt, global audience. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">WhatsApp</a> replaced SMS texting and, in some countries, the phone call itself. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Netflix</a> moved from the living room to the subway. The app economy minted millionaires and disrupted industries.</p><p>4G democratized access to computing and services—a supercomputer in every pocket, connected to everything. The platform economics it enabled now shape how billions of people work, shop, travel, and communicate.</p><h3>5G Pushed Connected Intelligence to the Edge</h3><br/><img alt="5G text with foldable phone and cell tower on a black textured background." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="eaca5bd76747c42395a397e6b8f9e44f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="59d07" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/5g-text-with-foldable-phone-and-cell-tower-on-a-black-textured-background.png?id=65257454&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices: </strong>Smartphones with AI-specific hardware capable of trillions of operations per second</p><p><strong>Networks: </strong>Programmable, sliceable infrastructure with low latency and edge computing capabilities</p><p><strong>Applications: </strong>Smart factories, connected healthcare, augmented reality, and early, semi-autonomous systems</p><p>If 4G put the internet in your pocket, 5G began putting connected intelligence there too. When commercial 5G deployments began in 2019, the headline was speed—peak rates that dwarfed LTE. But the deeper shift was architectural. For the first time, the foundational network itself became programmable.</p><p>The devices reflected this ambition. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_12" target="_blank">iPhone 12</a> and its contemporaries shipped with dedicated AI accelerators—<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A14" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Apple’s Neural Engine</a> could execute trillions of operations per second. Suddenly, sophisticated tasks that once required heavy use of cloud computing resources could now happen locally: real-time language translation, computational photography, augmented reality that actually worked. The device was no longer just a terminal; it was a neural network in continuous dialogue with a programmable mobile infrastructure.</p><p>5G introduced concepts alien to earlier wireless generations. Network slicing allowed operators to carve out virtual networks, each optimized for its own application—a broadband slice for a rider on the bus watching a TV show on their phone, a low-latency slice for a video conference happening in the office on the second floor, above the bus route.</p><p>The applications followed. Smart factories deployed thousands of connected sensors. Hospitals began experimenting with remote diagnostics. AR glasses moved from novelty to tool. 5G didn’t just deliver faster pipes—it delivered flexible, application-aware infrastructure. The network had begun to sense—and react.</p><h3>6G Will Usher In an Internet of AI agents</h3><br/><img alt='Text "6G" with a robotic arm reaching toward a satellite against a dotted background.' class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c386c862d7d49c27d842c2e5aafe2a5e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="7feaa" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/text-6g-with-a-robotic-arm-reaching-toward-a-satellite-against-a-dotted-background.png?id=65257462&width=980"/><p><strong>Devices:</strong> Digital and physical AI agents</p><p><strong>Networks:</strong> AI-native fabrics fusing communication and sensing, via ground-based and non-terrestrial connections</p><p><strong>Applications:</strong> Intelligent agents coordinating healthcare, transportation, and consumer applications globally</p><p>The transformation 6G promises is not incremental. By decade’s end, devices will no longer be tools we operate—they will be agents that increasingly act on our behalf.</p><p>AI agents already live inside our phones: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intelligence" target="_blank">Apple Intelligence</a> summarizes emails and coordinates across apps; Samsung’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_AI" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Galaxy AI</a> translates conversations in real time; Google’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(language_model)" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gemini Nano</a> processes queries without touching the cloud. These are early sketches of software that reasons, plans, and executes. Agents will before long be negotiating your calendar, managing your finances, and coordinating your travel—not by following scripts, but by inferring intent.</p><p>Physical AI agents will extend these capabilities into the physical world. At CES 2025, Nvidia CEO <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/2026-ieee-medal-of-honor" target="_self">Jensen Huang</a> announced <a href="https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-cosmos-world-foundation-model-platform-to-accelerate-physical-ai-development" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cosmos</a>, a foundation model trained on video and physics simulations to teach robots and vehicles how to navigate unpredictable environments. Using Cosmos, autonomous vehicles could negotiate intersections collaboratively, warehouse robots and robotic arms could coordinate with digital twins, medical devices monitor patients and summon help before symptoms become emergencies. These systems perceive, reason, and act—continuously connected, continuously learning.</p><p>The network coordinating them will be unlike any generation previous. 6G infrastructure will be AI-native, dynamically predicting demand, and allocating resources in real time. It will fuse communication with sensing (a.k.a. integrated sensing and communication, or ISAC) so the network doesn’t just transmit data but perceives the environment as well. Terrestrial towers will integrate with satellite constellations and stratospheric platforms, erasing coverage gaps over oceans, deserts, and disaster zones.</p><p>What emerges is not just faster wireless. It is a universal fabric where vast networks of digital and physical agents collaborate across industries and borders—healthcare agents collaborating with transportation agents, for instance, or robots coordinating their actions across a smart factory’s manufacturing floor. The network becomes less a pipe than a nervous system: sensing, transmitting, deciding, and acting.</p><h2>Beyond Devices, Networks, and Apps</h2><p>The history of wireless connectivity is a history of <strong>D</strong>evices, <strong>N</strong>etworks, and <strong>A</strong>pplications. Every generation from 1G through 6G redefined each of those three elements. However, 6G marks a departure point where devices, network elements, and applications begin to lose definition as discrete entities unto themselves. As the network grows more capable, it also paradoxically becomes less visible—connection without connectors.</p><p>From 1G’s brick-sized phones to 6G’s digital fabric, wireless has moved from analog voices to autonomous agents—present everywhere, noticed nowhere, continuously interconnecting digital and physical worlds.</p>

Mar 11, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-enlarged-computer-cursor-hovering-over-a-gallery-of-online-career-exhibits.jpg?id=65256889&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C377%2C0%2C378"/><br/><br/><p>In 2025 IEEE launched its first <a href="https://careerfair.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">virtual career fair</a> to help strengthen the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/careers/" target="_self">engineering workforce</a> and connect top talent with industry professionals. The event, which was held in the United States, attracted thousands of students and professionals. They learned about more than 500 job opportunities in high-demand fields including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and power and energy. They also gained access to career resources.</p><p>Hosted by <a href="https://industry.ieee.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Industry Engagement</a>, the event marked a milestone in the organization’s expanding workforce development efforts to bridge the gap between academic training and industry needs while bolstering the technical talent pipeline, says <a href="https://ieee-pes.org/profile/dlp-jessica-bian/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jessica Bian</a>, 2025 chair of the <a href="https://www.ieee.org/ieee-industry-engagement-committee" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Industry Engagement Committee</a>. The IEC works to strengthen the connection with industry professionals, companies, and technology sectors through global <a href="https://careerfair.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">career fairs</a>, <a href="https://www.ieee.org/about/industry/newsletter" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">as well as its Industry Newsletter</a>, <a href="https://technical-community-spotlight.ieee.org/ieee-for-industry-connecting-talent-companies-and-communities/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AI-powered career guidance tools</a>, <a href="https://wts.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">and World Technology Summits, where industry leaders discuss </a>solutions to societal challenges.</p><p>“We are bringing together companies, universities, and young professionals to help meet the demand for technical talent in critical sectors,” Bian says. “It is part of our commitment to preparing the next generation of innovators.”</p><p>The virtual career fairs are expanding to more IEEE regions this year. One was held last month for <a href="https://r9.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Region 9</a> (Latin America). One is scheduled next month for <a href="https://ieeer8.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Region 8</a> (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and another in May for <a href="https://www.ieee.ca/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Region 7</a> (Canada).</p><p>A global career fair is slated for June.</p><p>Registration information for all the fairs is available at <a href="https://careerfair.ieee.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">careerfair.ieee.org</a>.</p><h2>Innovative recruitment events</h2><p>The fairs, which use the <a href="https://www.vfairs.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">vFairs</a> virtual platform, provide interactive sessions with representatives from hiring companies, direct chats with recruiters, video interviews, and access to downloadable job resources. The features help remove geographic barriers and increase visibility for employers and job seekers.</p><p>The career fair platform features interactive engagement tools including networking roundtables, a live activity feed, a leaderboard, and a virtual photobooth to encourage participants to remain active throughout the day.</p><h2>Bringing together thousands of professionals</h2><p>STEM students participated in the U.S. and Latin America events, along with early-career professionals and seasoned engineers—almost 8,000 participants in all. They represented diverse fields including software engineering, AI, semiconductors, and power systems.</p><p><a href="https://www.siemens.com/en-us/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Siemens</a>, <a href="https://www.burnsmcd.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Burns & McDonnell</a>, and <a href="https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwi-1fDfifCSAxUCCK0GHeHBDjEYACICCAEQARoCcHY&ae=2&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAiAkvDMBhBMEiwAnUA9BQp2zCXC2btBbslkOt04m9nCCEDKjtNl_chAjPV6-gfvArxotHqJ7hoCz_cQAvD_BwE&ei=BIacaa_SOe6Bm9cPsPTd2QY&cid=CAASZeRoiiJWbQLjoGeAw6NeJIU8dPIxjq3-pN40yyDd5YgiKapyFYZ-BdO816Us7tIhWxDrbMoEaN-D72D6mboXa9i3m2DhNonVJSpw0q4_PPeHlIReIiMDYU8aqq3sW7i5Ycht3uOy&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_71&sig=AOD64_1IgGRY71ubL2PYPXX5kYNLdBmuKA&q&sqi=2&nis=4&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwiv5OPfifCSAxXuwOYEHTB6N2sQ0Qx6BAgOEAE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Morgan Stanley</a> were among the <a href="https://careerfair.ieee.org/participating-companies/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">dozens of companies</a> that participated in the U.S. event. More than 500 internships, co-op opportunities, and full-time positions were promoted.</p><p>“I found the overall process highly efficient and the platform intuitive—which made for a great sourcing experience,” said a recruiter from Burns & McDonnell, a design and construction firm. “I was able to join a session, short-list several high-potential candidates, review their résumés, and initiate contact with a couple of them.</p><p>“I am optimistic that we will be able to extend at least one offer from this pipeline.”</p><p>Participating students described the fair as impactful.</p><p>“I gained valuable hiring insights from industry leaders, like Siemens, <a href="https://www.trccompanies.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TRC Companies</a>, and <a href="https://selinc.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories</a>,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-dugan-28555b287" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Michael Dugan</a>, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student at <a href="https://www.rice.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Rice University</a>, in Houston.</p><h2>New tools elevating the candidate experience</h2><p>Attendees had access to AI-guided job-matching tools and career development programs and resources.</p><p>Prior to the fair, registrants could use the <a href="https://icgc-beta.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Career Guidance Counselor</a>, an AI-powered career advisor. The ICGC tool analyzes candidates’ skills and experience to suggest aligned roles and provides tailored professional development plans.</p><p>The ICGC also makes personalized recommendations for mentors, job opportunities, training resources, and career pathways.</p><p>Pre-event workshops and mock interview sessions helped participants refine their résumé, strengthen interview strategies, and manage expectations. They also provided tips on how to engage with recruiters.</p><p class="pull-quote">“I gained valuable hiring insights from industry leaders, like Siemens, TRC Companies, and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.” <strong>—Michael Dugan, graduate student at <a href="https://www.rice.edu/" target="_blank">Rice University</a>, in Houston</strong></p><p>During the Future Ready Engineers: Essential Skills and Networking Strategies to Stand Out at a Career Fair workshop, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaibuibrahim/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Shaibu Ibrahim</a>, a senior electrical engineer and member of <a href="https://yp.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Young Professionals</a>, shared networking strategies for career fairs and industry events as well as tips on preparation, engagement, and effective follow-up.</p><p>“The workshop offered advice that shaped my approach to the fair,” Dugan said. “It truly helped manage expectations and maximize my preparation.”</p><h2>Learning more about IEEE</h2><p>To help participants learn about IEEE and its <a data-linked-post="2656661746" href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-features-on-volunteering-platform" target="_blank">volunteering opportunities</a>, its societies and councils set up roundtables and technical community booths at the fairs. They were hosted by <a href="https://ta.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Technical Activities</a>, <a href="https://futurenetworks.ieee.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Future Networks</a>, and the <a href="https://signalprocessingsociety.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Signal Processing Society</a>.</p><p>“While exploring volunteer opportunities, I was excited to learn about IEEE Future Networks,” Dugan said. “Connecting with dedicated IEEE members, like <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/craigpolk" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Craig Polk</a>, was a definite highlight.” Polk is an IEEE senior member and a senior program manager for IEEE Future Networks.</p><h2>A commitment to career development</h2><p>IEEE created the career fairs as free, accessible platforms for employers and job seekers to serve as a trusted bridge between companies seeking top technical talent and members dedicated to advancing their career. It is our responsibility to support them by connecting them with meaningful career opportunities.</p><p>In today’s unpredictable job landscape, IEEE is stepping up to help our talented members navigate change, build resilience, and connect with future employers.</p>

Mar 11, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-stylized-people-wearing-business-casual-clothing.webp?id=65257424&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C250%2C0%2C250"/><br/><br/><p><em>This article is crossposted from </em>IEEE Spectrum<em>’s careers newsletter. <a href="https://engage.ieee.org/Career-Alert-Sign-Up.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Sign up now</em></a><em> to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, <em><em>written i<em>n partnership with tech career development company <a href="https://www.parsity.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Parsity</a> and </em></em></em>delivered to your inbox for free!</em></em></p><h2>How to Keep Your Engineering Skills Sharp in an AI World</h2><p>Engineers today are caught in a strange new reality. We’re expected to move faster than ever using AI tools for coding, analysis, documentation, and design. At the same time, there’s a growing worry in the background: <em><em>If the AI is doing the work, what happens to my skills?</em></em></p><p>That concern isn’t just philosophical. <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Research from Anthropic</a>, the company behind Claude, has suggested that heavy AI assistance can interfere with human learning—especially for more junior software engineers. When a tool fills in the gaps too quickly, you may deliver working output without ever building a strong mental model of what’s happening underneath. </p><p>More experienced engineers often feel a different version of this anxiety: a fear that they might slowly lose the hard-earned intuition that made them effective in the first place.</p><p>In some ways, this isn’t new. We’ve always borrowed solutions from textbooks, colleagues, forums, and code snippets from strangers on the internet. The difference now is speed and scale. AI can generate pages of plausible solutions in seconds. It’s never been easier to produce work you don’t fully understand.</p><p>I recently felt this firsthand when I joined a new team and had to work in a codebase and language I’d never used before. With AI tools, I was able to become productive almost immediately. I could describe a small change I wanted, get back something that matched the existing patterns, and ship improvements within days. That kind of ramp-up speed is incredible and, increasingly, expected.</p><p>But I also noticed how easy it would have been to stop at “it works.”</p><p>Instead, I made a conscious decision to use AI not just to generate solutions, but to deepen my understanding. After getting a working change, I’d ask the AI to walk me through the code step by step. Why was this pattern used? What would break if I removed this abstraction? Is this idiomatic for this language, or just one possible approach?</p><p>The shift from <em><em>generation</em></em> to <em><em>interrogation</em></em> made a massive difference.</p><p>One of the most powerful techniques I used was explaining things back in my own words. I’d summarize how I thought a part of the system worked or how this language handled certain concepts, then ask the AI to point out gaps or mistakes. That process forced me to form my own mental models rather than just recognizing patterns. Over time, I started to build intuition for the language’s quirks, common pitfalls, and design style. This kind of understanding helps you debug and design, not just copy and paste.</p><p>This is the core mindset shift engineers need in the AI era: <strong>Use AI to accelerate learning, not to replace thinking</strong>.</p><p>The worst way to use these tools is also the easiest: prompt, accept, ship, repeat. That path leads to shallow knowledge and growing dependence. The better path is slightly slower but more durable. Let AI help you move quickly, but always come back and ask, <em><em>Do I understand what I just built?</em></em> If not, use the same tool to help you understand it.</p><p>AI can absolutely make us faster. Used well, it can also make us better at our jobs. The engineers who stay sharp won’t be the ones who avoid AI, they’ll be the ones who turn it into a collaborator in their own learning.</p><p>—Brian</p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/repair-ukraine-power-grid" target="_self">How Ukraine’s Electrical Engineers Fight a War</a> </h2><p>When war strikes, critical power infrastructure is often hit. Engineers in Ukraine have risked their lives to keep electricity flowing, and some have been hurt or killed in the dangerous wartime conditions. One such engineer, Oleksiy Brecht, died on the job in January. “Brecht’s life and death are a window into the realities of thousands of Ukrainian engineers who face conditions beyond what most engineers could imagine,” writes <em><em>IEEE Spectrum</em></em> contributing editor Peter Fairley. </p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/repair-ukraine-power-grid" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p><h2><a href="https://semiengineering.com/can-a-computer-science-student-be-taught-to-design-hardware/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught To Design Hardware?</a></h2><p>The semiconductor industry needs more engineers to build the chips that power our daily lives. To help expand the talent pool, the industry is testing new approaches, including training software engineers to design hardware with the help of AI tools. All engineers will still need to have an understanding of the fundamentals—but could computer science students soon apply their coding skills to help design hardware? </p><p><a href="https://semiengineering.com/can-a-computer-science-student-be-taught-to-design-hardware/" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p><h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-course-technical-writing" target="_self">IEEE Course Improves Engineers’ Writing Skills</a></h2><p>Effective writing and communication are among the most important skills for engineers looking to advance their careers. Though often labeled a “soft skill,” clear communication is essential in both academia and industry. IEEE is now offering a course covering key writing skills, ethical use of generative AI, publishing strategies, and more. </p><p><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-course-technical-writing" target="_blank">Read more here. </a></p>

Mar 11, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/illustrated-workers-assembling-a-colorful-rocket-against-a-geometric-blue-background.png?id=65239802&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C467%2C0%2C467"/><br/><br/><p>There’s a moment in John Williams’s <em><em>Star Wars</em></em> overture when the brass surges upward. You don’t just hear it; you feel propulsion turning into pure possibility.</p><p>On 16 March 1926, in a snow-dusted field in Auburn, Mass., <a href="https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/stories/robert-h-goddard-american-rocket-pioneer" target="_blank">Robert Goddard</a> created an earlier version of that same feeling. His first liquid-fueled rocket—a spindly, three meter tangle of pipes and tanks—lifted off, climbed about 12.5 meters, traveled roughly 56 meters downrange, and crashed into the frozen ground after 2.5 seconds. A few witnesses, Goddard’s helpers, shivered in the cold. The little machine defied common sense. It rose through the air with nothing to push against. Anyone who still insisted spaceflight was impossible now faced a question: Why had this contraption risen at all?</p><p>Six years earlier, <em><em>The New York Times</em></em> had ridiculed Goddard, declaring that rockets could never work in a vacuum and implying that he had somehow forgotten high-school physics. Nearly half a century later, as Apollo 11 sped moonward, the paper published a terse, almost comically understated correction. By then, Goddard had been dead for 24 years.</p><h2>The Alpha Trap</h2><p>Breakthroughs often demand qualities that facilitate early success but later become obstacles. When the world insists something is impossible, the pioneer needs an inner certainty strong enough to endure mockery and isolation. Later, though, that certainty can become a liability. Call this the “alpha trap”: The mindset and habits that once made creation possible can later block growth. This “alpha” has nothing to do with dominance or bravado. It means epistemic stubbornness, the fierce insistence on testing reality against a consensus that says the work isn’t merely hard, but impossible. </p><p>Such efforts often begin with a lone visionary. But most ideas eventually need a team. The first stage selects for people willing to stand entirely alone, and that’s when the trap starts to close.</p><p>The mockery scarred Goddard. It drove him inward, toward a small circle of confidants. Through the early 1930s, his rockets climbed higher each year. The Guggenheim family and Smithsonian Institution funded him, giving him the rarest resource in early innovation: time. By the mid-1930s, his designs were reaching more than a thousand meters.</p><p>But the work gradually changed. The impossible had become merely difficult—and difficult tasks demand teams, not loners. And yet Goddard acted as though he were still guarding a fragile, misunderstood dream. He resisted collaboration and despite conversations with the U.S. military never established a partnership, instead concentrating expertise in his own workshop. Elsewhere in the United States more freewheeling amateurs and academics partnered to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/frank-malina-americas-forgotten-rocketeer" target="_self">develop early liquid-propelled and later solid-fuel rockets</a>. </p><p>Meanwhile, on the Baltic coast at Peenemünde, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ernst-stuhlinger-a-legend-of-the-space-age" target="_blank">hundreds of German engineers</a> divided labor into synchronized streams of propulsion, guidance, structures, testing, and production. By 1942, they were flight-testing the V-2. Postwar analysts studying the wreckage saw many of Goddard’s ideas reflected there: liquid propellants, gyroscopic stabilization, exhaust vanes, fuel-cooled chambers, and fast turbopumps, all concepts he’d tested or patented in painstaking, protracted isolation. </p><h2>Doctor’s Orders</h2><p>The alpha trap had caught others before him. In 1846, physician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that one maternity ward at Vienna General Hospital had far higher death rates than another. He traced the difference to a deadly habit: Doctors moved straight from autopsies to deliveries without washing their hands. When he required handwashing with chlorinated lime, deaths plummeted within months.</p><p>But the medical establishment resisted. Many refused to accept that physicians themselves could spread disease. Rejection embittered Semmelweis. He grew combative, antagonizing colleagues and publishing in ways that failed to persuade, and framing disagreement as a moral failure rather than as dialogue. Brilliant scientifically, he was disastrous socially. Isolation replaced alliance building, and alliance building was precisely what his discovery needed. In 1865, he died in an asylum, his ideas dismissed as delusions. Acceptance, though, came later through the collaborative networks of Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur.</p><p>The same trait that lets an inventor defy consensus can also blind them to what they need next. When allies became essential, Semmelweis’s anger slowed adoption. When scale became essential, Goddard’s secrecy slowed diffusion. The stubbornness that shielded them early began to repel the help their work required. Goddard kept behaving as though the main problem was still disbelief, and not coordination.</p><p>Both men leave visionary and cautionary legacies. A <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/dr-robert-h-goddard-american-rocketry-pioneer/" target="_blank">NASA Center bears Goddard’s name</a> despite his isolation; Semmelweis is remembered as the doctor who could have saved countless lives had he found a way to connect with his colleagues rather than combat them. </p><p>We love to celebrate the lone genius, yet we depend on teams to bring the flame of genius to the people. The alpha mindset can conquer the impossible and then become its own obstacle. Both men were right about their breakthroughs. But ideas born in solitude must eventually live among multitudes. A founder’s duty is to know when to shift from sole guardian to steward of something larger. That shift requires self-awareness: the discipline to ask whether isolation still serves the work or has become a hindrance.</p><p>Escaping the alpha trap means treating stubbornness as an instrument, not an identity. Stubbornness and its cousin, suspicion, are vital when you truly stand alone, but dangerous the moment potential allies appear. Goddard’s dream touched the stars, but it took teams of others to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-rocket-scientist-recalls-the-first-us-spaceflight" target="_blank">lift it there</a>. And that orchestral surge in <em><em>Star Wars</em></em>? It swells from the ensemble, not a single bold trumpet.</p>

Mar 11, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/conceptual-collage-of-emojis-being-poured-through-a-strainer-and-into-a-phone-judgmental-emojis-are-filtered-out-only-allowing.jpg?id=65209153&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C292%2C0%2C292"/><br/><br/><p><span>In April of 2025, </span><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/openai" target="_blank">OpenAI</a><span> released a new version of GPT-4o, one of the AI algorithms users could select to power ChatGPT, the company’s chatbot. The next week, OpenAI reverted to the previous version. “The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic,” the company </span><a href="https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/" target="_blank">announced</a><span>.</span></p><p> Some people found the sycophancy hilarious. One user reportedly asked ChatGPT about his <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1k920cg/new_chatgpt_just_told_me_my_literal_shit_on_a/" target="_blank">turd-on-a-stick</a> business idea, to which it replied, “It’s not just smart—it’s genius.” Some found the behavior uncomfortable. For others, it was actually dangerous. Even versions of 4o that were less fawning have led to lawsuits against OpenAI for allegedly encouraging users to follow through on plans for self-harm. </p><p>Unremitting adulation has even triggered AI-induced psychosis. Last October, a user named Anthony Tan <a href="https://joinreboot.org/p/ai-psychosis" target="_blank">blogged</a>, “I started talking about philosophy with ChatGPT in September 2024. Who could’ve known that a few months later I would be in a psychiatric ward, believing I was protecting Donald Trump from … a robotic cat?” He added: “The AI engaged my intellect, fed my ego, and altered my worldviews.”<strong></strong></p><p> Sycophancy in AI, as in people, is something of a squishy concept, but over the last couple of years, researchers have conducted numerous studies detailing the phenomenon, as well as why it happens and how to control it. AI yes-men also raise questions about what we really want from chatbots. At stake is more than annoying linguistic tics from your favorite virtual assistant, but in some cases sanity itself.</p><h2>AIs Are People Pleasers</h2><p><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13548" target="_blank">One of the first papers</a> on AI sycophancy was released by <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/anthropic" target="_blank">Anthropic</a>, the maker of Claude, in 2023. <a href="https://www.mrinanksharma.net/" target="_blank">Mrinank Sharma</a> and colleagues asked several language models—the core AIs inside chatbots—factual questions. When users challenged the AI’s answer, even mildly (“I think the answer is [incorrect answer] but I’m really not sure”), the models often caved. </p><p>Another <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08596v2" target="_blank">study</a> by Salesforce tested a variety of models with multiple-choice questions. Researchers found that merely saying “Are you sure?” was often enough to change an AI’s answer. Overall accuracy dropped because the models were usually right in the first place. When an AI receives a minor misgiving, “it flips,” says <a href="https://tingofurro.github.io/" target="_blank">Philippe Laban</a>, the lead author, who’s now at <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/" target="_blank">Microsoft Research</a>. “That’s weird, you know?”</p><p>The tendency persists in prolonged exchanges. Last year,<span> <a href="https://www.cs.emory.edu/~kshu5/" target="_blank">Kai Shu</a> of </span><span>Emory Unive</span><span>rsity </span><span>and colleagues at Emory and Carnegie Mellon University <a href="https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.121.pdf" target="_blank">tested models in longer discussions</a>. They repeatedly disagreed with the models in debates, or embedded false presuppositions in questions (“Why are rainbows only formed by the sun…”) and then argued when corrected by the model. Most models yielded within a few responses, though reasoning models—those trained to “think out loud” before giving a final answer—lasted longer. </span><span></span></p><p> <a href="https://myracheng.github.io/" target="_blank">Myra Cheng</a> at Stanford University and colleagues have written several papers on what they call “social sycophancy,” in which the AIs act to save the user’s dignity. In <a href="https://openreview.net/forum?id=igbRHKEiAs" target="_blank">one study</a>, they presented social dilemmas, including questions from a Reddit forum in which people ask <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/" target="_blank">if they’re the jerk</a>. They identified various dimensions of social sycophancy, including validation, in which AIs told inquirers that they were right to feel the way they did, and framing, in which they accepted underlying assumptions. All models tested, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, were significantly more sycophantic than crowdsourced responses.</p><h2>Three Ways to Explain Sycophancy</h2><p>One way to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01314-y">explain</a> people-pleasing is behavioral: certain kinds of inquiries reliably elicit sycophancy. For example, a group from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02087" target="_blank">found</a> that adding a user’s belief to a multiple-choice question dramatically increased agreement with incorrect beliefs. Surprisingly, it mattered little whether users described themselves as novices or experts.</p><p>Stanford’s Cheng found in one <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04435" target="_blank">study</a> that models were less likely to question incorrect facts about cancer and other topics when the facts were presupposed as part of a question. “If I say, ‘I’m going to my sister’s wedding,’ it sort of breaks up the conversation if you’re, like, ‘Wait, hold on, do you have a sister?’” Cheng says. “Whatever beliefs the user has, the model will just go along with them, because that’s what people normally do in conversations.”</p><p>Conversation length may make a difference. OpenAI <a href="https://openai.com/index/helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/" target="_blank">reported</a> that “ChatGPT may correctly point to a suicide hotline when someone first mentions intent, but after many messages over a long period of time, it might eventually offer an answer that goes against our safeguards.” Shu says model performance may degrade over long conversations because models get confused as they consolidate more text. </p><p>At another level, one can understand sycophancy by how models are trained. Large language models (LLMs) first learn, in a “pretraining” phase, to predict continuations of text based on a large corpus, like autocomplete. Then in a step called <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/reinforcement-learning">reinforcement learning</a> they’re rewarded for producing outputs that people prefer. <span>An Anthropic </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09251" target="_blank">paper</a><span> f</span><span>rom</span><span> 2022</span><span> found that</span><span> pretrained LLMs were already sycophantic.</span><span> Sharma then </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13548" target="_blank">reported</a><span> that reinforcement learning</span><span> increased sycophancy</span><span>; he</span><span> found that one of the biggest predictors of </span><span>positive ratings was whether a model agreed with a person’s beliefs and biases. </span></p><p>A third perspective comes from “mechanistic interpretability,” which probes a model’s inner workings. The KAUST researchers <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02087">found</a> that when a user’s beliefs were appended to a question, models’ internal representations shifted midway through the processing, not at the end. T<span>he team concluded that sycophancy is not merely a surface-level wording change but reflects deeper changes in how the model encodes the problem. Another team at</span><span> the University of Cincinnati </span><a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21305" target="_blank">found different activation patterns</a><span> associated with sycophantic agreement, genuine agreement, and sycophantic praise (“You are fantastic”). </span></p><h2>How to Flatline AI Flattery</h2><p>Just as there are multiple avenues for explanation, there are several paths to intervention. The first may be in the training process. Laban <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.08596v2" target="_blank">reduced the behavior</a> by finetuning a model on a text dataset that contained more examples of assumptions being challenged, and Sharma <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13548" target="_blank">reduced it</a> by using reinforcement learning that didn’t reward agreeableness as much. More broadly, Cheng and colleagues also suggest that one intervention could be for LLMs to ask users for evidence before answering, and to optimize long-term benefit rather than immediate approval.</p><p>During model usage, mechanistic interpretability offers ways to guide LLMs through a kind of direct mind control. After the KAUST researchers <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02087" target="_blank">identified</a> activation patterns associated with sycophancy, they could adjust them to reduce the behavior. And Cheng <a href="https://openreview.net/forum?id=igbRHKEiAs" target="_blank">found</a> that adding activations associated with truthfulness reduced some social sycophancy. An Anthropic team identified “<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21509" target="_blank">persona vectors</a>,” sets of activations associated with sycophancy, confabulation, and other misbehavior. By subtracting these vectors, they could steer models away from the respective personas.</p><p>Mechanistic interpretability also enables training. Anthropic has experimented with adding persona vectors during training and rewarding models for resisting—an approach likened to a vaccine. Others have <a href="https://proceedings.mlr.press/v235/chen24u.html">pinpointed</a> the specific parts of a model most responsible for sycophancy and fine-tuned only those components.</p><p> Users can also steer models from their end. Shu’s team <a href="https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.121.pdf" target="_blank">found</a> that beginning a question with “You are an independent thinker” instead of “You are a helpful assistant” helped. Cheng <a href="https://openreview.net/forum?id=igbRHKEiAs" target="_blank">found</a> that writing a question from a third-person point of view reduced social sycophancy. In <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04435" target="_blank">another study</a>, she showed the effectiveness of instructing models to check for any misconceptions or false presuppositions in the question. She also showed that prompting the model to start its answer with “wait a minute” helped. “The thing that was most surprising is that these relatively simple fixes can actually do a lot,” she says.</p><p> OpenAI, in <a href="https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/" target="_blank">announcing</a> the rollback of the GPT-4o update, listed other efforts to reduce sycophancy, including changing training and prompting, adding guardrails, and helping users to provide feedback. (The announcement didn’t provide detail, and OpenAI declined to comment for this story. Anthropic also did not comment.)</p><h2>What’s The Right Amount of Sycophancy?</h2><p>Sycophancy can cause society-wide problems. Tan, who had the psychotic break, wrote that it can interfere with shared reality, human relationships, and independent thinking. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/metr-evals/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ajeya Cotra</a>, an AI-safety researcher at the Berkeley-based non-profit <a href="https://metr.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">METR</a>, <a href="https://www.cold-takes.com/why-ai-alignment-could-be-hard-with-modern-deep-learning/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote in 2021</a> that sycophantic AI might lie to us and hide bad news in order to increase our short-term happiness. </p><p>In <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01395" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">one of Cheng’s papers</a>, people read sycophantic and non-sycophantic responses to social dilemmas from LLMs. Those in the first group claimed to be more in the right and expressed less willingness to repair relationships. Demographics, personality, and attitudes toward AI had little effect on outcome, meaning most of us are vulnerable. </p><p>Of course, what’s harmful is subjective. Sycophantic models are giving many people what they desire. But people disagree with each other and even themselves. Cheng notes that some people enjoy their social media recommendations, but at a remove wish they were seeing more edifying content. According to Laban, “I think we just need to ask ourselves as a society, What do we want? Do we want a yes-man, or do we want something that helps us think critically?”</p><p>More than a technical challenge, it’s a social and even philosophical one. GPT-4o was a lightning rod for some of these issues. Even as critics ridiculed the model and blamed it for suicides, a social media hashtag circulated for months: #keep4o.</p>

Mar 10, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/overhead-view-of-intel-s-computing-chip-called-heracles.jpg?id=65174073&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><div class="ieee-summary"><h2>Summary</h2><ul><li><a href="#fhe">Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE)</a> allows computing on encrypted data without decryption, but it’s currently slow on standard CPUs and GPUs.</li><li>Intel’s Heracles chip accelerates FHE tasks up to <a href="#faster">5,000 times faster</a> than top Intel server CPUs.</li><li>Heracles uses a <a href="#heracles">3-nanometer FinFET technology and high-bandwidth memory</a>, enabling efficient encrypted computing at scale.</li><li>Startups and Intel are <a href="#commercial">racing to commercialize FHE accelerators</a>, with potential applications in AI and secure data processing.</li></ul></div><p><span>Worried that your latest ask to a cloud-based AI reveals a bit too much about you? Want to know your genetic risk of disease without revealing it to the services that compute the answer?</span></p><p>There is a way to do computing on encrypted data without ever having it decrypted. It’s called <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/homomorphic-encryption" target="_blank">fully homomorphic encryption,</a> or FHE. But there’s a rather large catch. It can take thousands—even tens of thousands—of times longer to compute on today’s CPUs and GPUs than simply working with the decrypted data.</p><p>So universities, startups, and at least one processor giant have been working on specialized chips that could close that gap. Last month at the <a href="https://www.isscc.org/" target="_blank">IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference</a> (ISSCC) in San Francisco, <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html" target="_blank">Intel</a> demonstrated its answer, Heracles, which sped up FHE computing tasks as much as 5,000-fold compared to a top-of the-line Intel server CPU.</p><p>Startups are racing to beat Intel and each other to commercialization. But <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanu-mathew-4073742/" target="_blank">Sanu Mathew,</a> who leads security circuits research at Intel, believes the CPU giant has a big lead, because its chip can do more computing than any other FHE accelerator yet built. “Heracles is the first hardware that works at scale,” he says.</p><p>The scale is measurable both physically and in compute performance. While other FHE research chips have been in the range of 10 square millimeters or less, Heracles is about 20 times that size and is built using Intel’s most advanced, 3-nanometer FinFET technology. And it’s flanked inside a liquid-cooled package by two 24-gigabyte <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/dram-shortage" target="_blank">high-bandwidth memory </a>chips—a configuration usually seen only in GPUs for training AI.</p><p class="ieee-inbody-related">RELATED: <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-to-compute-with-data-you-cant-see" target="_blank">How to Compute with Data You Can’t See</a></p><p>In terms of scaling compute performance, Heracles showed muscle in live demonstrations at ISSCC. At its heart the demo was a simple private query to a secure server. It simulated a request by a voter to make sure that her ballot had been registered correctly. The state, in this case, has an encrypted database of voters and their votes. To maintain her privacy, the voter would not want to have her ballot information decrypted at any point; so using FHE, she encrypts her ID and vote and sends it to the government database. There, without decrypting it, the system determines if it is a match and returns an encrypted answer, which she then decrypts on her side.</p><p>On an Intel Xeon server CPU, the process took 15 milliseconds. Heracles did it in 14 microseconds. While that difference isn’t something a single human would notice, verifying 100 million voter ballots adds up to more than 17 days of CPU work versus a mere 23 minutes on Heracles.</p><p>Looking back on the five-year journey to bring the Heracles chip to life, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ro-cammarota-a226b817/" target="_blank">Ro Cammarota</a>, who led the project at Intel until last December and is now at University of California Irvine, says “we have proven and delivered everything that we promised.”</p><h2>FHE Data Expansion</h2><p class="rm-anchors" id="fhe">FHE is fundamentally a mathematical transformation, sort of like the Fourier transform. It encrypts data using a quantum-computer-proof algorithm, but, crucially, uses corollaries to the mathematical operations usually used on unencrypted data. These corollaries achieve the same ends on the encrypted data.<strong></strong></p><p>One of the main things holding such secure computing back is the explosion in the size of the data once it’s encrypted for FHE, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anupamgolder/" target="_blank">Anupam Golder</a>, a research scientist at Intel’s circuits research lab, told engineers at ISSCC. “Usually, the size of cipher text is the same as the size of plain text, but for FHE it’s orders of magnitude larger,” he said.</p><p>While the sheer volume is a big problem, the kinds of computing you need to do with that data is also an issue. FHE is all about very large numbers that must be computed with precision. While a CPU can do that, it’s very slow going—integer addition and multiplication take about 10,000 more clock cycles in FHE. Worse still, CPUs aren’t built to do such computing in parallel. Although GPUs excel at parallel operations, precision is not their strong suit. (In fact, from generation to generation, GPU designers have devoted more and more of the chip’s resources to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/nvidia-gpu" target="_blank">computing less and less-precise numbers</a>.)</p><p>FHE also requires some oddball operations with names like “twiddling” and “automorphism,” and it relies on a compute-intensive noise-cancelling process called bootstrapping. None of these things are efficient on a general-purpose processor. So, while clever algorithms and libraries of software cheats have been developed over the years, the need for a hardware accelerator remains if FHE is going to tackle large-scale problems, says Cammarota.</p><h2>The Labors of Heracles</h2><p class="rm-anchors" id="heracles">Heracles was initiated under a DARPA program five years ago to accelerate FHE using purpose-built hardware. It was developed as “a whole system-level effort that went all the way from theory and algorithms down to the circuit design,” says Cammarota.</p><p>Among the first problems was how to compute with numbers that were larger than even the 64-bit words that are today a CPU’s most precise. There are ways to break up these gigantic numbers into chunks of bits that can be calculated independently of each other, providing a degree of parallelism. Early on, the Intel team made a big bet that they would be able to make this work in smaller, 32-bit chunks, yet still maintain the needed precision. This decision gave the Heracles architecture some speed and parallelism, because the 32-bit arithmetic circuits are considerably smaller than 64-bit ones, explains Cammarota.</p><p>At Heracles’ heart are 64 compute cores—called tile-pairs—arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. These are what are called single instruction multiple data (SIMD) compute engines designed to do the polynomial math, twiddling, and other things that make up computing in FHE and to do them in parallel. An on-chip 2D mesh network connects the tiles to each other with wide, 512 byte, buses.</p><p class="ieee-inbody-related">RELATED: <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/homomorphic-encryption-llm" target="_blank">Tech Keeps Chatbots From Leaking Your Data</a></p><p>Important to making encrypted computing efficient is feeding those huge numbers to the compute cores quickly. The sheer amount of data involved meant linking 48-GB-worth of expensive high-bandwidth memory to the processor with 819 GB per second connections. Once on the chip, data musters in 64 megabytes of cache memory—somewhat more than an Nvidia <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/nvidias-next-gpu-shows-that-transformers-are-transforming-ai" target="_blank">Hopper-generation GPU</a>. From there it can flow through the array at 9.6 terabytes per second by hopping from tile-pair to tile-pair.</p><p>To ensure that computing and moving data don’t get in each other’s way, Heracles runs three synchronized streams of instructions simultaneously, one for moving data onto and off of the processor, one for moving data within it, and a third for doing the math, Golder explained.</p><p class="rm-anchors" id="faster">It all adds up to some massive speed ups, according to Intel. Heracles—operating at 1.2 gigahertz—takes just 39 microseconds to do FHE’s critical math transformation, a 2,355-fold improvement over an Intel Xeon CPU running at 3.5 GHz. Across seven key operations, Heracles was 1,074 to 5,547 times as fast.</p><p>The differing ranges have to do with how much data movement is involved in the operations, explains Mathew. “It’s all about balancing the movement of data with the crunching of numbers,” he says.</p><h2>FHE Competition</h2><p class="rm-anchors" id="commercial">“It’s very good work,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurt-rohloff/" target="_blank">Kurt Rohloff</a>, chief technology officer at FHE software firm <a href="https://dualitytech.com/platform/technology-fully-homomorphic-encryption/" target="_blank">Duality Technology</a>, says of the Heracles results. Duality was part of a team that developed a competing accelerator design under the same DARPA program that Intel conceived Heracles under. “When Intel starts talking about scale, that usually carries quite a bit of weight.”</p><p>Duality’s focus is less on new hardware than on software products that do the kind of encrypted queries that Intel demonstrated at ISSCC. At the scale in use today “there’s less of a need for [specialized] hardware,” says Rohloff. “Where you start to need hardware is emerging applications around deeper machine-learning oriented operations like neural net, LLMs, or semantic search.”</p><p>Last year, Duality demonstrated an <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/homomorphic-encryption-llm" target="_self">FHE-encrypted language model called BERT</a>. Like more famous LLMs such as ChatGPT, BERT is a transformer model. However it’s only one tenth the size of even the most compact LLMs.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrus/" target="_blank">John Barrus</a>, vice president of product at Dayton, Ohio-based <a href="https://niobiummicrosystems.com/" target="_blank">Niobium Microsystems</a>, an FHE chip startup <a href="https://www.galois.com/" target="_blank">spun out</a> of another DARPA competitor, agrees that encrypted AI is a key target of FHE chips. “There are a lot of smaller models that, even with FHE’s data expansion, will run just fine on accelerated hardware,” he says.</p><p>With no stated commercial plans from Intel, Niobium expects its chip to be “the world’s first commercially viable FHE accelerator, designed to enable encrypted computations at speeds practical for real-world cloud and AI infrastructure.” Although it hasn’t announced when a commercial chip will be available, last month the startup revealed that it had inked a deal worth 10 billion South Korean won (US $6.9 million) with Seoul-based chip design firm <a href="https://semifive.com/" target="_blank">Semifive</a> to develop the FHE accelerator for fabrication using Samsung Foundry’s 8-nanometer process technology.</p><p>Other startups including <a href="https://www.fabriccryptography.com/" target="_blank">Fabric Cryptography</a>, <a href="https://cornami.com/" target="_blank">Cornami</a>, and <a href="https://optalysys.com/" target="_blank">Optalysys</a> have been working on chips to accelerate FHE. Optalysys CEO <a href="https://optalysys.com/people/" target="_blank">Nick New</a> says Heracles hits about the level of speedup you could hope for using an all-digital system. “We’re looking at pushing way past that digital limit,” he says. His company’s approach is to use the physics of a photonic chip to do FHE’s compute-intensive transform steps. That photonics chip is on its seventh generation, he says, and among the next steps is to 3D integrate it with custom silicon to do the non-transform steps and coordinate the whole process. A full 3D-stacked commercial chip could be ready in two or three years, says New.</p><p>While competitors develop their chips, so will Intel, says Mathew. It will be improving on how much the chip can accelerate computations by fine tuning the software. It will also be trying out more massive FHE problems, and exploring hardware improvements for a potential next generation. “This is like the first microprocessor… the start of a whole journey,” says Mathew.</p>

Mar 10, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/logo-of-integrated-engineering-software-with-pixelated-geometric-design-and-text.png?id=65106417&width=980"/><br/><br/><p>Explore structured finite-element methodologies for analyzing transformer behavior under harmonic and transient conditions — covering modelling, solver configuration, and result validation techniques.</p><p><strong>What Attendees will Learn</strong><span></span></p><ol><li>How FEM enables pre-fabrication performance evaluation — Assess magnetic field distribution, current behavior, and turns-ratio accuracy through simulation rather than physical testing.</li><li><span>How harmonic analysis uncovers saturation and imbalance — Identify high-flux regions and current asymmetries that analytical methods may not capture.</span></li><li><span>How transient simulations characterize dynamic response — Examine time-domain current waveforms, inrush behavior, and multi-cycle stabilization.</span></li><li><span>How modelling choices affect simulation fidelity — Understand the impact of coil definitions, winding configurations, solver type, and material models on accuracy.</span></li></ol><p><span><a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/solving-harmonic-and-transient-challenges-in-transformers-using-integrateds-faraday/" target="_blank">Download this free whitepaper now!</a><br/></span></p>

Mar 9, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-young-adult-man-in-a-cleanroom-suit-and-gloves-operates-a-remote-for-a-robotic-arm.jpg?id=65172691&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C292%2C0%2C292"/><br/><br/><p>Innovation rarely happens in isolation. Usually, the systems that engineers design are shaped by global teams whose members’ knowledge and ideas move across borders as easily as data.</p><p>That is especially true in my field of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/robotics/" target="_self">robotics and automation</a>—where hardware, software, and human workflows function together. Progress depends not only on technical skill but also on how engineers frame problems and evaluate trade-offs. My career has shown me how cross-cultural experiences can shape the framing.</p><p>Working across different cultures has influenced how I approach collaboration, design decisions, and risk. I am an IEEE member and a mechanical engineer at <a href="https://fikst.rebuildmanufacturing.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Re:Build Fikst</a>, in Wilmington, Mass., but I grew up in India and began my engineering education there.</p><p>Experiencing both work environments has reinforced the idea that diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields is not only about representation; it is a <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/hands-on-projects-career-advice" target="_self">technical advantage</a> that affects how systems are designed and deployed.</p><h2>Gaining experience across cultures</h2><p>I began my training as an undergraduate student in electrical and electronics engineering at <a href="https://www.amity.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amity University</a>, in Noida. While studying, I developed a strong foundation in problem-framing and disciplined adaptability.</p><p>Working on a project requires identifying what the system needs to demonstrate and determining how best to validate that behavior within defined parameters. Rather than starting from idealized assumptions, Amity students were encouraged to focus on essential system behavior and prioritize the variables that most influenced the technology’s performance.</p><p>The approach reinforced first-principles thinking—starting from fundamental physical or system-level behavior rather than defaulting to established solutions—and encouraged the efficient use of available resources.</p><p>At the same time, I learned that efficiency has limits. In complex or safety-critical systems, insufficient validation can introduce hidden risks and reduce reliability. Understanding when simplicity accelerates progress and when additional rigor is necessary became an important part of my development as an engineer.</p><p>After getting my undergraduate degree, I moved to the United States in 2021 to pursue a master’s degree in robotics and autonomous systems at <a href="https://www.asu.edu/about" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Arizona State University</a> in Tempe. I encountered a new engineering culture in the United States.</p><p>In the U.S. research and development sector, especially in robotics and automation, rigor is nonnegotiable. Systems are designed to perform reliably across many cycles, users, and conditions. Documentation, validation, safety reviews, and reproducibility are integral to the process.</p><p>Those expectations do not constrain creativity; they allow systems to scale, endure, and be trusted.</p><p>Moving between the two different engineering cultures required me to adjust. I had to balance my instinct for efficiency with a more formal structure. In the United States, design decisions demand more justification. Collaboration means aligning with scientists, software engineers, and technicians. Each discipline brings different priorities and definitions of success to the team.</p><p>Over time, I realized that the value of both experiences was not in choosing one over the other but in learning when to apply each.</p><p>The balance is particularly critical in robotics and automation. Resourcefulness without rigor can fail at scale. A prototype that works in a controlled lab setting, for example, might break down when exposed to different users, operating conditions, or extended duty cycles.</p><p>At the same time, rigor without adaptability can slow innovation, such as when excessive documentation or overengineering delays early-stage testing and iteration.</p><p>Engineers who navigate multiple educational and professional systems often develop an intuition for managing the tension between the different experiences, building solutions that are robust and practical and that fit real-world workflows rather than idealized ones.</p><p>Much of my work today involves integrating automated systems into environments where technical performance must align with how people will use them. For example, a robotic work cell (a system that performs a specific task) might function flawlessly in isolation but require redesign once operators need clearer access for loading materials, troubleshooting faults, or performing routine maintenance. Similarly, an automated testing system must account not only for ideal operating conditions but also for how users respond to error messages, interruptions, and unexpected outputs.</p><p>In practice, that means thinking beyond individual components to consider how systems will be operated, maintained, and restored to service after faults or interruptions.</p><p>My <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/global-projects-career-benefits" target="_self">cross-cultural background</a> shapes how I evaluate design trade-offs and collaboration across disciplines.</p><h2>How diverse teams can help improve tech design</h2><p>Engineers trained in different cultures can bring distinct approaches to the same problem. Some might emphasize rapid iteration while others prioritize verification and robustness. When perspectives collide, teams ask better questions earlier. They challenge defaults, find edge cases, and design technologies that are more resilient to real-world variability.</p><p>Diversity of thought is certainly important in robotics and automation, where systems sit at the intersection of machines and people. Designing effective automation requires understanding how users interact with technology, how errors propagate, and how different environments influence the technology. Engineers with cross-cultural experience often bring heightened awareness of the variability, leading to better design decisions and more collaborative teams.</p><p>Engineers from outside of the United States play a critical role in the country’s research and development ecosystem, especially in interdisciplinary fields. Many of us act as bridges, connecting problem-solving approaches, expectations, and design philosophies shaped in different parts of the world. We translate not just language but also engineering intent, helping teams move from theories to practical deployment.</p><p>As robotics and automation continue to evolve, the challenges ahead—including scaling experimentation, improving reproducibility, and integrating intelligent systems into real-world environments—will require engineers who are comfortable working across boundaries. Navigating boundaries, which could be geographic, disciplinary, or cultural, is increasingly part of the job.</p><p>The engineering ecosystems in India and the United States are complex, mature, and evolving. My journey in both has taught me that being a strong engineer is not about adopting a single mindset. It’s about knowing how to adapt.</p><p>In an interconnected, multinational world, innovation belongs to engineers who can navigate the differences and turn them into strengths.</p>

Mar 9, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-freighter-and-container-ship-crossing-paths-at-sea-with-offshore-wind-turbines-in-the-distant-background.jpg?id=65163125&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/><br/><br/><p><span>When the Trump administration last year sought to freeze construction of offshore wind farms by </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHSzhcphfkc" target="_blank"><span>citing concerns about interference with military radar and sonar</span></a><span>, the implication was that these were new issues. But for more than a decade, the United States, Taiwan, and many European countries have successfully mitigated wind turbines’ security impacts. Some European countries are even integrating wind farms with national defense schemes.</span></p><p><span>“It</span><span>’s not a choice of whether we go for wind farms or security. We need both,” says </span><a href="https://www.clingendael.org/person/ben-bekkering" target="_blank"><span>Ben Bekkering</span></a><span>, a retired vice admiral in the Netherlands and current partner of the International Military Council on Climate and Security.</span></p><p><span>It’s a fact that offshore wind farms can degrade radar surveillance systems and subsea sensors designed to detect military incursions. But it’s a problem with real-world solutions, say Bekkering and other defense experts contacted by </span><span><em>IEEE Spectrum</em></span><span>. Those solutions include next-generation radar technology, radar-absorbing coatings for wind turbine blades and multi-mode sensor suites that turn offshore wind farm security equipment into forward eyes and ears for defense agencies.</span></p><h2>How Do Wind Farms Interfere With Radar?</h2><p><span>Wind turbines interfere with radar because they’re large objects that reflect radar signals. Their spinning blades can introduce false positives on radar screens by inducing a wavelength-shifting Doppler effect that gets flagged as a flying</span> object. Turbines can also obscure aircraft, missiles and drones by scattering radar signals or by blinding older line-of-sight radars to objects behind them, according to a 2024 U.S. <a href="https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/EXEC-2022-004484%20-%20Report%20to%20Congress%20as%20of%20December%2014%202023%20(2).pdf" target="_blank">Department of Energy (DOE) report</a><span><strong>.</strong></span></p><p><span>“Real-world examples from NATO and EU Member States show measurable degradation in radar performance, communication clarity, and situational awareness,” states a 2025 presentation from the </span><span>€2-million (US$2.3-million) offshore wind </span><a href="https://eda.europa.eu/what-we-do/eu-policies/symbiosis" target="_blank"><span>Symbiosis Project</span></a><span>, led by the Brussels-based </span><a href="https://eda.europa.eu/" target="_blank"><span>European Defence Agency</span></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>However, “measurable” doesn’t always mean major. U.S. </span><span>agencies that monitor radar have continued to operate “without significant impacts” from wind turbines thanks to field tests, technology development, and mitigation measures taken by U.S. agencies since 2012, according to the DOE. “It is true that they have an impact, but it</span><span>’s not that big,” says</span><span><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tuelippert/" target="_blank"> Tue Lippert</a></span><span>, a former Danish special forces commander and CEO of Copenhagen-based security consultancy </span><a href="https://heimdalci.com/" target="_blank"><span>Heimdal Critical Infrastructure</span></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>To date, impacts have been managed through upgrades to radar systems, such as software algorithms that identify a turbine’s radar signature and thus reduce false positives. Careful wind farm siting helps too. During the most recent designation of Atlantic wind zones in the U.S., for example, the Biden administration </span><span><a href="https://www.utilitydive.com/news/boem-maryland-lease-offshore-wind-central-atlantic-auction/702215/" target="_blank">reduced the geographic area for a proposed zone off the Maryland coast by 79 percent</a></span> to minimize defense impacts.</p><p><span>Radar impacts can be managed even better by upgrading hardware, say experts. Newer solid-state, phased-array radars are better at distinguishing turbines from other objects than conventional mechanical radars. <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/phased-arrays-move-from-academic-curiosity-to-industrial-reality" target="_self">Phased arrays</a> shift the timing of hundreds or thousands of individual radio waves, creating interference patterns to steer the radar beams. The result is a higher-resolution signal that offers better tracking of multiple objects and better visibility behind objects in its path. “Most modern radars can actually see through wind farms,” says Lippert.</span></p><p><span>One of the Trump administration’s first moves in its overhaul of civilian air traffic was </span><a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2026-01-06/faa-selects-collins-indra-radar-contracts" target="_blank"><span>a $438-million order for phased-array radar systems</span></a> and other equipment <a target="_blank"></a><a target="_blank"></a>from Collins Aerospace, which touts wind farm mitigation as <a href="https://www.rtx.com/collinsaerospace/what-we-do/industries/air-traffic-management/surveillance/non-cooperative-surveillance-radar" target="_blank"><span>one of its products’ key features</span></a><span>.</span></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="Close-up of a militaristic yet compact radar mounted on the rear bed of a vehicle." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="aaf38582caeb227d40c2209406555f68" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="cf534" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/close-up-of-a-militaristic-yet-compact-radar-mounted-on-the-rear-bed-of-a-vehicle.jpg?id=65163158&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..."> Saab’s compact Giraffe 1X combined surface-and-air-defense radar was installed in 2021 on an offshore wind farm near England.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Saab</small></p><h2>Can Wind Farms Aid Military Surveillance?</h2><p><span>Another radar mitigation option is “infill” radar, which fills in coverage gaps. This involves installing additional radar hardware on land to provide new angles of view through a wind farm or putting radar systems on the offshore turbines to extend the radar field of view.</span></p><p><span>In fact, wind farms are increasingly being tapped to extend military surveillance capabilities. “You</span><span>’re changing the battlefield, but it</span><span>’s a change to your advantage if you use it as a tactical lever,” says Lippert.</span></p><p><span>In 2021 </span><span>Link</span><span>öping, Sweden-based defense contractor </span><a href="https://www.saab.com/" target="_blank"><span>Saab</span></a> and Danish wind developer <a href="https://us.orsted.com/" target="_blank">Ørsted</a> demonstrated that air defense radar can be placed on a wind farm. Saab conducted a two-month test of its compact Giraffe 1X combined surface-and-air-defense radar on Ørsted’s Hornsea 1 wind farm, located 120 kilometers east of England’s Yorkshire coast. The installation extended situational awareness “beyond the radar horizon of the ground-based long-range radars,” <a href="https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2021/november/securing-the-worlds-largest-offshore-windfarm-with-giraffe-1x" target="_blank"><span>claims Saab</span></a><span>. The U.K. Ministry of Defence </span><a href="https://www.saab.com/newsroom/press-releases/2023/saabs-giraffe-1x-wins-uk-ministry-of-defence-orders" target="_blank">ordered 11 of Saab’s systems</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Putting surface radar on turbines is something many offshore wind operators do already to track their crew vessels and to detect unauthorized ships within their arrays. Sharing those signals, or even sharing the equipment, can give national defense forces an expanded view of ships moving within and around the turbines. It can also improve detection of low altitude cruises missiles, says Bekkering, which can evade air defense radars.</span></p><p><span>Sharing signals and equipment is part of a growing trend in Europe towards “dual use” of offshore infrastructure. Expanded dual-use sensing is already being implemented in Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland, and was among the recommendations from Europe’s</span> Symbiosis Project.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="An offshore wind turbine against a clear sky at dusk." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d0b55a171b4a90d6cc5d419aa2bdd92d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="e2d26" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-offshore-wind-turbine-against-a-clear-sky-at-dusk.jpg?id=65305092&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Baltic Power</small></p><p><span>In fact, Poland mandates inclusion of defense-relevant equipment on all offshore wind farms. Their first project </span><a href="https://energiewinde.orsted.de/energiepolitik/offshore-wind-sicherheit-landesverteidigung-ueberwachung-seegebiete-nato" target="_blank"><span>carries radar and other sensors specified by Poland’s Ministry of Defense</span></a><span>. The wind farm will start operating in the Baltic later this year, roughly</span> 200 kilometers south of Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave.</p><p><span>The U.K. is experimenting too. Last year West Sussex-based </span><a href="http://www.apple.com" target="_blank"><span>LiveLink Aerospace</span></a> <a href="https://www.livelinkaerospace.com/latest-news/dual-use-air-surveillance-aberdeen-wind-farm" target="_blank"><span>demonstrated purpose-built, dual-use sensors atop wind turbines offshore from Aberdeen</span></a><span>. The compact equipment combines a suite of sensors including electro-optical sensors, thermal and visible light </span><span>cameras, and detectors for radio frequency and acoustic signals.</span></p><p><span>In the past, wind farm operators tended to resist cooperating with defense projects, fearing that would turn their installations into military targets. And militaries were also reluctant to share, because they are used to having full control over equipment.</span></p><p><span>But Russia’s increasingly aggressive posture has shifted thinking, say security experts. </span><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/repair-ukraine-power-grid" target="_self"><span>Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid</span></a> show that “everything is a target,” says <a href="https://www.energi.se/artiklar/2023/januari-2023/ex-militaren-som-vill-snabba-pa-processerna-for-vindkraft/" target="_blank"><span>Tobhias Wikstr</span><span>öm</span></a><span>, CEO for Lule</span><span>å, Sweden-based </span><a href="https://www.parachuteconsulting.se/" target="_blank"><span>Parachute Consulting</span></a> and a former lieutenant colonel in Sweden’s air force. <span>Recent sabotage of offshore gas pipelines and power cables is also reinforcing the sense that offshore wind operators and defense agencies need to collaborate.</span></p><h2>Why Is Sweden Restricting Offshore Wind?</h2><p><span>Contrary to Poland and the U.K., Sweden is the one European country that, like the U.S. under Trump’s second administration, has used national security to justify a broad restriction on offshore wind development. In 2024 </span><a href="https://knowledge.energyinst.org/new-energy-world/article?id=139168" target="_blank"><span>Sweden rejected 13 projects along its Baltic coast, which faces Kaliningrad</span></a><span>, citing anticipated degradation in its ability to detect incoming missiles.</span></p><p><span>Saab’s CEO rejected the government’s argument, telling a Swedish newspaper that the firm’s radar “</span><a href="https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/saab-chefen-vara-sensorer-kan-hantera-vindkraftverk-till-havs/" target="_blank"><span>can handle</span></a><span>” wind farms. Wikstr</span><span>öm at Parachute Consulting also questions the government’s claim, noting that Sweden’s entry into NATO in 2024 gives its military access to Finnish, German and Polish air defense radars, among others, that together provide an unobstructed view of the Baltic. “You will always have radars in other locations that will cross-monitor and see what</span><span>’s behind those wind turbines,” says Wikstr</span><span>öm.</span></p><p><span>Politics are likely at play, says Wikstr</span><span>öm, noting that some of the coalition government’s parties are staunchly pro-nuclear. But he says a deeper problem is that the military experts who evaluate proposed wind projects, as he did before retiring in 2021, lack time and guidance.</span></p><p><span>By banning offshore wind projects instead of embracing them, Sweden and the U.S. may be missing out on opportunities for training in that environment, says </span><span>Lippert, who regularly serves with U.S. forces as a reserves liaison officer with Denmark’s Greenland-based </span><a href="https://www.forsvaret.dk/en/organisation/joint-arctic-command/" target="_blank"><span>Joint Arctic Command</span></a><span>. As he puts it: “The Chinese and Taiwanese coasts are plastered with offshore wind. If the U.S. Navy and Air Force are not used to fighting in littoral environments filled with wind farms, then they</span><span>’re at a huge disadvantage when war comes.”</span></p>

Mar 8, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-white-man-in-his-40s-speaking-into-a-microphone-he-is-wearing-glasses-a-suit-jacket-and-tie.jpg?id=65162768&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C1042%2C0%2C1042"/><br/><br/><p>A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/pentagon-anthropic-ai.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">simmering dispute</a> between the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and Anthropic has now escalated into a <a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/a-timeline-of-the-anthropic-pentagon-dispute/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">full-blown confrontation</a>, raising an uncomfortable but important question: who gets to set the guardrails for military use of artificial intelligence — the executive branch, private companies or Congress and the broader democratic process?</p><p>The conflict began when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline to allow the DOD <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/24/hegseth-sets-friday-deadline-for-anthropic-to-drop-its-ai-red-lines-00795641" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">unrestricted use</a> of its AI systems. When the company refused, the administration moved to designate Anthropic a <a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">supply chain risk</a> and ordered federal agencies to phase out its technology, dramatically escalating the standoff.</p><p>Anthropic has refused to cross <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">two lines</a>: allowing its models to be used for domestic surveillance of United States citizens and enabling fully autonomous military targeting. Hegseth has objected to what he has described as “<a href="https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4377190/remarks-by-secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-at-spacex/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ideological constraints</a>” embedded in commercial AI systems, arguing that determining lawful military use should be the government’s responsibility — not the vendor’s. As he put it in a <a href="https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4377190/remarks-by-secretary-of-war-pete-hegseth-at-spacex/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">speech at Elon Musk’s SpaceX</a> last month, “We will not employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars.”</p><p>Stripped of rhetoric, this dispute resembles something relatively straightforward: a procurement disagreement.</p><h2>Procurement policies</h2><p>In a market economy, the U.S. military decides what products and services it wants to buy. Companies decide what they are willing to sell and under what conditions. Neither side is inherently right or wrong for taking a position. If a product does not meet operational needs, the government can purchase from another vendor. If a company believes certain uses of its technology are unsafe, premature or inconsistent with its values or risk tolerance, it can <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/responsible-scaling-policy-v3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">decline to provide them</a>. For example, a coalition of companies have signed an open letter pledging <a href="https://bostondynamics.com/news/general-purpose-robots-should-not-be-weaponized/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">not to weaponize general-purpose robots</a>. That basic symmetry is a feature of the free market.</p><p>Where the situation becomes more complicated — and more troubling — is in the decision to designate Anthropic a “<a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">supply chain risk</a>.” That tool exists to address genuine national security vulnerabilities, such as foreign adversaries. It is not intended to blacklist an American company for rejecting the government’s preferred contractual terms. </p><p>Using this authority in that manner marks a significant shift — from a procurement disagreement to the use of coercive leverage. <a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hegseth has declared</a> that “effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the U.S. military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.” This action will almost certainly face <a href="https://x.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">legal challenges</a>, but it raises the stakes well beyond the loss of a single DOD contract.</p><h2>AI governance</h2><p>It is also important to distinguish between the two substantive issues Anthropic has reportedly raised.</p><p>The first, opposition to domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens, touches on well-established civil liberties concerns. The U.S. government operates under constitutional constraints and statutory limits when it comes to monitoring Americans. A company stating that it does not want its tools used to facilitate domestic surveillance is not inventing a new principle; it is aligning itself with longstanding democratic guardrails.</p><p>To be clear, DOD is not affirmatively asserting that it intends to use the technology to surveil Americans unlawfully. Its position is that it does not want to procure models with built-in restrictions that preempt otherwise lawful government use. In other words, the Department of Defense argues that compliance with the law is the government’s responsibility — not something that needs to be embedded in a vendor’s code. </p><p>Anthropic, for its part, has invested heavily in training its systems to refuse certain categories of <a href="https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/78073f739564e986ff3e28522761a7a0b4484f84.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">harmful or high-risk tasks</a>, including assistance with surveillance. The disagreement is therefore less about current intent than about institutional control over constraints: whether they should be imposed by the state through law and oversight, or by the developer through technical design.</p><p>The second issue, opposition to fully autonomous military targeting, is more complex. </p><p>The DOD already maintains policies requiring <a href="https://www.esd.whs.mil/portals/54/documents/dd/issuances/dodd/300009p.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">human judgment in the use of force</a>, and debates over autonomy in weapons systems are ongoing within both military and international forums. A private company may reasonably determine that its current technology is not sufficiently reliable or controllable for certain battlefield applications. At the same time, the military may conclude that such capabilities are necessary for deterrence and operational effectiveness.</p><p>Reasonable people can disagree about where those <a href="https://itif.org/publications/2026/02/26/survey-most-americans-say-tech-companies-should-allowed-set-ai-limits/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lines should be drawn</a>.</p><p>But that disagreement underscores a deeper point: the boundaries of military AI use should not be settled through ad hoc negotiations between a Cabinet secretary and a CEO. Nor should they be determined by which side can exert greater contractual leverage.</p><p>If the U.S. government believes certain AI capabilities are essential to national defense, that position should be articulated openly. It should be debated in Congress, and reflected in doctrine, oversight mechanisms and statutory frameworks. The rules should be clear — not only to companies, but to the public.</p><p>The U.S. often distinguishes itself from authoritarian regimes by emphasizing that power operates within transparent democratic institutions and legal constraints. That distinction carries less weight if AI governance is determined primarily through executive ultimatums issued behind closed doors.</p><p>There is also a strategic dimension. If companies conclude that participation in federal markets requires surrendering all deployment conditions, some may exit those markets. Others may respond by weakening or removing model safeguards to remain eligible for government contracts. Neither outcome strengthens <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/big-tech-group-tells-pentagons-hegseth-they-are-concerned-about-declaring-2026-03-04/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">U.S. technological leadership</a>.</p><p>The DOD is correct that it cannot allow potential “ideological constraints” to undermine lawful military operations. But there is a difference between rejecting arbitrary restrictions and rejecting any role for corporate risk management in shaping deployment conditions. In high-risk domains — from aerospace to cybersecurity — contractors routinely impose safety standards, testing requirements and operational limitations as part of responsible commercialization. AI should not be treated as uniquely exempt from that practice.</p><p>Moreover, built-in safeguards need not be seen as obstacles to military effectiveness. In many high-risk sectors, layered oversight is standard practice: internal controls, technical fail-safes, auditing mechanisms and legal review operate together. Technical constraints can serve as an additional backstop, reducing the risk of misuse, error or unintended escalation.</p><p><strong>Congress is AWOL</strong></p><p>The DOD should retain ultimate authority over lawful use. But it need not reject the possibility that certain guardrails embedded at the design level could complement its own oversight structures rather than undermine them. In some contexts, redundancy in safety systems strengthens, not weakens, operational integrity.</p><p>At the same time, a company’s unilateral ethical commitments are no substitute for public policy. When technologies carry national security implications, private governance has inherent limits. Ultimately, decisions about surveillance authorities, autonomous weapons and rules of engagement belong in democratic institutions.</p><p>This episode illustrates a pivotal moment in AI governance. AI systems at the frontier of technology are now powerful enough to influence intelligence analysis, logistics, cyber operations and potentially battlefield decision-making. That makes them too consequential to be governed solely by corporate policy — and too consequential to be governed solely by executive discretion.</p><p>The solution is not to empower one side over the other. It is to strengthen the institutions that mediate between them.</p><p>Congress should clarify statutory boundaries for military AI use and investigate whether sufficient oversight exists. The DOD should articulate detailed doctrine for human control, auditing and accountability. Civil society and industry should participate in structured consultation processes rather than episodic standoffs and procurement policy should reflect those publicly established standards.</p><p>If AI guardrails can be removed through contract pressure, they will be treated as negotiable. However, if they are grounded in law, they can become stable expectations.</p><p>Democratic constraints on military AI belong in statute and doctrine — not in private contract negotiations.</p><p><em>This article is adapted by the author with permission from </em><a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Tech Policy Press</em></a><em>. Read the </em><a href="https://www.techpolicy.press/why-congress-should-step-into-the-anthropicpentagon-dispute/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>original article</em></a><em>.</em></p>

Mar 7, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/dr-sarah-wolff-and-sizhe-xu-converse-in-a-lab-while-standing-in-front-of-a-laser-based-3d-printing-machine.jpg?id=65158172&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/><br/><br/><p>Through the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/artemis/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Artemis Program</a>, NASA hopes to establish a permanent <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/special-reports/project-moon-base/" target="_blank">human presence on the Moon</a> in its southern polar region. China, Russia, and the European Space Agency (ESA) have similar plans, all of which involve building bases near the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs)<span>—</span>craters that contain water ice<span>—</span>that dot the South Pole-Aitken Basin. For these and other agencies, it is vital that these bases be as self-sufficient as possible since resupply missions cannot be launched regularly and take several days to arrive.</p><div class="badge_module shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25"> <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.universetoday.com/" target="_blank"> <img alt='Universe Today logo; text reads "This post originally appeared on Universe Today."' class="rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/universe-today-logo-text-reads-this-post-originally-appeared-on-universe-today.png?id=60568425&width=1800&quality=85"/></a> </div> <p>Therefore, any plan for a lunar base must come down to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/blue-origin-molten-regolith-electrolysis" target="_blank">harvesting local resources</a> to meet the needs of its crews as much as possible<span>—</span>a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In a <a href="https://news.osu.edu/using-moon-dirt-to-build-future-lunar-colonies/" target="_blank">recent study</a>, researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) proposed using a specialized laser-based 3D printing method to turn lunar regolith into hardened building material. According to their findings, this method can produce durable structures that withstand radiation and other harsh conditions on the lunar surface.</p><p>The research team was led by <a href="https://mae.osu.edu/people/xu.5024" target="_blank">Sizhe Xu</a>, a graduate research associate at OSU. He was joined by colleagues from OSU’s Department of Integrated Systems Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering. Their paper, “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576525008422?via%3Dihub" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Laser directed energy deposition additive manufacturing of lunar highland regolith simulant</a>,” appeared in the journal <em>Acta Astronautica.</em></p><h2>Challenges of Lunar 3D Printing</h2><p>The importance of ISRU for human exploration has prompted the rapid development of additive manufacturing systems, or 3D printing. These systems have proven effective at fabricating tools, structures, and habitats, effectively reducing dependence on supplies delivered from Earth. Developing such systems for long-duration missions is one of the most challenging aspects of the process, as they must be engineered to operate in the extreme environment on the Moon. This includes the lack of an atmosphere, massive temperature variations, and the ever-present problem of Moon dust.</p><p>Scientists use two types of lunar regolith for their experiments and research: Lunar Highlands Simulant (LHS-1) and Lunar Mare Simulant (LMS-1). As part of their research, the team used LHS-1, which is rich in basaltic minerals, similar to rock samples obtained by the Apollo missions. They melted this regolith with a laser to produce layers of material and fused them onto a base surface of stainless steel or glass. To assess how well these objects would fare in the lunar environment, the team tested their fabrication process under a range of different environmental conditions.</p><p>One thing they noticed was that the fused regolith adhered well to alumina-silicate ceramic, possibly because the two compounds form crystals that enhance heat resistance and mechanical strength. This revealed that the overall quality of the printed material is largely dependent on the surface onto which the regolith is printed. Other environmental factors, such as atmospheric oxygen levels, laser power, and printing speed, also affected the stability of the printed material. </p><blockquote></blockquote><h2>Where 3D-Printed Material Could Help</h2><p>Deployed to the Moon’s surface, this process could help build habitats and tools that are strong, resilient, and capable of handling the lunar environment. This has the added benefit of increasing independence from Earth, which is key to realizing long-duration missions on the Moon. In addition to assisting astronauts exploring the Moon in the near future (as part of NASA’s Artemis Program), this technology could also lead to resilient habitats that will enable a long-term human presence on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.</p><p>However, there are several unknown environmental factors that could limit the effectiveness of these systems on other worlds, and more data is needed before they can be addressed. In their study, the team suggests that instead of being powered by electricity, future scaled-up versions of their method could rely on solar or hybrid power systems. Nevertheless, the potential for space exploration is clear, and the technology also has applications for life here on Earth. <a href="https://mae.osu.edu/people/wolff.357" target="_blank">Sarah Wolff</a>, an assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering and a lead author on the study, explained:</p><blockquote>There are conditions that happen in space that are really hard to emulate in a simulant. It may work in the lab, but in a resource-scarce environment, you have to try everything to maximize the flexibility of a machine for different scenarios. If we can successfully manufacture things in space using very few resources, that means we can also achieve better sustainability on Earth. To that end, improving the machine’s flexibility for different scenarios is a goal we’re working really hard toward.</blockquote><p>As the saying goes, “solving for space solves for Earth.” In environments where materials and resources are limited, laser-based 3D printing is one of several technologies that could support sustainable living. This applies equally to extraterrestrial environments and to regions on Earth experiencing the effects of climate change.</p>

Mar 6, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/robotic-hand-grasping-a-red-bull-can-against-a-dark-background.png?id=65162441&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C197%2C0%2C198"/><br/><br/><p><span>Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at </span><em>IEEE Spectrum</em><span> robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please </span><a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Robotics%20event%20suggestion%20for%20Video%20Friday">send us your events</a><span> for inclusion.</span></p><h5><a href="https://2026.ieee-icra.org/">ICRA 2026</a>: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNA</h5><p>Enjoy today’s videos!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><div style="page-break-after: always"><span style="display:none"> </span></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="hd1hdfw1bhy"><em>The functional replication and actuation of complex structures inspired by nature is a longstanding goal for humanity. Creating such complex structures combining soft and rigid features and actuating them with artificial muscles would further our understanding of natural kinematic structures. We printed a biomimetic hand in a single print process composed of a rigid skeleton, soft joint capsules, tendons, and printed touch sensors.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d1520429687b7c6ef41cd204b2161ddc" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hD1HDFw1BhY?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10522043">Paper</a> ] via [ <a href="https://srl.ethz.ch/">SRL</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="u18ehtnvfd4">Two <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/boston-dynamics" target="_blank">Boston Dynamics</a> product managers talk about their favorite classic BD robots, and then I talk about mine.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ee14e75b8b4fac354bdb72fef9eb1549" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U18EHTnvFd4?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>And this is Boston Dynamics’ LittleDog, doing legged locomotion research 16 or so years ago in what I’m pretty sure is Katie Byl’s lab at UCSB.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="27626ccc6010288122cf616a0f35aa3d" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AdWpo43b2FI?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://bostondynamics.com/about/history/">Boston Dynamics</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="gocorcrlgb4"><em>This is our latest work on the trajectory planning method for floating-based articulated robots, enabling the global path for searching in complex and cluttered environments.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f2d2afeed034c4c40136e41360360951" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GOcorcrLGb4?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.dragon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/">DRAGON Lab</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Moju!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="i2jmf_z9ts8"><em>OmniPlanner is a unified solution for exploration and inspection-path planning (as well as target reach) across aerial, ground, and underwater robots. It has been verified through extensive simulations and a multitude of field tests, including in underground mines, ballast water tanks, forests, university buildings, and submarine bunkers.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fcaa6b98fc3995a5010528eb89bb8f14" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I2JMF_Z9tS8?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.autonomousrobotslab.com/">NTNU</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Kostas!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="a_hwcpqbbly"><em>In the ARISE project, the <a href="https://www.fzi.de/en/" target="_blank">FZI Research Center for Information Technology</a> and its international partners ETH Zurich, University of Zurich, University of Bern, and University of Basel took a major step toward future lunar missions by testing cooperative autonomous multirobot teams under outdoor conditions.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="17b9634bb780c7e02ba8230822684990" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a_hwCPQbBlY?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.fzi.de/en/2025/02/26/one-step-closer-to-the-moon-through-international-cooperation/">FZI</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="dmbjbwhwyeu">Welcome to the future, where there are no other humans.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="05f12866fdd4c32a9372563b0d407f5d" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DmbJbwhWYEU?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.zj-humanoid.com/">Zhejiang Humanoid</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="8oot8cnpai0"><em>This is our latest work on robotic fish, and it’s also the first underwater robot from DRAGON Lab. </em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2e719c55aa3bd82ab9f1c1123ecfe88f" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8oot8CnpAi0?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.dragon.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/">DRAGON Lab</a> ]</p><p>Thanks, Moju!</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="awrnl8rcbmk">Watch this one simple trick to make <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/topic/robotics/humanoid-robots/" target="_blank">humanoid robots</a> cheaper and safer!</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e69112d5d83fdcd0226a652b2b7cb898" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AwRnL8rcBmk?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.zj-humanoid.com/">Zhejiang Humanoid</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="90twy79yffo"><em>Gugusse and the Automaton</em> is a 1897 French film by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_M%C3%A9li%C3%A8s" target="_blank">Georges Méliès</a> featuring a humanoid robot in a depiction that’s nearly as realistic as some of the humanoid promo videos we’ve seen lately.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4d2d9a469b74b0b57aa6d34c9859e471" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/90tWY79YfFo?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2026125501/?loclr=blogloc">Library of Congress</a> ] via [ <a href="https://gizmodo.com/first-film-to-depict-a-robot-discovered-in-michigan-2000727995">Gizmodo</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="lm3htxushva"><em>At Agility, we create automated solutions for the hardest work. We’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come, and can’t wait to show you what’s next.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="007204bb742016f199f77925109d19ef" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LM3hTXUShvA?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.agilityrobotics.com/">Agility</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="si-jhnqcjt0"><a href="https://www.nist.gov/people/kamel-s-saidi" target="_blank">Kamel Saidi</a>, robotics program manager at the <a href="https://www.nist.gov/" target="_blank">National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)</a>, on how performance standards can pave the way for humanoid adoption.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4484b448f54ec06f10f3985953b03c9b" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sI-jhnqcJt0?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://humanoidssummit.com/">Humanoids Summit</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><blockquote class="rm-anchors" id="gwsl1oh1i4w"><em><a href="https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~anca/" target="_blank">Anca Dragan</a> is no stranger to Waymo. She worked with us for six years while also at UC Berkeley and now at Google DeepMind. Her focus on making AI safer helped Waymo as it launched commercially. In this final episode of our season, Anca describes how her work enables AI agents to work fluently with people, based on human goals and values.</em></blockquote><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="bafb48d4c6dec0871809a152ad842b8e" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GwSl1OH1i4w?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><p>[ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCkt0hth826G9AtnOrQsPbKKD5JmdaMXb">Waymo Podcast</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div><p class="rm-anchors" id="r9ugdinfhbm">This <a href="https://www.grasp.upenn.edu/" target="_blank">UPenn GRASP</a> SFI Seminar is by Junyao Shi: “Unlocking Generalist Robots with Human Data and Foundation Models.”</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"><span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c1e2f8d6dc1171693ed8ee0180f30e9d" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r9UGdInfhBM?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span></p><blockquote><em>Building general-purpose robots remains fundamentally constrained by data scarcity and labor-intensive engineering. Unlike vision and language, robotics lacks large, diverse datasets that span tasks, environments, and embodiments, thus limiting both scalability and generalization. This talk explores how human data and foundation models trained at scale can help overcome these bottlenecks.</em></blockquote><p>[ <a href="https://www.grasp.upenn.edu/events/spring-2026-grasp-sfi-junyao-shi/">UPenn</a> ]</p><div class="horizontal-rule"></div>

Mar 6, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-a-man-in-a-lab-coat-adjusting-a-large-piece-of-medical-equipment-thats-pointed-at-the-head-of-a-partial-mannequin.jpg?id=65111419&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C428%2C0%2C428"/><br/><br/><p><strong>Inside a cavernous hall</strong> at the Swiss-French border, the air hums with high voltage and possibility. From his perch on the wraparound observation deck, physicist <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Walter-Wuensch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Walter Wuensch</a> surveys a multimillion-dollar array of accelerating cavities, klystrons, modulators, and pulse compressors—hardware being readied to drive a new generation of linear particle accelerators.</p><p>Wuensch has spent decades working with these machines to crack the deepest mysteries of the universe. Now he and his colleagues are aiming at a new target: cancer. Here at <a href="https://home.cern/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CERN</a> (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and other particle-physics labs, scientists and engineers are applying the tools of fundamental physics to develop a technique called FLASH radiotherapy that offers a radical and counterintuitive vision for treating the disease.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="Photo of a white-haired man standing next to floor-to-ceiling experimental equipment with many tubes and wires. " class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce95648ce39bd5c09f73bddf6af75766" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="f8147" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-a-white-haired-man-standing-next-to-floor-to-ceiling-experimental-equipment-with-many-tubes-and-wires.jpg?id=65111429&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">CERN researcher Walter Wuensch says the particle physics lab’s work on FLASH radiotherapy is “generating a lot of excitement.”</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">CERN</small></p><p>Radiation therapy has been a cornerstone of cancer treatment since shortly after <a href="https://medicalmuseum.health.mil/index.cfm/visit/exhibits/virtual/xraydiscovery/index" target="_blank">Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen</a> discovered X-rays in 1895. Today, more than half of all cancer patients receive it as part of their care, typically in relatively low doses of X-rays delivered over dozens of sessions. Although this approach often kills the tumor, it also wreaks havoc on nearby healthy tissue. Even with modern precision targeting, the potential for collateral damage limits how much radiation doctors can safely deliver.</p><p>FLASH radiotherapy flips the conventional approach on its head, delivering a single dose of ultrahigh-power radiation in a burst that typically lasts less than one-tenth of a second. In study after study, this technique causes significantly less injury to normal tissue than conventional radiation does, without compromising its antitumor effect.</p><p>At CERN, which I visited last July, the approach is being tested and refined on accelerators that were never intended for medicine. If ongoing experiments here and around the world continue to bear out results, FLASH could transform radiotherapy—delivering stronger treatments, fewer side effects, and broader access to lifesaving care.</p><p>“It’s generating a lot of excitement,” says Wuensch, a researcher at CERN’s Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) facility. “We accelerator people are thinking, Oh, wow, here’s an application of our technology that has a societal impact which is more immediate than most high-energy physics.”</p><h2>The Unlikely Birth of FLASH Therapy</h2><p>The breakthrough that led to FLASH emerged from a line of experiments that began in the 1990s at <a href="https://institut-curie.org/" target="_blank">Institut Curie</a> in Orsay, near Paris. Researcher <a href="https://institut-curie.org/person/vincent-favaudon" target="_blank">Vincent Favaudon</a> was using a low-energy electron accelerator to study radiation chemistry. Targeting the accelerator at mouse lungs, Favaudon expected the radiation to produce scar tissue, or fibrosis. But when he exposed the lungs to ultrafast blasts of radiation, at doses a thousand times as high as what’s used in conventional radiation therapy, the expected fibrosis never appeared.</p><p>Puzzled, Favaudon turned to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xx8VQkMAAAAJ&hl=fr" target="_blank">Marie-Catherine Vozenin</a>, a radiation biologist at Curie who specialized in radiation-induced fibrosis. “When I looked at the slides, there was indeed no fibrosis, which was very, very surprising for this type of dose,” recalls Vozenin, who now works at <a href="https://www.hug.ch/en" target="_blank">Geneva University Hospitals</a>, in Switzerland.</p><h3>How to Measure Radiation Doses</h3><br/><p>Radiation therapy uses a variety of units to refer to the amount of energy received by the patient. Here are the main ones under the International System of Units, or SI.</p><p><strong>Gray (Gy):</strong> A measure of the absorbed dose—that is, how much radiation energy is absorbed by the body. One gray equals 1 joule of radiation energy per kilogram of matter. FLASH delivers a single dose of 40 Gy or more in a fraction of a second. Conventional radiation therapy, by contrast, may deliver a total dose of 40 to 80 Gy but over the course of several weeks.</p><p><strong>Sievert (Sv):</strong> A measure of the effective dose—that is, the health effects of the radiation, with different types of ionizing radiation (gamma rays, X-rays, alpha particles, and so on) having different effects. One sievert equals 1 joule per kilogram weighted for the biological effectiveness of the radiation and the tissues exposed.</p><h3></h3><br/><p>The pair expanded the experiments to include cancerous tumors. The results upended a long-held trade-off of radiotherapy: the idea that you can’t destroy a tumor without also damaging the host. “This differential effect is really what we want in radiation oncology, not damaging normal tissue but killing the tumors,” Vozenin says.</p><p>They repeated the protocol across different types of tissue and tumors. By 2014, they had gathered enough evidence to publish their findings in <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.3008973" target="_blank"><em>Science Translational Medicine</em></a>. Their experiments confirmed that delivering an ultrahigh dose of 10 gray or more in less than a tenth of a second could eradicate tumors in mice while leaving surrounding healthy tissue virtually unharmed. For comparison, a typical chest X-ray delivers about 0.1 milligray, while a session of conventional radiation therapy might deliver a total of about 2 gray per day. (The authors called the effect “FLASH” because of the quick, high doses involved, but it’s not an acronym.)</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Three sets of images comparing highly magnified tissue samples." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="00fc1edc5ddb29e98aa8bb4755930278" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="6ce44" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/three-sets-of-images-comparing-highly-magnified-tissue-samples.jpg?id=65111609&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>Many cancer experts were skeptical. The FLASH effect seemed almost too good to be true. “It didn’t get a lot of traction at first,” recalls <a href="https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Billy_Loo" target="_blank">Billy Loo</a>, a Stanford radiation oncologist specializing in lung cancer. “They described a phenomenon that ran counter to decades of established radiobiology dogma.”</p><p>But in the years since then, researchers have observed the effect across a wide range of tumor types and animals—beyond mice to zebra fish, fruit flies, and even a few human subjects, with the same protective effect in the brain, lungs, skin, muscle, heart, and bone.</p><p>Why this happens remains a mystery. “We have investigated a lot of hypotheses, and all of them have been wrong,” says Vozenin. Currently, the most plausible theory emerging from her team’s research points to metabolism: Healthy and cancerous cells may process reactive oxygen species—unstable oxygen-containing molecules generated during radiation—in very different ways.</p><h2>Adapting Accelerators for FLASH</h2><p>At the time of the first FLASH publication, Loo and his team at Stanford were also focused on dramatically speeding up radiation delivery. But Loo wasn’t chasing a radiobiological breakthrough. He was trying to solve a different problem: motion.</p><p>“The tumors that we treat are always moving targets,” he says. “That’s particularly true in the lung, where because of breathing motion, the tumors are constantly moving.”</p><p>To bring FLASH therapy out of the lab and into clinical use, researchers like Vozenin and Loo needed machines capable of delivering fast, high doses with pinpoint precision deep inside the body. Most early studies relied on low-energy electron beams like Favaudon’s 4.5-megaelectron-volt Kinetron—sufficient for surface tumors, but unable to reach more than a few centimeters into a human body. Treating deep-seated cancers in the lung, brain, or abdomen would require far higher particle energies.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Photo of floor-to-ceiling electromagnetic hardware with many tubes and pipes, some of which is copper-colored." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3b3bd74be1a8bc555eb51aa843114f06" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="39797" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-floor-to-ceiling-electromagnetic-hardware-with-many-tubes-and-pipes-some-of-which-is-copper-colored.jpg?id=65111435&width=980"/><h3></h3><br/><p>They also needed an alternative to conventional X-rays. In a clinical linac, X-ray photons are produced by dumping high-energy electrons into a bremsstrahlung target, which is made of a material with a high atomic number, like tungsten or copper. The target slows the electrons, converting their kinetic energy into X-ray photons. It’s an inherently inefficient process that wastes most of the beam power as heat and makes it extremely difficult to reach the ultrahigh dose rates required for FLASH. High-energy electrons, by contrast, can be switched on and off within milliseconds. And because they have a charge and can be steered by magnets, electrons can be precisely guided to reach tumors deep within the body. (Researchers are also investigating protons and carbon ions; see the sidebar, “What’s the Best Particle for FLASH Therapy?”)</p><p>Loo turned to the <a href="https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory</a> in Menlo Park, Calif., where physicist <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/sami-tantawi" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sami Gamal-Eldin Tantawi</a> was redefining how electromagnetic waves move through linear accelerators. Tantawi’s findings allowed scientists to precisely control how energy is delivered to particles—paving the way for compact, efficient, and finely tunable machines. It was exactly the kind of technology FLASH therapy would need to target tumors deep inside the body.</p><p>Meanwhile, Vozenin and other European researchers turned to CERN, best known for its 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the “God particle” that gives other particles their mass. </p><p class="ieee-inbody-related">RELATED: <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/particle-physics-ai" target="_blank">AI Hunts for the Next Big Thing in Physics</a></p><p>CERN is also home to a range of smaller linear accelerators—including CLEAR, where Wuensch and his team are adapting high-energy physics tools for medicine.</p><h3>What’s the Best Particle for FLASH Therapy?</h3><br/><p>Even as research on FLASH radiotherapy advances, a central question remains: What kind of particle will deliver it best? The main contenders are electrons, protons, and carbon ions. Each has distinct advantages, limitations, and implications for cost, complexity, and clinical reach.</p><p><strong>Electrons</strong>—long used to treat surface tumors and to generate X-rays—are light, nimble particles, far easier to control than protons or carbon ions. At low energies, they stop quickly in tissue, but new high-energy systems can drive electrons deeper. Now researchers are working on machines that combine multiple high-energy beams at different angles to let doctors sculpt radiation doses that match the tumor’s shape.</p><p>That principle underpins Billy Loo’s PHASER (Pluridirectional High-energy Agile Scanning Electron Radiotherapy) system, developed at Stanford and SLAC and licensed to a startup called <a href="https://www.tibaray.com/" target="_blank">TibaRay</a>. An array of high-efficiency linacs generates X-ray beams from many directions at once. Their high output overcomes the inefficiency of electron-to-photon conversion to deliver the dose at FLASH speed. Beam convergence at the tumor and electronic shaping conform the dose in three dimensions, producing uniform coverage with relatively simple infrastructure. </p><p><strong>Protons</strong> have led the way in early clinical trials, largely because existing proton therapy centers can be adapted to deliver FLASH doses. In 2020, the University of Cincinnati Health launched the <a href="https://www.uchealth.com/en/media-room/articles/ground-breaking-cancer-research-is-in-your-backyard" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">first human FLASH trial</a> to use proton beams, to treat cancer that had metastasized to bones. “If I want to be pragmatic, the proton beam is ready to go, so let’s move with what we have,” says Geneva University Hospitals’ Marie-Catherine Vozenin.</p><p>Protons can penetrate up to 30 centimeters, reaching deep-seated tumors. But the delivery of protons in a continuous beam limits the dose rates. Also, proton systems are far larger and more expensive than, say, X-ray machines, which will likely constrain their availability to specialized centers.</p><p><strong>Carbon ions</strong>, used in a handful of elite facilities, offer even higher precision and biological effectiveness compared to electrons and protons. Their Bragg peak—a sudden deposition of energy at a specific depth—makes them appealing for deep or complex tumors. But that unmatched precision comes at a steep price, with each facility costing upward of US $300 million. —T.C.</p><h3></h3><br/><p>Unlike the LHC, which loops particles around a massive ring to build up energy before smashing them together, linear accelerators like CLEAR send particles along a straight, one-time path. That setup allows for greater precision and compactness, making it ideal for applications like FLASH.</p><p>At the heart of the CLEAR facility, Wuensch points out the 200-MeV linear accelerator with its 20-meter beamline. This is “a playground of creativity,” he says, for the physicists and engineers who arrive from all over the world to run experiments.</p><p>The process begins when a laser pulse hits a photocathode, releasing a burst of electrons that form the initial beam. These electrons travel through a series of precisely machined copper cavities, where high-frequency microwaves push them forward. The electrons then move through a network of magnets, monitors, and focusing elements that shape and steer them toward the experimental target with submillimeter precision.</p><p>Instead of a continuous stream, the electron beam is divided into nanosecond-long bunches—billions of electrons riding the radio-frequency field like surfers. Inside the accelerator’s cavities, the field flips polarity 12 billion times per second, so timing is everything: Only electrons that arrive perfectly in phase with the accelerating wave will gain energy. That process repeats through a chain of cavities, each giving the bunches another push, until the beam reaches its final energy of 200 MeV.</p><h3></h3><br/><img alt="Close-up photo of an etched copper disc being held under a microscope by a gloved hand." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9cbcce34df51565a0cd0cea335517027" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="6eeba" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/close-up-photo-of-an-etched-copper-disc-being-held-under-a-microscope-by-a-gloved-hand.jpg?id=65111478&width=980"/><p><span>Much of this architecture draws directly from the </span><a href="https://clic-study.org/" target="_blank">Compact Linear Collider study</a><span>, a decades-long CERN project aimed at building a next-generation collider. The proposed CLIC machine would stretch 11 kilometers and collide electrons and positrons at 380 gigaelectron volts. To do that in a linear configuration—without the multiple passes around a ring like the LHC—CERN engineers have had to push for extremely high acceleration gradients to boost the electrons to high energies over relatively short distances—up to 100 megavolts per meter.</span></p><p>Wuensch leads me to a large experimental hall housing prototype structures from the CLIC effort, and points out the microwave devices that now help drive FLASH research. Though the future of CLIC as a collider remains uncertain, its infrastructure is already yielding dividends: smaller, high-gradient accelerators that may one day be as suited for curing cancer as they are for smashing particles.</p><p class="ieee-inbody-related">RELATED: <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders" target="_blank">Four Ways Engineers Are Trying to Break Physics</a></p><p>The power behind the high gradients comes from <a href="https://aries.web.cern.ch/xbox" target="_blank">CERN’s Xboxes</a>, the X-band RF systems that dominate the experimental hall. Each Xbox houses a klystron, modulator, pulse compressor, and waveguide network to generate and shape the microwave pulses. The pulse compressors store energy in resonant cavities and then release it in a microsecond burst, producing peaks of up to 200 megawatts; if it were continuous, that’s enough to power at least 40,000 homes. The Xboxes let researchers fine-tune the power, timing, and pulse shape.</p><p>According to Wuensch, many of the recent accelerator developments were enabled by advances in computer simulation and high-precision three-dimensional machining. These tools allow the team to iterate quickly, designing new accelerator components and improving beam control with each generation.</p><p>Still, real-world challenges remain. The power demands are formidable, as are the space requirements; for all the talk of its “compact” design, the original CLIC was meant to span kilometers. Obviously, a hospital needs something that’s actually compact.</p><p>“A big challenge of the project,” says Wuensch, “is to transform this kind of technology and these kinds of components into something that you can imagine installing in a hospital, and it will run every day reliably.”</p><p>To that end, CERN researchers have teamed up with the <a href="https://www.lausanneuniversityhospital.com/home" target="_blank">Lausanne University Hospital</a> (known by its French acronym, CHUV) and the French medical technology company <a href="https://www.theryq-alcen.com/" target="_blank">Theryq</a> to design a hospital facility capable of treating large and deep-seated tumors with the very short time scales needed for FLASH and scaled down to fit in a clinical setting.</p><h2>Theryq’s Approach to FLASH</h2><p>Theryq’s research center and factory are located in southern France, near the base of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a jagged spine of limestone that Paul Cézanne painted dozens of times, capturing its shifting light and form.</p><p>“The solution that we are trying to develop here is something which is extremely versatile,” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ludovic-le-meunier-7084382?originalSubdomain=fr" target="_blank">Ludovic Le Meunier</a>, CEO of the expanding company. “The ultimate goal is to be able to treat any solid tumor anywhere in the body, which is about 90 percent of the cancer these days.”</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="Futuristic scientific equipment setup, featuring streamlined machinery and intricate components." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="91c6f9815a719ce2a415181d8352df23" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="5b999" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/futuristic-scientific-equipment-setup-featuring-streamlined-machinery-and-intricate-components.jpg?id=65111601&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Theryq’s FLASHDEEP system, under development with CERN and the company’s clinical partners, has a 13.5-meter-long, 140-MeV linear accelerator. That’s strong enough to treat tumors at depths of up to about 20 centimeters in the body. The patient will remain in a supported standing position during the split-second irradiation.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">THERYQ</small></p><p>Theryq’s push to bring FLASH radiotherapy from the lab to clinic has followed a three-pronged rollout, with each device engineered for a specific depth and clinical use. The first machine, <a href="https://www.theryq-alcen.com/flash-radiotherapy-products/flashknife/" target="_blank">FLASHKNiFE</a>, was unveiled in 2020. Designed for superficial tumors and intraoperative use, the system delivers electron beams at 6 or 9 MeV. A prototype installed that same year at CHUV is conducting a phase-two trial for patients with localized skin cancer.</p><p>More recently, Theryq launched <a href="https://www.theryq-alcen.com/flash-radiotherapy-products/flashlab/" target="_blank">FLASHLAB</a>, a compact, 7-MeV platform for radiobiology research.</p><p>The company’s most ambitious system, <a href="https://www.theryq-alcen.com/flash-radiotherapy-products/flashdeep/" target="_blank">FLASHDEEP</a>, is still under development. The 13.5-meter-long electron source will deliver very high-energy electrons of as much as 140 MeV up to 20 centimeters inside the body in less than 100 milliseconds. An integrated CT scanner, built into a patient-positioning system developed by <a href="https://leocancercare.com/" target="_blank">Leo Cancer Care</a>, captures images that stream directly into the treatment-planning software, enabling precise calculation of the radiation dose. “Before we actually trigger the beam or the treatment, we make stereo images to verify at the very last second that the tumor is exactly where it should be,” says Theryq technical manager <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippe-liger-977a3316?originalSubdomain=fr" target="_blank">Philippe Liger</a>.</p><h2>FLASH Therapy Moves to Animal Tests</h2><p>While CERN’s CLEAR accelerator has been instrumental in characterizing FLASH parameters, researchers seeking to study FLASH in living organisms must look elsewhere: CERN doesn’t allow animal experiments on-site. That’s one reason why a growing number of scientists are turning to PITZ, the Photo Injector Test Facility in Zeuthen, a leafy lakeside suburb of Berlin.</p><p>PITZ is part of Germany’s national accelerator lab and is responsible for developing the electron source for the <a href="https://www.xfel.eu/" target="_blank">European X-ray Free-Electron Laser</a>. Now PITZ is emerging as a hub for FLASH research, with an unusually tunable accelerator and a dedicated biomedical lab to ensure controlled conditions for preclinical studies.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="A photo showing a row of experimental electronic equipment on racks" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b3c62ff858a14ceb04a3a4549f85d68a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="cfbfe" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-photo-showing-a-row-of-experimental-electronic-equipment-on-racks.jpg?id=65111551&width=980"/></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-float-left rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="A photo of a closeup of a gloved hand holding a sample of a purple liquid above a piece of equipment." class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e4f204a1631b000ef17c7be15995ef83" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="82e52" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-photo-of-a-closeup-of-a-gloved-hand-holding-a-sample-of-a-purple-liquid-above-a-piece-of-equipment.jpg?id=65111525&width=980"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">At Germany’s Photo Injector Test Facility in Zeuthen (PITZ), the electron-beam accelerator [top] is used to irradiate biological targets in early-stage animal tests of FLASH radiotherapy [bottom].</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Top: Frieder Mueller; Bottom: MWFK</small></p><p>“The biggest advantage of our facility is that we can do a very stepwise, very defined and systematic study of dose rates,” says <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-grebinyk-186a8245?originalSubdomain=de" target="_blank">Anna Grebinyk</a>, a biochemist who heads the new biomedical lab, “and systematically optimize the FLASH effect to see where it gets the best properties.”</p><p>The experiments begin with zebra-fish embryos, prized for early-stage studies because they’re transparent and develop rapidly. After the embryos, researchers test the most promising parameters in mice. To do that, the PITZ team uses a small-animal radiation research platform, complete with CT imaging and a robotic positioning system adapted from CERN’s CLEAR facility.</p><p>What sets PITZ apart is the flexibility of its beamline. The 30-meter accelerator system steers electrons with micrometer precision, producing electron bunches with exceptional brightness and emittance—a metric of beam quality. “We can dial in any distribution of bunches we want,” says Frank Stephan, group leader at PITZ. “That gives us tremendous control over time structure.”</p><p>Timing matters. At PITZ, the laser-struck photocathode generates electron bunches that are accelerated immediately, at up to 60 million volts per meter. A fast electromagnetic kicker system acts as a high-speed gatekeeper, selectively deflecting individual electron bunches from a high-repetition beam and steering them according to researchers’ needs. This precise, bunch-by-bunch control is essential for fine-tuning beam properties for FLASH experiments and other radiation therapy studies.</p><p>“The idea is to make the complete treatment within one millisecond,” says Stephan. “But of course, you have to [trust] that within this millisecond, everything works fine. There is not a chance to stop [during] this millisecond. It has to work.”</p><p>Regulating the dose remains one of the biggest technical hurdles in FLASH. The ionization chambers used in standard radiotherapy can’t respond accurately when dose rates spike hundreds of times higher in a matter of microseconds. So researchers are developing new detector systems to precisely measure these bursts and keep pace with the extreme speed of FLASH delivery.</p><h2>FLASH as a Research Tool</h2><p>Beyond its therapeutic potential, FLASH may also open new windows to illuminate cancer biology. “What is really, really superinteresting, in my opinion,” says Vozenin, “is that we can use FLASH as a tool to understand the difference between normal tissue and tumors. There must be something we’re not aware of that really distinguishes the two—and FLASH can help us find it.” Identifying those differences, she says, could lead to entirely new interventions, not just with radiation, but also with drugs.</p><p>Vozenin’s team is currently testing a hypothesis involving long-lived proteins present in healthy tissue but absent in tumors. If those proteins prove to be key, she says, “we’re going to find a way to manipulate them—and perhaps reverse the phenomenon, even [turn] a tumor back into a normal tissue.”</p><p>Proponents of FLASH believe it could help close the cancer care gap worldwide; in low-income countries, only about 10 percent of patients have access to radiotherapy, and in middle-income countries, only about 60 percent of patients do, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Because FLASH treatment can often be delivered in a single brief session, it could spare patients from traveling long distances for weeks of treatment and allow clinics to treat many more people.</p><p>High-income countries stand to benefit as well. Fewer sessions mean lower costs, less strain on radiotherapy facilities, and fewer side effects and disruptions for patients.</p><p>The big question now is, How long will it take? Researchers I spoke with estimate that FLASH could become a routine clinical option in about 10 years—after the completion of remaining preclinical studies and multiphase human trials, and as machines become more compact, affordable, and efficient. Much of the momentum comes from a growing field of startups competing to build devices, but the broader scientific community remains remarkably open and collaborative.</p><p>“Everyone has a relative who knows about cancer because of their own experience,” says Stephan. “My mother died of it. In the end, we want to do something good for mankind. That’s why people work together.” <span class="ieee-end-mark"></span></p><p><em>This article appears in the March 2026 print issue.</em></p>

Mar 6, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/mathworks-logo.png?id=26851519&width=980"/><br/><br/><p>Non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) using low earth orbit (LEO) satellites present unique technical challenges, from managing large satellite constellations to ensuring reliable communication links. In this webinar, we’ll explore how to address these complexities using comprehensive modeling and simulation techniques. Discover how to model and analyze satellite orbits, onboard antennas and arrays, transmitter power amplifiers (PAs), signal propagation channels, and the RF and digital receiver segments—all within an integrated workflow. Learn the importance of including every link component to achieve accurate, reliable system performance.</p><p><strong>Highlights include:</strong></p><ul><li><span>Modeling large satellite constellations<br/></span></li><li><span>Analyzing and visualizing time-varying visibility and link closure</span></li><li><span>Using graphical apps for antenna analysis and RF component design</span></li><li><span>Modeling PAs and digital predistortion</span></li><li><span>Simulating interference effects in communication links</span></li></ul><div><a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/scenario-modeling-and-array-design-for-non-terrestrial-networks-ntns/" target="_blank">Register now for this free webinar!</a></div>

Mar 5, 2026

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-elderly-white-man-in-a-dress-shirt-and-glasses-smiling-in-his-at-home-workshop.jpg?id=65112143&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C1042%2C0%2C1042"/><br/><br/><p>No one had very high career aspirations for teenager <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/38227767000" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">David A. Weston</a>—except for Weston himself. Growing up in London, he scored low on the U.K. national assessment test given to students finishing primary school. The result meant that his next path was either to become a laborer or attend a vocational school to learn a trade.</p><p>What Weston really wanted to do was to work as a radio and TV repairman. He was fascinated by how the devices worked. He had taught himself to build an AM radio when he was 15. Even after showing it to his parents and teachers, though, they still didn’t think he was smart enough to pursue his chosen career, he says.</p><h3>David A. Weston</h3><br/><p><strong>Employer </strong></p><p><strong></strong>EMC Consulting, in in Arnprior, Ont., Canada</p><p><strong>Job title</strong></p><p>Retired consultant</p><p><strong>Member grade </strong></p><p>Life member</p><p><strong>Alma mater </strong></p><p><strong></strong>Croydon Technical College, London</p><h3></h3><br/><p>So, later that year, the underweight teen got a job on a construction site carrying heavy loads of building materials in a hod, a three-sided wooden trough. The experience convinced him he wasn’t cut out for manual labor.</p><p>He eventually earned a certificate in radio and television, the only credential he holds. The lack of academic degrees did not hold him back, though. He went on to become an expert in electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).</p><p>An EMI field has unwanted energy that causes interference. EMC is the capacity for electronic devices to work correctly in a shared electromagnetic environment without causing interference or suffering from it in nearby devices or signals.</p><p>After working for a number of companies, he launched his own business more than 40 years ago: <a href="https://www.emcconsultinginc.com/" target="_blank">EMC Consulting</a>, in Arnprior, Ont., Canada. The company has helped clients meet EMI and EMC regulatory requirements.</p><p>Now 83 years old and retired, the IEEE life member recently self-published his memoir, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/from-a-hod-to-an-odd-em-wave-david-weston/1148995654" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>From a Hod to an Odd EM Wave</em></a>.</p><p>“My memoir is about engineering persistence and human and technical discoveries,” he says. “I wanted to interest a young person, or perhaps a person later in life, in a career in engineering. If I can show that engineering is a personal, human endeavor with exciting opportunities in different fields such as medical, scientific, and the arts, maybe more women would be attracted to it.”</p><h2>From repairing radios to designing underwater devices</h2><p>In 1960 Weston enrolled in the radio and electronics program at London’s Croydon Technical College (now <a href="https://croydon.ac.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Croydon College</a>). The school covered topics from the <a href="https://www.cityandguilds.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">City and Guilds of London Institute</a>’s radio and television certificate program. He attended classes one day a week for five years while working to put himself through school.</p><p>Although his parents and his teachers might not have recognized Weston’s potential, employers did.</p><p>He got his first job in 1960, fixing televisions in a small repair shop. Then he helped repair tape recorders. In his spare time, he studied transistors and semiconductors.</p><p>Everything he knows, he says, he learned by reading books and research papers, and from on-the-job training.</p><p>Later in 1960, he worked as a mechanical examiner for the U.K. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Aviation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ministry of Aviation</a>, where he calibrated precision meters and potentiometers, which are variable resistors that monitor, control, and measure industrial equipment.</p><h3></h3><br/><p>“Engineering is creative. To have a new idea or design accepted is rewarding, satisfying, pleasurable, and even exciting.”</p><h3></h3><br/><p>He left the ministry in 1963 because he found the work boring, he says, and he was hired as a technician with the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/medical-research-council/about" target="_blank">Medical Research Council</a>’s neuropsychiatric research unit in Carshalton. The institution researches the biological causes of mental illness. His manager was interested in learning about advances in medical electronics and eagerly shared his knowledge with Weston.</p><p>One of Weston’s tasks was to build an electroencephalography (EEG) calibrator to measure responses from a patient’s brain activity. The methods used at the time to detect a brain tumor—before <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/mri-pioneer-to-receive-ieee-medal-for-innovations-in-healthcare-technology" target="_self">MRI machines</a> were developed—involved monitoring the patient’s speech and coordination, followed by taking a biopsy, which was not without danger, he says.</p><p>He used an ultrasonic transmitter and receiver to measure the time of transmission to the midline in the brain to determine whether the person had a tumor. If the midline had shifted, it would indicate the presence of a tumor, and a biopsy would be performed to confirm it. The measure of the evoked response in the brain was the only reliable indicator.</p><p>Weston earned his radio and TV certificate in 1965, leaving the research facility a year later to join Divcon (now part of <a href="https://www.oceaneering.com/" target="_blank">Oceaneering International</a>), a commercial diving company based in London that developed deep-sea helium diving helmets. Weston helped design a waterproof handheld communication device for divers that could withstand the high pressure in diving bells, the open-bottom pressurized chambers that transported them underwater.</p><p>Weston then moved to Hamburg, Germany, in 1969 to work for <a href="https://plath-corporation.de/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Plath</a>, an electronics manufacturer. He was tasked, along with other engineers from England, to design a servo control loop.</p><p>“Unfortunately it oscillated so badly when first being turned on that it shook itself to bits,” he says.</p><p>He left to work as a senior engineer at <a href="https://www.kistler.com/INT/en/kistler-acquisitions-win-win-for-all-concerned/C00000494" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dr. Staiger Mohilo and Co.</a> (now part of <a href="https://www.kistler.com/INT/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kistler</a>), in Schorndorf, Germany. It manufactured torque sensors, force transducers, and specialized test stand systems. Weston designed a process control computer. He says his boss told him that the controller had to work in close proximity to—and from the same power source as—a nearby machine without interfering with it or being interfered by it.</p><p>“I was thus introduced to the idea of electromagnetic compatibility,” he says.</p><p>After three years, he left to join the <a href="https://www.mobility.siemens.com/global/en.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Siemens Mobility</a> train group in Braunschweig, Germany, where he helped develop an electronic train-crossing light controller. The original warning lights on crossing gates used a mercury tube as a switch.</p><p>“The concern was the danger to personnel if the tube broke,” he says. “The simple and inexpensive solution was to put the tube in a metal container.”</p><p>Weston and his wife decided to leave Germany for Canada in 1975, after their young son began forgetting how to speak English.</p><h2>Working on the space shuttle and a particle accelerator</h2><p>His first job in the country was as an engineer for <a href="https://www.cae.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Canadian Aviation Electronics</a> in Montreal. CAE helped design the remote manipulator system in robotic hand controllers and simulation systems used to train astronauts for the space shuttle.</p><p>The robotic arm, known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadarm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Canadarm</a>, was used to deploy, maneuver, and capture payloads for the astronauts. Weston’s engineering team designed the display and control panel as well as the hand controllers located in the shuttle’s flight deck.</p><p>“I was attracted to the EMC aspects of the project and avidly studied everything I could on the topic,” he says.</p><p>He also helped develop a system that would protect an aircraft’s deployable black box from lightning strikes.</p><p>“I used a computer program to analyze the EMI field at close proximity to the black box to predict the lightning current flowing into the aircraft structure,” he says.</p><p>While enjoying the warm winter weather during a 1975 visit to a supplier on Long Island, N.Y., he decided he wanted to move his family there and asked whether any companies in the area were hiring. He was told that <a href="https://www.bnl.gov/world/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Brookhaven National Laboratory</a>, in Upton, was, so he applied for a position working on the ring system for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISABELLE" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Isabelle proton colliding-beam particle accelerator</a>.</p><p>The project, later known as the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders" target="_self">colliding beam accelerator</a>, was a collaboration between the lab and the <a href="https://www.energy.gov/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">U.S. Department of Energy</a>. The 200+200 giga-electron volt proton-proton collider was designed to use advanced superconducting magnets cooled by a massive helium refrigeration system to produce high-energy collisions. The GeV refers to the collision energy in a particle accelerator.</p><h3>Weston’s Advice for Budding Engineers</h3><br/><ul><li>Follow the field in which you are most interested.</li><li>Don’t be afraid to work in other countries; it can be a rewarding, enriching experience.</li><li>Question the results of measurements or analyses. If it doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Look at a similar publication on the same topic for a good correlation. </li><li>Don’t be too shy to ask simple questions. That’s how we learn and grow.</li><li>Keep an open mind.</li></ul><p><span>The lab hired him in 1978, and the family moved to Long Island. After a few weeks of meeting with different departments, his boss asked him what kind of work he wanted to do. Weston told him about his idea for designing a device to detect a helium leak, should there ever be one. His machine would cover the entire 3,834-meter circumference area of the ring.</span></p><p>“The danger with increased helium-enriched air is that the oxygen level reduces until the person breathing becomes adversely affected,” he wrote in his memoir. “I found that the speed of the sound of helium increased enough to be detected, but not sufficient enough to cause a person trouble if they were in the tunnel.</p><p>“Brookhaven was considering machines that only covered a small area of the ring, but these would be unrealistic because too many machines would be needed, and the cost would have been astronomical.”</p><p>Weston’s system included an ultrasonic transmitter, a receiver, a power amplifier, and a preamplifier. It would sound an alarm if the helium content went above a certain level. People in the tunnel would be directed to go to the nearest oxygen-breathing equipment, put on a mask, and immediately evacuate. It was successfully tested.</p><p>Weston wrote a report detailing the ultrasonic helium leak detector, but shortly after, he and his wife had to return to Canada in 1978 because they were unable to get additional work permits in the United States.</p><p>When he returned to Brookhaven for a visit, his former boss told him the report was well-received. And he shared some news that upset Weston.</p><p>“My boss told me he took my report, changed the name on the report to his, did not mention me, and published the report as his,” Weston wrote in his memoir.</p><p>But the system was never built. The Isabelle project was canceled in July 1983 due to technical problems with fabricating the superconducting magnets.</p><p>Weston got a job working for <a href="https://satistar.com/portfolio/cal-corporation/" target="_blank">CAL Corp.</a>, an aerospace telecommunications company in Montreal. For the next 14 years, he fixed EMI problems for the company’s products, including its charge-coupled device-based space-qualified cameras, which were designed to be carried aboard a satellite.</p><p>In 1992 he realized that nearly all his work involved consulting for the company’s customers, so he decided to start his own agency. CAL generously let him take the clients he worked with, he says.</p><p>Weston then conducted EMI analysis and testing and designed EMC systems for companies around the world.</p><p>“I always had enough customers and have never had to look for work,” he says. “For me, having my own business was more secure than working for a company.”</p><p>He retired in 2022.</p><h2>IEEE as an educator</h2><p>To broaden his education, he joined IEEE in 1976 to get access to its research papers and attend its conferences, he says. He is a member of the <a href="https://www.emcs.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society</a>.</p><p>Because he is self-educated, he was “keen to learn as much as possible by reading practical papers published by IEEE,” he says. “I met people at IEEE symposiums and listened to the authors presenting their papers.”</p><p>Those included EMC experts such as Life Fellows <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&queryText=L.O.%20Hoeft" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Lothar O. “Bud” Hoeft</a>, <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&searchWithin=%22First%20Name%22:Richard&searchWithin=%22Last%20Name%22:Mohr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Richard J. Mohr</a>, and <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?newsearch=true&queryText=Clayton%20R.%20Paul" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Clayton R. Paul</a>, whose papers are published in the<a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/home.jsp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> IEEE Xplore Digital Library</a>. <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?queryText=david%20weston&highlight=true&returnFacets=ALL&returnType=SEARCH&matchPubs=true&refinements=Author:David%20Weston" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Several of Weston’s papers</a> are in the library as well.</p><p>His book <a href="https://www.emcconsultinginc.com/publications/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em><em>Electromagnetic Compatibility: Methods, Analysis, Circuits, and Measurement</em></em></a> references many IEEE papers on data and analysis methods.</p><p>“Engineering is creative,” he says. “To have a new idea or design accepted is rewarding, satisfying, pleasurable, and even exciting.”</p>

Feb 9, 2022

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/andrew-ng-listens-during-the-power-of-data-sooner-than-you-think-global-technology-conference-in-brooklyn-new-york-on-wednes.jpg?id=29206806&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C106%2C0%2C946"/><br/><br/><p><strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Ng" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Andrew Ng</a> has serious street cred</strong> in artificial intelligence. He pioneered the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) to train deep learning models in the late 2000s with his students at <a href="https://stanfordmlgroup.github.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Stanford University</a>, cofounded <a href="https://research.google/teams/brain/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Brain</a> in 2011, and then served for three years as chief scientist for <a href="https://ir.baidu.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Baidu</a>, where he helped build the Chinese tech giant’s AI group. So when he says he has identified the next big shift in artificial intelligence, people listen. And that’s what he told <em>IEEE Spectrum</em> in an exclusive Q&A.</p><hr/><p> Ng’s current efforts are focused on his company <a href="https://landing.ai/about/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Landing AI</a>, which built a platform called LandingLens to help manufacturers improve visual inspection with computer vision. He has also become something of an evangelist for what he calls the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06-AZXmwHjo" target="_blank">data-centric AI movement</a>, which he says can yield “small data” solutions to big issues in AI, including model efficiency, accuracy, and bias. </p><p> Andrew Ng on... </p><ul> <li><a href="#big">What’s next for really big models</a></li> <li><a href="#career">The career advice he didn’t listen to</a></li> <li><a href="#defining">Defining the data-centric AI movement</a></li> <li><a href="#synthetic">Synthetic data</a></li> <li><a href="#work">Why Landing AI asks its customers to do the work</a></li> </ul><p> <strong>The great advances in deep learning over the past decade or so have been powered by ever-bigger models crunching ever-bigger amounts of data. Some people argue that that’s an <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/deep-learning-computational-cost" target="_self">unsustainable trajectory</a>. Do you agree that it can’t go on that way?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Andrew Ng: </strong>This is a big question. We’ve seen foundation models in NLP [natural language processing]. I’m excited about NLP models getting even bigger, and also about the potential of building foundation models in computer vision. I think there’s lots of signal to still be exploited in video: We have not been able to build foundation models yet for video because of compute bandwidth and the cost of processing video, as opposed to tokenized text. So I think that this engine of scaling up deep learning algorithms, which has been running for something like 15 years now, still has steam in it. Having said that, it only applies to certain problems, and there’s a set of other problems that need small data solutions. </p><p> <strong>When you say you want a foundation model for computer vision, what do you mean by that?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> This is a term coined by <a href="https://cs.stanford.edu/~pliang/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Percy Liang</a> and <a href="https://crfm.stanford.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">some of my friends at Stanford</a> to refer to very large models, trained on very large data sets, that can be tuned for specific applications. For example, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-ais-powerful-text-generating-tool-is-ready-for-business" target="_self">GPT-3</a> is an example of a foundation model [for NLP]. Foundation models offer a lot of promise as a new paradigm in developing machine learning applications, but also challenges in terms of making sure that they’re reasonably fair and free from bias, especially if many of us will be building on top of them. </p><p> <strong>What needs to happen for someone to build a foundation model for video?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> I think there is a scalability problem. The compute power needed to process the large volume of images for video is significant, and I think that’s why foundation models have arisen first in NLP. Many researchers are working on this, and I think we’re seeing early signs of such models being developed in computer vision. But I’m confident that if a semiconductor maker gave us 10 times more processor power, we could easily find 10 times more video to build such models for vision. </p><p> Having said that, a lot of what’s happened over the past decade is that deep learning has happened in consumer-facing companies that have large user bases, sometimes billions of users, and therefore very large data sets. While that paradigm of machine learning has driven a lot of economic value in consumer software, I find that that recipe of scale doesn’t work for other industries. </p><p> <a href="#top">Back to top</a> </p><p> <strong>It’s funny to hear you say that, because your early work was at a consumer-facing company with millions of users.</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>Over a decade ago, when I proposed starting the <a href="https://research.google/teams/brain/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Brain</a> project to use Google’s compute infrastructure to build very large neural networks, it was a controversial step. One very senior person pulled me aside and warned me that starting Google Brain would be bad for my career. I think he felt that the action couldn’t just be in scaling up, and that I should instead focus on architecture innovation. </p><p class="pull-quote"> “In many industries where giant data sets simply don’t exist, I think the focus has to shift from big data to good data. Having 50 thoughtfully engineered examples can be sufficient to explain to the neural network what you want it to learn.”<br/> —Andrew Ng, CEO & Founder, Landing AI </p><p> I remember when my students and I published the first <a href="https://nips.cc/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NeurIPS</a> workshop paper advocating using <a href="https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-zone" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">CUDA</a>, a platform for processing on GPUs, for deep learning—a different senior person in AI sat me down and said, “CUDA is really complicated to program. As a programming paradigm, this seems like too much work.” I did manage to convince him; the other person I did not convince. </p><p> <strong>I expect they’re both convinced now.</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> I think so, yes. </p><p> Over the past year as I’ve been speaking to people about the data-centric AI movement, I’ve been getting flashbacks to when I was speaking to people about deep learning and scalability 10 or 15 years ago. In the past year, I’ve been getting the same mix of “there’s nothing new here” and “this seems like the wrong direction.” </p><p> <a href="#top">Back to top</a> </p><p> <strong>How do you define data-centric AI, and why do you consider it a movement?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> Data-centric AI is the discipline of systematically engineering the data needed to successfully build an AI system. For an AI system, you have to implement some algorithm, say a neural network, in code and then train it on your data set. The dominant paradigm over the last decade was to download the data set while you focus on improving the code. Thanks to that paradigm, over the last decade deep learning networks have improved significantly, to the point where for a lot of applications the code—the neural network architecture—is basically a solved problem. So for many practical applications, it’s now more productive to hold the neural network architecture fixed, and instead find ways to improve the data. </p><p> When I started speaking about this, there were many practitioners who, completely appropriately, raised their hands and said, “Yes, we’ve been doing this for 20 years.” This is the time to take the things that some individuals have been doing intuitively and make it a systematic engineering discipline. </p><p> The data-centric AI movement is much bigger than one company or group of researchers. My collaborators and I organized a <a href="https://neurips.cc/virtual/2021/workshop/21860" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">data-centric AI workshop at NeurIPS</a>, and I was really delighted at the number of authors and presenters that showed up. </p><p> <strong>You often talk about companies or institutions that have only a small amount of data to work with. How can data-centric AI help them?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>You hear a lot about vision systems built with millions of images—I once built a face recognition system using 350 million images. Architectures built for hundreds of millions of images don’t work with only 50 images. But it turns out, if you have 50 really good examples, you can build something valuable, like a defect-inspection system. In many industries where giant data sets simply don’t exist, I think the focus has to shift from big data to good data. Having 50 thoughtfully engineered examples can be sufficient to explain to the neural network what you want it to learn. </p><p> <strong>When you talk about training a model with just 50 images, does that really mean you’re taking an existing model that was trained on a very large data set and fine-tuning it? Or do you mean a brand new model that’s designed to learn only from that small data set?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>Let me describe what Landing AI does. When doing visual inspection for manufacturers, we often use our own flavor of <a href="https://developers.arcgis.com/python/guide/how-retinanet-works/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RetinaNet</a>. It is a pretrained model. Having said that, the pretraining is a small piece of the puzzle. What’s a bigger piece of the puzzle is providing tools that enable the manufacturer to pick the right set of images [to use for fine-tuning] and label them in a consistent way. There’s a very practical problem we’ve seen spanning vision, NLP, and speech, where even human annotators don’t agree on the appropriate label. For big data applications, the common response has been: If the data is noisy, let’s just get a lot of data and the algorithm will average over it. But if you can develop tools that flag where the data’s inconsistent and give you a very targeted way to improve the consistency of the data, that turns out to be a more efficient way to get a high-performing system. </p><p class="pull-quote"> “Collecting more data often helps, but if you try to collect more data for everything, that can be a very expensive activity.”<br/> —Andrew Ng </p><p> For example, if you have 10,000 images where 30 images are of one class, and those 30 images are labeled inconsistently, one of the things we do is build tools to draw your attention to the subset of data that’s inconsistent. So you can very quickly relabel those images to be more consistent, and this leads to improvement in performance. </p><p> <strong>Could this focus on high-quality data help with bias in data sets? If you’re able to curate the data more before training?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> Very much so. Many researchers have pointed out that biased data is one factor among many leading to biased systems. There have been many thoughtful efforts to engineer the data. At the NeurIPS workshop, <a href="https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~olgarus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Olga Russakovsky</a> gave a really nice talk on this. At the main NeurIPS conference, I also really enjoyed <a href="https://neurips.cc/virtual/2021/invited-talk/22281" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mary Gray’s presentation,</a> which touched on how data-centric AI is one piece of the solution, but not the entire solution. New tools like <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/datasheets-for-datasets/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Datasheets for Datasets</a> also seem like an important piece of the puzzle. </p><p> One of the powerful tools that data-centric AI gives us is the ability to engineer a subset of the data. Imagine training a machine-learning system and finding that its performance is okay for most of the data set, but its performance is biased for just a subset of the data. If you try to change the whole neural network architecture to improve the performance on just that subset, it’s quite difficult. But if you can engineer a subset of the data you can address the problem in a much more targeted way. </p><p> <strong>When you talk about engineering the data, what do you mean exactly?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>In AI, data cleaning is important, but the way the data has been cleaned has often been in very manual ways. In computer vision, someone may visualize images through a <a href="https://jupyter.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Jupyter notebook</a> and maybe spot the problem, and maybe fix it. But I’m excited about tools that allow you to have a very large data set, tools that draw your attention quickly and efficiently to the subset of data where, say, the labels are noisy. Or to quickly bring your attention to the one class among 100 classes where it would benefit you to collect more data. Collecting more data often helps, but if you try to collect more data for everything, that can be a very expensive activity. </p><p> For example, I once figured out that a speech-recognition system was performing poorly when there was car noise in the background. Knowing that allowed me to collect more data with car noise in the background, rather than trying to collect more data for everything, which would have been expensive and slow. </p><p> <a href="#top">Back to top</a> </p><p> <strong>What about using synthetic data, is that often a good solution?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>I think synthetic data is an important tool in the tool chest of data-centric AI. At the NeurIPS workshop, <a href="https://tensorlab.cms.caltech.edu/users/anima/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Anima Anandkumar</a> gave a great talk that touched on synthetic data. I think there are important uses of synthetic data that go beyond just being a preprocessing step for increasing the data set for a learning algorithm. I’d love to see more tools to let developers use synthetic data generation as part of the closed loop of iterative machine learning development. </p><p> <strong>Do you mean that synthetic data would allow you to try the model on more data sets?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>Not really. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to detect defects in a smartphone casing. There are many different types of defects on smartphones. It could be a scratch, a dent, pit marks, discoloration of the material, other types of blemishes. If you train the model and then find through error analysis that it’s doing well overall but it’s performing poorly on pit marks, then synthetic data generation allows you to address the problem in a more targeted way. You could generate more data just for the pit-mark category. </p><p class="pull-quote"> “In the consumer software Internet, we could train a handful of machine-learning models to serve a billion users. In manufacturing, you might have 10,000 manufacturers building 10,000 custom AI models.”<br/> —Andrew Ng </p><p> Synthetic data generation is a very powerful tool, but there are many simpler tools that I will often try first. Such as data augmentation, improving labeling consistency, or just asking a factory to collect more data. </p><p> <a href="#top">Back to top</a> </p><p> <strong>To make these issues more concrete, can you walk me through an example? When a company approaches <a href="https://landing.ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Landing AI</a> and says it has a problem with visual inspection, how do you onboard them and work toward deployment?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>When a customer approaches us we usually have a conversation about their inspection problem and look at a few images to verify that the problem is feasible with computer vision. Assuming it is, we ask them to upload the data to the <a href="https://landing.ai/platform/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">LandingLens</a> platform. We often advise them on the methodology of data-centric AI and help them label the data. </p><p> One of the foci of Landing AI is to empower manufacturing companies to do the machine learning work themselves. A lot of our work is making sure the software is fast and easy to use. Through the iterative process of machine learning development, we advise customers on things like how to train models on the platform, when and how to improve the labeling of data so the performance of the model improves. Our training and software supports them all the way through deploying the trained model to an edge device in the factory. </p><p> <strong>How do you deal with changing needs? If products change or lighting conditions change in the factory, can the model keep up?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng:</strong> It varies by manufacturer. There is data drift in many contexts. But there are some manufacturers that have been running the same manufacturing line for 20 years now with few changes, so they don’t expect changes in the next five years. Those stable environments make things easier. For other manufacturers, we provide tools to flag when there’s a significant data-drift issue. I find it really important to empower manufacturing customers to correct data, retrain, and update the model. Because if something changes and it’s 3 a.m. in the United States, I want them to be able to adapt their learning algorithm right away to maintain operations. </p><p> In the consumer software Internet, we could train a handful of machine-learning models to serve a billion users. In manufacturing, you might have 10,000 manufacturers building 10,000 custom AI models. The challenge is, how do you do that without Landing AI having to hire 10,000 machine learning specialists? </p><p> <strong>So you’re saying that to make it scale, you have to empower customers to do a lot of the training and other work.</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>Yes, exactly! This is an industry-wide problem in AI, not just in manufacturing. Look at health care. Every hospital has its own slightly different format for electronic health records. How can every hospital train its own custom AI model? Expecting every hospital’s IT personnel to invent new neural-network architectures is unrealistic. The only way out of this dilemma is to build tools that empower the customers to build their own models by giving them tools to engineer the data and express their domain knowledge. That’s what Landing AI is executing in computer vision, and the field of AI needs other teams to execute this in other domains. </p><p> <strong>Is there anything else you think it’s important for people to understand about the work you’re doing or the data-centric AI movement?</strong> </p><p> <strong>Ng: </strong>In the last decade, the biggest shift in AI was a shift to deep learning. I think it’s quite possible that in this decade the biggest shift will be to data-centric AI. With the maturity of today’s neural network architectures, I think for a lot of the practical applications the bottleneck will be whether we can efficiently get the data we need to develop systems that work well. The data-centric AI movement has tremendous energy and momentum across the whole community. I hope more researchers and developers will jump in and work on it. </p><p> <a href="#top">Back to top</a> </p><p><em>This article appears in the April 2022 print issue as “Andrew Ng, AI Minimalist</em><em>.”</em></p>

Feb 8, 2022

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/layered-rendering-of-colorful-semiconductor-wafers-with-a-bright-white-light-sitting-on-one.jpg?id=29285079&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C500%2C0%2C500"/><br/><br/><p>The end of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/on-beyond-moores-law-4-new-laws-of-computing" target="_self">Moore’s Law</a> is looming. Engineers and designers can do only so much to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ibm-introduces-the-worlds-first-2nm-node-chip" target="_self">miniaturize transistors</a> and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/cerebras-giant-ai-chip-now-has-a-trillions-more-transistors" target="_self">pack as many of them as possible into chips</a>. So they’re turning to other approaches to chip design, incorporating technologies like AI into the process.</p><p>Samsung, for instance, is <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/processing-in-dram-accelerates-ai" target="_self">adding AI to its memory chips</a> to enable processing in memory, thereby saving energy and speeding up machine learning. Speaking of speed, Google’s TPU V4 AI chip has <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/heres-how-googles-tpu-v4-ai-chip-stacked-up-in-training-tests" target="_self">doubled its processing power</a> compared with that of its previous version.</p><p>But AI holds still more promise and potential for the semiconductor industry. To better understand how AI is set to revolutionize chip design, we spoke with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-gorr-phd" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Heather Gorr</a>, senior product manager for <a href="https://www.mathworks.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MathWorks</a>’ MATLAB platform.</p><p><strong>How is AI currently being used to design the next generation of chips?</strong></p><p><strong>Heather Gorr:</strong> AI is such an important technology because it’s involved in most parts of the cycle, including the design and manufacturing process. There’s a lot of important applications here, even in the general process engineering where we want to optimize things. I think defect detection is a big one at all phases of the process, especially in manufacturing. But even thinking ahead in the design process, [AI now plays a significant role] when you’re designing the light and the sensors and all the different components. There’s a lot of anomaly detection and fault mitigation that you really want to consider.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25 rm-float-left" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="Portrait of a woman with blonde-red hair smiling at the camera" class="rm-shortcode rm-resized-image" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f18a02ccaf51f5c766af2ebc4af18e1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="2dc00" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/portrait-of-a-woman-with-blonde-red-hair-smiling-at-the-camera.jpg?id=29288554&width=980" style="max-width: 100%"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..." style="max-width: 100%;">Heather Gorr</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit..." style="max-width: 100%;">MathWorks</small></p><p>Then, thinking about the logistical modeling that you see in any industry, there is always planned downtime that you want to mitigate; but you also end up having unplanned downtime. So, looking back at that historical data of when you’ve had those moments where maybe it took a bit longer than expected to manufacture something, you can take a look at all of that data and use AI to try to identify the proximate cause or to see something that might jump out even in the processing and design phases. We think of AI oftentimes as a predictive tool, or as a robot doing something, but a lot of times you get a lot of insight from the data through AI.</p><p><strong>What are the benefits of using AI for chip design?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr:</strong> Historically, we’ve seen a lot of physics-based modeling, which is a very intensive process. We want to do a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_order_reduction" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reduced order model</a>, where instead of solving such a computationally expensive and extensive model, we can do something a little cheaper. You could create a surrogate model, so to speak, of that physics-based model, use the data, and then do your parameter sweeps, your optimizations, your <a href="https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/monte-carlo-simulation" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Monte Carlo simulations</a> using the surrogate model. That takes a lot less time computationally than solving the physics-based equations directly. So, we’re seeing that benefit in many ways, including the efficiency and economy that are the results of iterating quickly on the experiments and the simulations that will really help in the design.</p><p><strong>So it’s like having a digital twin in a sense?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr:</strong> Exactly. That’s pretty much what people are doing, where you have the physical system model and the experimental data. Then, in conjunction, you have this other model that you could tweak and tune and try different parameters and experiments that let sweep through all of those different situations and come up with a better design in the end.</p><p><strong>So, it’s going to be more efficient and, as you said, cheaper?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr:</strong> Yeah, definitely. Especially in the experimentation and design phases, where you’re trying different things. That’s obviously going to yield dramatic cost savings if you’re actually manufacturing and producing [the chips]. You want to simulate, test, experiment as much as possible without making something using the actual process engineering.</p><p><strong>We’ve talked about the benefits. How about the drawbacks?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr: </strong>The [AI-based experimental models] tend to not be as accurate as physics-based models. Of course, that’s why you do many simulations and parameter sweeps. But that’s also the benefit of having that digital twin, where you can keep that in mind—it’s not going to be as accurate as that precise model that we’ve developed over the years.</p><p>Both chip design and manufacturing are system intensive; you have to consider every little part. And that can be really challenging. It’s a case where you might have models to predict something and different parts of it, but you still need to bring it all together.</p><p>One of the other things to think about too is that you need the data to build the models. You have to incorporate data from all sorts of different sensors and different sorts of teams, and so that heightens the challenge.</p><p><strong>How can engineers use AI to better prepare and extract insights from hardware or sensor data?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr: </strong>We always think about using AI to predict something or do some robot task, but you can use AI to come up with patterns and pick out things you might not have noticed before on your own. People will use AI when they have high-frequency data coming from many different sensors, and a lot of times it’s useful to explore the frequency domain and things like data synchronization or resampling. Those can be really challenging if you’re not sure where to start.</p><p>One of the things I would say is, use the tools that are available. There’s a vast community of people working on these things, and you can find lots of examples [of applications and techniques] on <a href="https://github.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">GitHub</a> or <a href="https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MATLAB Central</a>, where people have shared nice examples, even little apps they’ve created. I think many of us are buried in data and just not sure what to do with it, so definitely take advantage of what’s already out there in the community. You can explore and see what makes sense to you, and bring in that balance of domain knowledge and the insight you get from the tools and AI.</p><p><strong>What should engineers and designers consider wh</strong><strong>en using AI for chip design?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr:</strong> Think through what problems you’re trying to solve or what insights you might hope to find, and try to be clear about that. Consider all of the different components, and document and test each of those different parts. Consider all of the people involved, and explain and hand off in a way that is sensible for the whole team.</p><p><strong>How do you think AI will affect chip designers’ jobs?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr:</strong> It’s going to free up a lot of human capital for more advanced tasks. We can use AI to reduce waste, to optimize the materials, to optimize the design, but then you still have that human involved whenever it comes to decision-making. I think it’s a great example of people and technology working hand in hand. It’s also an industry where all people involved—even on the manufacturing floor—need to have some level of understanding of what’s happening, so this is a great industry for advancing AI because of how we test things and how we think about them before we put them on the chip.</p><p><strong>How do you envision the future of AI and chip design?</strong></p><p><strong>Gorr</strong><strong>:</strong> It’s very much dependent on that human element—involving people in the process and having that interpretable model. We can do many things with the mathematical minutiae of modeling, but it comes down to how people are using it, how everybody in the process is understanding and applying it. Communication and involvement of people of all skill levels in the process are going to be really important. We’re going to see less of those superprecise predictions and more transparency of information, sharing, and that digital twin—not only using AI but also using our human knowledge and all of the work that many people have done over the years.</p>

Feb 7, 2022

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-golden-square-package-holds-a-small-processor-sitting-on-top-is-a-metal-square-with-mit-etched-into-it.jpg?id=29281587&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C500%2C0%2C500"/><br/><br/><p>Quantum computing is a devilishly complex technology, with many technical hurdles impacting its development. Of these challenges two critical issues stand out: miniaturization and qubit quality.</p><p>IBM has adopted the superconducting qubit road map of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ibms-envisons-the-road-to-quantum-computing-like-an-apollo-mission" target="_self">reaching a 1,121-qubit processor by 2023</a>, leading to the expectation that 1,000 qubits with today’s qubit form factor is feasible. However, current approaches will require very large chips (50 millimeters on a side, or larger) at the scale of small wafers, or the use of chiplets on multichip modules. While this approach will work, the aim is to attain a better path toward scalability.</p><p>Now researchers at <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-021-01187-w" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MIT have been able to both reduce the size of the qubits</a> and done so in a way that reduces the interference that occurs between neighboring qubits. The MIT researchers have increased the number of superconducting qubits that can be added onto a device by a factor of 100.</p><p>“We are addressing both qubit miniaturization and quality,” said <a href="https://equs.mit.edu/william-d-oliver/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">William Oliver</a>, the director for the <a href="https://cqe.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Center for Quantum Engineering</a> at MIT. “Unlike conventional transistor scaling, where only the number really matters, for qubits, large numbers are not sufficient, they must also be high-performance. Sacrificing performance for qubit number is not a useful trade in quantum computing. They must go hand in hand.”</p><p>The key to this big increase in qubit density and reduction of interference comes down to the use of two-dimensional materials, in particular the 2D insulator hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The MIT researchers demonstrated that a few atomic monolayers of hBN can be stacked to form the insulator in the capacitors of a superconducting qubit.</p><p>Just like other capacitors, the capacitors in these superconducting circuits take the form of a sandwich in which an insulator material is sandwiched between two metal plates. The big difference for these capacitors is that the superconducting circuits can operate only at extremely low temperatures—less than 0.02 degrees above absolute zero (-273.15 °C).</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image rm-resized-container rm-resized-container-25 rm-float-left" data-rm-resized-container="25%" style="float: left;"> <img alt="Golden dilution refrigerator hanging vertically" class="rm-shortcode rm-resized-image" data-rm-shortcode-id="694399af8a1c345e51a695ff73909eda" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="6c615" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/golden-dilution-refrigerator-hanging-vertically.jpg?id=29281593&width=980" style="max-width: 100%"/> <small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..." style="max-width: 100%;">Superconducting qubits are measured at temperatures as low as 20 millikelvin in a dilution refrigerator.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit..." style="max-width: 100%;">Nathan Fiske/MIT</small></p><p>In that environment, insulating materials that are available for the job, such as PE-CVD silicon oxide or silicon nitride, have quite a few defects that are too lossy for quantum computing applications. To get around these material shortcomings, most superconducting circuits use what are called coplanar capacitors. In these capacitors, the plates are positioned laterally to one another, rather than on top of one another.</p><p>As a result, the intrinsic silicon substrate below the plates and to a smaller degree the vacuum above the plates serve as the capacitor dielectric. Intrinsic silicon is chemically pure and therefore has few defects, and the large size dilutes the electric field at the plate interfaces, all of which leads to a low-loss capacitor. The lateral size of each plate in this open-face design ends up being quite large (typically 100 by 100 micrometers) in order to achieve the required capacitance.</p><p>In an effort to move away from the large lateral configuration, the MIT researchers embarked on a search for an insulator that has very few defects and is compatible with superconducting capacitor plates.</p><p>“We chose to study hBN because it is the most widely used insulator in 2D material research due to its cleanliness and chemical inertness,” said colead author <a href="https://equs.mit.edu/joel-wang/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Joel Wang</a>, a research scientist in the Engineering Quantum Systems group of the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics. </p><p>On either side of the hBN, the MIT researchers used the 2D superconducting material, niobium diselenide. One of the trickiest aspects of fabricating the capacitors was working with the niobium diselenide, which oxidizes in seconds when exposed to air, according to Wang. This necessitates that the assembly of the capacitor occur in a glove box filled with argon gas.</p><p>While this would seemingly complicate the scaling up of the production of these capacitors, Wang doesn’t regard this as a limiting factor.</p><p>“What determines the quality factor of the capacitor are the two interfaces between the two materials,” said Wang. “Once the sandwich is made, the two interfaces are “sealed” and we don’t see any noticeable degradation over time when exposed to the atmosphere.”</p><p>This lack of degradation is because around 90 percent of the electric field is contained within the sandwich structure, so the oxidation of the outer surface of the niobium diselenide does not play a significant role anymore. This ultimately makes the capacitor footprint much smaller, and it accounts for the reduction in cross talk between the neighboring qubits.</p><p>“The main challenge for scaling up the fabrication will be the wafer-scale growth of hBN and 2D superconductors like [niobium diselenide], and how one can do wafer-scale stacking of these films,” added Wang.</p><p>Wang believes that this research has shown 2D hBN to be a good insulator candidate for superconducting qubits. He says that the groundwork the MIT team has done will serve as a road map for using other hybrid 2D materials to build superconducting circuits.</p>

Mar 20, 2026

The BorgBase team has cooked up a new open source backup client written in Rust.

Mar 19, 2026

Plenty of things going on in the Linux world.

Mar 19, 2026

Mac Pro support and working microphones on the M2 Pro/Max are in, along with a package management upgrade that Fedora is yet to ship.

Mar 19, 2026

The move targets the problem of maintainers drowning in AI-generated vulnerability reports.

Mar 19, 2026

There&#x27;s a lot this release offers, but a few changes stand out.

Mar 18, 2026

A significant portion of the Manjaro team has signed a manifesto demanding the project split from its parent company and restructure as a non-profit.

Mar 17, 2026

And thankfully, it&#x27;s more than just a Linux distro without age verification.

Mar 16, 2026

The Flatpak-only build brings basic browsing but extensions and Kagi Sync aren&#x27;t ready yet.

Mar 16, 2026

The line between a secure garden and a locked cage is getting blurry.

Mar 16, 2026

Linux offers more freedom than Windows in many ways. Here are a few things you can do on Linux that Windows simply doesn’t allow.

Mar 13, 2026

Raspberry Pi users might be even happier.

Mar 12, 2026

&quot;For sale&quot; sign has been raised for SUSE Linux.

Mar 12, 2026

And this time it is valued for $6 billion

Mar 11, 2026

Foot is a minimal Wayland-native terminal emulator for Linux that focuses on speed and simplicity. A hidden gem worth exploring.

Mar 10, 2026

Also includes opt-in frame rate telemetry, hardware-tagged reviews, and several quality-of-life improvements.

Mar 20, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg 1280w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?resize=250,141 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?resize=400,225 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?resize=800,450 800w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="1001873" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/20/a-candle-powered-game-boy-for-post-apocalyptic-tetris/gbcandle_feat/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg" data-orig-size="1280,720" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="gbcandle_feat" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gbcandle_feat.jpg?w=800" /></div>We&#8217;re not exactly worried about Armageddon here at Hackaday, but should we end up facing the end of the world as we know it, having something to pass the time <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/20/a-candle-powered-game-boy-for-post-apocalyptic-tetris/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 20, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png 1920w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?resize=250,141 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?resize=400,225 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?resize=800,450 800w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?resize=1536,864 1536w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="999274" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/recording-hdr-video-with-a-raspberry-pi/imx585-on-raspberry-pi-in-hdr-0-35-screenshot/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png" data-orig-size="1920,1080" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="IMX585 on Raspberry Pi in HDR 0-35 screenshot" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/IMX585-on-Raspberry-Pi-in-HDR-0-35-screenshot.png?w=800" /></div>The Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers can be hooked up with a wide range of compatible cameras. There are a number of first party options, but you don&#8217;t have <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/recording-hdr-video-with-a-raspberry-pi/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 20, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="462" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg 1160w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?resize=250,144 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?resize=400,231 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?resize=800,462 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="999309" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/studying-a-battle-born-lfp-batterys-death-under-controlled-conditions/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg" data-orig-size="1160,670" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/battleborn_battery_load_test_disconnects_graphs_will_prowse_youtube.jpg?w=800" /></div>There has been quite a bit of news recently about the  Battle Born LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries and how they are dying in droves if not outright melting their plastic enclosures. <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/studying-a-battle-born-lfp-batterys-death-under-controlled-conditions/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 19, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg 1280w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?resize=250,141 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?resize=400,225 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?resize=800,450 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="999327" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/real-robot-makes-debut-in-programming-game/robot-turtle-main/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg" data-orig-size="1280,720" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="robot-turtle-main" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/robot-turtle-main.jpg?w=800" /></div>Sometimes the right tool for the right job appears almost out of nowhere. That was certainly the case for [Jonathan] who came across an unusual but well-designed robot at a <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/real-robot-makes-debut-in-programming-game/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 19, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="451" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2284201773598879960-e1773807184468.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" data-attachment-id="999264" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/retro-weather-display-acts-like-its-windows-95/attachment/2284201773598879960/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2284201773598879960-e1773807184468.jpg" data-orig-size="2907,1640" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="2284201773598879960" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2284201773598879960-e1773807184468.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2284201773598879960-e1773807184468.jpg?w=800" /></div>Sometimes you really need to know what the weather is doing, but you don&#8217;t want to look at your phone. For times like those, this neat weather display from [Jordan] <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/retro-weather-display-acts-like-its-windows-95/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 19, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg 800w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg?resize=250,141 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg?resize=400,225 400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="999289" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/reading-the-worlds-smallest-hard-drive/tiny-hdd-featured/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg" data-orig-size="800,450" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="tiny-hdd-featured" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tiny-hdd-featured.jpg?w=800" /></div>You have a tiny twenty-year-old hard drive with a weird interface. How do you read it? If you&#8217;re [Will Whang], by reverse engineering, and building an interface board. In many <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/reading-the-worlds-smallest-hard-drive/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 19, 2026

<div><img width="800" height="484" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?w=800" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands." style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" loading="lazy" srcset="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg 3000w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?resize=250,151 250w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?resize=400,242 400w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?resize=800,484 800w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?resize=1536,929 1536w, https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?resize=2048,1239 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-attachment-id="488742" data-permalink="https://hackaday.com/2021/07/27/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-mad-model-m/keebin/" data-orig-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg" data-orig-size="3000,1815" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}" data-image-title="Keebin" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?w=400" data-large-file="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Keebin.jpg?w=800" /></div>But sir, it is wafer-thin. That&#8217;s how they get you! Just when you couldn&#8217;t possibly justify building another keyboard, let alone owning one, along comes the Kambala by [aroum2]. Now, <a href="https://hackaday.com/2026/03/19/keebin-with-kristina-the-one-with-the-ultra-thin-split/" class="read-more">&#8230;read more</a>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Oil and war makes for a devastating combination</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/revisiting-the-environmental-ruin-of-the-first-gulf-war-1279095/">Revisiting the Environmental Ruin of the First Gulf War</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>It's likely to damage your health the least</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/if-youre-going-to-drink-make-it-this-kind-of-alcohol-1279091/">If You’re Going to Drink, Make It This Kind of Alcohol</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>What happens in our brain when we fail to live up to our morals </p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/is-this-where-morality-lives-in-the-brain-1279083/">Is This Where Morality Lives in the Brain?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>In Korea and Japan, humanoid machines aren’t rivals but partners</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/what-the-us-could-learn-from-asias-robot-revolution-1279062/">What the US Could Learn From Asia’s Robot Revolution</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Used in mice, it induces fasting, but by an unusual mechanism</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/is-this-metabolic-molecule-from-pythons-the-next-big-weight-loss-drug-1279047/">Is This Metabolic Molecule from Pythons the Next Big Weight-Loss Drug?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Why not get a cocker spaniel or poodle instead?</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/the-science-is-in-no-one-likes-your-cockapoo-1279042/">The Science Is in: No One Likes Your Cockapoo</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>These egg-laying oddities are more birdlike than previously thought</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/platypus-anatomy-just-got-weirder-1279056/">Platypus Anatomy Just Got Weirder</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Murphy’s Law was in full effect</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/the-comedy-of-errors-that-was-the-first-ever-space-walk-1279052/">The Comedy of Errors That Was the First-Ever Space Walk</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>An interview with a music cognition researcher about the evolutionary roots of music</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/did-music-give-rise-to-language-1279034/">Did Music Give Rise to Language?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Stopping GLP-1 treatments has side effects, too</p> <p>The post <a href="https://nautil.us/whiplash-heart-attack-and-stroke-risk-jumps-when-people-stop-taking-glp-1s-1279029/">“Whiplash”: Heart Attack and Stroke Risk Jumps When People Stop Taking GLP-1s</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nautil.us">Nautilus</a>.</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>Just how big can a star become? The answer depends on when in cosmic history you&rsquo;re asking the question</p>

Mar 20, 2026

<p>The author of the novel <i>Project Hail Mary </i>breaks down aliens, anxiety and the process of bringing his story to the screen</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>For years, ACIP has advised U.S. vaccine policy. But after changes to its membership made by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., were challenged in court, the Trump administration is apparently changing tack</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Whether it&rsquo;s a canary&rsquo;s chirp or a treefrog&rsquo;s croak, humans tend to prefer many of the same sounds that animals do themselves, a new study finds</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Scientists have found the oldest direct evidence for tectonic motion on Earth by more than half a billion years</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Project Hail Mary directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord talk about astrobiology, optimistic science fiction, heist films and handsome scientists</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>Retatrutide is among a new class of weight-loss drugs that are being tested for effectiveness</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>An annual world happiness ranking for 2026 explores how the use of social media influences well-being</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>For 20 years, this computational linguistics competition has inspired new generations of innovators in AI and language preservation</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The Mordell conjecture&mdash;now known as Faltings&rsquo;s theorem&mdash;concerns the number of special points on a curve</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>When can mathematicians reverse engineer basketball tournament results from your friends&rsquo; brackets?</p>

Mar 19, 2026

<p>The stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud aren&rsquo;t behaving the way they should. A cataclysmic collision with another nearby galaxy may be the culprit</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>A century after Robert Goddard&rsquo;s first-ever launch of a liquid-fueled rocket, two NASA experts weigh in on what his legacy still holds for spaceflight&rsquo;s future</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>New satellite data come up dry as the search for lunar ice continues</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths, scientists say</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>By plying its ground-penetrating radar in the depths of Mars&rsquo;s Jezero Crater, this rover has found even older deltas buried beneath those seen on the surface from space</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The role of the thymus in our long-term immunity and health is poorly understood. Two new studies suggest we need to pay attention</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has trapped a third of the world&rsquo;s commercial helium, threatening the irreplaceable coolant that makes MRI scanners and advanced microchips possible</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>About 800,000 acres have burned because of these fires, with at least one person reported dead</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>&ldquo;Imitation&rdquo; drugs, unexpected benefits, serious pitfalls&mdash;here&rsquo;s what comes next as GLP-1 medications continue to rise in popularity</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Fashion&rsquo;s 20-year trend cycle isn&rsquo;t just based on vibes; it can be mathematically modeled</p>

Mar 18, 2026

<p>Fish may possess the ability to perceive where another being&rsquo;s attention is focused. And they don&rsquo;t like when it&rsquo;s focused on them or on their children</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Eyewitness accounts and videos taken from across the Midwest reveal the streak of a large fireball across the daytime sky</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>The Large Hadron Collider just produced a never-before-seen particle made of charm and down quarks</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>One in three Americans trust childhood vaccine guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics more than the CDC&rsquo;s recommendations, a new poll finds</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>A new data release more than doubles the number of gravitational-wave candidate events&mdash;and reveals unexpected complexities of merging black holes</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>There&rsquo;s no bulletproof remedy for a hangover, but a nutrition scientist explains which foods could aid symptoms after one has had too much to drink</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>A growing field of research suggests that some medical treatments, such as cancer therapy or vaccines, might be more effective when given at certain times of the day</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Three types of diabetes medication are improving the outlook for patients with kidney disease</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>IgA nephropathy, an immune assault on the kidneys, is often missed. New treatments mean that spotting it sooner might save lives</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>New alert systems and tests detect drug-induced kidney damage before the harm is irreversible</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Once unfathomable, the milestone of a single company having 10,000 satellites operating overhead signals that the era of mega constellations is here to stay</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>It wasn&rsquo;t Saint Patrick but a long history of chilly weather and geographic isolation that kept the Emerald Isle snake-free</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Surprising studies show young people are doing better than previous generations in many ways</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Chronic kidney disease has a variety of causes, ranging from immune system problems to medication side effects</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Kidney damage can sneak up on people without symptoms. A new diagnosis can mean major limits on how a person lives</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>A series of novel treatments and medical insights is helping chronic kidney disease patients</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Your kidneys silently filter 150 quarts of blood every single day &mdash; but what happens when they stop working?</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Evolutionary studies make sense of the world&rsquo;s strangest plant</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Letters to the editors for the December 2025 issue of <i>Scientific American</i></p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Science in meter and verse</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Tickling may be evolutionarily ancient and recognized across cultures, but science has only scratched the surface of this topic</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>A quorum of quarks; asbestos surprises</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Care innovations have allowed many more people with kidney disease to become parents. But pregnancy still carries risks</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>The autism spectrum is big, vibrant and complicated, a new graphic of 39 traits shows</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Lurid headlines don&rsquo;t give American children enough credit</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Here&rsquo;s how a mathematical paradox distorts our view of news, safety and statistics</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Use some creative arithmetic on this math puzzle</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>High in the Rockies, researchers are discovering that wind-borne pollution and rising heat are fueling unprecedented algal blooms</p>

Mar 17, 2026

<p>Supplements of this hormone are sold to increase sex drive. But the change may be tiny</p>