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Tech News
A software developer recounts that their business partner used an AI coding assistant to build an entire payments backend module in a single day, then submitted a 5,236-line pull request without testing it. The developer found the endpoints didn't actually work and that documentation was riddled with obvious AI-generated filler, while missing critical details like where to obtain API keys.
A security researcher extracted decades-old root certificates bundled with early Netscape and Internet Explorer browser installers from archive.org, using an LLM to catalog them. Among the finds was a 512-bit RSA certificate authority key shipped in Netscape 4.51 in 1999, trusted for both SSL and S/MIME, which the researcher then successfully factored using modern computing power.
There is no single button in iOS that resets the Camera app back to its original settings, according to a new how-to guide. Instead, users who want to undo accumulated tweaks or clean up a second-hand iPhone must manually revert each camera option one by one.
Two children died in separate gene-editing clinical trials in China, prompting scrutiny from researchers, ethicists and legal scholars over how such studies are approved and monitored. Investigators say the trials involved ethical breaches that could carry lasting consequences for China's biomedical research sector.
OpenAI announced on 8 September that its latest AI model produced a proof showing that the Navier-Stokes equations, which model fluid motion, can break down and predict a fluid reaching infinite speed in finite time. This addresses one of the seven unsolved Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Problems, which carries a $1 million prize for a full solution. OpenAI researchers say they focused their AI on this problem after hearing that two academic mathematicians were close to solving related aspects.
Stefano Cataldi, a neuroscientist at Columbia University studying serotonin's role in cognition, is weighing whether to leave bench research entirely to focus on science policy work. He is a delegate for the United Auto Workers union representing postdocs and research scientists, and last year he founded SCOPE, a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory-backed program that teaches scientists about policy, communication and career resources.
Google DeepMind has launched the AlphaGenome Atlas, a free, non-commercial database that uses its AlphaGenome AI model to predict the biological impact of every possible single-letter change across the human genome—about 9 billion mutations in total. The tool also incorporates predictions for over 100 million short insertions and deletions found in human DNA, and is designed to be accessible without requiring users to write code, unlike the original API-based release.
A Nature retrospective highlights the scientific career of William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, noting that his contributions extended well beyond the temperature scale that bears his name. The piece surveys his broader body of work in physics and engineering during the 19th century.
Two recent reports—the World Inequality Lab's Global Justice Report and a UN High-Level Expert Group's Beyond GDP recommendations—have reignited debate over whether nations should deprioritize economic growth in favor of other measures of well-being. A commentary argues both reports miss the real issue: whether governments are leaving future generations richer or poorer, not simply how fast economies grow or how well-being is measured.
An editorial in Nature argues that prediction markets allowing wagers on the outcomes of clinical trials pose risks to research integrity and public trust in science. It calls for limits on such betting activity to prevent interference with ongoing trials.
Responding to Ming Li's proposal to separate academic 'titles' from resource allocation in Chinese universities, a Nature correspondence argues the reform is unlikely to succeed. The author agrees that suppressed performance indicators tend to resurface under different labels, but contends university administrators benefit from the current metric-based system and thus have little incentive to change it.
A recent catastrophic flood event in Nepal illustrates how multiple climate-related hazards can combine to produce disasters far more severe than any single risk factor would suggest. Nature's commentary uses the event to argue that scientists and policymakers have been underestimating the danger posed by such compound risks.