The International Meteor Organization, a nonprofit that coordinates global reporting of meteor and fireball sightings, disclosed that a cyberattack severely damaged its outdated infrastructure and knocked much of its website offline. The group says it expects weeks of partial downtime while it rebuilds on new systems, and is temporarily directing fireball reports and updates through alternative channels including Facebook.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed letting third-party evaluators like METR and Redwood Research operate inside frontier AI companies with deep access to systems and training data, not just finished models. OpenAI's Sam Altman said his company would adopt a similar approach. Evaluators welcomed the idea but say specifics—and possibly legislation—are needed to ensure genuine independence rather than vendor-style arrangements.
Apple confirmed to CNET that its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, will launch on Oct. 23 running iOS 27.1 instead of the base iOS 27 version. The company said this build adds features specifically designed for the foldable form factor, while other iPhones are already testing the next update, iOS 27.2. Preorders for the Duo open Oct. 16, and all devices will eventually be able to move to iOS 27.2 later this year.
The breakdown of the Milne Ice Shelf in Canada's High Arctic caused the freshwater lake that once floated atop denser seawater behind it to empty out within a matter of months. This lake was the last known epishelf lake in the Canadian Arctic, formed by a rare balance of ice-shelf structure and layered water that has now been broken.
In an interview with io9, director Na Hong-jin and actress Hoyeon discussed the ambiguous conclusion of their sci-fi film 'Hope' and addressed speculation about future installments. The pair offered insight into their creative intentions behind the ending without confirming concrete sequel plans.
X has rolled out a new feature letting U.S. users trade stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies directly from ticker mentions on their timelines. Tapping a Cashtag now shows a live price chart and related posts, with a 'Trade' button that routes users to partnered brokerages like Interactive Brokers, Moomoo, Gemini, Kraken, and Coinbase to complete transactions.
Researchers excavating a historical site near Lima uncovered a sealed mausoleum dating back roughly six centuries, predating Incan rule in the region. The tomb had escaped disturbance by both colonial-era and modern looters, leaving its contents largely undisturbed until the excavation team identified and opened it.
Snap has introduced SPECS Intelligence, an AI system that learns a user's goals, relationships, and daily routines by connecting to their apps and tools. The tool aims to proactively surface useful information, such as meeting prep details or travel itineraries, without requiring users to ask for it, and it will now extend beyond its original platform to iOS and Mac devices.
During a 33-hour period when Matt Mullenweg was placed on leave by Automattic's board, interim CEO Mark Davies and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan each approved the other's exit agreement. The deals grant both executives a year of salary, accelerated equity vesting, stock option exercise rights, and extended health coverage, totaling roughly $8.15 million combined. Mullenweg fired both men upon reclaiming his role, and Automattic is now weighing whether to honor or legally contest the payouts.
Apple announced that iOS 27.2 will give developers the choice to display an alternative version of its App Tracking Transparency prompt in the European Union, with modified wording and formatting plus an optional 'Additional Information' button. In Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Romania, this alternative prompt will be mandatory rather than optional due to local legal requirements. The change stems from Apple's recent settlement with German antitrust regulators over its ATT rules.
A Stanford research team removed a large section of a mouse's brain and replaced it with tissue grown from human stem cells known as brain organoids. The goal was to give these lab-grown clusters of neurons a living, connected environment closer to an actual brain than a petri dish can offer.
A technical guide details Cyclomatic Complexity (CC), a decades-old code metric originated by Thomas McCabe in 1976 that counts independent execution paths through a method by tallying branching constructs like if, while, for, case, and logical operators. It outlines the scoring scale—1 for a single path, roughly 10 as McCabe's recommended ceiling, and above 25 flagged as excessive by Microsoft's CA1502 analyzer—and shows how to compute, visualize, and interpret it in .NET codebases alongside test coverage and IL-level analysis.