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Tech News
MIT Technology Review has released its annual list of 35 young innovators, chosen from 550 nominations with help from 44 expert judges. Honorees span biotechnology, AI, computing and robotics, and climate and energy, each showing measurable progress toward their goals. A separate feature in the same issue explores how spiderwebs, rich in trapped environmental DNA, are becoming a valuable tool for tracking biodiversity.
After his daughter Lucy suffered a brain hemorrhage that left her blind, billionaire Bill Ackman used his connections to secure her advanced care at Mount Sinai and pursue an experimental treatment. In May, the FDA granted her medical team first-time emergency authorization to transplant mitochondria from her leg muscle into her eyes in an attempt to repair her optic nerves. Ackman has since pledged over $400 million to establish an institute focused on longevity and brain health research.
ConnectWise disclosed a new security flaw in its ScreenConnect remote access platform affecting file transfer behavior in both cloud and on-premises deployments. The vulnerability has no CVE identifier yet and no official patch, though the company says a fix is coming later this week. In the meantime, ConnectWise published manual mitigation steps requiring administrators to disable file transfer permissions across user roles.
A developer released VODForge, a free and open-source desktop application that lets users download YouTube videos and playlists as MP4 files or MP3 audio. The app runs locally, offering controls for quality, download queues, metadata, and cover art without requiring an online converter or command-line tools. It is MIT licensed, requires no account, and ships signed and notarized for macOS with Authenticode signing on Windows.
A veteran software publisher with 28 years of experience has moved from permissive licenses like LGPLv2 and MIT to the EUPL-1.2, a strong copyleft license issued by the European Union. The change closes what the developer calls the 'SaaS loophole,' requiring companies to share modifications even when software is only used as a service rather than distributed.
At IFA, Ecovacs showed off its new Deebot X12S OmniCyclone robot vacuum, which builds on the X12 with stronger suction and a dust-mite-focused cleaning mode, but its water-jet stain removal demo failed to hit the intended spot during a live demonstration. The company says third-party testing found the robot removes over 97% of dust mite allergens and nearly 96% of dust mites from carpet, aiming at allergy-prone households.
At IFA, Ecovacs unveiled the Deebot X12S OmniCyclone, an update to its X12 robot vacuum that adds dust mite removal capability while retaining the water jet stain-loosening feature from its predecessor. In a live demonstration, the reporter observed the stain-removal spray fail to actually hit its intended target, raising questions about that feature's reliability, though independent testing by SGS in Singapore found the device removed over 97% of dust mite allergens and 95% of dust mites from carpet.
Ecovacs has unveiled the Deebot X12S OmniCyclone, an updated robot vacuum designed to dig deeper into carpet fibers to remove dust mites and allergens. Independent testing by SGS Testing & Control Services Singapore found it eliminated an average of 97.44% of dust mite allergens and 95.45% of dust mites from carpet. The model also boosts suction to 53 air watts, a 60% increase over its predecessor, and retains a self-cleaning roller and stain-spray feature from the previous X12 generation.
An MIT Technology Review Insights webcast produced with NiCE examines how companies are moving AI agents from small pilots to enterprise-wide use. Chandra argues that agents need consistent access to data, context and back-end systems, and warns that scaling without integration can create new silos across teams.
Surveys show AI use among students is widespread: a 2026 UK poll found 94% of undergraduates use generative AI for coursework, with 12% directly pasting AI text into assignments, while a US study of over 95,000 students estimated 9% used AI despite knowing it violated rules. Professors report signs of misuse, including fabricated references and AI-typical writing patterns, prompting many institutions to redesign assessments rather than simply ban the tools.
Julia began in 2009 as an MIT research effort by frustrated researchers who wanted a scientific programming language that was both easy to use and fast, unlike existing tools that forced rewrites for performance. The project evolved from an MIT lab into the company JuliaHub, and Julia is now a free, open-source language used by more than a million people across companies and universities worldwide, applied to everything from modeling jet engines and drugs to imaging black holes.
An MIT committee co-chaired by professors Eric Klopfer and Samuel Madden released a report finding that AI models can now produce credible answers to nearly any undergraduate assignment, including essays, math and science problems, proofs, and coding tasks. The report warns this capability is already reshaping campus life, citing drops in office-hour attendance, online discussion participation, and in-person study groups.