Researchers Jonas Lescroart and Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz have identified a new feline species, Leopardus tilcayo, native to Bolivia's Yungas cloud forests, marking the first new cat species discovery in over a century. The finding, published in Current Biology, began when Nogales-Ascarrunz noticed a rescued animal at a wildlife center had spots and a tail unlike any known local species, prompting genetic testing. The research also revealed a new tiger cat subspecies.
Researchers led by Jonas Lescroart and Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz of the Programa de Investigación de Félidos Bolivia identified a new small feline species, Leopardus tilcayo, in the Bolivian Yungas, marking the first new cat species found in over a century. Nogales-Ascarrunz first noticed the animal at a wildlife rehabilitation center, mistaking it for a kitten before genetic testing revealed it didn't match any known species. The team also made new findings about tiger cat subspecies during the same research, published in Current Biology.
A newly unsealed filing in The New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveals internal communications showing employees at both companies recognized their AI tools could jeopardize the publishers whose content trains them. The filing suggests executives were aware of this risk even as they continued developing and deploying the technology.
PrismML, a startup founded by Caltech researchers led by CEO Babak Hassibi, has released Bonsai 2 27B, a compressed version of Alibaba's open-source Qwen3.8 27B model that shrinks it from full size down to 5.9 GB. The compressed model retains about 98% of the original's benchmark performance, up from 95% in the prior Bonsai release, while being small enough to run on PCs and possibly high-end smartphones. The company has raised a $22.25 million seed round and counts Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica as an advisor.
Breville has launched the Eye Q 850 Auto Toaster, a $300 device that uses a pulsing internal light sensor to track the bread's color as it toasts, rather than relying solely on a timer or fixed temperature settings. A CNET reviewer tested the toaster for a month and found the sensor-based approach generally delivers consistent results, though with some caveats worth noting. The sensor only operates in the left slot, and the machine features a motorized lift instead of a spring-loaded pop-up mechanism.
A retrospective look at Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 film 'House' highlights its surreal blend of horror and comedy, following schoolgirls terrorized by a haunted, living home. The piece praises the film's boundary-pushing, low-budget special effects and its enduring cult status among genre fans.
Newly unsealed court documents from The New York Times-led copyright lawsuit reveal internal Microsoft and OpenAI communications acknowledging the risks of scraping news content for AI training. Microsoft's Brent Hecht reportedly called the practice possibly the 'largest theft of labor in human history' and undermined the companies' own fair-use defense, while OpenAI's Nick Turley warned that AI products could pose an 'existential threat' to publishers.
Newly unredacted court documents in The New York Times' copyright suit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal that a senior Microsoft executive privately labeled the companies' AI training practices as theft, while OpenAI leaders reportedly acknowledged their models posed an existential threat to publishers. The filings also allege the companies bypassed paywalls, scraped content en masse, and removed copyright notices to build training datasets.
Wispr Advanced Interfaces Lab has released Canto, a new speech recognition model built specifically for real-time dictation in noisy, everyday conditions rather than clean studio audio. In tests using 10 hours of real Wispr Flow dictations from over 2,300 speakers, Canto posted the lowest word error rate compared with models from Google, OpenAI, AssemblyAI, and Deepgram.
Scientists studying a small spotted cat first photographed in Bolivia nearly a decade ago by National Geographic Explorer Paola Nogales-Ascarrunz have confirmed it as a genetically distinct species, not a variant of the previously known tigrina. The findings, published in Current Biology, name the animal Leopardus tilcayo, marking the first entirely new felid species identified in over a century.
Chinese startup Xteink is following up its compact X4 e-reader with the Xteink S4, a 4.3-inch E-Ink device that ditches the previous proprietary Linux OS for Android 11. This change lets users sideload apps like Kindle, Kobo, and KOReader instead of being limited to DRM-free EPUB files. The S4 also bumps up specs with 2GB RAM, 32GB storage, and a 1,400mAh battery, more than double the X4's 650mAh cell.
Newly unsealed court documents in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal internal admissions from both companies' executives. Microsoft's director of applied science Brent Hecht reportedly described AI training as the 'largest theft of labor in human history,' while OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman acknowledged that generative AI products pose an 'existential threat' to publishers because they are increasingly substitutive of original content.
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