A group of researchers, including members of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality convened by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, has proposed creating an International Panel on Inequality (IPI). The body would function like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, systematically reviewing evidence on the scale, causes and effects of inequality and assessing which policies actually reduce it. A founding committee has already begun developing the proposal after it was presented to G20 governments earlier this year.
The 2025 Ig Nobel prizes, which honor quirky but genuinely published research, were held outside the United States for the first time since the ceremony began, after founder Marc Abrahams cited safety concerns for international guests visiting the US. This year's fungus-themed event kept its trademark paper-plane openings, banana-suited timekeepers enforcing 60-second speeches, and 24/7 lectures, while handing out awards including a posthumous medicine prize for nose-blowing aerodynamics research and an economics prize on wealth and candy-jar theft.
Nature's careers team is organizing a 60-minute webinar examining how doctoral programmes are adjusting to the growing use of AI tools among graduate students, who increasingly rely on them for literature searches, coding, presentations and summarizing papers. Three panellists will discuss the benefits of AI in research alongside concerns that it may weaken essential skills PhD training is meant to instill.
Apple's iOS 27 update overhauls the Home app with Apple Intelligence features, letting it summarize alerts from doorbells and smoke detectors instead of flooding the lock screen with notifications. Cameras gain improved AI-based detection of faces and animals, can stitch together footage of a person moving through multiple rooms, and now record in 4K with AI-generated video descriptions and searchable events. The update also lets users update all Apple TVs at once from the Home app and improves overall app reliability.
An Anthropic employee has left the company, warning that competitive pressure among AI labs is pushing them to build self-improving models that could escape human oversight. The departure reflects growing internal unease about the pace of AI capability development outstripping safety safeguards.
Apple CarPlay includes a dedicated Settings menu where drivers can adjust the interface to their preference, including switching between light, dark, or automatic display modes based on ambient light. Users can also change the background wallpaper from a set of Apple-designed options, swap between dark and clear 'Liquid Glass' icon packs, and increase text size through the Accessibility menu.
Ahead of its 'Surprise and Shine' event, Apple has quietly added nearly 40 hardware identifiers to its backend systems, covering iPhones, Macs, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TV, and a HomeAccessory category. Notably, seven iPhone identifiers appeared even though only six models are currently expected in the iPhone 18 lineup, suggesting either an unannounced variant or a surprise new device.
A report by the Washington-based Tech Transparency Project found 332 paid ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery ran on Meta's platforms over the past 10 months, with 84 appearing in India. Of those Indian ads, 78 ran after India ordered Meta to remove such content following a BBC investigation. Some ads reused photos of real children, including a European royal, digitally manipulated to create abusive imagery.
The White House removed a browser game called 'Build the Wall' from its website after the Tetris Company said it had no involvement in the title and takes copyright infringement seriously. The game, which used block-stacking mechanics resembling Tetris, tasked players with building a wall to stop a 'zombie border siege' and drew criticism for its racist framing. The page now returns a 404 error, though another game on the site, Rio Run, which involves deporting immigrant characters, remains live.
Ampbase's founder JP explained how the company replaced a traditional relational database with Tigris, an object storage system built on FoundationDB, using only two storage primitives. To make this work, Ampbase had to manually implement unique constraints, transactions, indices, and history tables, features a normal database engine provides automatically.
Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy told CNBC that the company's ability to earn trust with major cloud computing customers over ten years has driven its shares up about 241% in the past year, far outpacing rival Broadcom's 6.6% gain. He pointed to new AI partnerships with Nvidia and Google, along with custom chip deals with all four major U.S. hyperscalers, as evidence of that trust paying off.
Major employers including Accenture, Disney, Meta, JP Morgan, KPMG and Coinbase are now measuring staff AI adoption through leaderboards, training mandates and performance reviews, with some firms firing employees who don't comply. Accenture's CEO has openly stated that career advancement now depends on integrating AI into daily work, while a US consultancy executive describes unofficial pressure to show AI fluency to avoid being sidelined.
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