GoKawiil
Tech News
Researchers report the discovery of an instrument in Egypt believed to have been used for land surveying in antiquity. The find offers physical evidence of the measurement techniques ancient Egyptians relied on for construction and land division.
A Nature feature examines how education systems and researchers are working to protect schooling and academic activity in regions affected by war. It underscores the disruption conflict causes to students, teachers, and institutions, and points to initiatives aimed at preserving learning continuity.
A Nature opinion piece argues that scientific publishing's peer-review system is strained by rising submissions, more complex manuscripts and a shortage of willing, timely reviewers. While most journals currently prohibit reviewers from using AI tools over confidentiality and accountability concerns, the author contends these blanket bans are difficult to enforce and only partially solve the underlying problems.
A commentary published on nature.com calls on rights holders and publishers to revise existing copyright licensing agreements specifically to block unauthorized use of creative and scholarly works by AI training systems. The authors argue that current licence terms were not designed with machine-learning ingestion in mind, leaving a gap that companies have exploited to harvest content without consent or compensation.
Researchers issued a technical addendum detailing the exact configuration of geoid models—EGM96, EGM2008 and GOCO06s—used in their earlier meta-analysis showing sea levels are higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments. The addendum specifies data sources, resolution, reference ellipsoid parameters and processing settings from the International Centre for Global Earth Models to make the original results fully reproducible.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has publicly criticized Amazon, focusing on the employment status of its delivery drivers, the sale of illegal e-bikes on its platform, and fines related to idling delivery vehicles. The socialist mayor is positioning these issues as part of a broader push to hold major corporations accountable for labor and safety practices in the city.
ESPN executive Michael Szykowny and Pixar's Jay Ward described at Disney's D23 convention how the network builds its animated alternate broadcasts, which recast real athletes as characters like Toy Story figures or Simpsons cast members. The system combines NFL Next Gen Stats player-tracking data, Sony's Beyond Sports engine and Hawk-Eye optical tracking to animate characters in real time, while commentator Drew Carter now uses a VR headset instead of a full motion-capture suit to sync his live calls with his on-screen avatar.
A free interactive tool called 'What's the Risk?' launched in early August, letting users visually compare the risks of vaccines against the diseases they prevent, as well as everyday hazards like car crashes, drowning and lightning strikes. It was built by the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy alongside Unbiased Science, a public health platform led by scientist Jessica Steier. Currently it covers measles, MMR vaccine and RSV-related products, with plans to expand comparisons over time.
In March 2024, three Romanian nationals attacked Iran International presenter Pouria Zeraati outside his London home, stabbing him in the leg before fleeing to Bucharest via Geneva. Investigators say the assault is part of a broader Iranian strategy of paying foreign criminals—including Russian mobsters, Hells Angels members, and Swedish teenagers—to target dissidents and journalists abroad, allowing Tehran to deny direct involvement.
Smart ring maker Oura is said to be planning a U.S. IPO as soon as next month, aiming to raise up to $3 billion at a valuation exceeding $16 billion, according to Bloomberg. That figure would nearly double the $10.9 billion valuation the company received in its September Series E round, with existing investors expected to sell a significant portion of shares in the offering.
A new open-source project called Bookshelf offers a self-hosted ebook library that renders a single searchable page for EPUB and PDF files, with in-browser readers for each format. It can run as a Cloudflare Worker backed by R2 object storage or as a Node server reading from a local directory, and ships a Docker setup that bundles the cwebp and pdftoppm tools needed for proper cover generation.
Builderall's CEO, hired specifically to break into the U.S. market, instead chose to focus resources on Latin America after analyzing the company's existing customer data. He found that while U.S. users were growing organically without acquisition spend, the underlying data pointed to a bigger, underexploited opportunity closer to the company's roots.