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Why the US Is Racing to Build a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon

NASA is fast-tracking a plan to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030 under a new directive from the agency’s interim administrator Sean Duffy. The plan revives a decades-old dream of scaling up nuclear power in space, a shift that would unlock futuristic possibilities and test legal and regulatory guidelines about the use of extraterrestrial resources and environments. Duffy, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s secretary of transportation, framed being first to put a reactor on

Computing’s Top 30: Guowen Xu

Guowen Xu’s passion for cryptography was seeded in various courses throughout his undergraduate mathematics education. It was his experience as a doctoral student, however, that was truly transformative in terms of his learning how to navigate cryptographic security’s complexities and begin shaping his research directions and career. Today, Xu is a full professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu. Xu’s wor

10 Linux features you should be using to get the best performance and functionality

Kerry Wan/ZDNET Linux is powerful, flexible, and can do just about anything. However, to really get the most out of Linux and your computer(s), there are certain skills and habits you need to bolster; otherwise, you're not really enjoying the riches that can be mined from Linux. Also: 8 ways I quickly leveled up my Linux skills - and you can too Trust me, there are riches in that open-source operating system. So, if you want to get serious about this, read on and consider these tips as esse

Topics: learn linux need use want

The Whispering Earring (Scott Alexander)

Cleaner, easier-to-reference repo of Scott Alexander’s The Whispering Earring (that’s the Schelling title, real title below). Original from livejournal is backed up here. Clarity didn’t work, trying mysterianism In the treasure-vaults of Til Iosophrang rests the Whispering Earring, buried deep beneath a heap of gold where it can do no further harm. The earring is a little topaz tetrahedron dangling from a thin gold wire. When worn, it whispers in the wearer’s ear: “Better for you if you take

The Best Hearing Aids of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

How much money should you expect to spend on a hearing aid? The answer depends primarily on whether you’re looking into over-the-counter or prescription hearing aids. Unsurprisingly, the latter is a wallet guzzler, with average costs between $2,000 to $8,000. But OTCs can ring up quite a tab in their own right, and our most highly rated devices will still run you about $800 to $2,000 a pair. So far, we haven’t found an OTC device under this $800 price that is truly effective at treating hearing

Elad Gil — one of tech’s sharpest minds — on early bets, breakout growth, and what’s coming next at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Elad Gil isn’t just ahead of the curve — he practically lives there. Before most of the world had even asked ChatGPT its first question, Gil was writing early checks into companies like Perplexity, Character.AI, and Harvey. And that’s just a slice of the story. His track record includes seed or Series A investments in more than 30 unicorns and involvement with some of the most iconic names in tech — Stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Notion, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, and many more. This Octobe

Truth Social’s AI search is powered by Perplexity, but the platform can set limits on sources

AI startup Perplexity is powering a new AI-powered search engine on Truth Social, President Donald Trump’s social media platform. The search engine, dubbed Truth Search AI, is already available on the web version of Truth Social, with public Beta testing on its iOS and Android apps planned for “the near future.” Trump Media said in a press release that Perplexity’s tech provides “direct, contextually accurate answers with transparent citations” which will help Truth Social “exponentially incre

Duolingo stock skyrockets 30% on boosted guidance as AI powers user growth

Duolingo shares skyrocketed more than 30% after the language learning platform boosted its guidance due to strong user growth driven by artificial intelligence. The mobile learning platform hiked its full-year guidance to between $1.01 billion and $1.02 billion, up from a prior range of $987 million to $996 million. Duolingo also lifted its bookings guidance to between $1.15 billion and $1.16 billion. "We exceeded our own high expectations for bookings and revenue this quarter, and did it whil

Sonos is raising prices this year to make up for tariff expenses

Sonos plans to raise prices across its products later this year in order to minimize the impact of tariffs on its earnings, the company has revealed alongside its financial results [PDF] for the third quarter of 2025. It hasn't listed the products and their new prices yet, but it said that it's evaluating any changes it might need to its promotional strategies and that it has flexibility to move production between Vietnam and Malaysia as needed. To note, the Trump administration had imposed a 20

Ceretone Core One Pro Hearing Aids Review: A Blunt Instrument

Ceretone, born on Indiegogo, hit the scene last year with impressively tiny hardware that still remains one of the smallest and lightest hearing aids I’ve ever reviewed. At just 0.96 grams each, the Ceretone Core One were so light they threatened to blow away in the wind. With a price of $349 per pair, they had a similarly minimal effect on your bank account. The trouble with the original Ceretone Core One is that they just weren’t very good as hearing aids. They were not tunable, suffered from

Apple Watch Ultra 3 sounds like it will be very much worth the wait

Last year, Apple was rumored to launch a new Apple Watch Ultra—but it didn’t. Instead, we only got a black finish for the existing Ultra 2. Now, with an Apple Watch Ultra 3 upgrade truly around the corner, it’s increasingly sounding like it will be very much worth the wait. Two-year wait for Apple Watch Ultra 3 will result in bigger upgrades As far as Apple products go, Apple Watch Ultra is a relative newcomer. The first model launched in 2022, with a second-gen landing a year later in 2023.

FDA approves eye drops that fix near vision without glasses

The first aceclidine-based eye drop to improve near vision in adults with presbyopia, which affects more than 100 million adults in the US alone, has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and will be available within three months. Known as VIZZ, from pharmaceutical company LENZ, the drops are an aceclidine ophthalmic solution that effectively treats presbyopia in adults. The once-daily drops offer relief from blurry near. vision for up to 10 hours. "The FDA approval of VIZZ i

Topics: eye fda near vision vizz

Debounce

Debouncing, in the context of programming, means to discard operations that occur too close together during a specific interval, and consolidate them into a single invocation. Debouncing is very similar to throttling. The key difference is that throttling enforces limits on continuous operations, while debouncing waits for invocations to stop for a specific time to consolidate many noisy invocations into one single invocation. A typical use case of debouncing is when responding to user input.

AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks

AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever. With AI Overviews and more recently AI Mode, people are able to ask questions they could never ask before. And the response has been tremendous: Our data shows people are happier with the experience and are searching more than ever as they discover what Search can do now. At the same time, we’ve recently heard some questions about what this means for traffic to websites from Google. So we wanted to share some insig

Trump Media Is Testing an AI Search Engine Powered by Perplexity

President Donald Trump's media company, Trump Media, is beta-testing a new AI search feature, Truth Search AI, on the Truth Social platform. The Florida-based company announced the news on Wednesday in a press release. Trump Media and Technology Group is perhaps best known for its social-media program Truth Social. The company is separate from the New York-based Trump Organization. "We're proud to partner with Perplexity to launch our public Beta testing of Truth Social AI, which will make Tru

Shopify stock soars 21% on rosy guidance as CFO says tariff hit 'did not materialize'

The logo of Shopify is seen outside its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, on Sept. 28, 2018. Shopify shares soared 21% on Wednesday after the company topped analysts' estimates for the second quarter, and gave rosy guidance for the third quarter. Here's how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG: Earnings per share: 35 cents adjusted vs. 29 cents 35 cents adjusted vs. 29 cents Revenue: $2.68 billion vs. $2.55 billion Second-quarter sales surged 31% year over ye

Google: Actually, AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks

Last month, a Pew Research Center report shed light on Google's AI Overviews' effect on web publishing. In short, the analysis painted an abysmal outlook for anyone relying on web traffic. But on Wednesday, Google Search head Liz Reid penned a blog post that puts quite a different spin on things. The Google VP claims traffic from search to websites is "relatively stable" and that click quality has increased. Reid's framing boils down to everything is peachy, and AI is making things better — eve

Vibe coding the MIT course catalog

I recently left Microsoft to join MIT's Media Arts and Sciences program. The transition brought an immediate problem: how do you navigate course selection when faced with the "unknown unknowns"? You can easily find courses you already know you want learn, i.e. "known unknowns". But discovering courses you never knew existed, courses that might reshape your thinking entirely, requires different tools altogether. MIT's official course catalog runs on what appears to be a CGI script. The technolog

Experts Warn That AI Is Getting Control of Nuclear Weapons

"It’s going to find its way into everything." Nobel laureates met with nuclear experts last month to discuss AI and the end of the world — and if that sounds like the opening to a sci-fi blockbuster set in the apocalypse, you're not alone. As Wired reports, the convened experts seemed to broadly agree that it's only a matter of time until an AI will get hold of nuclear codes. Exactly why that needs to be true is hard to pin down, but the feeling of inevitability — and anxiety — is palpable in

Samsung just quietly started selling the Galaxy Buds 3 FE

TL;DR Samsung has started selling the Galaxy Buds 3 FE in Latin America. The Fan Edition earbuds adopt the design of the Galaxy Buds 3. The company is selling its new earbuds for $129. Samsung is expected to launch a Fan Edition version of the Galaxy Buds 3 soon. How soon? Apparently, sooner than anyone had guessed. The tech giant has just quietly started selling the earbuds. Shortly after leaking an image of the Galaxy Buds 3 FE, Android Headlines spotted the buds listed on Samsung’s Latin

Vibe Coding the MIT Course Catalog

I recently left Microsoft to join MIT's Media Arts and Sciences program. The transition brought an immediate problem: how do you navigate course selection when faced with the "unknown unknowns"? You can easily find courses you already know you want learn, i.e. "known unknowns". But discovering courses you never knew existed, courses that might reshape your thinking entirely, requires different tools altogether. MIT's official course catalog runs on what appears to be a CGI script. The technolog

Google search boss says AI isn’t killing search clicks

Google has often bristled at the implication that its obsession with AI search is harming web traffic, and now search head Liz Reid has penned a blog post on the topic. According to Reid, clicks aren't declining, AI is driving more searches, and everything is fine on the Internet. But despite the optimistic tone, the post stops short of providing any actual data to back up those claims. This statement feels like a direct response to a recent Pew Research Center analysis that showed searches wit

Google denies AI search features are killing website traffic

Numerous studies indicate that the shift to AI search features and the use of AI chatbots are killing traffic to publishers’ sites. But Google on Wednesday denied that’s the case, at least in aggregate. Instead, the search giant says that total organic click volume from its search engine to websites has been “relatively stable” year-over-year and that average click quality has slightly increased. “This data is in contrast to third-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in agg

Google’s new diffusion AI agent mimics human writing to improve enterprise research

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Google researchers have developed a new framework for AI research agents that outperforms leading systems from rivals OpenAI, Perplexity, and others on key benchmarks. The new agent, called Test-Time Diffusion Deep Researcher (TTD-DR), is inspired by the way humans write by going through a process of drafting, searching for information, an

Gemini's new Guided Learning mode can quiz students and create interactive study aids

Google is updating Gemini to make it a better education tool with a new feature called Guided Learning. Like similar learning-focused updates to ChatGPT and Claude, Guided Learning tries to promote understanding by breaking down problems into step-by-step instructions, follow-up questions and interactive examples, rather than simply providing an answer. Guided Learning will be available as toggle in the prompt box of Gemini as the feature rolls out. When it's toggled on, Gemini will treat quest

Google says AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks

AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever. With AI Overviews and more recently AI Mode, people are able to ask questions they could never ask before. And the response has been tremendous: Our data shows people are happier with the experience and are searching more than ever as they discover what Search can do now. At the same time, we’ve recently heard some questions about what this means for traffic to websites from Google. So we wanted to share some insig

The 12 Most Effective Cardio Workouts

Cardio is more than just running laps or hopping on a bike. It's any movement that gets your heart pumping, your body sweating and your energy levels soaring. Whether you're chasing a weight loss goal or looking to boost endurance, there's a cardio workout that fits your mood and motivation. Not into high-impact moves? Go for swimming or a rowing session that's easier on the joints. Want something that pushes your limits? Sprinting or HIIT might be your jam. Cardio is flexible and lets you mix i

Google takes on ChatGPT’s Study Mode with new ‘Guided Learning’ tool in Gemini

As the new school year approaches, Google announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new tool called Guided Learning within Gemini. The tool sort of functions like an AI tutor, as it’s designed to help users build a deep understanding instead of just getting answers. The launch follows just over a week after OpenAI rolled out Study Mode for ChatGPT, which is also designed to go beyond simply obtaining answers to questions by actually helping users develop critical thinking skills. Both compa

Google swears it isn’t destroying the web with AI search

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Google says its AI search features aren’t tanking website traffic despite recent reports suggesting otherwise. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Google Search head Liz Reid says click volume from the search engine has remained “relatively stable” when compa

New Paper Finds Something Very Weird About the Shroud of Turin

The mysterious Shroud of Turin, which is believed by many Christians to have laid atop Jesus Christ's body after his crucifixion, may be even stranger than we previously thought. In a new study published in the journal Archaeometry, Brazilian 3D designer Cicero Moraes lends credence to the theory that the shroud was a work of art rather than a genuine death shroud — and per the new paper, it may not have laid atop a human at all. Using three types of 3D modeling tools — MakeHuman, Blender, and