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Australians to face age checks from search engines

Search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing must implement age assurance checks for logged-in users in 'no later than six months'. Image: Shutterstock Australians using search engines while logged in to accounts from the likes of Google and Microsoft will have their age checked by the end of 2025, under a new online safety code co-developed by technology companies and registered by the eSafety Commissioner. Search engines operating in Australia will need to implement age assurance techn

What Happens to Your Brain When You Use ChatGPT? Scientists Took a Look

Your brain works differently when you're using generative AI to complete a task than it does when you use your brain alone. Namely, you're less likely to remember what you did. That's the somewhat obvious-sounding conclusion of an MIT study that looked at how people think when they write an essay -- one of the earliest scientific studies of how using gen AI affects us. The study, a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, is pretty small (54 participants) and preliminary, but it points tow

From 30 days to 1: Chevron’s cloud migration ROI in real numbers

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more The No. 1 way AI is changing 150-year-old energy giant Chevron? How technical practitioners engage with data. Offshore in the Gulf, Chevron is drilling for oil resources miles below the ocean floor in pockets and reservoirs that may or may not yield results. Agentic architectures need to be able to process petabytes of critical data — whi

AeroVironment stock drops 11% on offering plan to pay off debt

An image of a Quantix drone made by AeroVironment. AeroVironment shares fell 11% Tuesday after the defense contractor said it plans to offer $750 million in common stock and $600 million in convertible senior notes due in 2030 to repay debt. The drone maker said it would use leftover funding for general purposes such as boosting manufacturing capacity. AeroVironment shares have soared 85% this year, ballooning its market value to about $13 billion. Last week, shares of the Arlington, Virgini

How a beer-making process is used to make cleaner disposable diapers

Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It's a $60 billion business. One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren't universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say. A growing number of

Google's AI Mode Is Changing How You Search. So What Is It?

A new tab is in your Google Search bar, and it feels a lot more like an AI chatbot than a traditional search engine. Google started testing AI Mode earlier this year and announced the full rollout at its I/O developers conference in May. It's now available for all English language users in the US over age 13 (and to Workspace and Education users over age 18). To celebrate, Google promoted it with an animation on the Google homepage on July 1, with the company's new logo inviting users into an

RFK Jr. Says AI Will Approve New Drugs at FDA ‘Very, Very Quickly’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on the latest episode of Tucker Carlson’s podcast on Monday and it’s filled with the ramblings of a man completely detached from reality. Kennedy falsely suggested vaccines cause autism, more or less endorsed the idea that Anthony Fauci should go to prison, and says that AI will allow the FDA to approve new drugs very quickly. It’s quite a mess. These absolutely unhinged ideas wouldn’t be such a problem if this were any other fringe lunatic appearing on the podcas

Nothing Just Killed Its Phone's Flashy Glyph Interface. I Think the Replacement Is Better

Nothing just announced its long-awaited "first true flagship," the Nothing Phone 3, and killed off one of its most popular and unique phone features in the process. The flashing lights that crisscrossed the back of its previous phones, known as the Glyph Interface, is gone. In its place is something new -- a round black and white screen on the rear of the phone, adjacent to the cameras, which Nothing is calling the Glyph Matrix. With an interface of monochrome dots, the Matrix can show a range

PlayStation 6? Sony and AMD's Plan to Power Next Gen Consoles With AI

Last week I sat down with executives from PlayStation and AMD to talk about their multiyear collaboration and what they're hoping to achieve on the PlayStation 5 and beyond. During this intimate dinner, I spoke with Mark Cerny, lead architect on PS5 and PS5 Pro at Sony Interactive Entertainment, alongside Jack Huynh, SVP, GM, Computing and Graphics Group at AMD. Sony PR said the conversation wouldn't touch any next-gen console topics but, per our discussion, future and next-generation hardware

Congress Dropped a Plan to Block State AI Rules. Why That Matters for Consumers

After months of debate, a plan in Congress to block states from regulating artificial intelligence was pulled from the big federal budget bill this week. The proposed 10-year moratorium would have prevented states from enforcing rules and laws on AI if the state accepted federal funding for broadband access. The issue exposed divides among technology experts and politicians, with some Senate Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the move. The Senate eventually voted 99-1 to remove the propo

Topics: ai laws said state states

Ted Cruz plan to punish states that regulate AI shot down in 99-1 vote

Facing overwhelming opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) accepted defeat and joined a 99-1 vote against his own plan to punish states that regulate artificial intelligence. "The Senate came together tonight to say that we can't just run over good state consumer protection laws," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said. The Cruz plan would have thwarted state laws related to robocalls, deepfakes, and autonomous vehicles, she said. The House previously approved a bu

Topics: ai cruz said state states

AeroVironment stock drops 8% on offering plan to pay off debt

An image of a Quantix drone made by AeroVironment. AeroVironment shares fell 8% Tuesday after the defense contractor said it plans to offer $750 million in common stock and $600 million in convertible senior notes due in 2030 to repay debt. The drone maker said it would use leftover funding for general purposes such as boosting manufacturing capacity. AeroVironment shares have soared 85% this year, ballooning its market value to about $13 billion. Last week, shares of the Arlington, Virginia

14 Million People Could Die in Next 5 Years Due to USAID Cuts, Study Finds

Elon Musk’s wood-chipping of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is poised to leave piles of bodies behind in its wake, a new study suggests. Scientists have calculated that recent funding cuts to USAID could lead to millions of preventable deaths worldwide over the next half-decade. An international group of researchers conducted the study, published Monday in the Lancet. They estimated that USAID funding in developing countries has helped save dozens of millions of

Remark raises $16M to build out human-powered expert models for e-commerce

Startups working on AI-powered e-commerce tools often rely on external data or user signals to build and improve their models. However, a company called Remark is taking a different approach by letting thousands of human experts chat with users while they are purchasing items, and then using that knowledge to train models. Remark also makes those experts “available” all the time by having their AI-powered persona answer questions. Remark said that this resulted in a 10% net revenue gain for par

When Did Nature Burst into Vivid Color?

In the animal kingdom, there is incredible variation in visual perception. What an animal sees depends on the structure of its retina and its neural visual processing system. Most insects can see ultraviolet, blue and green light, but there is wide variety among arthropods; mantis shrimp eyes have up to 12 different channels of color, revealing the ultraviolet spectrum and polarized light. The ancestor of living vertebrates could likely detect red, purple, blue and green — an ability that was ma

Grammarly acquires AI email client Superhuman

Grammarly announced Tuesday the acquisition of email client Superhuman in a push to build out its AI for its productivity suite. Neither companies provided details about the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman was founded by Rahul Vohra, Vivek Sodera, and Conrad Irwin. The company raised more than $114 million in funding from backers including a16z, IVP, and Tiger Global, with its last valuation at $825 million, according to data from venture data analytics firm Traxcn. “With Superhuman, w

AeroVironment stock drops 7% on offering plan to pay off debt

An image of a Quantix drone made by AeroVironment. AeroVironment shares fell 7% Tuesday after the defense contractor said it plans to offer $750 million in common stock and $600 million in convertible senior notes due in 2030 to repay debt. The drone maker said it would use leftover funding for general purposes such as boosting manufacturing capacity. AeroVironment shares have soared 85% this year, ballooning its market value to about $13 billion. Last week, shares of the Arlington, Virginia

Kayak and Expedia race to build AI travel agents that turn social posts into itineraries

Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more When people started to talk about AI agents and assistants, the number one use case revolved around travel. Could someone be watching a video about the Maldives and direct their AI agent to start finding flights and hotels, and book these seamlessly? We‘re inching closer to a similar future as the travel industry begins to embrace agentic

Drug cartel hacked FBI official’s phone to track and kill informants, report says

The Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico hacked the phone of an FBI official investigating kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán as part of a surveillance campaign “to intimidate and/or kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” according to a recently published report by the Justice Department. The report, which cited an “individual connected to the cartel,” said a hacker hired by its top brass “offered a menu of services related to exploiting mobile phones and other electronic devices.” The hired

Tailor, a ‘headless’ ERP startup, raises $22M Series A

Tailor, a San Francisco- and Tokyo-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round. Investors include ANRI, JIC Venture Growth Investments (JIC VGI), New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Spiral Capital and Y Combinator. ERP systems typically come with a single interface that includes all the necessary functions, but this can be inflexible and restrict customization options. In contrast, a “headless” ERP system separates the front end (user inter

Why are lefties more creative? Turns out, they're not

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain What do Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher and Jimi Hendrix have in common? They're just a few of the creative geniuses also known for being left-handed, helping to fuel the widespread belief that lefties are more creative. It's a compelling idea that even scientists presumed to be tru

The ‘Superman’ We Need Right Now: A Report From the Set of James Gunn’s New DC Film

When Superman started kissing the football on a stick, it all clicked together. The day was June 24, 2024 and io9 was in Cleveland to watch the filming of James Gunn’s Superman. At the end of a giant battle over the streets of Metropolis, the Man of Steel knelt down to kiss and profess his love to an inanimate object that special effects would later transform into his dog, Krypto. That little dash of heartfelt weirdness, in the middle of a massive action scene, did a near-perfect job of showing

Believe It or Not, These 10 Foods Aren't Vegetarian, Experts Warn

Do you think wine or vegetable soup is vegetarian? You might want to think again. Depending on how strictly you follow a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, some seemingly plant-based foods might not make the cut. Surprising ingredients, including animal byproducts, can sneak into everyday staples like sugar, wine, and even corn tortillas. We spoke with food and drink experts to learn about 10 common foods that aren't always as vegetarian-friendly as they seem. Here's everything to know. Cheese Re

Robinhood expands its global push, minutes from crypto chief's old cramped apartment in Cannes

CANNES — Fifteen years after flipping burgers at a McDonald 's and teaching himself to code at night in a cramped apartment near the French Riviera, Robinhood crypto chief Johann Kerbrat is back. The last time he lived around Cannes, he was 21 — with no connections, no funding, and no formal business training. But he had a knack for programming and a drive to solve real-world problems. Kerbrat, who is now senior vice president and crypto GM at Robinhood, quit his job just before starting unive

Snap & Grab Is an '80s Glam Heist Game Where Hitman Meets Pokemon Snap

At Summer Game Fest, I tried out one of the more stylish, relaxing games that made me wish I had pals on the couch to play with. But instead of a co-op adventure, Snap & Grab, as it's called, is a heist title where players take on the role of a fashionista photojournalist who steals gaudy treasures from rich doofuses to fill her penthouse. Snap & Grab is the debut title for studio No Goblin, which held its demo in publisher Annapurna Interactive's closed-door area at the annual gaming festival.

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?

On a blustery spring Thursday, just after midterms, I went out for noodles with Alex and Eugene, two undergraduates at New York University, to talk about how they use artificial intelligence in their schoolwork. When I first met Alex, last year, he was interested in a career in the arts, and he devoted a lot of his free time to photo shoots with his friends. But he had recently decided on a more practical path: he wanted to become a C.P.A. His Thursdays were busy, and he had forty-five minutes u

Google inks its first fusion power deal with Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Fusion power got another boost on Monday as Google announced it will buy half the output of Commonwealth Fusion System’s first commercial power plant. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) will send Google 200 megawatts of electricity from its Arc power plant, which is expected to come online in the early 2030s. Meanwhile, Google is sending CFS a check as part of a new, unannounced funding round. The new round will be “comparable” to the previous one, CFS co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard said. CFS’

Are software professionals truly an endangered species? It's complicated

islander11/Getty Images Industry eyebrows were raised recently at New York Federal Reserve Bank data showing software engineering graduates face higher unemployment rates than art history majors. The unemployment rates for computer engineering and computer science were 7.5% and 6.7% respectively. By contrast, the unemployment rates for art history and social services majors were 3% and 1.7% respectively. Also: The best AI for coding in 2025 (including a new winner - and what not to use) In a

Snap & Grab Is an '80s Glam Heist Game Where Hitman meets Pokemon Snap

At Summer Game Fest, I tried out one of the more stylish, relaxing games that made me wish I had pals on the couch to play with. But instead of a co-op adventure, Snap & Grab, as it's called, is a heist title where players take on the role of a fashionista photojournalist who steals gaudy treasures from rich doofuses to fill her penthouse. Snap & Grab is the debut title for studio No Goblin, which held its demo in publisher Annapurna Interactive's closed-door area at the annual gaming festival.

Joby delivers first aircraft to Dubai as air taxi service nears launch

is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State. Joby Aviation is getting ready to take flight. The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) company has delivered its first production aircraft to Dubai, where it plans to launch a commercial air taxi service in early 2026. Joby, which has successfully completed multiple flight tests with a pilot onboard, says it has