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A technical commentary warns analysts against using the 'ntile()' function from R's dplyr package when preparing statistical analyses meant for regulatory submission. The author explains that ntile() originated as a SQL utility and behaves in ways that do not align with standard statistical quantile calculations, potentially producing misleading results.
Cisco says many organizations already have AI agents operating without proper identities, owners, or access controls, often connected directly to production systems by developers without IT's knowledge. The company's identity product lead, Matt Caulfield, is developing Duo Agentic Identity to address this gap as traditional identity and access management tools were never designed for autonomous, machine-speed actors.
A technical essay revisits Gary Bernhardt's decade-old 'Functional Core, Imperative Shell' architecture, arguing that the key property enabling easy testing isn't functional purity itself but determinism. The author suggests that state machines and other deterministic constructs can achieve the same testability benefits as pure functions, broadening how developers might structure isolated, predictable 'core' logic versus the messier, IO-heavy 'shell' that talks to the outside world.
ReBarUEFI is a UEFI DXE driver that can be injected into a system's firmware to enable Resizable BAR on boards that don't officially support the feature. It works by patching the PCI resource allocation process during boot and is paired with a companion tool, ReBarState, to set the BAR size, with a separate project called NvStrapsReBar covering older NVIDIA Turing GPUs.
A lawsuit alleges that Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI and Google entered into an unlawful agreement to coordinate the pace of AI development rather than compete independently. The claim frames this coordination as an antitrust violation rather than a safety measure, arguing it restrained competitive behavior among rival AI labs.
A technical blog post (originally from 2018) revisits a classic question about neural network training: why does the backpropagation algorithm invented by Rumelhart et al. in 1986 compute gradients by propagating errors backward through the network rather than forward, given that both directions are mathematically valid applications of the chain rule. The author walks through the notation and structure of a neural network node to set up an explanation of why forward-mode differentiation is computationally suboptimal compared to the standard backward approach.
Apple introduced iPhone Handoff, a new iOS 27 capability that lets a single phone number and carrier account work across two iPhones simultaneously. Users simply unlock whichever iPhone they want to use, and calls, texts, saved payment cards and most apps sync automatically without needing separate accounts on each device.
Researchers have formally described Leopardus tilcayo, a small spotted feline native to South America, marking the first new cat species identified by science in over a century. Genetic analysis places it within the tiger cat lineage, distinguishing it from previously known relatives despite its similar leopard-like markings.
Chinese authorities have imposed disciplinary measures on several prominent academics after investigations into research-integrity violations flagged by an online research sleuth known as 'Student Geng.' The sanctions form part of a broader crackdown covering 31 research teams accused of misconduct.
MIT researchers led by Giovanni Traverso developed a battery coated in a rice-paper-like material that can power swallowable medical devices and then be fully broken down and absorbed by the body. The team tested the battery in pigs by powering an RFID tag that transmits data from inside the body and a device that electrically stimulates the stomach to release hunger-regulating hormones. The work, published in Nature Chemical Engineering, replaces toxic metals, organic electrolytes and plastic casings found in conventional batteries with non-toxic alternatives like magnesium and molybdenum.
Researchers introduce RetroChimera, a retrosynthesis model that combines two neural architectures with different inductive biases through a learned ensembling method. It outperforms existing baseline models across varying data scales and generalizes well even with limited examples per reaction type. In blind evaluations, professional chemists preferred RetroChimera's suggested synthesis routes over both published reference reactions and predictions from other AI systems.
Researchers at nChroma Bio and Milan-based institutes developed a therapy that attaches chemical tags to the hepatitis B virus genome, silencing its genes without cutting DNA. Tests in human liver cells and mice showed the approach effectively blocked viral particle production, and monkey trials revealed only mild, short-lived side effects after a single dose. A human clinical trial has since begun in Hong Kong and New Zealand, with the first patient dosed in January.