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Popular Sugar Substitute Marketed to Diabetics Linked to Stroke, Heart Attack, Brain Cell Damage

Image by Getty Images Studies A widely-used sugar substitute found in products marketed to people with diabetes may involve more risks than rewards. In a new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder found that erythritol — an organic compound used for so-called "stevia" products sold by the brands Wholesome, Truvia, and Splenda — can harm brain cells and increase the risk of stroke and heart attack. Created during the corn ferme

James Webb Spots Planets Forming Into Solar System in Real Time, Like an Organism's First Cells

Astronomers have spotted a planetary system being conceived from the swirl of gas and dust surrounding a star — giving us an unprecedented, real-time look at how our solar system would've formed some 4.6 billion years ago. The findings, published as a study in the journal Nature, are the first time we're seeing such an early stage of planets being formed anywhere in the cosmos. "We've captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like Earth are born around young protostars,"

A mushroom casket marks a first for ‘green burials’ in the US

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. “I’m probably the only architect who created a final home,” Bob Hendrikx tells The Verge. Tombs and catacombs aside, Hendrikx might be the only one to make a final home using mushrooms. Hendrikx is the founder and CEO of Loop Biotech, a company that makes caskets out of mycel

Is Climate Change an Existential Threat?

If a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) asteroid slammed into Earth tomorrow, it would render the planet inhospitable to nearly all life forms, save for the hardiest extremophiles. This mass extinction event would wipe humanity off the face of the Earth—there would be no survivors. To some experts, this is the true definition of an “existential threat.” Traditionalists will say this term describes a risk that endangers the very existence of something—in this case, the human species. In recent ye

Microsoft Will Erase Your Passwords in 2 Weeks: What to Do Now

Microsoft is axing passwords starting in August -- and if you use its Authenticator app, you'll want to be prepared. For years, Microsoft Authenticator has been a go-to for managing multifactor authentication and saved passwords. However, starting next month, it will no longer support passwords and will move to passkeys instead. That means your logins will soon rely more on things like PINs, fingerprint scans or facial recognition. Using a passkey can make your account safer, and it's a move I

Asynchrony is not concurrency

Yes I know about that one talk from Rob Pike. The title of this blog post is not something you hear people say often, if ever. What you do hear people say is “concurrency is not parallelism”, but that’s not as useful, in my opinion. Let’s see how Wikipedia defines those terms: Concurrency refers to the ability of a system to execute multiple tasks through simultaneous execution or time-sharing (context switching) Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or proce

Asynchrony Is Not Concurrency

Yes I know about that one talk from Rob Pike. The title of this blog post is not something you hear people say often, if ever. What you do hear people say is “concurrency is not parallelism”, but that’s not as useful, in my opinion. Let’s see how Wikipedia defines those terms: Concurrency refers to the ability of a system to execute multiple tasks through simultaneous execution or time-sharing (context switching) Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or proce

2 Meteor Showers Are Peaking on the Same Night in July. How to Catch a Glimpse

Meteor showers happen all year. They happen so often that they overlap for significant percentages of the year. There are two times when three meteor showers will be active in October, for example. But a rarer feat? Having two meteor showers that peak at the same time. It'll happen later this month, on July 29. The show will come courtesy of the Alpha Capricornids and Southern delta Aquariids meteor showers. The former began on Saturday and runs through Aug. 12, with a peak of July 29. Southern

Two Meteor Showers Are Peaking on the Same Night in July. How to Catch a Glimpse

Meteor showers happen all year. They happen so often that they overlap for significant percentages of the year. There are two times when three meteor showers will be active in October, for example. But a rarer feat? Having two meteor showers that peak at the same time. It'll happen later this month, on July 29. The show will come courtesy of the Alpha Capricornids and Southern delta Aquariids meteor showers. The former began on Saturday and runs through Aug. 12, with a peak of July 29. Southern

If You Thought Your Life Was a Mess, Spare a Thought for Boeing's Massively Failed Starliner Spacecraft

Even after pouring $2 billion into its much-maligned Starliner spacecraft, NASA and Boeing remain committed to getting back off the ground. As Ars Technica reports, the head of NASA's commercial crew program, Steve Stich, revealed last week that Boeing and its propulsion supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne, are making considerable changes to the astronaut shuttle following a disastrous first crewed mission to the International Space Station last year. The spacecraft experienced several "in-flight ano

Cybertruck Sales Are Dead in the Water

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse for Tesla's Cybertruck, sales for the controversial pickup truck are circling the drain after dropping off a cliff. In numbers, the Elon Musk-owned automaker sold just 4,306 Cybertrucks in the second quarter of 2025, according to the latest data from Cox Automotive's Kelley Blue Book — a stunning 50.8 percent nosedive from the same period last year. It's also a big dip from the quarter before, when Tesla eked out a barely more respectable 6,4

Elon Musk's Neuralink filed as 'disadvantaged business' before being valued at $9 billion

Elon Musk's health tech company Neuralink labeled itself a "small disadvantaged business" in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration, shortly before a financing round valued the company at $9 billion. Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) system, with an initial aim to help people with severe paralysis regain some independence. BCI technology broadly can translate a person's brain signals into commands that allow them to manipulate external technologies j

If You Thought Your Life Was a Mess, Spare a Thought for Boeing's Starliner

Even after pouring $2 billion into its much-maligned Starliner spacecraft, NASA and Boeing remain committed to getting back off the ground. As Ars Technica reports, the head of NASA's commercial crew program, Steve Stich, revealed last week that Boeing and its propulsion supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne, are making considerable changes to the astronaut shuttle following a disastrous first crewed mission to the International Space Station last year. The spacecraft experienced several "in-flight ano

Anti-Exploitation Group Horrified by Elon Musk's AI-Powered Waifu

One of the weirder bits of news on the AI front this week has been Elon Musk's rollout of sexually-charged animated chatbots. Officially called "companions" — or by the slangier "waifus," a Japanese term for a fictional romantic partner — the virtual characters rolled out to X-formerly-Twitter just days after Grok experienced a catastrophic meltdown, blasting users with racist comments and calling itself "MechaHitler." Users on X-formerly-Twitter can now pay a $300 monthly subscription to acce

Topics: access ai ani mode musk

A Surge of Earthquakes in Alaska Is Raising Red Flags

A powerful offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami warning for communities along a 700-mile (1,100-kilometer) stretch of Alaska’s southern coast on Wednesday, July 16. Fortunately, the wave never came, and ground shaking caused minimal damage, but another large quake could strike this area in the near future. Since 2020, five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 7.2 to 8.2 have struck the southern coast of Alaska. It’s not unusual for seismic activity to occur in this part of the state, as it run

Colon Cancer Explained: Warning Signs, Risk Factors and Prevention

Colon cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and it's important to be aware of the symptoms as well as what you can do to prevent this deadly illness. Colorectal or colon cancer (not to be confused with stomach or gastric cancer) has become a hot topic in recent years with news of celebrities -- such as Chadwick Boseman and Kirstie Alley-- passing away after battling the disease. In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates that there will be about 107,320 new cases of c

ChatGPT’s new AI agent can browse the web and create PowerPoint slideshows

On Thursday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent, a new feature that lets the company's AI assistant complete multi-step tasks by controlling its own web browser. The update merges capabilities from OpenAI's earlier Operator tool and the Deep Research feature, allowing ChatGPT to navigate websites, run code, and create documents while users maintain control over the process. The feature marks OpenAI's latest entry into what the tech industry calls "agentic AI"—systems that can take autonomous multi-s

Get a Free Storm Skin, Hawkeye Skin and More in Marvel Rivals Season 3

Marvel Rivals season 2.5 may have taken our heroes off-world as they battled across Arakko, but season 3 is throwing us into the furthest reaches of space to fight a new threat: Knull and his symbiote army. Stopping one symbiote is tough enough. Fighting off an army of them is going to require a whole new wardrobe's worth of battle gear. Luckily for you, there are many ways to unlock some free skins in the hit hero shooter right now -- including the Milano Repair Logs event that evens the odds

Linux has over 6% of the desktop market? Yes, you read that right - here's how

SJVN / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET At long last, after years of waiting for the "Year of the Linux desktop," we're getting somewhere. According to the US Federal Government Website and App Analytics, which I trust far more than I do StatCounter, 6% of its visitors over the last month were using Linux operating systems. Downright impressive This website keeps track of US government website visits and analyzes them. On average, there have been 1.6 billion sessions in the last 30 days, with mi

Musk Accuses Trump of Covering Up Epstein Scandal

It's no wonder multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk sees the Jeffrey Epstein crisis as an enormous opportunity to score political points. The situation has driven a massive wedge between president Donald Trump and his MAGA base. A furious Trump has repeatedly attempted to pour cold water on conspiracy theories surrounding the late sex criminal billionaire's mysterious death and the existence of a purported "client list" — efforts that only enraged his supporters even further. In a Twitter spr

Elon Musk Wants to Turn AI Into a Cosmic Religion

It is one of his more abstract philosophical riffs. Elon Musk has once again linked the fate of humanity to the trajectory of artificial intelligence. And this time, he says the key to AI safety might be babies and rockets. The CEO of Tesla’s latest pronouncement cuts through the typical discussions of AI efficiency and profit models, positing a far grander ambition for advanced intelligence. The CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX and xAI asserted that “AI is a de facto neurotransmitter tonnage

Topics: ai long musk term tonnage

Our Best View Yet of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

A comet unlike any seen before has fixated astronomers around the world. An observatory in Hawaii has unveiled the most stunning image of this ancient interstellar visitor yet. The Gemini North telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, recently snapped a close-up of 3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object ever discovered. The telescope’s highly sensitive Multi-Object Spectrograph captured the comet’s compact coma—a cloud of gas and dust surrounding its icy nucleus—in striking detail. 3I/ATLAS is inbound t

Elon Musk gets more time to respond to SEC suit over Twitter disclosure

Elon Musk listens as US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to give Elon Musk more time to respond to its lawsuit over his alleged failure to properly disclose purchases of Twitter stock before bidding to buy the company. In a motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, the SEC said it had reached a joint ag

Hate Windows 11? Here's how you can make it work more like Windows 10

Pau Barrena/Bloomberg via Getty Images I wrote the original version of this post when Windows 11 was still less than a year old, after reading a ton of feedback from early adopters. I didn't have to spend a lot of time in support forums and other community sites to hear a steady stream of criticism from people who were annoyed by the changes Microsoft made in the Windows 10 user interface they had grown comfortable with. Enough time has passed since the original Windows 11 release that some of

Top Execs Fleeing Tesla as Dark Clouds Grow

Another top executive has quit Tesla as the automaker continues a dicey and high-stakes spiral. The Wall Street Journal reports that Troy Jones, Tesla's vice president of sales, service and delivery in North America — its largest market — suddenly packed his bags after 15 years at the company. It's unclear at this point if the decision was his; at Tesla, heads can roll depending on the whims of CEO Elon Musk. Jones' exit comes during a particularly tumultuous time for the EV brand, which is su

Elon Unveils New Grok AI ‘Companion’ That Looks Uncomfortably Familiar

On Wednesday, Elon Musk discussed a new male AI “companion” that his company xAI is developing, which will run on the company’s unhinged chatbot software Grok. And while it’s not yet clear when this new robot buddy will be released, it sounds an awful lot like Musk is trying to make a romanticized version of himself. Musk first tweeted an image of the anime-inspired bot on Tuesday, asking followers on X what it should be named. The billionaire has already released two AI companions that use Gro

Topics: 50 ai elon musk new

Elon Musk teases AI anime boyfriend based on Edward Cullen

is a senior reporter focusing on wearables, health tech, and more with 13 years of experience. Before coming to The Verge, she worked for Gizmodo and PC Magazine. Days after introducing an AI ‘waifu’ companion for Grok, Elon Musk is now officially teasing a male version for the ladies. So far we can tell it is broody and dark-haired, and according to Musk, “his personality is inspired by Edward Cullen from Twilight and Christian Grey from 50 Shades.” This is a decidedly different tack than the

Topics: ani cullen grey grok musk

Microsoft Is Testing Letting Copilot AI Interact With Your Whole Desktop

Microsoft has confirmed an upcoming expansion to its Copilot AI chatbot's screen-sharing abilities: Soon it will be able to process your entire desktop, not just certain parts of it. The company said Tuesday that this expansion of Copilot's Vision capabilities has begun public testing. This update, now rolling out to the company's Windows Insider program testers, will allow the AI chatbot to view, process and react to all aspects of a user's desktop, where beforehand it was limited to specific

Microsoft's Copilot Vision can now see and analyze your entire Windows desktop

Microsoft Microsoft has expanded the powers and reach of its Copilot Vision AI to help you with all types of content. In a Tuesday blog post, the company revealed that Windows insiders can now opt to share their entire desktop with Copilot Vision where you can ask it to analyze and answer questions about all the items on your screen. A big leap forward Available in the US for Windows 10 and 11 and coming soon to other non-European countries, Copilot Vision on Windows acts as a virtual compani

Look Up at Night and You May See 2 Meteor Showers at Once

Even if you've never really seen one, meteor showers actually happen all year. In fact, they happen so often that they overlap for significant percentages of the year. There are two times when three meteor showers will be active in October, for example. But a rarer feat? Having two meteor showers that peak at the same time. It'll happen later this month, on July 29. The show will come courtesy of the Alpha Capricornids and Southern delta Aquariids meteor showers. The former began on Saturday an