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Tech News
Researchers report that large language models can develop novel social biases not present in their original training data when placed in adaptive, exploration-based learning settings. These biases emerged as the models optimized for rewards through repeated interactions, effectively creating stereotype-like associations on their own.
Google has shifted Chrome from a four-week to a two-week release schedule, beginning with Chrome 153 rolling out on desktop, iOS, and Android. The company says the change helps it manage a growing volume of security patches driven by AI-assisted bug discovery and faster-moving threats.
Motif Design has launched a browser-based platform that lets architecture teams work with highly complex building models directly online, without specialized desktop software. The tool is positioned as a collaboration-first alternative to traditional architectural modeling workflows, echoing the browser-native approach that made Figma popular in design.
A retrospective catalogs obsolete HTML snippets that were never part of the official specification but emerged from browser wars, vendor extensions, and third-party integrations. Examples include the X-UA-Compatible meta tag used to force Internet Explorer into specific rendering modes, and the chrome=1 directive tied to Google's now-defunct Chrome Frame plugin that let IE 6-9 users render pages using Chrome's engine.
Brave released new benchmark data asserting its desktop browser consumes 44% less CPU, 28% less memory, and 10% less energy than Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, while loading full pages about 20% faster. The company attributes the gains largely to blocking ads, trackers, and analytics scripts that would otherwise generate extra background processing after the visible page content loads.
A review examines whether ChromeOS-based Chromebooks can serve as a primary computer, highlighting their light weight, durability, fast boot times and battery life often exceeding 10 hours. It also details ChromeOS's built-in security architecture, including read-only system files, verified boot, and sandboxing, alongside the option to unlock full system access via Developer Mode.
Apple's WebKit team has opened a call for proposals for Interop 2027, the next round of the annual cross-browser project run with Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Bocoup, and Igalia. Developers can submit ideas through September 23, with entries required to focus on mature, testable web standards measured via Web Platform Tests.
A developer who previously built Onionservatory, a tool to audit Onion Service security configurations, has now released a companion tool called Onionspector. This new tool flips the perspective, showing users exactly what data points—from HTTP headers to browser fingerprinting signals like screen size, fonts, and Canvas/WebGL output—a website can collect about them when they connect, even over Tor.
A visitor to nature.com attempting to access an archived piece titled 'Catching Crumbs from the Table' from 2000 instead encountered a generic browser-compatibility notice rather than the article's actual content. The page indicated the site was being displayed without full styling or JavaScript because of the outdated browser being used, leaving the substance of the original 2000 piece inaccessible in this instance.
Solipsism Browser is a new open-source Android browser built on Chromium that launched about three months ago, offering extensive customization and design options typically associated with Firefox forks rather than Chrome. Despite its early stage, reviewers note it already feels highly polished and distinct from mainstream Chromium-based browsers.
Scientists used a citizen-science method of burying cotton underwear in soil for several months as a low-cost way to assess microbial activity, since healthier soil decomposes cotton fabric faster. Volunteers around the world dug up roughly 1,000 pairs and reported how much material had degraded, generating a broad dataset on soil condition.
An independent developer continues building a free, browser-playable action-RPG multiplayer game using AI-assisted 'vibecoding' techniques, now in its sixth week of public development. The project requires no downloads and lets players jump straight into a persistent shared realm to level characters and complete dungeon runs alongside other online users.