First thing’s first: it’s bad to cheat on your wife with your employees and business associates, so Nvidia had compelling reason to push out its CEO Jensen Huang for doing exactly that. But the most salacious part of this ongoing story, that one of Huang’s affair partners was a Chinese spy, deserves just as much scrutiny as Huang’s infidelity. Before we get into it, a little recap. The whole episode kicked off when the New York Times, quoting anonymous US officials who had viewed a classified brief, claimed that US intelligence sources suspected Jensen Huang’s mistress, Alice Huang, of working as a spy for the Chinese government. Mainstream media has been feasting off the story ever since, running startling headlines about the “spy scandal” rocking the AI world. Yet if journalists and media figures were to take second glance at the US government’s track record around Chinese spy allegations, they would find a trail of lives left shattered by baseless and Sinophobic hysteria. One prominent example is Hu Anming, a Chinese-Canadian laser physicist who was fired from his research position at the University of Tennessee Knoxville in 2020 after groundless allegations surfaced that he was engaged in economic espionage on…

A new comprehensive study by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa Climate Resilience Collaborative reveals that traditional sea-level rise models, which account only for rising ocean waters, drastically underestimate the true threat to coastal infrastructure on Oʻahu, Hawai’i.

Ask any reptile lover where to find a cold-blooded creature, and chances are they will point to a rocky outcrop.

What’s the best way to protect ourselves against climate change? The default is to reach for concrete and steel to build seawalls, dikes, dams and drainage systems. These can work. But they are expensive and inflexible. There’s another, much cheaper option which gets vastly less attention. Mangroves, forests and urban trees can help protect humans and their homes, farms and cities from floods, droughts, rising seas and heat.

Microsoft’s day-long outage began with Outlook and Teams, and ended up taking much of the company’s cloud services offline. Microsoft says it’s gradually restoring service.

Archaeologists digging north of Southampton have uncovered five wooden water wells, all sitting over one natural spring. The oldest four date to the Iron Age, and the fifth belongs to the Roman period. Those ones suggests they suggest people drew water from this one spot for hundreds of years. The find came during work ahead of the Southampton Link Main, a pipeline of about 12 miles that will connect Otterbourne and Southampton. Southern Water is funding the project, and the company says the new pipe will help Hampshire handle water shortages during droughts. Before crews lay any pipe, specialists check the ground for buried remains. This time the survey turned up far more than anyone expected. A team from UCL Archaeology South-East carried out the work, and the timbers are now being studied in the lab. A Well Built to Last The four Iron Age wells were built in a distinctive way. Builders hollowed out oak trunks and set them upright in pits. The largest log measures 70 centimeters across. Radiocarbon dating placed one of these wells between 719 and 396 BCE, which falls in the Early Iron Age. Each well has its own quirks. One had a ring of…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Silicon Valley claims to know the future. So why did it get the midterms so wrong? —Aaron Zamost, a tech communications consultant and a former executive at Square The self-styled visionaries of Silicon Valley have built careers claiming to see the future. Yet five weeks before the midterms, many gathered at the White House to pose with Trump and endorse his “Super Intelligence” agenda, despite growing opposition to AI and data centers. Their decision to lash themselves to President Trump was a catastrophic misreading of the political landscape. Now, not only have they jeopardized their companies’ fates, but they’ve also raised questions about their vision and judgment.  Here’s why Silicon Valley’s tech leaders may be less visionary than they think. Nvidia privately confirmed it could track chips to fight smuggling, even as industry publicly questioned feasibility Nvidia representatives told Illinois representative Bill Foster that it was possible to implement the anti-smuggling measures called for in the Chip Security Act, Foster told MIT Technology Review on Thursday, despite an industry group claiming they were “potentially infeasible.” Foster,…

In one synthetic image published to X-formerly-Twitter, the singer Billie Eilish looks terrifyingly thin. In another, the model and reality TV star Kendall Jenner is pictured heavily pregnant as she carries a bottle of liquor. In yet another, the rapper Jaden Smith holds and kisses a “mystery man.” All of the images are AI-altered deepfakes — and they’re picking up traction on platforms like X, which engage in little moderation and are deeply integrated with AI tech. Welcome to the new era of viral AI tabloid fodder, delivered straight from the uncanny valley and completely unburdened from the confines of reality. Engagement baiters on X are spreading fabricated and often sensational clickbait about famous people by way of deepfaked paparazzi shots and social media posts, editing existing images to alter celebrities’ bodies and surroundings to suit concocted narratives. The images can be alarmingly convincing due to the fact that they’re slightly-altered versions of real images, rather than AI-generated whole cloth, meaning that much of the original picture remains intact. The motive, it seems, is money: the accounts publishing this kind of content tend to be verified, meaning that they stand to get a financial kickback from X if their content…

When amphibians and reptiles get an infection, they sometimes raise their body temperature above its usual level by moving to a warmer environment. This well-documented behavioral response is known as behavioral fever.

The ESA’s Euclid has already teased us with some early results. In the past, it’s given us a small image covering 60 square degrees of the sky, created with a few days of observations. Those images showed individual targets from the Horsehead Nebula to the Perseus cluster of galaxies.

Given Nvidia’s stronghold on AI and its importance in Israel, many in the country’s startup ecosystem are worried about the impact of his departure.

A hairy spider, roughly the width of an adult’s palm, is showing up in places where Austrians would rather not find it. Cellars, garages, garden sheds and even gaps around front doors have become regular hiding spots. Since early September, residents across Austria have submitted hundreds of photographs of these unusually large visitors. Two species are responsible, both commonly called “tarantulas” in Austria. One has lived near Vienna for about a century, while the other arrived from the south decades ago. This autumn, sightings of both have risen sharply. Over 200 Reports in Just Two Months The reports are being collected by the Austrian League for Nature Conservation (Naturschutzbund), which relies on public photographs and specialist verification to track wildlife sightings. Since September began, more than 200 tarantula reports have arrived, with 175 confirmed. September alone accounted for 114 sightings of the two species. Styria leads with 66 reports, followed by Lower Austria with 49 and Burgenland with 43. The geographical split is striking: every report from Styria and Carinthia this year has involved the black-bellied tarantula, while Vienna and Lower Austria have recorded only the Southern Russian species. Burgenland is the only state reporting both. A specimen of the…

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium is listed by the World Health Organization as one of the highest-priority bacteria in its 2024 Bacterial Priority Pathogens List, ahead of MRSA, due to its ability to transfer resistance genes between humans, animals and the environment.

Our team clocked serious hours walking, working, and sometimes jogging to find the best under-desk treadmills for home offices and small spaces.

Huang described Kress as a “deer in the headlights” during a meeting in summer.

Businesses and institutions in just 6% of Montreal’s mapped area account for about 100,000 metric tons (110,000 tons) of food waste sent to landfill each year—half of the total amount from nonhousehold sources in the city as a whole, McGill University researchers found. Food service and retail businesses were found to be the biggest contributors.

A study of ancient DNA from 348 individuals suggests that dark skin was the norm among people in Europe for most of the past 45,000 years. Intermediate or pale skin only became the majority around 3,000 years ago, much later than assumed. For a while, modern humans moved into Europe around 45,000 years ago, and the assumption was that they rapidly evolved paler skin to get enough vitamin D during dark winters. Cells in the skin make a precursor of that vitamin when exposed to ultraviolet light, but in darker skin, less ultraviolet reaches those cells. That view changed as it became possible to sequence DNA from individuals who lived many thousands of years ago, and to apply methods developed by forensic scientists to help identify suspects from DNA samples found at crime scenes. A new study now gives the most comprehensive picture yet of how pigmentation traits shifted across the continent. A Dataset Without Precedent Guido Barbujani at the University of Ferrara in Italy and his colleagues predicted the color, eye and hair colour of almost all the ancient Europeans whose genomes have been sequenced so far, 348 individuals in total. They wanted to see how these traits changed…

Solar power, wind energy, and electric vehicles are reshaping global emissions trends, but a new scientific assessment reveals that the world’s remaining carbon budget is shrinking at an alarming rate. Global fossil fuel emissions are expected to fall slightly in 2026, but the world’s total carbon dioxide output is still projected to rise. A new […]

A new national database developed at the University of Michigan shows that none of the top 99 public transportation systems in the United States are easy for people with disabilities to use in four key areas of accommodation and accessibility.

$1,500 buys you vibrant color, deep blacks, and a fast screen fit for just about anything. Just be sure the wide pedestal fits your setup.

Mansa says its AI microdramas can serve as proofs of concept for what Black audiences want. Critics say the studio is selling out.

Our uniquely human walking style comes with evolutionary benefits—but also a cost

Lumina, a huge computer model laden with complex astrophysics, is giving scientists a breathtaking virtual view of the young universe

In mid-September 2023, seismic stations around the world began picking up something that looked nothing like an ordinary earthquake. There was no sharp jolt, no sequence of tremors gradually dying away. Instead, the instruments recorded a steady pulse, repeating at precisely the same interval for hours, then days. Sensors thousands of miles apart, from the Arctic to Antarctica, registered the same strange rhythm, which continued for more than a week before fading. Scientists initially had no explanation for it. Whatever was shaking the planet appeared to be coming from one of the Arctic’s most remote regions. A Hum With No Obvious Source The signal first appeared on September 16, 2023. Unlike earthquakes, which typically generate a jumble of seismic frequencies, it was remarkably clean: a monochromatic vibration at 10.88 millihertz, completing one cycle every 92 seconds. The frequency remained almost perfectly constant. Seismologists classify such vibrations as very-long-period signals, far too slow for people to hear or feel directly. For up to nine days, the pulse traveled through the Earth, gradually losing strength without shifting its rhythm. Few recordings in modern seismology had looked quite like it. Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite image pinpointing the mega-tsunami location at Dickson Fjord in East…

The AI memory crunch is coming for your holiday shopping list.

Gas above a Martian volcano may come from hidden magma, offering clues to the planet’s remaining heat and its potential to support life underground. Hydrogen chloride gas usually reaches its highest levels in Mars’s atmosphere during winter in the northern hemisphere, then mostly disappears in summer. Much of that seasonal pattern appears to follow the […]

Jean Guerrero, Stephen Miller’s biographer, sees him as “a case study in oligarchic capture”—and as a way for Donald Trump to double down.

China’s one-child policy is widely considered one of the most stringent public policies in modern history. Yet researchers have long debated how much it actually contributed to the country’s dramatic fertility decline.

William Gibson released his seminal novel Neuromancer in 1984. WIRED has an exclusive look at how it eventually made its way to Apple TV—thanks in no small part to Drake.

The first consensus guidelines on stuttering, released this summer, are throwing new light on an ancient condition

An older universe could give unexpectedly mature early galaxies billions more years to grow, according to a model that also reproduces galaxy rotation without dark matter. To explain how galaxies rotate, the standard model of the universe relies on dark matter, an unseen source of gravity. A new paper published in Monthly Notices of the […]

Tesla’s unpredictable CEO is ready to move on from the company’s most controversial vehicle, but owners aren’t about to let him off the hook for what they see as a poor decision.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX was poised Friday to carry out its latest test of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, the Starship, with plans for a groundbreaking “catch” of the spaceship following a day in orbit.

Wildfires that consumed vast swaths of Indonesia this year were driven largely by a strong El Niño, fueled by climate change and decades of natural landscape destruction, researchers said Friday.

An international research team led by Nobuhiro Yanai from the University of Tokyo and Michael R. Wasielewski from Northwestern University has created polarized radical pairs, molecules with unpaired electrons whose spins align, in metal–organic frameworks (MOFs), porous materials consisting of metal ions linked by organic molecules.

The self-styled visionaries of Silicon Valley, leaders like OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, have built careers claiming to see the future. Long-term vision is currency: Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg built a 10-year road map for Facebook in 2016, and Google famously told investors before its public offering that it was unconcerned with short-term results. And yet there they all were, a mere five weeks before the midterm elections, gathered at the White House to smile for photos with President Trump and sign on to his “Super Intelligence” agenda. Even by the diminished standards of today’s corporate governance, this was a shockingly foolish decision. Despite dozens of polls showing a rising tide of anti-Trump sentiment and bipartisan rejection of AI and data centers, the futurists of the tech elite cast aside long-term corporate interests for short-term political favor. And now, their industry is very squarely in the new victors’ crosshairs. For an industry obsessed with pattern recognition, their decision to lash themselves to President Trump has proved to be a catastrophic misreading of the political landscape. Now, not only have they jeopardized their companies’ fates, but they’ve also raised questions about their vision and judgment.  What were…

Scientists have been working on ways to decode brain activity for decades. Teams have developed brain implants that can be used to control robotic limbs and computers, and even to “speak.” The people who volunteer for trials of those devices play a vital role in that research, and they ought to be recognized for their contributions, says Ian Burkhart, who had one implanted in his own brain back in 2014. He’s been working on a set of guidelines for researchers developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Ethics guidelines for clinical trials already exist. But BCI trials are different, says Jennifer Chandler, a professor of law and neuroethics at the University of Ottawa who also worked on the guidelines. “These are people who have a device embedded in their brain, are in trials sometimes for years and years … [and contribute] a significant investment of time, of the body, and of intellectual effort.” Burkhart was left paralyzed from the chest down following a diving accident in 2010, when he was 19 years old. Around four years later, he volunteered to become the first person to trial a brain implant designed for hand control. He had an array of 96 electrodes inserted into the…

It’s not promoted very much, but Bitdefender’s stand-alone Antivirus Plus software is both effective and affordable.

With Hubble expected to reenter the atmosphere by 2034 and several malfunctions on board, NASA is asking commercial space companies for proposals on how to extend the telescope’s lifespan.

More than half a century ago, a Hungarian architect, sculptor and professor invented what would become one of the world’s most popular and beloved puzzles whose appeal has spanned generations: the colorful, mind-bending, six-sided Rubik’s Cube.

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For one group of young sea turtles, a protected wetland in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) proved a perfect oasis. A team tracking nine juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas) found they were spending over 80 percent of their time in the Al Qurm Wa Lehhfaiiah Protected Area, a human-made lagoon on the UAE’s Gulf of Oman coast. Large numbers of turtles are also found in this basin built beyond the salt-tolerant trees and shrubs along the coast. A study published today in the journal Aquatic Conservation details the findings. In 2003, the basin was excavated as an extension of the Khor Kalba mangrove trees. The resulting Al Qurm Wa Lehhfaiiah Protected Area has been recognized as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention and as a Key Biodiversity Area since 2013. “Our results show just how critical coastal wetlands can be to young green turtles,” Dr. Owen Exeter, a study co-author and marine conservation ecologist from the University of Exeter, said in a statement. “The fact these turtles are using the artificial basin appears to be a happy accident, and an example of how wildlife can find a way in a world increasingly shaped by humans. However, without…

Discussing racism with children can seem daunting to parents, caregivers and educators for several reasons. Often, it can feel uncomfortable talking about people’s differences; conversations about racism reveal implicit biases and, for some, immense privilege.

Quantum computers have the potential to perform calculations more quickly than supercomputers, but they could be even faster and more energy-efficient if they were built with photons as their basic units, called qubits.

If we want big things in space, we’ll have to build and assemble them there. Rocket fairings are not large enough to accommodate the large things we want to have in space. Not only that, but the stubborn rocket equation refuses to bend itself to our desires.

As the major powers and the private companies go full tilt with their plans to develop infrastructure and extract resources on the moon, the questions around environmental protection, international regulation and who benefits all come into play. Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science (VU IIRPS) professor Florian Rabitz, together with Xiao-Shan Yap from Utrecht University, explores these concerns in their research article, “Don’t Fly Me to the Moon: A Moratorium on Lunar Industrialization,” published in the journal Global Environmental Politics.