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"Microsoft, Atom computing, EeroQ update their quantum computing progress."
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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencemonitor.blogspot.com).
20 articles selected
20
Today
by John Timmer / 51min
With dozens of companies, from small startups to tech giants, pursuing quantum computing, there's a steady flow of results as they try to find a path to utility. We typically focus on new technologies and major landmarks, which can obscure the fact that any big success will inevitably have been built on a lot of incremental progress. The past few weeks have seen a number of companies release prog
A possible case of New World screwworm has been reported in South Texas. If confirmed, it would be the first detected breach of the US-Mexico border by the ravenous flesh-eating flies , which have been making their way up through Central America for the past several years. In a social media post Wednesday afternoon , the US Department of Agriculture said a "sample is now at USDA's National Veteri
UK regulators today ordered Google to put clearer attributions and links to publishers' content in its AI-generated search features. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also said Google must give publishers a way to opt out of AI features in search. "In a world first, publishers will now have effective tools to prevent their content being used to power AI features in search, such as
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There’s a lot that doesn’t add up in a security advisory password manager Dashlane published Monday, warning that attackers managed to obtain 20 encrypted user vaults. “Starting on Sunday, May 31, 2026, an external party launched a brute force attack against certain Dashlane user accounts,” the company said . “The goal of the attack was to brute-force two-factor authentication (2FA) protections t
The generative AI boom has driven the cost of memory into the stratosphere, and Google is a key part of that trend. So it's only fitting that Google should offer some less RAM-hungry local AI models. The company has announced the release of a new Gemma 4 model that fills a gap in the lineup that launched earlier this year. The new model is efficient enough that you may be able to run it on a pret
On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally signed his executive order expanding the government's efforts to conduct voluntary safety testing of frontier AI models. Now, critics are warning that the order may be short-sighted, offering only performative reassurances that the government is actively monitoring for AI risks, while changing very little about how and when models are deployed. Last month, Trump a
Plex is adding new social features to the platform. As of today, users can make and share "personalized lists on Plex of any movie, show or episode," the company said in an announcement. Later this year, users will be able to import lists from other streaming services and react to other people's lists. This month, Plex will also launch a community forum that will allow people to "post and comment
by Jonathan M. Gitlin / 2h
The age of robotaxis, long the preserve of science fiction, is now a reality, at least in a handful of American cities. It took just over a decade to get from the DARPA Grand Challenges to the start of Waymo's commercial service in California, albeit initially with a safety driver on board. Proponents of the technology, which has attracted at least $100 billion in investment, say robotaxis will b
by Hannah Murphy, Financial Times / 2h
A year after Mark Zuckerberg installed Alexandr Wang to jolt Meta’s artificial intelligence efforts into wartime mode, the $1.5 trillion company has produced Muse Spark, its most credible AI model yet. By handing responsibility for Meta’s AI revival to a then-28-year-old start-up founder rather than a veteran researcher, Zuckerberg bet that an outsider’s urgency and ambition could succeed where t
For decades, scientists have understood that plants can release volatile organic compounds—essentially airborne chemical signals—to attract the natural enemies of the things that eat them, like caterpillars. What we didn’t know was exactly how a plant translates the physical act of being eaten into a specific, predator-summoning distress signal. “[One] thing we didn’t know is how the plant detect
A former NASA engineer named John Muratore sat on console as launch director in early September 2016 as propellant flowed onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Ahead of a planned launch two days later, SpaceX was preparing for a static fire test of the vehicle. Then, all of a sudden, the rocket exploded. "It came out of nowhere, and it was really violent," Muratore said. This fireball resulted in th
Yesterday
Male bowerbirds are notorious for their complex mating rituals. They build intricate tunnels out of twigs—the bowers from which they get their name—and then decorate them with random colorful items gleaned from the environment. When a female of the species shows up to check out a male's fancy digs, the male tosses his shiniest objects in her direction and shows off his plumage in hopes of impress
Microsoft's Build developer conference kicked off today , and as with almost everything the company has done in the last few years, Microsoft's opening keynote focused overwhelmingly on AI and other closely related technologies. There's Microsoft Scout , an OpenClaw-based "Autopilot" agent that can hook into Microsoft 365 data to perform tasks for users; several new AI models ; an expanded previe
Microsoft has been deeply committed to the growth of generative AI technology in recent years through its now-fragmented partnership with OpenAI. At Build 2026, the company remains all-in on AI, and it's looking toward the future with a new software platform. The new Android-based OS is called Project Solara, and Microsoft says Solara is designed to run agents instead of apps. Project Solara is n
A lawsuit against Amazon is seeking financial damages for millions of Americans whose faces may have been recorded by Ring cameras since the Familiar Faces feature was rolled out late last year. Plaintiff Charles Sigwalt yesterday filed a class action suit that aims to represent all people in the US "who had their facial recognition data collected, retained, and otherwise used by the Familiar Fac
by Kiona N. Smith / 1d
One way archaeologists learn how ancient people, including Neanderthals, did things is to attempt to do those things themselves, a process called experimental archaeology. Normally, that involves making stone tools, butchering deer, or distilling birch tar. But in a new study, it meant doing very destructive things to teeth from one of the world’s most carefully protected animals. That's because
In December, the Trump administration abruptly announced it would shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a Boulder, Colorado-based facility that helps researchers perform studies of weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and more. The news came as a shock, given that the government had never identified serious deficiencies in the management of NCAR and its associated sup
Mathematicians warned against rising tech industry influence in a declaration describing the many challenges that AI poses to mathematics research. The timing of the declaration comes two weeks after OpenAI publicized one of its AI models as having disproved an 80-year-old mathematical conjecture in geometry. The declaration was developed by a working group of 16 researchers over eight months fol
We're expecting Android 17 to begin rolling out later this month, but first, Google has a batch of updates for the wider Android device ecosystem. As usual, some of the new features are limited to specific devices, and others require using Google's apps. But if you don't mind the latter, you can get automated protection from the growing threat of deepfake phone scams. According to Google, "impers
In April, we got a short teaser for the third season of Silo , the critically acclaimed Apple TV series based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, which hinted at a mysterious origin story dating back centuries. Apple TV just released the full trailer, and it looks like our heroine is again facing conflict and danger because she just keeps asking so many inconvenient questions. As previously re
The estimated size of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has fallen by hundreds of cases as outbreak response efforts have ramped up and increased testing has ruled out illnesses. On Tuesday, a representative for the World Health Organization confirmed to Reuters that Congolese authorities are now reporting 437 cases in the DRC, including 321 confirmed cases and 116 suspec
by Kyle Orland / 1d
Here at Ars, we've taken pleasure in reporting on versions of Doom that run on everything from wireless earbuds and printers to Windows' notepad.exe and even inside Doom itself . So when we hear that a piece of game-playing hardware from the '90s (or later) can't run Doom , our ears perk up. That hardware is the Neo Geo, an early '90s game console that players of a certain age will remember for i
by Stephen Clark / 1d
The race to field China's first reusable launch vehicle is far less predictable than a similar competition that played out in the United States a decade ago. There was never any real question of which company would develop and demonstrate the first reusable orbital-class rocket in the United States. SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in 2015, and a little more than a year later,
The chief executive of Blue Origin, whose large New Glenn rocket exploded spectacularly less than a week ago at the company's launch site in Florida, vowed Monday night that the company would launch again before the end of 2026. Writing on the social media site X , Blue Origin's Dave Limp said the company had been able to complete a preliminary survey of the LC-36A launch site. "Now that we’ve ha
by Jonathan M. Gitlin / 1d
Slate Auto may be one of the most interesting companies in the American automotive industry right now. Based in Warsaw, Indiana, the startup is taking a completely different approach to building an electric pickup truck. Forget Ford's clean-sheet "skunk works" story ; the Slate Truck's design has been stripped down to just 600 parts and components . That minimalism includes the interior, where yo
by Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News / 1d
Federal energy efficiency rebate programs will no longer cover a switch from fossil fuels to electricity for heating, according to long-awaited guidance from the Department of Energy. The department published an update on how it will implement consumer programs with $8.8 billion in funding. The new provisions include eliminating use of diversity, equity and inclusion considerations, among other c
Getting around space, as it turns out, is kind of a big deal. On Tuesday, Impulse Space, a company dedicated to improving space mobility, announced it has raised $500 million in Series D funding. Since it was founded five years ago by SpaceX veteran Tom Mueller, the company has now raised more than $1 billion. "Timing is everything," Mueller said in an interview about the new round of funding. By
Jun 1, 2026
In April, GitHub announced that it was moving subscribers from request-based billing to a usage-based model for its AI-powered Copilot service. As that new pricing model goes into effect today, many GitHub Copilot users are reporting some extreme sticker shock as they realize just how quickly their previous "normal" usage is burning through their newly limited monthly allotment of AI credits. Acr
by Jennifer Ouellette / 2d
It’s a regrettable reality that there is never enough time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across. So every month, we highlight a handful of the best stories that nearly slipped through the cracks. May's list includes the discovery of a possible prehistoric mining site in the Pyrenees; a new species of tiny blue octopus; why cats seem to prefer silver vine to catnip; and w
The global health organization Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced Monday that it will "urgently accelerate development" of three vaccine candidates against Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), pledging a little over $60 million in the effort to extinguish an outbreak currently raging out of control in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under the plans, CEPI has committed
Meta’s AI support chatbot proved unusually helpful to hackers looking to steal and resell notable Instagram accounts—the hackers simply asking the bot to change the accounts’ associated email addresses while using VPN to mask their true locations. Videos featuring the “shockingly easy” exploit have been circulating among Telegram groups for hackers and security researchers, according to 404 Media
Dell, Asus, Lenovo, HP, MSI, Acer, and Gigabyte are among the PC makers that are designing systems around Nvidia's RTX Spark , Nvidia's new Arm-based chip for Windows PCs. But the flagship RTX Spark PC may be from the same company that makes Windows: the new Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is a high-end RTX Spark system that will offer up to 128GB of unified memory for "creators, developers, and A
Official Red Hat NPM accounts have been compromised and used to push a malicious worm that spreads from machine to machine, where it pilfers sensitive credentials in hopes of stealing yet more confidential data, researchers said. The supply-chain attack began Monday and remained active at the time this post went live, according to researchers at security firm Aikido. It’s the result of the threat
The American Medical Association came out swinging this weekend at an executive order President Trump signed Friday that reaffirms intentions to model US childhood vaccine recommendations after those of Denmark—a country with universal healthcare, less diversity, and a population about the size of Maryland's. “There is no credible scientific evidence to support," such a change, AMA President Bobb
On Monday, Florida became the first state to sue OpenAI over ChatGPT's allegedly dangerous design. In a complaint filed in state court, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier accused OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of prioritizing profits over the safety of Floridians. The civil lawsuit comes after Florida opened an unrelated criminal probe into OpenAI , following a ChatGPT-linked mass shooting
by Jonathan M. Gitlin / 2d
When we met Sterling Anderson in 2024 , he was the chief product officer of Aurora, the self-driving startup he cofounded in 2016 after several years at Tesla. Just over a year ago, though, Anderson decamped from the startup world for something a little more established, taking over as chief product officer at General Motors, the nation's largest automaker. Since then, he's had a good view of how
A San Francisco robotics startup is being taken to court by an Airbnb host who claims the company’s “robotic prototype testing” caused extensive damage to his home. In the lawsuit filed on May 26, 2026, Sean Donovan is seeking more than $12,000 in damages from the Bay Area startup The Bot Company. The court case was first reported by SFGate , which also interviewed Donovan about the unprecedented
One of the benefits of building an AMD PC is that the company has historically supported its processor sockets for longer than Intel does, allowing the same motherboard (and RAM kit, if you want) to power your PC through multiple CPU upgrades. Today at Computex, AMD announced chips for the current AM5 socket and the improbably-still-around AM4 socket that will help extend their lives a little fur
by Kyle Orland / 2d
When the Steam Deck OLED launched three years ago, we were glad to see that the new, more brilliant screen fixed the biggest flaw of Valve's original handheld hardware. So we're unsurprisingly excited about today's announcement that Asus is preparing a new, OLED-equipped ROG Xbox Ally X20 for the coming holiday season. Still, it's a bit worrying that Asus is positioning the new upgrade as a niche
These days, Nvidia primarily sells AI data center products, and its traditional consumer devices feel like more of a side project. But the company occasionally still releases something designed for consumers. After a couple of years of rumors, Nvidia has announced an Arm-based chip designed to power Windows PCs. Dubbed RTX Spark, the new chip combines a 20-core Nvidia Grace CPU co-developed with
Intel plans to ship an AI chip by the end of this year that uses cheaper memory and cooling technology than rival offerings from Nvidia and AMD, as the US chipmaker seeks to capitalize on a sharp turnaround in its fortunes. Kevork Kechichian, who leads Intel’s data center group, told the FT that the company is “starting with the basics” as it tries to challenge its rivals in the booming market fo
In mid-May, OpenAI announced that an internal AI model had disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture, a famous problem in discrete geometry that had stumped human mathematicians for the
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