Category: Technology

Last year, the Canadian government pushed Bill C-2, which would erode Canadian digital rights in the name of “border security.” The bill was so bad it didn’t even make it to committee because of the backlash from the privacy community. Now, the spring’s worst sequel, Bill C-22, aka The Lawful Access Act, is trying it […]

When governments shut down spaces for dialogue, dissent, and collective organizing, the damage extends far beyond a single event. The abrupt cancellation of RightsCon 2026—the world’s largest annual global digital rights conference—is not just a logistical disruption for thousands of researchers, journalists, technologists, and activists—it is part of a growing global pattern of shrinking civic […]

serpeblu/Shutterstock A great Tyrannosaurus rex strides through the conifer trees of her territory, sniffing the air. She picks up the scent from the carcass of a dead horned dinosaur, Triceratops, that she was feeding on yesterday. She walks over and strips off some more shreds of meat, but the smell is foul even for her. […]

DOERS/Shutterstock Researchers at MIT have suggested that rice seeds can hear the sound of rain, according to a new study. MIT calls it “the first direct evidence that plant seeds and seedlings can sense sounds in nature”. Perhaps surprisingly, the effects reported in this new study are not as radical as they may appear. Playing […]

Shutterstock/PeoplesImages Artificial intelligence has crossed a threshold in the modern workplace. It is being used for everything from helping employees manage schedules to supporting financial forecasts. A similar shift is now unfolding inside research laboratories. There is currently a boom in national initiatives to accelerate the integration of AI into science. These include the US […]

The discovery of the first planets outside our Solar System (exoplanets) came in the 1990s and thousands more have been identified since then. Most exoplanets discovered so far do not resemble the planets found in our Solar System. There is a much greater variety of planetary types, but scientists don’t yet know why. Understanding alien planets As a result, the field has evolved from finding new exoplanets, to studying […]

Following criticism, lawmakers have narrowed the GUARD Act, a bill aimed at restricting minors’ access to certain AI systems. The earlier version could have applied broadly to nearly every AI-powered chatbot or search tool. The amended bill focuses more narrowly on so-called “AI companions”—conversational systems designed to simulate emotional or interpersonal interactions with users.  That […]

PBXStudio/Shutterstock I recently lost one of my cocker spaniels, Bobbi. She was fit, healthy and active, but had a catastrophic diagnosis of oral melanoma two months before I had to make the decision that anyone with deeply loved pets dreads. It is easy to presume that only humans have a true concept of death and […]

whiteMocca/Shutterstock Until recently, AI’s role in research felt like having a useful assistant. It could summarise a paper, clean up a dataset or draft an abstract. Researchers were still in charge of the thinking. That changed in late 2025 when cutting-edge “frontier” AI models became capable of reasoning and planning reliably by themselves. A key […]

GoodStudio/Shutterstock The question sounds simple. The answer, once you examine the actual measurement science behind it, is more interesting than either “yes” or “no”. The houseplant-as-air-purifier idea can be traced to a 1989 US study, conducted for Nasa as part of research into closed-loop life support systems for space stations. In sealed, controlled chambers, certain […]