The truth about child IQ: research shows it fluctuates and may be an unreliable predictor of future success

peampath2812/Shutterstock Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is arguably the most celebrated child prodigy in history, composing his first pieces of music aged five, his first symphony at eight and his first opera at 11. After a study in 1993 found that listening to Mozart could improve spatial IQ – prompting headlines such as “Mozart makes your brain […]

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Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 Surpasses GPT-5.4 in Technical Coding Benchmarks

SAN FRANCISCO — Anthropic has released its latest flagship model, Claude Opus 4.7, which has established a new performance ceiling in automated software engineering. In standardized testing released on April 16, 2026, the model outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 by a margin of 6.6 percentage points on the industry-standard SWE-bench Pro benchmark. Performance Data and Benchmarks The […]

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Stop New York's Attack on 3D Printing

New York’s proposed 2026-2027 budget currently includes provisions that will require all 3D printers sold in the state to run print-blocking censorware—software that surveils every print for forbidden designs. This policy would also create felony charges for possessing or sharing certain design files. The vote on the state budget could happen as early as next […]

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How Push Notifications Can Betray Your Privacy (and What to Do About It)

A phone’s push notifications can contain a significant amount of information about you, your communications, and what you do throughout the day. They’re important enough to government investigations that Apple and Google now both require a judge’s order to hand details about push notifications over to law enforcement, and even with that requirement Apple shares data […]

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How Iran cryptocurrency demands explain a key role of money throughout history

When Iran began demanding payment in exchange for safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, it offered the option to pay in cryptocurrency. Likewise, the shadowy network of tankers that have smuggled Russian oil to world markets since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have often been paid this way. Illicit actors the world […]

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Moroccan dinosaur’s fearsome tail spikes evolved much earlier than we thought – new discovery

In the heart of the Middle Atlas Mountains in central Morocco, a global team of palaeontologists and geologists has discovered new remains of a very unusual dinosaur. It belonged to the group called ankylosaurs, plant eaters whose bodies were covered in bony plates. The fossils reveal a heavily armoured dinosaur. It has distinctive outward-pointing spikes […]

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From sunsets to the night sky: how technology can help you to notice nature in new ways

Northern Lights were spotted across the UK in 2024. Alyssa Glen/Shutterstock On a chilly yet beautifully clear evening last November, I sat on a video call with colleagues and happened to mention the live feed from the International Space Station – a real-time broadcast from onboard cameras as the station orbits earth. Several people hadn’t […]

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EFF Calls on Kuwait to Release Journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin

EFF calls on the Kuwaiti government to immediately release journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin. An award-winning journalist and television host who worked for Al Jazeera for many years, Shihab-Eldin—a dual American-Kuwaiti citizen—was arrested in Kuwait on March 3 while visiting family. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported yesterday that it is believed he has been charged […]

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DESI completes 3D map of the Universe and continues exploring – UKRI

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has completed the largest 3D map of the Universe. This milestone was reached when DESI’s 5,000 fibre-optic sensors captured their final scheduled observations, targeting a region of sky near the Little Dipper. The survey was completed ahead of schedule and has delivered significantly more data than originally projected. Chasing […]

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Digital Hopes, Real Power: The Rise of Network Shutdowns

This is the fourth installment of a blog series reflecting on the global digital legacy of the 2011 Arab uprisings. You can read the rest of the series here. Iran’s internet has been intermittently disrupted for months. After years of bombardment, Gaza’s telecommunications infrastructure remains fragile. In India, recurring shutdowns and throttling have become a routine […]

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