Category: Technology

Lawmakers in Congress are moving quickly on the GUARD Act, an age-gating bill restricting minors’ access to a wide range of online tools, with a key vote expected this week. The proposal is framed as a response to alarming cases involving “AI companions” and vulnerable young users. But the text of the bill goes much […]

Zeno Swijtink/Shutterstock Each May, nature lovers get out of bed early to experience the seasonal wonder of birds singing, as the sun rises above the horizon to take part in International Dawn Chorus Day. In Europe you may hear blackbirds, chiffchaffs and nightingales. In the US, cardinals, chickadees and blue jays. In East Africa, morning […]

Humans are not the only species negatively affected by increasingly hot and humid conditions. Intense heatwaves sometimes kill large numbers of wild animals. Eastern Australia’s giant fruit bats, known as flying-foxes, provide possibly the most dramatic illustration. In late 2018, two days of extreme heat in the far north of Queensland wiped out one third […]

A table tennis robot has outperformed elite players in recent evaluations. The robot, called Ace, marks a significant step toward artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can operate in fast, uncertain, real-world environments. In the tests, the autonomous robot won three out of five matches against elite players – competitive athletes with over ten years’ experience […]

Speaker Johnson has introduced a new fig leaf over the American surveillance state, the Foreign Intelligence Accountability Act. Introduced with only days to go before Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expires and the U.S. government loses one of its most invasive surveillance programs, the bill does nothing to make any of the substantial changes privacy […]

SmugMug is a family-owned photo hosting and e-commerce platform that helps professional photographers run their businesses online. Founded in 2002, the company provides tools for photographers to show their work, deliver client galleries, sell prints, and manage payments.  In 2018, SmugMug purchased Flickr, the long-running photo-sharing community, which added tens of millions of active hobbyist […]

International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3 for 2026) is a great time to hear the UK’s birds at their most vocal. While we can enjoy the variety and beauty of birdsong, for the birds themselves it serves more practical purposes – to attract a mate and establish and defend a breeding territory. Birds can produce […]

Ciprian23/Shutterstock Contrails, short for condensation trails, are the white streaks often seen in the sky behind aircraft. The international cloud atlas, which classifies clouds, has a category just for them: cirrus homogenitus, an example of man-made clouds. Contrails contribute to climate change, adding to the warming by the carbon dioxide emitted by aviation. Although the […]

The Droid TW 12.7, made by Devdroid, has been used in many of the attacks involving ground robots in Ukraine. Devdroid, CC BY For the first time, Ukraine has captured a Russian position using only ground robots and aerial drones, reports suggest. In a message posted on social media on April 14, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr […]

California lawmakers are fast-tracking A.B. 1709—a sweeping bill that would ban anyone under 16 from using social media and force every user, regardless of age, to verify their identity before accessing social platforms. That means that under this bill, all Californians would be required to submit highly sensitive government-issued ID or biometric information to private […]