Category: Technology

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

If your pooch is losing interest in exercise it could be a sign they're in pain. Elayne Massaini/Shutterstock If you live with a pet, you might feel like you can almost read each other’s minds. You might even have experienced your pet responding to your emotional state. Animals seem to have impressive skills at detecting […]

In September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data. The next month, Google gave Thomas-Johnson’s information to ICE without giving him the chance to challenge the subpoena, breaking a nearly decade-long promise to notify users before handing […]

A simulation of the ‘cosmic web’, the vast network of threads and filaments that extends throughout the Universe. Dark matter density is represented by the blue-purple colours on the left. Gas density is represented by the orange-red colours on the right. Esa New research suggests that relic black holes from before the big bang may […]