Among the terminated advisory committees was the NIH Center for Scientific Review Advisory Council, which was established in 1988. The advisory council wasn’t responsible for reviewing grant applications; rather, it...
Cloud service providers ask EU regulator to reinstate VMware partner program
“In January 2026 Broadcom signaled the termination of its VMware Cloud Service Provider program in Europe,” CIPSE said in a statement. This unilateral decision removed all but a tiny minority...
AI #160: What Passes For a Pause
A lot happened, but by today’s standards this felt like a quiet week. I was happy for the break, and I hope that we get to continue relatively relaxing. The...
Kagi Translate’s AI answers the question “What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?”
If you’ve been using the Internet for any length of time, you’ve probably used a tool like Google Translate to convert webpages or snippets of text to and from languages...
Musk’s tactic of blaming users for Grok sex images may be foiled by EU law
Why officials want to go after platforms, not users Officials “want to introduce a new ban on so-called ‘nudifier’ systems that use AI to create or manipulate images that are...
Coal plant forced to stay open due to emergency order isn’t even running
In the US, the economics of coal power generation are marginal at best, and a large number of coal plants have shut down as cheaper renewables and natural gas have...
Never mind Band-Aids, Neanderthals had antiseptic birch tar
Our view of Neanderthal life keeps getting more complex and vibrant. This replica shows how Neanderthals might have used birch tar to haft a projectile point. Credit: Paul R. B....
Cloudflare appeals Piracy Shield fine, hopes to kill Italy’s site-blocking law
Despite its complaints about the size of the fine, Cloudflare said the principles at stake “are even larger” than the financial penalty. “Piracy Shield is an unsupervised electronic portal through...
A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid
It may sound fanciful, but a Los Angeles-based company says it has conceived of a plan to fly out to a smallish, near-Earth asteroid, throw a large bag around it,...
Federal cyber experts called Microsoft’s cloud a “pile of shit,” approved it anyway
One Microsoft product was approved despite years of concerns about its security. In late 2024, the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud...
A station wagon is entering one of the hardest 24-hour races in the world
But the NLS has multiple classes, from low-powered entries similar to the Golf GTI I used to race all the way up to GT3s, plus an exhibition class called SPX...
Peter faces a new life cycle in Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer
We’ve got an official trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the follow-up to 2021’s No Way Home that is purportedly intended to launch a fresh trilogy of films with Tom...
Users hate it, but age-check tech is coming. Here’s how it works.
On-device face scans and cross-platform age keys decrease privacy risks, but trust issues abound. Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images Last month, Discord quickly...
Anthropic vs. DoW #5: Motions Filed
The news has thankfully quieted down on this front, and is mostly about the lawsuit as we build towards a hearing next week, after which we will find out if...
Apple can delist apps “with or without cause,” judge says in loss for Musi app
No iPhone return for Musi Judge tosses Musi case against Apple, sanctions lawyers for “mak[ing] up facts.” Musi streaming app. Credit: Musi Musi, a free music streaming app that had...
How World ID wants to put a unique human identity on every AI agent
Over the last few months, tools like OpenClaw have shown what tech-savvy AI users can do by setting a virtual cadre of automated agents on a task. But that individual...
Arizona indicts prediction market Kalshi for running illegal gambling operation
Arizona’s attorney general filed criminal charges against prediction market Kalshi, accusing it of operating a gambling business without a license and offering illegal wagers on elections. “Kalshi may brand itself...
FDA links raw cheese to outbreak; Makers “100% disagree,” refuse recall
The Food and Drug Administration has linked cheddar cheese made from raw (unpasteurized) milk to a multistate outbreak of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. But the cheese’s maker, Raw Farm, is...
Trump’s plan to shut down weather and climate center triggers lawsuit
Suit: The National Center for Atmospheric Research is to be terminated for no rational reason. On Monday, a consortium that oversees the US’s premier atmospheric research center announced it was...
Paul Atreides faces the cost of his holy war in Dune: Part 3 teaser
Warner Bros. just dropped a broody and haunting extended teaser for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3, the highly anticipated third film in the director’s acclaimed franchise—the last in his planned...
