On Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation announced it is partnering with Google-owned Kaggle—a popular data science community platform—to release a version of Wikipedia optimized for training AI models. Starting with English and French, the foundation will offer stripped down versions of raw Wikipedia text, excluding any references or markdown code. Being a non-profit, volunteer-led platform, Wikipedia monetizes largely through donations and does not own the content it hosts, allowing anyone to use and remix content from the platform. But a flood of bots constantly trawling its website for AI training needs has led to a surge in non-human traffic to Wikipedia, something it was interested in addressing as the costs soared. Earlier this month, the foundation said bandwidth consumption has increased 50% since January 2024. Offering a standard, JSON-formatted version of Wikipedia articles should dissuade AI developers from bombarding the website. “Kaggle is excited to play a role in keeping this data accessible, available, and useful.” It is no secret that tech companies fundamentally do not respect content creators and place little value on any individual's creative work. There is a rising school of thought in the industry that all content should be free and that taking it from anywhere on the web to train an AI model constitutes fair use due to the transformative nature of language models. Language models that produce human-like text outputs need to be trained on vast amounts of material, and training data has become something akin to oil in the AI boom. The Wikimedia Foundation told Gizmodo that Kaggle is paying for the data through Wikimedia Enterprise, a premium offering that allows high-volume users to more easily reuse content. It said that reusers of the content, such as AI model companies, are still expected to respect Wikipedia's attribution and licensing terms. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. An extensive report on the future of AI research indicated that there's skepticism about current approaches to AGI. Large language models still struggle with simple tasks like telling time. Gradually, then suddenly, the big tech companies are replacing Nvidia's pricey AI chips. Multiple companies have removed mentions of leadership members from their websites. The “Sound of All Human Knowledge” will identify Wikipedia content on smart speakers and other audio platforms. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

Instagram on Thursday announced that it's rolling out Blend, a new feature that lets you create a custom, personalized reels feed for you and your friends. The custom feeds are refreshed with new content each day. When someone in the group reacts to a reel, Instagram will notify you so you can keep a convo going in the DM (direct messaging) chat. The idea behind the feature is to explore what sorts of reels your friends are into, while also connecting with them and discovering new content together. For Instagram, Blend could be a way to boost reels' discovery and watch time on the social network, as it's encouraging users to watch short-form content together. It's worth noting that Blend is somewhat similar to Spotify's functionality of the same name, which allows people to combine their tastes into one shared playlist that refreshes daily. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B, with news expected later this week OpenAI debuts Codex CLI, an open source coding tool for terminals Microsoft researchers say they've developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs For security, Android phones will now auto-reboot after three days

Anti-vaccine activists with close ties to US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are falsely claiming that the measles public health crisis in Texas is caused by a “bioweapon” targeting the Mennonite community. These activists are now trying to sell their followers a range of pseudoscientific cures—some purportedly powered by artificial intelligence—that supposedly prevent customers from contracting measles. The claims were made in a webinar posted online last week and hosted by Mikki Willis, an infamous conspiracy filmmaker best known for his Plandemic series of pseudo-documentaries. These helped supercharge Covid-19 disinformation online and were, Kennedy has said, funded in part by Children's Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded. “I'm not going to be careful by calling it a virus,” Willis said in the measles webinar. “You can see RFK Jr. has translated his anti-vaccine lies into political power. You can see others have converted it into economic power. The claims have been facilitated, in part, by Kennedy, whose response to the outbreak has been widely criticized by public health officials. Kennedy last month, in an interview on Fox News, also praised doctors who have been using alternative and unproven treatments within the Mennonite community. Among those doctors is Richard Bartlett, who also appeared on Willis' webinar last week and is credited on the Rebel Lion site with sharing the measles “protocol” package for purchase. He also urged viewers to buy a range of pseudoscientific treatments. Along with mouthwash, supplemental oxygen, and a few other items, the measles protocol includes Rebel Lion's own Fierce Immunity capsules, which cost $50 for a single bottle and contain a blend of five supplements available off the shelf that the company claims have been formulated with a supposed AI technology known as Swarm Intelligence. Swarm Intelligence was created by Anton Fliri, who says he has worked as a cancer researcher at Pfizer in the past. Fliri told Willis in a webinar last August that unlike regular AI, his technology “is the natural form of intelligence, that's the way our brain works, that's the way our body works and it doesn't hallucinate because everything we are doing is based on reality, based on the real evidence.” Willis, Bartlett, Rebel Lion, and Fliri, who also appeared on last week's webinar, did not respond to requests for comment. Willis' attempt to cash in on an ongoing public health crisis is reminiscent of a strategy that has been playing out for decades in the anti-vaccine community and was seen most recently during the Covid-19 pandemic. Anti-vaccine influencers and groups like America's Frontline Doctors pushed the baseless claim that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were viable treatments for Covid-19, encouraging followers to spend millions of dollars on these products. Within hours of the first child's death reported in Lubbock, Texas, on February 25, the Defender, CHD's news publication, published an article citing several unsubstantiated text messages from medical professionals suggesting that the child had not died of measles. CHD has also pushed the debunked claim that vitamin C offers protections against contracting measles. CHD, Kennedy, and the HHS did not respond to requests for comment. On X, anti-vaccine influencers claimed without evidence that hospital employees had mistreated the first patient, leading to their death. One of those pushing this narrative was Syed Haider, a doctor who was part of the notorious Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), which formed during the pandemic and pushes dubious and ineffective treatments. Henry Ealy, a naturopathic doctor based in Oregon with 50,000 X followers, also pushed this claim. Ealy's 2022 report falsely claiming that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had altered records to boost deaths linked to Covid-19 has been cited in the past by CHD. Marissa Brooke Alesi, an influencer known as Red Pill Patriot, posted a video on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook claiming the child was hospitalized for pneumonia and RSV. The video has been viewed over 3 million times on Instagram alone. Haider, Ealy, and Alesi did not respond to requests for comment. In August of last year, the American Board of Internal Medicine revoked Kory's certifications; just a month earlier, Kennedy described Kory as a “brave dissident doctor.” “Do you want to know the real story on this case?” Kory told a physician and activist last month. “Several of us believe that they weaponized this measles virus—on purpose. She got sicker from this measles probably because they monkeyed with the virus.” In 2023, Willis turned Kory's War on Ivermectin book into a documentary. Willis also claimed in the webinar that he has been given exclusive access to the Mennonite community in Texas after Bartlett convinced community members to speak only to him and people from CHD, and to avoid speaking to members of the mainstream media, who Willis described as “vultures.” Willis said he has interviewed at least 20 people for a short documentary that will be released in the coming days. “This is a very contemporary example of very old tropes, which is that an extremist who's seeking to radicalize someone else, separates them from people that might persuade them otherwise, whether that's doctors, family, community, journalists who might be asking them questions to expose what's happening,” Ahmed says. Big Story: If Anthropic succeeds, a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born Special Edition: The most dangerous hackers you've never heard of WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Malaysia has become a major importer of computing systems and computer parts, such as CPUs and GPUs used for AI, from Taiwan in recent quarters, coinciding with restrictions imposed by the U.S. government on shipments of advanced GPUs for AI and HPC to Chinese entities. The surge in shipments follows increased enforcement of curbs aimed at preventing smuggled AI GPUs from entering China, as evidenced by recent busts of multiple smuggling rings and the country's commitment to further enhance enforcement. The surge is raising questions about whether Malaysia is trying to enter the cloud AI data center market, or if it is serving as a conduit for further smuggling of restricted components to China. Exports of computer systems from Taiwan to Malaysia totaled $1873.89 billion in March, up 366% year-over-year from $401.92 million last March and up a humongous 55,117% from $3.4 million in March, 2023, according to Taiwan's International Trade Administration, as noticed by Lennart Heim. The accelerating purchases of AI hardware ahead of the AI Diffusion Rule's coming into effect on May 15 are not entirely unexpected. However, Malaysian companies are not only importing AI servers. They also accelerated purchases of components from Taiwan, which may include AI accelerators, such as Nvidia's H100. Taiwan's ITA tracks exports based on their HS codes. Computer systems, which span from laptops and tablets all the way to AI, HPC, and storage servers, are classified under the heading 8471 with different suffixes. Taiwan's ITA only allows us to track items under headings and without suffixes, so exports of computer systems from Taiwan include both inexpensive notebooks and ultra-expensive Nvidia DGX and HGX AI servers (which Nvidia classifies as 8471.50). Taiwan's exports of likely AI chips to Malaysia are surging (h/t @kakashiii111). Although we cannot distinguish between AI servers and cheap laptops based solely on HS codes, it is evident that exports of computer systems from Taiwan to Malaysia began to accelerate right after the U.S. imposed restrictions on shipments of advanced AI GPUs to China. The U.S. government recently asked the Malaysian government to tighten oversight of the country's high-tech exports to China, which suggests that there are suspicions that Nvidia's high-end GPUs are being funneled to China. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. According to media reports, Chinese clients are the primary customers of Malaysian cloud data centers. Therefore, at least some of the high-end machines shipped to Malaysia end up in local data centers. Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher.

Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report. While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is allegedly weighing international expansion. Stargate remains focused on the U.S. at the moment, to be clear, as originally pitched — and it's still in the process of raising its first $100 billion. SoftBank is expected to put forward tens of billions of dollars as a mixture of debt and equity. When Stargate was announced in January, President Donald Trump praised the initiative as a “declaration of confidence in America.” Subscribe for the industry's biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch's coverage. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.

There's a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: People are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. Users on X quickly discovered that o3, in particular, is quite good at deducing cities, landmarks, and even restaurants and bars from subtle visual clues. Wow, nailed it and not even a tree in sight. In many cases, the models don't appear to be drawing on “memories” of past ChatGPT conversations, or EXIF data, which is the metadata attached to photos that reveal details such as where the photo was taken. X is filled with examples of users giving ChatGPT restaurant menus, neighborhood snaps, facades, and self-portraits, and instructing o3 to imagine it's playing “GeoGuessr,” an online game that challenges players to guess locations from Google Street View images. TechCrunch ran a number of photos through o3 and an older model without image-reasoning capabilities, GPT-4o, to compare the models' location-guessing skills. Surprisingly, GPT-4o arrived at the same, correct answer as o3 more often than not — and took less time. There was at least one instance during our brief testing when o3 found a place GPT-4o couldn't. Several of our tests failed — o3 got stuck in a loop, unable to arrive at an answer it was reasonably confident about, or volunteered a wrong location. Users on X noted, too, that o3 can be pretty far off in its location deductions. The latest viral ChatGPT trend is doing ‘reverse location search' from photos OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B, with news expected later this week Microsoft researchers say they've developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs For security, Android phones will now auto-reboot after three days

Discord is facing a new lawsuit from the state of New Jersey, which claims that the chat app is engaged in “deceptive and unconscionable business practices” that put its younger users in danger. The AG's office claims it has uncovered evidence that, despite Discord's policies to protect children and teens, the popular messaging app is putting youth “at risk.” One is personal: A few years ago, a family friend came to Platkin, astonished that his 10-year-old son was able to sign up for Discord, despite the platform forbidding children under 13 from registering. The allegations, which were filed on Thursday morning, turn on a set of policies adopted by Discord to keep children younger than 13 off the platform and to keep teenagers safe from sexual exploitation and violent content. The lawsuit is just the latest in a growing list of litigation from states against major social media firms—litigation that has, thus far, proven fairly ineffective. Discord's child and teen safety policies are clear: Children under 13 are forbidden from the messaging app, while it more broadly forbids any sexual interaction with minors, including youth “self-endangerment.” It further has algorithmic filters operating to stop unwanted sexual direct messages. The California-based company's safety policy, published in 2023, states, “We built Discord to be different and work relentlessly to make it a fun and safe space for teens.” But New Jersey says “Discord's promises fell, and continue to fall, flat.” The attorney general points out that Discord has three levels of safety to prevent youth from unwanted and exploitative messages from adults: “Keep me safe,” where the platform scans all messages into a user's inbox; “my friends are nice,” where it does not scan messages from friends; and “do not scan,” where it scans no messages. He contends that the new features are insufficient and easy to get around, and they are less than what the company has made available to users in other countries. WIRED reached out to Discord for comment about its child safety measures but has not heard back. “Together, these open design features and default settings make it so that anyone can gain direct, private access to a child user with just a few clicks,” the filings allege. Later, the AG goes further, writing that “Discord promised parents safety but made deliberate choices to design its Application and establish default settings that rendered those promises utterly meaningless.” The lawsuit lists a half-dozen criminal cases where adults allegedly used Discord to lure and exploited children, including the case of 764, a digital far-right pedophile ring. The lawsuit proposes several different remedies, including a court injunction requiring that Discord improve its safety features and possible financial penalties if it's found to be failing to keep its users safe. While this appears to be the first state-level lawsuit against Discord, a number of private law firms have taken aim at the company on similar grounds. In 2022, the family of a then-11-year-old girl filed a class action lawsuit against Discord, alleging that the platform failed to implement enough safeguards to prevent her exploitation by other users. A similar case was filed in California earlier this year. But these lawsuits are growing more and more common: Meta, in particular, is facing two massive lawsuits, led by dozens of states, claiming it harmed its teenage users. The European Union, meanwhile, has crafted a suite of regulations meant to tackle these externalities—but, thus far, it is having trouble getting the American tech giants to comply. “They can't knowingly put out a product that's unsafe for kids,” Platkin says. “I don't care if you're a social media company, or an opioid manufacturer or any other company that's telling the public your product is safe when it's not. Platkin says he's hopeful that the Trump administration, which has indicated some willingness to go after major social media companies, is interested in keeping children safe — not just targeting supposed conservative censorship. Big Story: If Anthropic succeeds, a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 gives the Framework Laptop 13 a performance injection, but battery life suffers. Configurable to your exact spec and highly repairable Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test. In a sea of laptops that make it hard, if not impossible, to upgrade your system post-purchase, Framework has always believed in giving customers more options. If this latest system looks familiar, it's because it uses the same chassis as the Intel Core Ultra Series 1 system we reviewed in August. You can buy a preconfigured system complete with an operating system already installed, or you can go crazy with custom configurations tailored to your personal preferences, right down to display bezel and expansion port colors. Our review unit is a DIY Edition, meaning some partial assembly is required to get the system up and running. Our review unit even uses the same 13-inch 120Hz 2880 x 1920 IPS panel, and two bezel options were included: black and transparent purple. It attaches to the display panel with friction pins and magnets. The power button also has a fingerprint reader embedded for use with Windows Hello. However, one of the most interesting parts of the Framework Laptop 13's design remains its modular expansion card bays. The laptop has two bays on either side, accommodating various ports. For example, our review unit came with USB-C, USB-A, and microSD reader expansion cards. I opted to configure the review unit with two USB-C ports (at least one USB-C port is required to charge the laptop), one USB-A port, and the microSD reader. However, you can easily tailor the port allotment to suit your needs. Framework offers HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and SD reader options. If that wasn't enough, you can add storage to the system via 250GB and 1TB expansion cards. These cards are available in the standard aluminum finish or from several color options. Two of my gripes about our last review unit still haven't been addressed. The expansion cards are still difficult to remove from their respective bays. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370-powered Laptop 13 measures 11.68 x 9.01 x 0.62 inches and weighs 2.87 pounds, which is identical to the previous model we reviewed with a Core Ultra processor. 3.5 mm headphone jack, four expansion slots of your choosing The claim to fame for Framework's lineup has always been modularity. Even if you get stumped regarding the procedure for upgrading a particular piece of hardware, you can scan the QR code on or beside that component to watch a video guide. I next flipped the laptop over and tightened five captive Torx screws. The tables turned, however, when moving to the file transfer test, which involves copying 25GB of mixed media files. For stress testing, look to Cinebench 2024, where we perform 10 consecutive runs. Framework outfitted our test system with its premium 13.5-inch 2880 x 1920 IPS display, which refreshes at 120 Hz. The Yoga Slim 9i with its OLED panel won the numbers game with 146.5 percent coverage of DCI-P3 and 206.9 percent of sRGB. However, those higher figures tend to make for an overly saturated display, which isn't always preferable, depending on your needs. The blacks and darkened areas in the trailer didn't look as inky black as you'd get with an OLED panel, but the Laptop 13's IPS panel performed well here. That means that while it has a similar look, feel, and key travel that I have previously likened positively to Apple's MacBook products, the half-height up and down arrow keys remain. While I understand that going with undersized keys saves some space, I would prefer if they were the same size as the left and right arrow keys. Given my familiarity with the keyboard, my typing tests at keyhero.com were nearly identical to my previous go with this keyboard, as I averaged around 90 words per minute with 97 percent accuracy. The speakers are average at best, but are perfectly suitable for run-of-the-mill productivity tasks that such a laptop will endure daily. I primarily used the speakers to listen to music via YouTube Premium, ranging from bass and drum-heavy tracks from Kanye West's Late Registration album to an assortment of woodwinds, brass, and strings in the great Gustav Holst's The Planets. While the dynamic range and bass output weren't awe-inspiring, it was perfectly in line with other ultraportables I've tested, given the space constraints. Framework outfits the Laptop 13 with a 1080p webcam using the same 9.2MP image sensor and 5-element lens as last year's model. Output from the camera is still a bit of a mixed bag, with an aggressive sharpening algorithm that tends to make facial details overly smooth and unnatural. The camera is serviceable for videoconferencing duty, but if you need higher-quality hardware for your specific needs, you should consider adding one of the best webcams. Battery life was a sore point with last year's version of the Laptop 13, and things haven't improved with this year's model. Our laptop endurance test involves browsing the web, streaming videos, and running OpenGL tests with the brightness set to 150 nits. The Laptop 13 lasted just 9 hours and 11 minutes, less than even the 9 hours and 59 minutes we achieved when equipped with an Intel Core Ultra processor. For comparison, the Yoga Slim 9i went on for 11 hours and 3 minutes, while the XPS 13 (9350) was far and away the endurance champion with a runtime of 17 hours and 29 minutes. The Laptop 13 DIY Edition doesn't have an operating system installed, but Framework provided us with a product key for Windows 11 Home, which we installed for testing. Once installed, there's only one item that Framework adds to the Start Menu: the Framework Marketplace (which is nothing more than a web link to purchase accessories/components). Everything else is just the standard installed apps/shortcuts you get with a default Windows 11 install. As for Linux operating systems on the Ryzen AI 300 Series systems, Framework says that Fedora 41, Bazzite, and Project Bluefin are supported out of the box. You can also install Arch Linux, but a few workarounds are needed to get up and running. The Framework Laptop 13 comes with a one-year warranty. The Laptop 13 DIY Edition is priced from $899 with a Ryzen AI 5 340 processor and a 13.5-inch 2256 x 1504 60 Hz display without RAM or an SSD. As configured with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 2.8K display, 16GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and four expansion cards (2x USB-C, USB-A, and microSD), our review sample is priced at $1,986. 1-year warranty) costs $1,529, the Extended Productivity (Ryzen AI 5 340, 2.2K display, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, 3-year warranty) costs $1,329, and the Extended Performance option (Ryzen AI 7 350, 2.2K display, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, 3-year warranty) for $1,689. The range-topping Extended Pro with a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 2.2K display, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, and a 3-year warranty costs $2,099. Framework continues to be in a class of its own regarding laptop customization options. Sure, some other laptop manufacturers allow you to easily upgrade memory and SSDs, but Framework goes above and beyond by allowing most components to be replaced or upgraded via the Framework Marketplace. However, that customization and upgrade prowess comes at a price premium compared to other systems. For example, the Dell XPS 13 (9350) offers similar performance, nearly 8 hours of additional runtime per charge, and costs just $1,599 (or $1,899 for a 1600p display). The Lenovo Yoga 9i is also sub-$1,900, comes with twice the memory, a 3840 x 2400 display, and lasts longer per charge. If all you're looking for is modularity and ease of upgrades, Framework remains your only option. However, far better options are available for less money if you strictly want a productivity-centered ultraportable with long battery life. Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. © Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York,

A perfect example of why 8GB VRAM isn't enough for modern games. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Nvidia's launch of its entry-level RTX 5060-series GPUs is, unsurprisingly, off to a messy start. Samples for 8GB cards weren't sent out, leaving reviewers scrambling to try to pick one up at retail — which is difficult when the cards all immediately sold out. Despite those difficulties, a review by the Carbon-based Technology Research Institute on Bilibili offers some insight into the kind of performance users can expect from the lower VRAM variant.First spotted by @harukaze5719, the video includes test results of two Asus-branded triple-fan RTX 5060 Ti GPUs — one with 16GB and the other with 8GB of VRAM. Most synthetic benchmark results suggest that the increased VRAM doesn't significantly impact performance. Notably, both GPUs show a 20–30% performance boost over the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB and are about 5% slower than the RTX 4070. That's basically in line with our own 16GB testing.The review also features gaming benchmarks at 1080p and 1440p resolutions, where the 8GB variant remained closely competitive with the 16GB model in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil 4, F1 2024, and Final Fantasy XIV. In Cyberpunk 2077, for example, the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB inexplicably performed worse than the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB at native 1440p resolution. While enabling MFG helped improve performance, pushing it to 4x delivered underwhelming results, with the 16GB version providing 22% higher performance than the 8GB card.Overall, while the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB offers decent generational improvements over its predecessor, as well as a theoretically lower price than the 4060 Ti 8GB, the VRAM remains a concern. Performance scaling in several instances, when using DLSS 4 features, proved to be more limiting than on the 16GB card. Real-world pricing will play a big role, and it's difficult to find any of these cards in stock. But even if you can find the 8GB model, it's a tough sell for gamers looking at something for the long term.Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware. Tom's Hardware is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. © Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York,

Astronomers have found one of the most promising indications that there could be extraterrestrial life on another planet. With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers have detected what they believe could be biosignatures of marine microorganisms on K2-18b, an exoplanet located in the habitable zone of its parent star 124 light-years away. On Earth, these compounds are produced only by microbial life such as phytoplankton. The scientists admit that there is a possibility that these substances have been produced on the planet by an unknown chemical process unrelated to microorganisms. However, they also emphasize that the data represent the strongest evidence to date for possible life on a planet other than our own. It lies in the direction of the constellation Leo and orbits a small, low-temperature type of star called a red dwarf. “We didn't know for sure whether the signal we saw last time was due to DMS, but just the hint of it was exciting enough for us to have another look with JWST using a different instrument,” said Nikku Madhusudhan, the scientist who led the research, in a press release. “Earlier theoretical work had predicted that high levels of sulfur-based gases like DMS and DMDS are possible on Hycean worlds. And now we've observed it, in line with what was predicted. Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have,” Madhusudhan said. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish. Big Story: If Anthropic succeeds, a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born Scientists claim to have brought back the dire wolf Special Edition: The most dangerous hackers you've never heard of WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

The reviewers of Science were not and unless proven otherwise Science is a serious publication.> I hate to say this, but I personally believe that "Chinese metallurgy" is an oxymoron. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.That's plain racism. The word "Chinesium" didn't come out of nowhere.That's plain racism. Serious publication or not (which, BTW, is an instance of the Argument from Authority fallacy), they aren't immune to the problem of junk science. [1]> That's plain racism.Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science. [2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." > That's plain racism.Not the OP, but I believe the intended reading of "Chinese" in this context is "product of the present Chinese social and economic system" and has nothing to do withe race or ethnicity (e.g. it wouldn't apply to Taiwan). The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science. [2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." The present Chinese system has a significant problem with bad science. [2][1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." [1] http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx#?jou%3dS...[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-017-9939-6"China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." "China with 4353 retracted articles out of 2,741,274 documents is the leading nation in breaching scientific integrity." There is no intended reading that makes "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron" a sensible thing to post any place where you want to have a halfway reasonable conversation with strangers. I'm not sure anyone was saying they're immune to it, but their reputation does lend them credibility when compared to a random HN commenter that says stuff like "Chinese metallurgy is an oxymoron"

Look alive: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have picked up signs of a potential biosignature on a steamy, ocean-covered exoplanet called K2-18b—a biosignature that, on Earth, is produced by marine life. The main character here is dimethyl sulfide, a molecule produced by many ocean denizens, but especially plankton. Or at least emitting suspiciously life-like chemical signals. K2-18b, located 120 light-years away, has been on scientists' radar since NASA's Kepler space telescope spotted it in 2015. It's about 8.6 times the mass of Earth and orbits within the habitable (or “Goldilocks”) zone of a red dwarf star. Earlier observations from Hubble hinted that K2-18b had water vapor in its atmosphere, a claim later shown to be in error. But JWST has taken matters several steps further, doubling down on an earlier finding of dimethyl sulfide in the planet's atmosphere. The curious mix suggests K2-18b hosts a watery, potentially habitable environment. Speaking to the BBC, Madhusudhan said his team detected a surprising amount of gas during the single observation. “The amount we estimate of this gas in the atmosphere is thousands of times higher than what we have on Earth,” he explained, saying that, if the link to life is valid, “then this planet will be teeming with life.” And should scientists confirm the presence of life on K2-18b, “it should basically confirm that life is very common in the galaxy,” Madhusudhan told the British broadcaster. In its landmark decadal survey on astronomy and astrophysics, the National Academies made one thing clear: finding habitable worlds should be a top scientific priority. The James Webb Space Telescope is front and center in that mission—and while NASA already has plans for its eventual successor, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that next-gen telescope won't launch for at least another decade. The detection isn't a done deal yet—it comes with a statistical confidence of around 3-sigma (about 99.73%), which makes it interesting, but not definitive. There's still a chance that abiotic (non-biological) processes or instrumental quirks could be responsible. This past Sunday, a separate team posted a paper on the preprint server arXiv suggesting the planet may not be Hycean at all, but instead a rocky world covered in magma, with hydrogen-rich skies—and virtually no chance of life. Further observations will help to validate the team's findings. But to be clear, if life does exist on K2-18b, it's likely microbial given the apparent evidence, and not a sign of alien intelligence. As an important aside, microbial life—like plankton—existed on Earth for a billion years, a long but crucial chapter that paved the way for more complex organisms to emerge. Regardless, life has never been found beyond Earth, so confirming even a single amoeba on a distant world would be nothing short of revelatory. At minimum, K2-18b is shaping up to be one of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth. And at maximum—if further studies validate the recent findings—we may be getting our first chemical whiffs of a living ocean on another world. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. News from the future, delivered to your present. Researchers exposed two lichen species to Mars-like atmospheric conditions for five hours—and one performed impressively. New Webb Telescope data confirms that asteroid 2024 YR4 poses no threat to Earth during its 2032 flyby. The longest organic molecules yet found on Mars are very similar to those produced by life on Earth. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

After wowing CinemaCon with an early look, this morning Marvel released the second trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps. And if the first trailer found them conspicuously absent, then this one is is all about one thing in particular: if this be doomsday, and Galactus' arrival on earth, then he must be heralded. Yes, today's trailer finally gives us a good look at Julia Garner in action as Shalla-Bal, First Steps‘ take on the Silver Surfer. In the comics, it's Norrin who becomes the Silver Surfer, making a pact with Galactus (played here in First Steps by absolute legend Ralph Ineson) to become his herald in exchange for the world-eater sparing Zenn-La. Although in some plotlines Shalla interacted with the power cosmic that granted to Norrin—notably using a fragment of it to restore Zenn-La after Galactus drained it as punishment for Radd's defiance of him—First Steps marks the first time she herself is being depicted as Galactus' herald. Shalla-Bal is not the only comics character this trailer “introduces” us to: we also learn that during the movie Sue is pregnant with her first child, and preparing to become a mother while navigating her and Reed's realities as superheroes. This will, presumably, be Franklin Richards—a one-time mutant, Franklin grows up to be an incredibly powerful reality-manipulation and psionic abilities, eventually fighting alongside his family and his sister Valeria as members of the First Family in his own rights. For now, it's up to the Fantastic generation before him to save their Earth from Galactus' threat… and, somehow, make their way across the multiverse over to the MCU's prime reality in time for Avengers: Doomsday. Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily. Daredevil: Born Again and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man gave us bad guys who are jerks first, and it's a great change of pace. Daredevil: Born Again had Kingpin do what he does best, and here's the story of how that came to be. Plus, the new Mummy reboot recruits a Marvel star, and then some. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn star in the new Marvel Studios movie. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.

Trump should strive to support innovation in the energy industry, and that'll take more than erecting costly trade barriers. President Trump and his appointees have repeatedly stressed the need to establish “American energy dominance.” But the White House's profusion of executive orders and aggressive tariffs, along with its determined effort to roll back clean-energy policies, are moving the industry in the wrong direction, creating market chaos and economic uncertainty that are making it harder for both legacy players and emerging companies to invest, grow, and compete. Rather than defaulting to broad, blunt tariffs, the administration should use this window to align trade policy with a focused industrial strategy—one aimed at winning the global race to become a manufacturing powerhouse in next-generation energy technologies. By tightly aligning tariff design with US strengths in R&D and recent government investments in the energy innovation lifecycle, the administration can turn a regressive trade posture into a proactive plan for economic growth and geopolitical advantage. These resources are undeniably crucial to America's ability to reindustrialize and rebuild a resilient domestic industrial base, while also providing strategic leverage abroad. Yet too often, the fruits of that innovation—especially manufacturing jobs and export opportunities—have ended up overseas, particularly in China. China, which is subject to Trump's steepest tariffs and wasn't granted any reprieve in the 90-day pause, has become the world's dominant producer of lithium-ion batteries, EVs, wind turbines, and other key components of the clean-energy transition. Today, the US is again making exciting strides in next-generation technologies, including fusion energy, clean steel, advanced batteries, industrial heat pumps, and thermal energy storage. These advances can transform industrial processes, cut emissions, improve air quality, and maximize the strategic value of our fossil-fuel resources. That means not simply burning them for their energy content, but instead using them as feedstocks for higher-value materials and chemicals that power the modern economy. The US's leading role in energy innovation didn't develop by accident. For several decades, legislators on both sides of the political divide supported increasing government investments into energy innovation—from basic research at national labs and universities to applied R&D through ARPA-E and, more recently, to the creation of the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which funds first-of-a-kind technology deployments. Early-stage companies in competitive, global industries like energy do need extra support to help them get to the point where they can stand up on their own. This is especially true for cleantech companies whose overseas rivals have much lower labor, land, and environmental compliance costs. Success should be measured not only in barrels produced or watts generated, but in dollars of goods exported, jobs created, and manufacturing capacity built. The Trump administration should back this industrial strategy with smarter trade policy as well. Steep, sweeping tariffs won't build long-term economic strength. But there are certain instances where reasonable, modern, targeted tariffs can be a useful tool in supporting domestic industries or countering unfair trade practices elsewhere. That's why we've seen leaders of both parties, including Presidents Biden and Obama, apply them in recent years. Such levies can be used to protect domestic industries where we're competing directly with geopolitical rivals like China, and where American companies need breathing room to scale and thrive. These aims can be achieved by imposing tariffs on specific strategic technologies, such as EVs and next-generation batteries. Another option is implementing a broader border adjustment policy, like the Foreign Pollution Fee Act recently reintroduced by Senators Cassidy and Graham, which is designed to create a level playing field that would help clean manufacturers in the US compete with heavily polluting businesses overseas. Just as important, the nation must avoid counterproductive tariffs on critical raw materials like steel, aluminum, and copper or retaliatory restrictions on critical minerals—all of which are essential inputs for US manufacturing. The nation does not currently produce enough of these materials to meet demand, and it would take years to build up that capacity. Raising input costs through tariffs only slows our ability to keep or bring key industries home. Their time, talent, and ingenuity shouldn't be spent assembling low-cost, low-margin consumer goods like toasters. Instead, we should focus on building cutting-edge industrial technologies that the world is demanding. These are the high-value products that support strong wages, resilient supply chains, and durable global leadership. The energy transition presents not just an environmental imperative but a generational opportunity for American industrial renewal. Addison Killean Stark is the chief executive and cofounder of AtmosZero, an industrial steam heat pump startup based in Loveland, Colorado. With news this week of the messaging app being used to discuss war plans, we get you up to speed on what Signal should be used for—and what it shouldn't. A conversation with Kathleen Hicks, the former deputy secretary of defense. Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more. 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