The real surprise, though, came when researchers realized that Alnashetri wasn’t a highly specialized, late-stage Alvarezsauroid. Instead, despite living in the Late Cretaceous, it occupied an early-branching position among earlier, basal members of the clade. This combination of tiny size and early-branching status fundamentally breaks our previous model of how these animals evolved. If the … Read more
While Washington’s breakup with Anthropic exposed the complete lack of any coherent rules governing artificial intelligence, a bipartisan coalition of thinkers has assembled something the government has so far declined to produce: a framework for what responsible AI development should actually look like. The Pro-Human Declaration was finalized before last week’s Pentagon-Anthropic standoff, but the … Read more
A push by a coalition of telecom operators, device makers, and industry groups to bring $40 smartphones to market — a price point seen as key to getting tens of millions more people online — is gathering momentum, but questions remain over whether manufacturers can produce such ultra-low-cost devices at scale. This week at Mobile … Read more
Sundar Pichai’s new pay package could be worth $692 million. Per a filing first spied by the FT, Alphabet has structured a three-year deal for its Google CEO that could make him one of the highest-paid executives on the planet — but most of it is tied to performance, including new stock incentives linked to … Read more
A recently-added feature in Grammarly purports to improve users’ writing with help from the world’s great writers and thinkers — and some tech journalists, too. Launched in August 2025 as part of a broader set of AI-powered features, Expert Review appears in the sidebar of Grammarly’s main writing assistant, allowing users to bring up revision … Read more
Deep in the Angolan Highlands lurks a rumored new species of elephant. Conservationist and ornithologist Steve Boyes has been searching for this elusive herd for years and the story of his journey is the focus of Ghost Elephants, a haunting, evocative documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film debuted at the Venice International Film Festival … Read more
Hardware executive Caitlin Kalinowski announced today that in response to OpenAI’s controversial agreement with the Department of Defense, she’s resigned from her role leading the company’s robotics team. “This wasn’t an easy call,” Kalinowski said in a social media post. “AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight … Read more
David Barnett has learned a lot since first launching PopSockets more than a decade ago. As the tale goes, the former philosophy professor was looking for an easy way to hold his headphones and went on to create one of the most viral phone accessories of all time: A device that grips to the back … Read more
A site called PSprices has been tracking prices on Sony’s digital game store and noticed something unusual: some games were being offered at different prices to different users. What’s more, those offers are tracked in the PlayStation API with experiment identifiers like IPT_PILOT and IPT_OPR_TESTING. Dynamic pricing is nothing new and is used across a … Read more
OpenAI has delayed the launch of “adult mode,” a ChatGPT feature that will give verified adult users access to erotica and other adult content. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman first announced the feature in October, writing, “In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, … Read more