We’ve already gotten a new mid-range release from Nothing this year, but what many have been waiting for is a new flagship release in the Nothing Phone (3), and now we’ve got a better idea of its release date.
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For those of us whose memory of high school biology hasn't faded entirely, planarians will probably sound very familiar. They're generally used as an example of one of the extreme ends of regenerative capacity. While some animals like mammals have a limited ability to regenerate lost tissues, planarians can be cut roughly in half and regenerate either an entire head or entire tail, depending on which part of the body you choose to keep track of.
In doing so, they have to re-establish something that is typically only needed early in an animal's development: a signaling system that helps tell cells where the animal's head and tail are. Now, a US-based team asked a question that I'd never have thought of: What happens if you cut the animal in half early in development, while the developmental head-to-tail signaling system is still active? The answer turned out to be surprisingly complex.
Planarians are small flatworms that would probably be living quiet lives somewhere if biologists hadn't discovered their ability to regenerate lots of adult tissues when damaged. The process has been well-studied by this point and involves the formation of a cluster of stem cells, called a blastema, at the site of damage. From there, many of the signals that control the formation of specialized tissues in the embryo get re-activated, directing the stem cells down the developmental pathways needed to reproduce any lost organs.
© NNehring
In a Black Mirror-esque turn, some cash-strapped actors who didn't fully understand the consequences are regretting selling their likenesses to be used in AI videos that they consider embarrassing, damaging, or harmful, AFP reported.
Among them is a 29-year-old New York-based actor, Adam Coy, who licensed rights to his face and voice to a company called MCM for one year for $1,000 without thinking, "am I crossing a line by doing this?" His partner's mother later found videos where he appeared as a doomsayer predicting disasters, he told the AFP.
South Korean actor Simon Lee's AI likeness was similarly used to spook naïve Internet users but in a potentially more harmful way. He told the AFP that he was "stunned" to find his AI avatar promoting "questionable health cures on TikTok and Instagram," feeling ashamed to have his face linked to obvious scams.
© arvitalya | iStock / Getty Images Plus
In what’s most likely a bug, some Android 16 Beta 4 users no longer have to long-press lockscreen shortcuts.
more…I love outlet adaptors for HomeKit, but if you still use them to automate lamps, it might be time to switch things up (sorry for the pun). Smart plugs are a great way to get started, but smart bulbs give you more control over the lighting experience and work with overhead lights. With smart bulbs, you can change the color, set different brightness levels, and group them by room or scene. It is an easy upgrade that adds flexibility without complicating your setup. This week, I am looking at the .
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Building (or rebuilding) a gaming PC can be difficult. It’s complex stuff, making sure everything’s compatible and whatnot. The next toughest part is finding a deal — and having the patience to wait for price drops without getting so antsy you buy everything at full price (shamefully raises hand). If you’re considering an AMD build, Micro Center has a great deal on a hardware bundle that includes the Ryzen 7 7800X3D (last-gen, but still among the mightiest CPUs around for gaming, according to our review), a motherboard, and RAM. Normally around $579.99, you can snag the bundle in-store only for $499.99 if you have a Micro Center nearby.
In addition to the 7800X3D processor ($389.99 by itself), which was only recently supplanted by the higher-end 9800X3D processor, you’ll get an Asus TUF B650-E motherboard (valued at $194.99), plus 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5-6,000MHz RAM (valued at $89.99). You’ll save $175 instead of paying $675 for all three components, giving you more pocket change for a GPU.
The 7800X3D utilizes the AM5 motherboard socket, used on the newer 9000-series processors. It seems likely that AMD will stick with AM5 in the near future, so you’ll have at least a couple of CPU generations to pick from should you ever need to upgrade. As for the motherboard, it has three M.2 slots (one of which is PCIe 5.0, while the others are PCIe 4.0), support for USB-C ports on the front and back of your case, and Wi-Fi 6E built-in, among other niceties. If you’d prefer to have Corsair Vengeance RAM instead of what’s included with this bundle, you can elect to pay a $15 price increase when you pick up the bundle in-store.
Target’s Nintendo Switch 2 preorders in the US will kick off on April 24th at 12AM ET, according to Target’s website. The preorder time applies to consoles, games, and accessories, the website says.
The timing update follows Nintendo’s announcement this morning of the new April 24th date for Switch 2 preorders. The company originally planned to have them start on April 9th, but it delayed preorders “in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.”
As part of this morning’s announcement, Nintendo said that the Switch 2’s starting price would remain $449.99, and the bundle that includes Mario Kart World would also stay at $499.99. But accessories got price bumps, including $5 increases for the Switch 2 Joy-Con and Pro Controller.
Prices could also change down the line; Nintendo said today that “other adjustments to the price of any Nintendo product are also possible in the future depending on market conditions.”
We’ve contacted Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart to ask when their Switch 2 preorders may start.
A judge has paused the termination of nearly 1,500 employees from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) while she considers whether the Trump administration violated a court order to avoid mass layoffs. As CNN reports, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the mass reduction in force was “not going to happen” for now and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 28th.
The ruling should temporarily prevent the CFPB from being nearly eliminated, a move that CFPB Acting Director Russell Vought announced to employees yesterday. Documents filed in court indicate that cuts were supposed to eliminate 1,483 of the agency’s 1,690 employees, drastically reducing headcount in several departments, including consumer response and data protection teams. They were accompanied by a statement shifting the CFPB’s mission away from investigating digital payment platforms, medical debt, and several other areas.
The administration has sought to eliminate high-level agency officials responsible for maintaining the privacy and security of sensitive information it’s collected over the years. A lawyer for the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents CFPB employees, said in a sworn declaration that they learned “virtually everyone” in the agency’s privacy, security, and cybersecurity units were told their jobs would be eliminated.
The NTEU alleged that this violated a March court order preventing the Trump administration from carrying out a previous, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)-spurred attempt to dismantle the agency. Judge Berman Jackson’s ruling in that lawsuit barred terminations unless they resulted from a “particularized assessment” of employees’ roles, something the NTEU says is highly unlikely to have taken place here. Berman Jackson concurred that she had “concerns about whether agency is in compliance” with that order, and she’s instructed the administration to hand over documents about its actions to the union as the case progresses.
Erie Meyer, former chief technologist of the CFPB, tells The Verge that the layoffs threaten basic protections for Americans and their privacy. “With them firing every person in charge of protecting the data that the bureau has except for one person in cybersecurity, it’s officially open season on consumers and I’m extremely concerned about how vulnerable people are going to be targeted,” Meyer says.
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss Palantir scoops, coping mechanisms, and feeling God in this Samsung television.
JOSEPH: I’m going to talk about how our Palantir leak story came about, Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People, because I think it shows the value of just hammering on a broader story, finding a way in, then getting more and more specifics on it.
It really starts with Jason’s story on April 9 called Inside a Powerful Database ICE Uses to Identify and Deport People. This was about ICE’s tool called the Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. The tool was not new. It had been around for multiple years and other outlets had covered it. What was new was that we got to see actual parts of the database. This provided an opportunity for us to cover it in new, specific detail.
It’s been expected for a while now, but according to a new report, Amazon is set to do away with the Android foundation for its Fire TV streaming devices, with the replacement launching later this year.
more…Apple TV+ recently announced that its longest-running comedy, Mythic Quest, has been canceled. But there was some good news thrown in with the bad. Apple gave its blessing for the creative team to revise the finale for a more fitting ending, but that has introduced a George Lucas-eque problem.
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After obliterating the federal office on long COVID and clawing back billions in COVID funding from state health departments, the Trump administration has now entirely erased the online hub for federal COVID-19 resources. In its place now stands a site promoting the unproven idea that the pandemic virus SARS-CoV-2 was generated in and leaked from a lab in China, sparking the global health crisis.
Navigating to COVID.gov brings up a slick site with rich content that lays out arguments and allegations supporting a lab-based origin of the pandemic and subsequent cover-up by US health officials and Democrats.
Previously, the site provided unembellished quick references to COVID-19 resources, including links to information on vaccines, testing, treatments, and long COVID. It also provided a link to resources for addressing COVID-19 vaccine misconceptions and confronting misinformation. That all appears to be gone now, though some of the same information still remains on a separate COVID-19 page hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
© White House
