Reading view

There are new articles available, click to refresh the page.

Paris Agreement target won’t protect polar ice sheets, scientists warn

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

Sea levels in some parts of the world could be rising by as much as 8 to 12 inches per decade within the lifetime of today’s youngest generations, outpacing the ability of many coastal communities to adapt, scientists warned in a new study published this week.

The research by an international team of sea level and polar ice experts suggests that limiting warming to 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) above the pre-industrial temperature—the Paris Climate Agreement’s target—isn’t low enough to prevent a worst-case meltdown of Earth’s polar ice sheets.

Read full article

Comments

© Mario Tama / Getty Images

Brembo develops brakes with almost no brake dust and less wear

As electric vehicles reduce car exhaust as a source of particulate emissions, people are increasingly focusing on other vehicular sources of pollution that won't go away with electrification. Tires are one of them, particularly as we grapple with overweight EVs with tire-shredding torque. And brakes are another—even an EV with regenerative braking will occasionally need to use its friction brakes, after all.

Over in Europe, the people responsible for writing regulations have taken this into consideration with the upcoming Euro 7 standard, which sets new limits on 10- and 2.5-micron particulate emissions on all new vehicles—including EVs—starting next year. And to help OEMs achieve that target, Brembo has developed a new brake and pad set called Greentell that it says cuts brake dust emissions by 90 percent, improving durability in the process.

"We started 10 years ago to investigate a different solution. The main topic that we had in mind was to develop a disk that is greener than the current production of cast iron," said Fabiano Carminati, VP of disc technical development at Brembo.

Read full article

Comments

© Brembo

SilverStone is back with a beige PC case that looks just like your crappy old 486

SilverStone's first '80s throwback PC case started life as an April Fools' joke, but the success of the FLP01 was apparently serious enough to merit a follow-up. The company brought another beige case to the Computex trade show this week, the vertically oriented FLP02 (via Tom's Hardware).

If the original horizontally oriented FLP01 case called to mind a 386-era Compaq Deskpro, the FLP02 is a dead ringer for the kind of case you might have gotten for a generic 486 or early Pentium-era PC. That extends to having a Turbo button built into the front—on vintage PCs, this button could actually determine how fast the processor was allowed to run, though here, it's actually a fan speed control instead. A lock on the front also locks the power switch in place to keep it from being flipped off accidentally, something else real vintage PCs actually did.

Despite its retro facade, the FLP02 is capable of fitting in even higher-end modern PC parts than the original FLP01. Front USB-A and USB-C ports are hidden behind a magnetic door on the front of the case, and its faux-5.25-inch floppy drives are just covers for drive bays that you could use for an optical drive or extra front I/O.

Read full article

Comments

© Future

Meta hypes AI friends as social media’s future, but users want real connections

If you ask the man who has largely shaped how friends and family connect on social media over the past two decades about the future of social media, you may not get a straight answer.

At the Federal Trade Commission's monopoly trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted what seemed like an artful dodge to avoid criticism that his company allegedly bought out rivals Instagram and WhatsApp to lock users into Meta's family of apps so they would never post about their personal lives anywhere else. He testified that people actually engage with social media less often these days to connect with loved ones, preferring instead to discover entertaining content on platforms to share in private messages with friends and family.

As Zuckerberg spins it, Meta no longer perceives much advantage in dominating the so-called personal social networking market where Facebook made its name and cemented what the FTC alleged is an illegal monopoly.

Read full article

Comments

© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Toyota debuts all-new RAV4 with hybrid and PHEV powertrains only

An all-new version of Toyota's best-selling RAV4 crossover debuted last night. For generation six, Toyota North America is going all-electrified, with hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains on offer. And while the RAV4 isn't quite a software-defined vehicle as we understand the term, it features an all-new software platform tying everything together.

Toyota has grouped the various RAV4 configurations into three groups: core, rugged, and sport. And there are three different powertrain options: front-wheel drive hybrid, all-wheel drive hybrid, and all-wheel drive PHEV, although some trims are only available in certain configurations.

Front-wheel drive hybrid RAV4s feature a 226 hp (168 kW) 2.5 L engine, with all-wheel drive hybrid models offering a slight increase at 236 hp (176 kW). The PHEV generates a combined 320 hp (239 kW), and Toyota says it can go 50 miles (80 km) on a single charge.

Read full article

Comments

© Toyota

AMD’s $299 Radeon RX 9060 XT brings 8GB or 16GB of RAM to fight the RTX 5060

AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 were fairly well received when they were released in March, ably competing with Nvidia's RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti for the same or a little less money. We were impressed by the cards' performance and power efficiency, even if they still have some of the same caveats as older Radeon cards (lack of DLSS upscaling and lower relative ray-tracing performance being two).

Today AMD is formally expanding its family of RDNA 4 graphics cards with the Radeon RX 9060 XT, a GPU that will go up against Nvidia's RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti GPUs. These GPUs have just half the compute units of the RX 9070 XT, but at $299 and $349 for 8GB and 16GB configurations, they ought to be decent options for 1080p or entry-level 1440p gaming PCs (with the eternal "if you can find them" caveat that comes with buying a GPU in 2025).

AMD says the new GPUs will be available starting on June 5th from the typical range of partners—AMD released renders of a reference GPU design, but sometimes these are starting points that manufacturers can take or leave, rather than products AMD intends to manufacture and sell itself.

Read full article

Comments

© AMD

How 3D printing is personalizing health care

Three-dimensional printing is transforming medical care, letting the health care field shift from mass-produced solutions to customized treatments tailored to each patient’s needs. For instance, researchers are developing 3D-printed prosthetic hands specifically designed for children, made with lightweight materials and adaptable control systems.

These continuing advancements in 3D-printed prosthetics demonstrate their increasing affordability and accessibility. Success stories like this one in personalized prosthetics highlight the benefits of 3D printing, in which a model of an object produced with computer-aided design software is transferred to a 3D printer and constructed layer by layer.

We are a biomedical engineer and a chemist who work with 3D printing. We study how this rapidly evolving technology provides new options not just for prosthetics but for implants, surgical planning, drug manufacturing, and other health care needs. The ability of 3D printing to make precisely shaped objects in a wide range of materials has led to, for example, custom replacement joints and custom-dosage, multidrug pills.

Read full article

Comments

© JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images

Self-hosting is having a moment. Ethan Sholly knows why.

Self-hosting is having a moment, even if it's hard to define exactly what it is.

It's a niche that goes beyond regular computing devices and networks but falls short of a full-on home lab. (Most home labs involve self-hosting, but not all self-hosting makes for a home lab.) It adds privacy, provides DRM-free alternatives, and reduces advertising. It's often touted as a way to get more out of your network-attached storage (NAS), but it's much more than just backup and media streaming.

Is self-hosting just running services on your network for which most people rely on cloud companies? Broadly, yes. But take a look at the selfh.st site/podcast/newsletter, the r/selfhosted subreddit, and all the GitHub project pages that link to one another, and you'll also find things that no cloud provider offers.

Read full article

Comments

© Aurich Lawson

Gemini 2.5 is leaving preview just in time for Google’s new $250 AI subscription

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google rolled out early versions of Gemini 2.5 earlier this year. Marking a significant improvement over the 2.0 branch. For the first time, Google's chatbot felt competitive with the likes of ChatGPT, but it's been "experimental" and later "preview" since then. At I/O 2025, Google announced general availability for Gemini 2.5, and these models will soon be integrated with Chrome. There's also a fancy new subscription plan to get the most from Google's AI. You probably won't like the pricing, though.

Gemini 2.5 goes gold

Even though Gemini 2.5 was revealed a few months ago, the older 2.0 Flash has been the default model all this time. Now that 2.5 is finally ready, the 2.5 Flash model will be swapped in as the new default. This model has built-in simulated reasoning, so its outputs are much more reliable than 2.0 Flash.

Google says the release version of 2.5 Flash is better at reasoning, coding, and multimodality, but it uses 20–30 percent fewer tokens than the preview version. This edition is now live in Vertex AI, AI Studio, and the Gemini app. It will be made the default model in early June.

Read full article

Comments

© Ryan Whitwam

Trump’s trade war risks splintering the Internet, experts warn

In sparking his global trade war, Donald Trump seems to have maintained a glaring blind spot when it comes to protecting one of America's greatest trade advantages: the export of digital services.

Experts have warned that the consequences for Silicon Valley could be far-reaching.

In a report released Tuesday, an intelligence firm that tracks global trade risks, Allianz Trade, shared results of a survey of 4,500 firms worldwide, designed "to capture the impact of the escalation of trade tensions." Amid other key findings, the group warned that the US's fixation on the country's trillion-dollar goods deficit risks rocking "the fastest-growing segment of global trade," America's "invisible exports" of financial and digital services.

Read full article

Comments

© Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images News

FCC chairman celebrates court loss in case over Biden-era diversity rule

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr celebrated an FCC court loss yesterday after a ruling that struck down Biden-era diversity reporting requirements that Carr voted against while Democrats were in charge.

"An appellate court just struck down the Biden FCC's 2024 decision to force broadcasters to post race and gender scorecards," Carr wrote. "As I said in my dissent back then, the FCC's 2024 decision was an unlawful effort to pressure businesses into discriminating based on race & gender."

The FCC mandate was challenged in court by National Religious Broadcasters, a group for Christian TV and radio broadcasters and the American Family Association. They sued in the conservative-leaning US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, where a three-judge panel yesterday ruled unanimously against the FCC.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty Images | SimpleImages

Under RFK Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups

Under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is unilaterally terminating universal access to seasonal COVID-19 vaccines; instead, only people who are age 65 years and older and people with underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19 will have access to seasonal boosters moving forward.

The move was laid out in a commentary article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by Trump administration FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency's new top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad.

The article lays out a new framework for approving seasonal COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a rationale for the change—which was made without input from independent advisory committees for the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty | Tasos Katopodis

Windows 11’s most important new feature is post-quantum cryptography. Here’s why.

Microsoft is updating Windows 11 with a set of new encryption algorithms that can withstand future attacks from quantum computers in a move aimed at jump-starting what’s likely to be the most formidable and important technology transition in modern history.

Computers that are based on the physics of quantum mechanics don’t yet exist outside of sophisticated labs, but it’s well-established science that they eventually will. Instead of processing data in the binary state of zeros and ones, quantum computers run on qubits, which encompass myriad states all at once. This new capability promises to bring about new discoveries of unprecedented scale in a host of fields, including metallurgy, chemistry, drug discovery, and financial modeling.

Averting the cryptopocalypse

One of the most disruptive changes quantum computing will bring is the breaking of some of the most common forms of encryption, specifically, the RSA cryptosystem and those based on elliptic curves. These systems are the workhorses that banks, governments, and online services around the world have relied on for more than four decades to keep their most sensitive data confidential. RSA and elliptic curve encryption keys securing web connections would require millions of years to be cracked using today’s computers. A quantum computer could crack the same keys in a matter of hours or minutes.

Read full article

Comments

© Getty Images

Trump admin lifts hold on offshore wind farm, doesn’t explain why

On Monday, the developer of a large offshore wind farm being built off the coast of New York announced that the federal government had lifted a hold it had placed on the project roughly a month ago. The entire process has been shrouded in mystery. The government never fully enunciated its justification for the hold and hasn't yet commented on the fact that it had been lifted, although there is some hint that it was coupled to a reconsideration of a cancelled natural gas pipeline.

Empire Wind is a large project being built off the southeast shore of Long Island by Equinor, a Norwegian energy company. The first of two phases, Empire Wind 1, will have an 800 MW capacity and has already received permitting and environmental approval. Equinor had started construction of the foundations for the towers that would hold the wind turbines and onshore facilities that would support this and future offshore projects.

All that changed in mid-April when Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced via a social media post that the approval for Empire Wind had been rushed and his department would be reviewing it. A Fox News article published a few days later suggests that a review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration "found the Empire Wind approval process relied on rushed, outdated, and incomplete scientific and environmental analysis." But nobody else has indicated that any such report exists, despite requests from the press.

Read full article

Comments

© glegorly

Adobe to automatically move subscribers to pricier, AI-focused tier in June

Subscribers to Adobe’s multi-app subscription plan, Creative Cloud All Apps, will be charged more starting on June 17 to accommodate for new generative AI features.

Adobe’s announcement, spotted by MakeUseOf, says the change will affect North American subscribers to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, which Adobe is renaming Creative Cloud Pro. Starting on June 17, Adobe will automatically renew Creative Cloud All Apps subscribers into the Creative Cloud Pro subscription, which will be $70 per month for individuals who commit to an annual plan, up from $60 for Creative Cloud All Apps. Annual plans for students and teachers plans are moving from $35/month to $40/month, and annual teams pricing will go from $90/month to $100/month. Monthly (non-annual) subscriptions are also increasing, from $90 to $105.

Further, in an apparent attempt to push generative AI users to more expensive subscriptions, as of June 17, Adobe will give new single-app subscribers just 25 generative AI credits instead of the current 500.

Read full article

Comments

© Adobe

Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books

On Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times published an advertorial summer reading list containing at least 10 fake books attributed to real authors, according to multiple reports on social media. The newspaper's uncredited "Summer reading list for 2025" supplement recommended titles including "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir—books that don't exist and were created out of thin air by an AI system.

The creator of the list, Marco Buscaglia, confirmed to 404 Media that he used AI to generate the content. "I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious. No excuses," Buscaglia said. "On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed."

A check by Ars Technica shows that only five of the fifteen recommended books in the list actually exist, with the remainder being fabricated titles falsely attributed to well-known authors. AI assistants such as ChatGPT are well-known for creating plausible-sounding errors known as confabulations, especially when lacking detailed information on a particular topic. The problem affects everything from AI search results to lawyers citing fake cases.

Read full article

Comments

© Jorg Greuel via Getty Images

Universal releases one last Jurassic World Rebirth trailer

Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali star in Jurassic World Rebirth.

Jurassic World Rebirth is coming to theaters for the Fourth of July weekend, and Universal Pictures has released one final trailer to whet audience appetites for the film.

As previously reported, this is the fourth installment in the Jurassic World series and seventh film overall in the franchise spawned by 1993's Jurassic Park. This time around, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali step into the leading roles since the film is meant to be a fresh start for the franchise—although it does feature a return to the original research facility. Gareth Edwards—who directed 2014's Godzilla—signed on to direct a script penned by David Koepp, who wrote the scripts for Jurassic Park and The Lost World (1997).

Per the official premise:

Read full article

Comments

© YouTube/Universal Pictures

2025 Hyundai Ioniq 9 first drive: Efficient, for a big one

SAVANNAH, Georgia—Hyundai's massive new Metaplant factory in Georgia is actually painted a subtle shade of green, not white, but you'd need someone to point that out to you. It's a shining example of the latest in car manufacturing—bright lights and white walls inside, knee-saving wooden floors on the production line, recaptured waste energy and solar—you name it. Hyundai even uses dog-like robots to check some welds. The vast facility is responsible for North American production of the electric Ioniq 5 and, now, the all-new Ioniq 9 SUV as well.

That Hyundai would make a three-row SUV with its class-leading electric powertrain was a no-brainer. The E-GMP platform, with its 800 V powertrain, was designed for medium to large EVs, after all. In 2021 it debuted the Seven concept, which explored the idea of a living room on wheels. I'm not sure why the nameplate skipped a couple of digits, but the production Ioniq 9 tries to keep as true to that theme as possible within the confines of real life.

Although they look quite different from one another, a common design language called "parametric pixels" ties together the Ioniq 9 with its smaller siblings the Ioniq 5 SUV and Ioniq 6 sedan. Creases catch the light even with the matte-gold paint of our test car, like the line ahead of the rear wheels that calls back to the collar on a traditional Korean garment. As ever, there are some other wonderful names for the design language: my favorite is "aerosthetic lounge," but when you look at the images, also think of words like "teutonic," "boat tail," and "integrated." When you hear the shape was inspired by a pebble, it makes sense that the drag coefficient is a slippery 0.27.

Read full article

Comments

© Jonathan Gitlin

Zero-click searches: Google’s AI tools are the culmination of its hubris

Google is constantly making changes to its search rankings, but not all updates are equal. Every few months, the company bundles up changes into a larger "core update." These updates make rapid and profound changes to search, so website operators watch them closely.

The March 2024 update was unique. It was one of Google's largest core updates ever, and it took over a month to fully roll out. Nothing has felt quite the same since. Whether the update was good or bad depends on who you ask—and maybe who you are.

It's common for websites to see traffic changes after a core update, but the impact of the March 2024 update marked a seismic shift. Google says the update aimed to address spam and AI-generated content in a meaningful way. Still, many publishers say they saw clicks on legitimate sites evaporate, while others have had to cope with unprecedented volatility in their traffic. Because Google owns almost the entire search market, changes in its algorithm can move the Internet itself.

Read full article

Comments

© Aurich Lawson

Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks

One of the longest-standing mysteries about Mars has been the presence of dark and light streaks on the rolling hills surrounding Olympus Mons. This week's image, from the European Space Agency, shows some of these streaks captured last October.

This massive mountain rises about 22 km above the surface of Mars, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. It is bordered by hummocky deposits, called aureoles, that were formed by landslides from the mountain. A striking feature of these aureoles is the periodic appearance of bright and dark streaks—sometimes for days and sometimes for years.

For decades, scientists have wondered what they might be.

Read full article

Comments

© European Space Agency

❌