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Tech

AI Summary

  • The AI sector is experiencing a boom in investment and development, leading to advancements in robotics and large language models, but also prompting significant concerns regarding ethics, copyright, and the spread of misinformation.
  • Commercial space ventures are shifting focus toward lunar missions and potential public offerings, with companies prioritizing moon exploration and related tech while anticipating major market debuts.
  • The autonomous vehicle industry is seeing substantial expansion and investment, pushing forward with robotaxis and self-driving trucks, which are increasingly integrating into daily operations and public life.
  • Major tech companies are under growing pressure concerning data privacy, content regulation, and their broader societal influence, resulting in legal challenges and increased demands for transparency and ethical accountability.
  • Apple maintains strong performance with record-breaking iPhone sales globally and is actively acquiring AI companies to bolster its capabilities, even as analysts question its long-term strategy for monetizing artificial intelligence.

TechCrunch


Hacker News


Engadget

  • Blue Origin is pausing its space tourist flights to work on lunar landers for NASA 2 hours ago by Mariella Moon
    Science, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Mariella Moon

    Blue Origin plans to put a focus on the development of its human lunar capabilities, so it won’t be sending tourists to space for at least the next two years. That means we won’t be seeing any New Shepard launches for quite some time. Blue Origin is one of the companies NASA chose to develop human landing systems for its Artemis program, along with SpaceX. Specifically, it will work on landers for the Artemis III and Artemis V missions. The company was originally contracted to build the human landing system that would transfer astronauts from NASA’s Gateway station to the moon’s

  • How to turn on hypertension alerts on Apple Watch 3 hours ago by Rob Webb
    Health, Technology & Electronics, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Rob Webb

    Apple has steadily expanded the Apple Watch’s health monitoring features over the years, moving beyond fitness tracking into areas that can offer early insight into potential medical concerns. One of the most recent additions is hypertension alerts, which are designed to notify users when their blood pressure trends are elevated over time. While Apple Watches cannot directly measure blood pressure, this feature can still play a useful role in highlighting patterns that may be worth discussing with your doctor. Here, we’ll explain what hypertension alerts do, how they work and how to enable and manage them on the Apple Watch. WHAT

  • Highguard, a hyperpop arena shooter and other new indie games worth checking out 4 hours ago by Kris Holt
    Media, Video Games, Arts & Entertainment, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Kris Holt

    Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. There are tons of interesting games out this week. But first, there's been some discourse around the Nintendo Switch version of Dispatch, which arrived this week as well. On other platforms, there's an option to censor genitalia and other explicit content, but that's not present in the Switch version. Instead, such content is censored by default, with black rectangles covering up characters' bits and someone flipping the bird. Noises that suggest sexual pleasure are said to be toned down too. "We worked with Nintendo to ensure the content

  • NASA used Claude to plot a route for its Perseverance rover on Mars 20 hours ago by Igor Bonifacic
    Science, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Igor Bonifacic

    Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has achieved a number of historic milestones, including sending back the first audio recordings from Mars. Now, nearly five years after landing on the Red Planet, it just achieved another feat. This past December, Perseverance successfully completed a route through a section of the Jezero crater plotted by Anthropic's Claude chatbot, marking the first time NASA has used a large language model to pilot the car-sized robot.     Between December 8 and 10, Perseverance drove approximately 400 meters (about 437 yards) through a field of rocks on the Martian surface mapped out by Claude. As you might

  • Rivian made an electric ambulance for Grey's Anatomy 20 hours ago by Will Shanklin
    Media, Arts & Entertainment, site|engadget, provider_name|Engadget, region|US, language|en-US, author_name|Will Shanklin

    America’s once-promising EV transition may have taken a U-turn, but at least some in Hollywood are trying to do their part. Rivian partnered with Grey’s Anatomy to make a custom electric ambulance for the long-running series. The ambulance is a modified version of Rivian’s Commercial Van. The custom “vanbulance” serves a dual purpose: preventing on-set exhaust fumes (which could harm the cast and crew) and integrating a green storyline. “As an added benefit, the elimination of engine noise brought a welcome quiet while cameras were rolling,” Rivan wrote in a blog post. Among other modifications, it has rear double doors instead of


The Verge

  • Cassette Boy forces you to see its world in a whole new way 2 hours ago by Jay Peters
    Entertainment, Games Review, Gaming

    It's no secret that Cassette Boy is inspired by the classics. It's a top-down adventure game in the vein of a retro Legend of Zelda, while your home base is a small town like in an older Pokémon game, complete with a mom who is constantly wishing you well. The game's blocky 3D graphics evoke Minecraft, and you save at campfires that reset the world, like a FromSoft game. Everything in Cassette Boy even has a green tint that reminds me of playing games on my original Game Boy. But despite all of the clear influences, it still feels unique:

  • ChatGPT isn’t the only chatbot pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia 3 hours ago by Robert Hart
    AI, Report, Tech, xAI

    ChatGPT is using Grokipedia as a source, and it's not the only AI tool to do so. Citations to Elon Musk's AI-generated encyclopedia are starting to appear in answers from Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini, too. Data suggests that's on the rise, heightening concerns about accuracy and misinformation as Musk seeks to reshape reality in his image. Since the warped Wikipedia-clone launched late last October, Grokipedia technically remains a minor source of information overall. Glen Allsopp, head of marketing strategy and research at SEO company Ahrefs, told The Verge the firm's testing found Grokipedia referenced in more than 263,000

  • A nice upgrade for Apple’s simplest gadget 3 hours ago by David Pierce
    Apps, Gadgets, Installer, Streaming, Tech

    Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 114, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, send Arc Raiders tips, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about wind turbines and phishing scams and oboes, keeping organized with the ultra-minimal Attn app, testing the lovely Aeronaut Bluesky client, spending too much time researching electric snow shovels, finally upgrading my trusty podcast headphones to a new Beyerdynamic pair, starting my umpteenth rewatch of Superstore, and debating whether to swap my iPhone 16 for an

  • The latest Instax printer is a pricey but worthy upgrade 8 hours ago by Thomas Ricker
    Accessory Reviews, Reviews, Tech

    Taping Instax Mini Link+ photos into a journal is just one use for the tiny prints. FujiFilm's Instax Mini Link 3 printer is a much-loved $100 accessory in my travel journal kit. I often tape a printed image next to my handwritten thoughts to preserve a moment in time. The prints produced by the instant film can, however, be soft and muddy - something the new $169.95 Instax Mini Link+ promises to improve. The big upgrade is a new Design Print mode. It's supposed to make text and intricate illustrations crisp and legible, but I didn't see much of an improvement, despite

  • Senate passes budget with two more weeks of Homeland Security funding 14 hours ago by Tina Nguyen
    Law, Policy, Politics

    Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) talks to reporters following the weekly Senate Democratic policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on January 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. | Getty Images The Senate voted on Friday evening to pass the federal budget, funding everything except for one entity: the Department of Homeland Security, which was given a two-week funding extension in order to negotiate new guardrails around Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If no agreement is reached, DHS funding will lapse and the department will face a shutdown. The agreement - the result of frenzied negotiations between a united Senate Democrat caucus, their


Wired


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