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Artificial intelligence agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose a threat to secure apps such as Signal, according to Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation... View Source

Meta has a lot of work to do when it comes to limiting hate speech on its platforms. Now, its Oversight Board is looking into the company's decision to ban an account for, among other things, posting visual violent threats and harassment against a journalist — and it wants the public's advice.  In the year prior to the ban, Meta referred five posts due to violations of its hateful c... View Source

Explore Webb Science James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Intricacies of Helix Nebula… Webb News Latest News Latest Images Webb’s Blog Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Webb Timeline Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycl... View Source

Madison, United States, 20th January 2026, CyberNewsWire... View Source

Test your grasp of the forces and ideas that shape our universe... View Source

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says consumers are starting to see the impact of tariffs less than a year after President Donald Trump implemented sweeping fees on a range of imported goods. During an interview with CNBC, Jassy says the inventory Amazon and third-party sellers prebought in early 2025 to keep prices low has "run out," which means "you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the p... View Source

The European push to become less dependent on US technology will hurt the bloc even as President Donald Trump’s Greenland policy alienates allies, according to the head of Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson AB... View Source

Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker discussed the threats that artificial intelligence agents that autonomously carry out tasks pose to secure apps. “If you give a system like that root access permissions, it can be hijacked,” Whittaker said during a conversation with Emily Chang at Bloomberg House in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

Adobe has announced updates for Premiere and After Effects, including new AI-powered tools that are meant to speed up your video editing tasks. In Premiere, the company’s video-editing software, it has unveiled a new AI-powered Object Mask feature that lets you easily pick and track persons or objects moving through your video clips. You simply have to hover over that object and click to generate... View Source

Annual Report of NESC Technical Activities On behalf of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC), I am pleased to provide you with the 2025 NESC Technical Update. This annual report summarizes the technical work, engineering advancements, and knowledge capture efforts we made in FY25. With support provided by members of our NASA community from across the centers, we focused our efforts on per... View Source

Even though the Red Planet's atmosphere is thin, wind is still one of Mars' most relentless sculptors... View Source

Signal President Meredith Whittaker speaks to Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

In a strange twist of fate, a fire broke out this week at the Rad Power Bikes retail store warehouse in Huntington Beach, California, Electrek reports. The structural blaze came less than two months after the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warned customers to "immediately stop" using and dispose of some of the company's e-bike batteries due to fire hazard. In December, Ra... View Source

The Model S. The Mach-E. The Ioniq. The… Dolphin Surf? That's right, friends: There's a new biggest name in EVs, and it means you might soon be cruising down the highway in the Dolphin Surf. And you might love it. After years of Tesla dominance, a Chinese company called BYD has become the world's biggest seller of electric vehicles. On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge's Andy Hawkins explai... View Source

Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa’s largest lender by assets, is set to lose two more top executives to smaller rival Absa Group Ltd... View Source

The UK government has announced a consultation, asking people for their feedback on whether to introduce a social media ban for children under 16 years old. It would also explore how to enforce that limit, how to limit tech companies from being able to access children’s data and how to limit “infinite scrolling,” as well as access to addictive online tools. In addition to seeking feedback from par... View Source

"The knowledge of these will ultimately help us understand the formation of the first stars and planets and how our own Milky Way came into being."... View Source

Energy will be a key driver to support the AI race and power all the data centers, but the US is in a good place to meet that demand, according to President Trump’s chief tech and science adviser. Michael Kratsios spoke with Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferro, Annmarie Hordern and Lisa Abramowicz on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

Sony is ceding control of its Bravia TV brand to China's TCL as part of a new "strategic partnership," the companies announced in a joint press release. The Japanese electronics giant plans to sell a majority 51 percent stake in its home entertainment arm to TCL, while retaining a 49 percent share. The joint venture is set to start operations in April 2027, pending regulatory and other approvals... View Source

Anthropic Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Dario Amodei says the US embargo on chip sales to Beijing is what is holding Chinese companies back. "I think it would be a big mistake to ship these chips," he tells Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait during a discussion at Bloomberg House on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloombe... View Source

Part of a lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its non-profit status claims Musk is owed anywhere from $79 billion to $134 billion in damages for the “wrongful gains” of OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk claims in the filing that he’s entitled to a chunk of the company’s recent $500 billion valuation, after contributing $38 million in “seed funding” during the AI company’s early years. It wasn’t just mo... View Source

Netflix has updated the acquisition terms for its Warner Bros. Discovery offer to an all-cash deal, replacing its initial $82.7 billion cash and stock agreement. The changes are designed to expedite the sale of WBD studios and streaming businesses, following repeated attempts by rival bidder Paramount to pressure shareholders into accepting its own $108 billion all-cash offer. "The WBD Board conti... View Source

Deutsche Boerse AG is nearing a deal to acquire European fund distribution platform Allfunds Group Plc for about €5.3 billion ($6.2 billion) in cash and stock, according to people familiar with the matter... View Source

Europe must invest in its own open source artificial intelligence labs and address soaring energy prices, or it will quickly find itself dependent on Chinese models, former Google chief executive and tech investor Eric Schmidt said... View Source

C/2024 E1 (Wierzchos) brightened significantly ahead of its close approach to the sun... View Source

Spotify wants audiobooks to be on the same page. Spotify appears to be working on a novel feature that will allow audiobook listeners to pick up where they left off in the physical book. Android Authority reports that version 9.1.18.282 of the Spotify app includes code references to a Page Match beta feature that can quickly sync audiobooks on the platform with their paper and ebook counterparts... View Source

Chinese scientist He Jiankui wants to end Alzheimer’s and thinks Silicon Valley is conducting a “Nazi eugenic experiment.”... View Source

G42 CEO Peng Xiao discusses building AI infrastructure, evolving government approaches to regulation, the UAE’s role in global AI development, the Stargate project, and chip imports amid existing restrictions. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Joumanna Bercetche on the sidelines of the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

4 Min Read Jaclyn Kagey Shapes Humanity’s Return to the Moon  Jaclyn Kagey trains in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where astronauts and flight controllers rehearse spacewalk procedures in a simulated microgravity environment. Credits: NASA For Jaclyn Kagey, helping astronauts put boots on the Moon is part of her daily work.  As the Artemis III extravehicular activity lead in NASA’s Flig... View Source

A fast CME slammed into Earth on Jan. 19, unleashing hours of intense auroral activity and lighting up skies far beyond the poles... View Source

Microsoft has been testing its ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming service over the past few months, as I exclusively revealed in October. Now, the software giant is getting close to testing the free streaming option with Xbox Insiders. Over the weekend, Microsoft updated its Xbox app with loading screens for Xbox Cloud Gaming that mention "1 hour of ad-supported playtime per session." That lines up wi... View Source

Sony Group Corp. is spinning off control of its home entertainment business, including the flagship Bravia television brand, to Chinese rival TCL Electronics Holdings Ltd., the latest Japanese company to cut exposure in the low-margin segment... View Source

If the partnership goes ahead, TCL will have input into the development of future Sony Bravia TV models. Sony has announced plans to spin off its TV hardware business, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two companies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony's home entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in the new venture, and Sony holding 49 percent. With... View Source

Prosus Chief Executive Officer Fabricio Bloisi tells Bloomberg's Francine Lacqua the company has "at least $10 billion" to keep investing as it looks to consolidate its global position in online food delivery and plans to expand in e-commerce and payments. He also discusses the significance of Indian and Latin American markets, as well as the need for "bigger technology companies" in Europe. He sp... View Source

Google DeepMind’s Chief Operating Officer Lila Ibrahim said the company will use conversations at the World Economic Forum this week to talk responsible development of artificial intelligence... View Source

Alisa Viejo, United States, 20th January 2026, CyberNewsWire... View Source

China’s consumer-sensitive sectors are lagging further behind growth in industries linked to manufacturing and tech, illustrating a sharp divide in an economy increasingly exposed to foreign demand... View Source

I’m sure that single extra milliamp-hour will make all the difference. After teasing 10,000mAh and 15,000mAh concept devices, Realme is ready to make those big batteries reality with the P4 Power, which launches in India on January 29th with a 10,001mAh capacity. Realme says the P4 Power will last for three and a half days of light use, which I can believe - I got between two and three days' batte... View Source

Meta Platforms Inc. is losing its most senior public policy executive in the Asia-Pacific at a time when the company faces several regulatory challenges in the region and beyond... View Source

Roland now offers a more capable audio mixer for phones and tablets with the launch of the Go:Mixer Studio. The Go:Mixer audio interface lineup has always been a bit limited, better suited for scrappy live streams and capturing quick demos on their phones than professional recording. The Go:Mixer Studio is an attempt to actually reach that lofty goal, with more inputs and outputs, built-in effects... View Source

Pennylane, a French startup that sells accounting software, has raised €175 million ($204 million) in a funding round led by growth equity investor TCV... View Source

The spectacular aurora australis, also known as the southern lights, may be visible as far north as Victoria and New South WalesA ‘severe’ solar storm, which is being monitored by the National Emergency Management Agency, could make auroras visible in Australia as well as cause disruptions to the power grid. Here’s what you need to know about the solar storm. Continue reading... View Source

China, locked in a battle to lead technologies ranging from robotics to artificial intelligence, is studying whether to set up a national mergers and acquisition fund as Beijing ramps up its push for technological breakthroughs... View Source

British and Chinese security officials established a forum to discuss cyberattacks following a spate of hacking accusations that soured relations between the two countries... View Source

Chinese electric stocks are winning favor with investors early in 2026, thanks to intensifying global demand for power gear to build data centers for artificial intelligence as well as a state-led investment push in the sector... View Source

China has broadened a probe into PDD Holdings Inc. after its employees exchanged blows with regulators, dispatching over 100 investigators from various agencies to the company’s Shanghai headquarters in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter... View Source

Britain’s financial regulators should start stress-testing the risks posed by artificial intelligence because their current wait-and-see approach leaves the public and economy in danger of “serious harm,” a group of lawmakers warned... View Source

The world-beating rally in South Korean stocks is poised to extend as the nation presses ahead with efforts to improve shareholder returns and lure global capital, according to Jeong Eun Bo, chief executive officer at the Korea Exchange... View Source

Pioneering mathematician Dr. Gladys West has passed away at the age of 95. Her name may not be familiar to you, but her contributions certainly are; West's work laid the foundation for the global positioning system. As you likely know from experience, GPS is now an essential component of industries ranging from aviation and emergency response, as well as ensuring that you get to that dinner d... View Source

Peter Chernin is in talks to sell his independent production company... View Source

A general desktop emulator (like xAI’s Macrohard, which emulates keystrokes, mouse movements, and screen interactions) could vastly expand beyond VBScript/Unix scripting, which are limited to command-line or basic API tasks. Such a system automates any UI-based workflow without code changes or integrations, mimicking human behavior across apps (browsers, legacy software, ERPs). What It Could... View Source

Despite global uproar over the generation of non-consensual explicit photos, Elon Musk has continued to downplay the issue... View Source

ASUS appears to be shifting its business operations away from smartphones. According to translations of recent quotes from Chairman Jonney Shih, the company does not plan to release new phone models in the future. The chairman did not confirm whether smartphones would be completely phased out, but he did acknowledge that possibility. Whatever direction ASUS takes, its existing phones will continue... View Source

The state-backed survival contest aims to find the best indigenous AI models... View Source

The UK Gambling Commission has raised concerns that Meta is ignoring advertisements by illegal gambling websites on its platforms. At a conference in Barcelona, the commission's Executive Director Tim Miller criticized Meta's behavior towards advertisements for online gambling on its Facebook and Instagram social networks."Companies like Meta will tell you that they don’t tolerate t... View Source

To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before!... View Source

OpenAI plans to focus on "practical adoption" of AI in 2026, according to a blog post from CFO Sarah Friar. As the company spends a huge amount of money on infrastructure, OpenAI is working on "closing the gap" on what AI can do and how people actually use it. "The opportunity is large and immediate, especially in health, science, and enterprise, where better intelligence translates directly into... View Source

With the spring approaching, it's time to start thinking about how you'll file your taxes. Unfortunately, with the recent demise of Direct File, there isn't a free, government-provided alternative to TurboTax in 2026, and you'll need to look to other federal programs, including IRS Free File, to file your paperwork. If you don't qualify for Free File, chances are you'... View Source

I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third week - with no clear end in sight - I've received a steady string of messages from increasingly concerned friend... View Source

Astonishingly, we can identify molecules present in the atmospheres of exoplanets... View Source

Marathon, Bungie's long-awaited extraction shooter, will arrive on March 5, the studio announced today. Alongside a definitive release date, Bungie shared a new gameplay trailer, in addition to details about the game's forthcoming deluxe edition, which fans can pre-order today on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. All versions of the game will support crossplay, meaning you'l... View Source

Sphere Entertainment, the company behind the eye-catching interactive venue in Las Vegas, has announced its "intent to develop" another Sphere in Maryland that will be located 15 minutes south of Washington, DC. A timeline and exact location haven't been finalized, but the Maryland Sphere would be the company's second venue in the US, following plans to build a Sphere in Abu Dhabi announced in Oct... View Source

The evacuation raises a question worth exploring: how do astronauts stay healthy in space, and why is this early evacuation so unusual?... View Source

The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the best sub-250g drone ever made and redefines what’s possible in this regulator-friendly drone category... View Source

Telecom tycoon Patrick Drahi is preparing to launch the sale of a controlling stake in French fiber optic company XpFibre, according to people with knowledge of the matter... View Source

Along with bonus stargazing targets!... View Source

Demand for data center capacity in Canada is causing BCE Inc. to accelerate work on its new artificial intelligence business, and the construction of new facilities is ahead of schedule, its top executive said... View Source

Elon Musk posted on X that Tesla will be restarting work on Dojo3, the third generation of its in-house supercomputer project. The Dojo team had been disbanded last year as the company prioritized the AI chips that run on board Tesla vehicles. Musk said the company is returning to the project "now that the AI5 chip design is in good shape." The purpose of the Dojo project is to process v... View Source

Alien lifeforms | Power of prayer | Corned beef | Remembering birthdays | Celebrity old-age homeYour article (Nasa moon rocket creeps to its launchpad in preparation for astronaut flight, 18 January) quotes the crew commander of Artemis II, Reid Wiseman: “They are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon. They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible.” I imagine... View Source

I have been writing about the Giant Magellan Telescope for a long time. Nearly two decades ago, for example, I wrote that time was "running out" in the race to build the next great optical telescope on the ground. At the time the proposed telescope was one of three contenders to make a giant leap in mirror size from the roughly 10-meter diameter instruments that existed then, to approximately 30 m... View Source

Yidu Tech founder and Chairlady Gong Yingying says China’s supportive regulatory environment and massive market size are accelerating the development of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry. Speaking to Bloomberg TV’s Haslinda Amin in Davos, she said AI could work with doctors to provide better healthcare for patients. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

"It's like watching a cosmic volcano erupt again after ages of calm — except this one is big enough to carve out structures stretching nearly a million light-years across space."... View Source

Artificial intelligence chip designer FuriosaAI is seeking to raise as much as $500 million in a funding round before an initial public offering as it gears up to challenge industry titan Nvidia Corp., according to people with knowledge of the matter... View Source

Bungie is putting an official date on Marathon today, its delayed extraction shooter. The slick-looking shooter from the makers of Halo and Destiny was originally set to release in September, but will now launch on March 5th. Bungie will launch Marathon on Xbox Series S / X, PS5, and PC, priced at $39.99. Bungie initially delayed Marathon in June last year following plenty of alpha test feedback... View Source

Meta Platforms Inc. is turning a blind eye to illegal gambling sites that advertise on Facebook and Instagram, according to the UK’s Gambling Commission... View Source

Chinese researchers have completed a full end-to-end simulation of the Chinese Space Station Telescope's observing systems, offering a preview of how the powerful scope will survey the universe... View Source

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva discusses trade tensions, the artificial intelligence boom, Venezuela's economy and financial backing for Ukraine. She speaks on Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

America's next mission to the moon is happening in only a few weeks... View Source

Animal Crossing has always been anti-instant gratification. By design, you have to take your time, wait for days to pass in real time, and complete a seemingly endless list of chores to build a meaningful life with your animal friends. The slowness is part of its appeal. But with New Horizons, some of that slowness became tedious: crafting its many items one at a time, painstakingly building cliff... View Source

In the AI industry, there's always a hot new thing. First it was ChatGPT. Then it was the image generators. There was the DeepSeek moment. In the latter half of last year, everyone was excited about how good Google's Gemini was. In January 2026, the new hot thing everyone is talking about is Claude Code. But of course, the AI models have been able to generate lines of code for a long time now. So... View Source

Auroras may be visible from Alaska to Colorado tonight as an incoming coronal mass ejection is forecast to impact within 24 hours... View Source

We’re back to start the year off with a very special live interview with Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, which we taped in front of a terrific audience at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas during CES.  Razer is obviously best known for making mice, keyboards, and gaming PCs in its signature black and bright green, with a smattering of RGB LEDs to set everything off. But the company always makes splashy ann... View Source

Meta’s Threads is pulling further ahead of Elon Musk’s X on mobile, based on recent estimates from analytics firm Similarweb, Forbes reports. In the first stretch of January, Threads averaged roughly 143 million daily active users worldwide on mobile devices, compared with about 126 million for X. Similarweb’s year-over-year snapshot shows Threads growing sharply, up 37.8 percent year-over-year, w... View Source

The Bic Lamp can be hung, mounted, or used as a vertical standing lamp. | Image: Seletti Seletti, an Italian design brand known for everything from furniture to tableware, has debuted an unusual tribute to an icon of design: the Bic Cristal pen. To celebrate its 75th anniversary, Seletti has supersized the pen and replaced its ink cartridge with a long LED-filled tube to illuminate your living roo... View Source

Yann LeCun’s artificial intelligence startup, AMI Labs, has attracted potential backers including Cathay Innovation in a round that could value the former Meta Platforms Inc. researcher’s business at €3 billion ($3.5 billion), people familiar with the matter said... View Source

Ancient shoreline features hint that water on Mars once formed a vast ocean... View Source

The Zenfone 12 Ultra is Asus’s latest — and perhaps final — flagship phone. Asus chairman Jonney Shih told Taiwan's Inside that the company is done making phones for now, marking the end of its Zenfone and ROG Phone lines. "Asus will no longer add new mobile phone models in the future," Shih reportedly said (translated with Google Translate). He didn't entirely rule out a return though, instead sa... View Source

Apple’s decision to rely on Gemini casts doubt about the advantages of Apple Intelligence... View Source

Revolut Ltd. applied for a full banking license in Peru as it expands in Latin America to compete with some of the region’s biggest financial-technology firms... View Source

"Instead of Webb's 6.5-meter diameter, it's like we are observing this region with a 13-meter space telescope."... View Source

A newer fund run by an unconventional team at the venture firm is finding success focusing on infrastructure... View Source

"One thing popped out as clear as anything, this previously unknown 'bar' of ionized iron atoms, in the middle of the familiar and iconic ring."... View Source

After launching almost three years ago, Meta's Threads is now reportedly attracting more daily mobile users than rival platform X. According to Similarweb data shared by TechCrunch, Threads has 141.5 million daily active iOS and Android global app users as of January 7th, compared to 125 million users for Elon Musk's mobile platform. Similarweb reports that Threads actually overtook X sometime bet... View Source

Tencent Holdings Ltd., Fidelity International Ltd. and Temasek Holdings Pte are planning to invest in the Hong Kong initial public offering of Chinese snack retailer Busy Ming Group Co., according to people familiar with the matter... View Source

Aurora alert! The colossal solar storm could impact and trigger impressive northern lights... View Source

From surveys of the pre-Sputnik skies to analysis of interstellar visitors, scientists are rethinking how and where to look for physical traces of alien technology... View Source

Weeks after its market value rose above £200 billion ($268 billion) for the first time in its history, HSBC Holdings Plc is now on course for a capitalization in excess of £300 billion, according to the head of the lender’s corporate and investment banking arm... View Source

The International Monetary Fund slightly raised its outlook for global growth this year, but it warned that concerns about an artificial intelligence bubble as well as trade and geopolitical tensions remain risks to the world economy... View Source

A research team has successfully imaged a nova in high resolution—and the images suggest that the nova was not a single, impulsive explosion... View Source

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ASM International NV reported fourth-quarter orders that beat expectations on the back of an improvement in bookings for its chip-making equipment from China and strong demand in artificial intelligence-linked segments... View Source

Apple Inc. retook the top spot in China after iPhone shipments jumped 28% during the holiday quarter despite a worsening shortage of vital memory chips, according to Counterpoint Research... View Source

Emerging Asian equities gained, led by South Korea and Taiwan, helping reverse early declines fueled by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of new tariffs on eight European countries over Greenland... View Source

Wipro’s third-quarter earnings fell short of expectations with a 7% drop in net profit, weighed down by restructuring costs and labor law charges. CFO Aparna Iyer explains why Q4 guidance remains muted at zero to 2% growth, even as operating margins hit a seven-year high of 17.6%. She joins Paul Allen exclusively on Insight with Haslinda Amin. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

Earth’s satellite will be visible in conjunction with the ringed planet as twilight gives way to darknessA slender crescent moon slides past Saturn this week, offering a rewarding conjunction. It will be the perfect way to start your evening, a little quiet contemplation of the night sky as the evening twilight gives way to full darkness.The chart shows the view looking south-west from London at 1... View Source

Ukraine is holding off on additional orders for strike drones from Helsing, Europe’s most valuable defense tech startup, after the company’s weapon systems faced problems in front line tests in battle, according to a German military presentation and people familiar with the matter... View Source

UBTech Robotics Corp. shares jumped after the China-based humanoid maker received an order from Airbus SE, bolstering the outlook for use of its products in global manufacturing... View Source

The operator of Las Vegas’s Sphere is planning to build a new venue in the Washington metropolitan area, adding a second US location following a successful start for its original orb-like arena... View Source

Nvidia Corp. supplier Micron Technology Inc. said an ongoing memory chip shortage has accelerated over the past quarter and reiterated that the crunch will last beyond this year due to a surge in demand for high-end semiconductors required for AI infrastructure... View Source

A sale of PhilTower has stalled because of differences in views between shareholders and potential buyers about the company’s valuation, according to people familiar with the matter... View Source

Cryptocurrencies fell sharply as risk assets slipped and haven demand strengthened after US President Donald Trump proposed new levies on eight European countries... View Source

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 29 Starlink satellites launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026... View Source

It's relatively rare for a podcast to last 14 years, especially a fiction one. In fact, as far as I can tell, Welcome to Night Vale is the longest continually running fiction podcast out there. (Some will argue it's actually We're Alive, but that has taken a few significant breaks between seasons.) The story of Night Vale, the titular desert town, now spans 12 seasons, over 280 episodes, three boo... View Source

If you weren't able to shut down your Windows 11 device recently, Microsoft has rolled out an emergency fix addressing a couple of critical bugs that popped up with its latest January 2026 Windows security update. The latest "out-of-band" update repairs an issue for some Windows 11 devices that would only restart when users tried to shut down or hibernate. The same update restores the ability for... View Source

Washington state residents may soon be forced to produce IDs before getting onto websites with pornographic content. Within the state's House of Representatives, Rep. Mari Leavitt introduced House Bill 2112, which is informally known as the Keep Our Children Safe Act. Similar to the initiatives seen in other states, the bill proposes to restrict access to "online sexual material harmful... View Source

Microsoft released its first security update of 2026 for Windows 11 on January 13th. Just four days later, it was forced to release an emergency out-of-band update to fix some pretty serious bugs, the first one introduced. The security patch was stopping some systems from shutting down or hibernating properly, and also preventing some users from logging in via remote desktop. This is just the late... View Source

Get stranded in the Delta Quadrant all over again when Star Trek Voyager – Across the Unknown warps in on February 19th... View Source

We need to talk about antimatter... View Source

A nonprofit foundation backed by Italian billionaire Andrea Pignataro is merging with the tech incubators of Milan’s leading universities in a bid to boost early-stage investment in the country... View Source

The new teen-led Paramount+ TV show isn't Trek's first attempt to study at the Academy... View Source

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on dystopian developments in AI, follow Hayden Field. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started You could say it all started with Elon Musk's AI FOMO - and his crusade against "wokeness." When his AI company, xAI, announced Grok in... View Source

When my colleagues and I send them out to explore our solar system, it's important for us to understand the 3D map of our space neighborhood... View Source

Sony’s terrific Bravia 8 II is $900 off for a limited time. Good deals are often hard to come by at the beginning of the year — which is precisely what makes Best Buy’s Winter Sale worth checking out. The ongoing sales event features discounts on everything from big-ticket OLED TVs to smaller electronics, including fitness trackers that can help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions. There are a... View Source

The Kaoss Pad has seen many different iterations, but the mainline effect unit and sampler hasn't received an update since the launch of the KP3+ in 2013. Korg has finally given it the attention it deserves with the release of the Kaoss Pad V. Rather than a dramatic reimagining of what a Kaoss Pad is, the V takes the core idea - an effect unit with an X / Y pad for controlling parameters in a natu... View Source

Israel has long been known as the “startup nation,” and its tech sector accelerated during the Israel-Hamas war. Since 2023, Israeli startups have raised record levels of private capital, driven by growth in cybersecurity, defense, artificial intelligence, biotech, and dual-use technologies. Author and political advisor Dan Senor, OurCrowd’s Ely Razin, and NH Ventures CEO Hyun Jun Kim explain how... View Source

With the moon out of the way on Jan. 18, bright Jupiter and Saturn become stand-outs in the January night sky... View Source

Brian Armstrong, chief executive officer of Coinbase Global Inc., speaks to members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. | Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images. January was going to be a landmark month for the crypto industry. The Senate would start negotiating the finer details of the CLARITY Act, a major law that would finally enshrine the fundamen... View Source

Sequoia Capital is planning a “big investment” in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the chatbot Claude, according to the Financial Times... View Source

The protostar is launching the longest outburst ever seen at 32 light-years long... View Source

Chinese solar giant Longi Green Energy Technology Co. warned it may report another loss in calendar year 2025 as a prolonged downturn continues to weigh on the solar supply chain... View Source

First journey around moon with astronauts in more than 50 years could blast off in FebruaryNasa’s giant new moon rocket has moved to the launch pad in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.The trip could blast off in February. Continue reading... View Source

Newly appointed Cambridge professor says feat would accelerate scientific knowledge by an order of magnitudeDark, hungry and inescapable: black holes are often portrayed as the ultimate cosmic villains.But now astronomers are preparing to capture a movie of a supermassive black hole in action for the first time, in observations that could help reveal another side to these elusive – and perhaps mis... View Source

Nearly a year after DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough rattled global markets, China is entering 2026 with a fresh wave of technological advances that are powering a stock rally, even as its economy remains fragile... View Source

Six years after the announcement of plans to build Atari Hotels in eight cities across the US, including Las Vegas, only one now seems to be moving forward, in Phoenix, Arizona. The Las Vegas deal ultimately "didn't come to fruition," spokesperson Sara Collins told Las Vegas Sun this week, and Atari Hotels is putting its focus into the Phoenix site "for the time being."Pho... View Source

Amazon is reportedly adding Teresa Palmer (The Fall Guy, Warm Bodies, Hacksaw Ridge) to its pantheon of Norse gods for its God of War TV show adaptation. As first reported by Deadline, Palmer will play Sif, Thor's wife and eventual leader of the Aesir, in the live-action adaptation. It may not carry as much weight as the casting of the video game's protagonist that was revealed earlier t... View Source

Musk Lawsuit seeks to block full for-profit conversion and potentially disrupt Microsoft ties. Evidence shows intent to breach early agreements. Even if OpenAI wins the 2026 trial, discovery exposes emails/intents/depositions → creates investor uncertainty and could delay fundraising and slow them in the AI race. AI Model Breakthroughs (Grok-4.2, GPT-5.2, etc.)Models like xAI’s Grok-4.2 and... View Source

In another attempt to reduce our attention spans to mush, TikTok has released the PineDrama app, which offers serialized drama series that are roughly a minute per episode. As first spotted by Business Insider, the app is designed exactly like TikTok, but instead of trendy dance videos, you can scroll through and watch "micro dramas." For those new to the category, micro dramas are bite-sized TV s... View Source

Interview with Sulaiman Ghori, Member of Technical Staff at xAI. XAI will emulate millions of humans via the distributed Tesla chips. HW4 good enough AI and XAI are hardware constrained and the biggest edge for XAI is speed of hardware deployment. Predicting future bottlenecks Elon excels at forecasting bottlenecks months and years ahead and working ... Read more... View Source

"Share a Disney quote that sums up how you're feeling right now!" That's what Disney posted on Threads the other day, and people immediately replied with lines from Star Wars, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and even Mary Poppins. The throughline between all the quotes: they were pretty pointedly anti-fascist and clearly aimed at the current administration. Apparently, Disney either couldn't handle t... View Source

Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoverie... View Source

Setapp Mobile seemed like one of the many alternative app markets with promise that launched in the wake of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). While the law may have forced Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices, it couldn't make users actually embrace them. MacPaw, the Ukrainian developer behind the subscription-based Setapp, posted on a support page that it would be sunsetting the... View Source

We now have some idea of what's at stake in the longstanding feud between Elon Musk and OpenAI. As first reported by Bloomberg, the latest filing, as part of a lawsuit that accuses the AI giant of abandoning its non-profit status, claims that Musk is owed anywhere between $79 billion and $134 billion in damages from the "wrongful gains" of OpenAI and Microsoft. Musk claimed in the f... View Source

The rocket that will launch the Artemis 2 astronauts around the moon is rolling to the pad for its historic mission, which could lift off just a few weeks from now... View Source

Small footprint. Speedy performance. | Image: The Verge Happy Saturday, folks! This week, Best Buy kicked off its so-called “Winter Sale,” introducing a whole host of price cuts that range from not-so-good to legitimately great, at least for this time of year. We’ll be publishing many of the highlights in a dedicated news post tomorrow, though, per usual, not all of this week’s best deals revolve... View Source

While Hollywood has repeatedly tried adapting stories from Japanese manga, vanishingly few of them have been as good as Edge of Tomorrow - Warner Bros.' 2014 live-action film based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's sci-fi light novel All You Need Is Kill. Edge of Tomorrow wasn't a one-to-one translation of All You Need Is Kill's original story or its manga adaptation by Takeshi Obata, Ryosuke Takeuchi, and... View Source

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, days after his office launched an official investigation into the company over reports that Grok was generating nonconsensual If you’ll recall, xAI and Grok have been under fire for taking images of real individuals and putting them in revealing clothing like bikinis upon random users’ requests. Bonta’s office demands... View Source

While playing Big Hops, a new 3D platformer starring an adorable frog, I kept feeling like I was breaking the game - and, like with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, breaking it is kind of the point. In Big Hops, you play as a frog named Hop. Early on, Hop is taken away from his home, and he works to get back by collecting airship parts from a few different areas, each with its own cute a... View Source

AirPods work most smoothly with Apple hardware, but they also connect reliably to Android phones, Windows laptops and other Bluetooth devices. The pairing process depends on the platform in use although the basics remain the same. Once the AirPods are placed in pairing mode, most devices detect them quickly and handle the remaining steps in the background. The guide below explains how to pair AirP... View Source

Test your space smarts with our weekly crossword challenge, crafted from Space.com's biggest headlines... View Source

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would "create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans - not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution." While the feds besieged hospitals and school bus stops and Targets, Wal... View Source

On Episode 193 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with NASA Chief Historian Dr. Roger Launius about the space agency's past... View Source

During a chaotic multiday event, I found myself working anywhere. And always in a rush. At CES, I did what you're not supposed to do: I brought a pre-production laptop to use as my primary workhorse during a hectic event. The unproven rifle in question is the new Arm-based Asus Zenbook A16. It's a 16-inch laptop that weighs less than a 13-inch MacBook Air and comes with a high-end Snapdragon X2 pr... View Source

Tesla Inc. is almost finished with the design of the AI5 chip for its full self-driving system, and is in the early stages of developing the next version, AI6, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a post on X... View Source

I came out of my CyberGhost review with a positive opinion, feeling it had earned its spot in my best VPN roundup. However, even an expert review is subjective, and there's a chance CyberGhost will not work for you. If that’s the case, here's how to cancel your subscription.How to stop your CyberGhost subscription renewingCancelling your CyberGhost subscription won't end it right aw... View Source

The first solar eclipse of the year will take place on Feb. 17, 2026... View Source

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 112, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, I hope your home is warmer than mine right now, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about WhatsApp and Gavin Newsom and David Ellison and Andreessen Horowitz, obsessively waiting for every new episode of T... View Source

Welcome to our latest roundup of what's going on in the indie game space. Several neat-looking games arrived this week, we got release dates for several others that I'm really looking forward to and a brand-new Steam festival was announced. The Love, Romance, and Heartbreak Debutante Ball is said to be the first Valentine's Day-themed Steam festival. It'll run from Februar... View Source

Saturday, Jan. 17, 2026: See our latest news and updates on NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket rollout to the launch pad... View Source

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “several thousand people” died in this month’s anti-government demonstrations, his first acknowledgment of the deadly scale of the unrest... View Source

NASA will roll out a costly rocket to the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, a milestone in a lunar space race between the US and China... View Source

Micron Technology Inc. has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. for $1.8 billion to expand its memory chip production... View Source

Twisting the PlayCube angles the image without a tripod. The best all-in-one portable projector is the one that makes all the right compromises. It needs to balance image and sound quality with battery life and responsiveness in a device that's not too expensive and small enough to take anywhere. TCL's fun little PlayCube delivers the right mix to justify paying $800 for a 1080p projector in 2026... View Source

Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journeyNasa is preparing to roll out its most powerful rocket yet before a mission to send astronauts around the moon and back again for the first time in more than 50 years.The Artemis II mission is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida as early as 6 February, taking its crew on a 685,000-mile r... View Source

Elon Musk wants OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft to pay him damages in the range of $79 billion to $134 billion over his claims that the generative AI company defrauded him by abandoning its nonprofit roots and partnering with the software giant... View Source

India will revive tax proceedings against Tiger Global Management after a top court ruling related to the firm’s 2018 sale of its stake in online retailer Flipkart... View Source

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said South Korean memory chipmakers and Taiwanese companies that aren’t investing in the US may face up to 100% tariffs unless they commit to increased production on American soil, as the Trump administration ramps up calls for additional foreign investment... View Source

European stocks posted their fifth straight weekly advance as investors remained confident about artificial intelligence demand. Novo Nordisk A/S jumped 6.5% after the UK regulator approved a higher dose of its obesity drug... View Source

German online fashion platform Zalando SE is preparing to announce its first deal with an American client soon, marking a break into the US market with the company’s business-to-business offerings... View Source

OpenAI will start testing advertisements in the ChatGPT app for certain US users, marking a major shift for the company as it seeks to bolster revenue from the popular chatbot... View Source

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson spoke to Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow. He made clear that acquihires will not be allowed as cover to evade antitrust scrutiny. Ferguson said the FTC will look beyond headcount to factors like access to technology, IP, and stock-based consideration when evaluating whether talent deals function as de facto mergers. (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

Jupiter harbors more oxygen than the sun, a new study finds, giving astronomers a crucial clue about how our solar system's planets formed... View Source

President Donald Trump's call for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates sent shares of financial firms tumbling as major banks released their earnings. Ximena Aleman, co-CEO and co-founder of Prometeo, discusses the impact of new tech on the financial industry and AI in banking with Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source

From Orion's glowing nebula to the sparkling Pleiades, these winter targets reward anyone willing to brave the cold... View Source

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is in talks with Radiate, a broadband operator backed by Stonepeak Partners, to set up a joint venture that would hold the companies’ fiber assets, as demand for high-speed connectivity soars amid the surge in AI and other data-intensive applications... View Source

NASA will roll its Artemis 2 moon rocket out to the launch pad on Saturday (Jan. 17), and you can watch the slow-moving action live... View Source

AIX Ventures — a venture capital firm that has backed artificial intelligence startups including Perplexity, Windsurf and Ideogram — saw co-founder Shaun Johnson exit the firm last month... View Source

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 crew returns to Ellington Field’s Guppy Hangar in Houston on Jan. 16, 2026, from left to right is Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, and Zena Cardman, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimya Yui.NASA After 167 days in space, the crew members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission will hold a news conference at 2:15 p.m. EST, Wednes... View Source

US secretary of state Marco Rubio is expected to prepare a proposal to buy Greenland for $700 billion, NBC reports. January 14, 2026 Meeting, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenland’s Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt at the White House. No deal was ... Read more... View Source

The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-11 mission made it to Houston today (Jan. 16), just a day after their unprecedented medical evacuation from the International Space Station... View Source

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is appealing a landmark antitrust decision that the company illegally monopolized online search and search advertising, an expected move that will likely delay the implementation of changes to the company’s business... View Source

GE and Lockheed ground tested a new air-breathing hypersonic jet engine capable of powering missiles to speeds well in excess of Mach 5 in a smaller, cheaper, lighter, and more efficient package than the most advanced scramjets in testing today. It is a rotating detonating engine. They did ground tests of a liquid-fueled rotating detonation ... Read more... View Source

Friday, Jan. 16, 2026: See our latest news and updates on NASA's Artemis 2 moon rocket rollout to the launch pad... View Source

Google is appealing a federal court's decision ruling it an illegal online search monopolist. The company filed a notice to appeal on Friday, requesting a pause on the court-ordered remedies meant to restore competition to the online search market. "As we have long said, the Court's August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they're forced to,"... View Source

PJM Interconnection LLC, operator of the largest US power grid, unveiled a proposal to take backstop measures to help support reliability... View Source

Credit: NASA For the 15th consecutive year, NASA received an unmodified, or “clean,” opinion from an external auditor on its fiscal year 2025 financial statements. The rating is the best possible audit opinion, certifying that NASA’s financial statements conform with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for federal agencies and accurately present the agency’s financial position. “NASA has deli... View Source

Congress just approved a $24.4 billion budget for NASA for this year, rejecting the deep cuts that President Trump had proposed last spring... View Source

Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow discusses the plan laid out by the Trump administration and several states to have tech companies pay for surging energy prices following the rise of AI data centers. Plus, AI coding startup Replit nears a $9 billion valuation in a new funding round. And the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, Andrew Ferguson discusses acquihires, consumer protection and AI regulation... View Source

Google has filed its appeal to the Department of Justice’s antitrust case that ended with a federal judge ruling that the company was maintaining a monopoly with its search business. While the company goes through the appeals process, it’s also asking that implementation of the remedies from the case, which include a requirement that Google share search data with its competitors, also be paused.“A... View Source

Auroras may be visible from Alaska to New York tonight as an incoming stream of speedy solar wind sets the stage for some potentially dazzling northern lights... View Source

ChatGPT will soon start showing you sponsored products or services if they're related to your conversation. In an announcement on Friday, OpenAI says it will start testing ads in the coming weeks for logged-in users in the US who use the app for free or have a ChatGPT Go subscription. The "clearly labeled" ads will surface in a separate area at the bottom of your chat. OpenAI says it will "keep yo... View Source

Niko Bonatsos and Michael Fertik are raising cash for a new firm called Verdict Capital... View Source

You know things are messed up when a Big Tech company fights accusations of union-busting by insisting it was only AI layoffs. That's where things stand after a group of fired TikTok moderators in the UK filed a legal claim with an employment tribunal. The Guardian reported on Friday that around 400 TikTok content moderators who were unionizing were laid off before Christmas.The workers were... View Source

The crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission: NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.Credit: NASA NASA is weeks away from sending astronauts farther than any crew has traveled before, with the agency’s second mission in its Artemis campaign. The Artemis II Press Kit now is available with information on the mission, astronauts,... View Source

Tiny delays in pulsar signals measured by SETI scientists could aid the search for gravitational waves and extraterrestrial life... View Source

OpenAI is expanding a low-cost subscription tier called ChatGPT Go to the US and the rest of the world. Go was released in India in August and later became available in another 170 countries prior to Friday's global release. "In markets where Go has been available, we've seen strong adoption and regular everyday use for tasks like writing, learning, image creation, and problem-solving," the compan... View Source

Analyst Mike Mayo pressed State Street management to spell out its strategy... View Source

OpenAI plans to start testing ads inside of ChatGPT "in the coming weeks." In a blog post published Friday, the company said adult users in the US of its free and Go tiers (more on the latter in a moment) would start seeing sponsored products and services appear below their conversations with its chatbot. "Ads will be clearly labeled and separated from the organic answer," Open... View Source

NASA hopes to launch its crewed Artemis 2 moon mission in early February, but everything will have to go right to hit that ambitious target... View Source

An Amazon Web Services data center in Ashburn, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they're "urging" PJM to hold an "emergency" auction for com... View Source

The humanoid robotics market is on track to reach $200 billion by 2035, according to a report from Barclays. Zornitsa Todorova, team director for Thematic FICC Research at Barclays, discusses with Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)... View Source