Author: News Room

My dad has owned a small business for as long as I can remember, and for just as long, he’s kept his books the old-fashioned way. Every sale gets written down by hand so he can file his taxes later. The problem is that his accountant needs this data in Excel, and my dad, who didn’t grow up around computers, has never learned how to use it. For years, his workaround was paying someone to manually type his handwritten entries into a spreadsheet. It worked, but it was adding additional cost to his business, which he wanted to avoid, but…

Most planetarium shows ask you to sit still and look up. The Smithsonian’s new VR exhibit takes a different approach, letting visitors walk through the vast expanse of the universe, drifting past stars, planets, and a black hole to get a physical sense of its true scale. A $29 ticket to the edge of the galaxy Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience is a 40-minute virtual reality tour that opened in Washington, D.C. in May, according to Ars Technica. Tickets run from $29 to $35 for solo visitors, with group rates as low as $18 a head, all discounted 15% right…

When the generative AI boom sparked into life in late 2022, business executives and team leaders from across the world were captivated by its potential. Many business leaders quickly recognized the potential of the new technology and began looking for ways to apply it.  What followed was a massive hiring spree: Companies were searching high and low for people with AI knowhow, and because it was an immature corner of tech, even people without advanced skills soon found themselves inundated with job offers. Even if a candidate only had a command of basic prompt engineering, or half an idea of how to…

Cybersecurity researchers say they have documented what could be the first ransomware attack carried out almost entirely by an autonomous AI agent, marking a significant shift in how cyberattacks could be conducted in the future. According to cloud security firm Sysdig, they have uncovered a ransomware operation dubbed JadePuffer that appears to have relied on a large language model (LLM) agent to perform nearly every stage of the attack without continuous human intervention. If confirmed, the incident suggests AI is moving beyond writing malicious code and into actively planning, adapting, and executing cyberattacks in real time. JadePuffer adapted to obstacles…

The United States has sealed a massive time capsule to mark its 250th anniversary, and among the dozens of artifacts chosen to represent modern America is one item almost everyone today would recognize: an iPhone 17 Pro Max. The stainless steel capsule, weighing roughly 900 pounds (about 400kg), was buried in Philadelphia as part of the country’s semiquincentennial celebrations. It is scheduled to remain sealed for the next 250 years, with plans to open it in 2276 during America’s 500th anniversary celebrations. While the capsule contains historic relics, cultural artifacts, and state contributions, the inclusion of Apple’s latest flagship smartphone…

AI-powered game development has recently been blamed for flooding app stores with low-effort mobile games, but every now and then, the technology produces a far more interesting result. Google lead product and design executive Ammar Reshi says he used Fable 5 to port Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour to the iPhone and iPad. This is not an emulator or a cloud-streamed version. According to Reshi’s GitHub page, the actual 2003 game engine has been compiled natively for ARM64 and runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The project uses EA’s GPL source release and builds on existing community work, while…

One of the biggest arguments against buying an electric vehicle has long been battery longevity. Critics have questioned whether expensive battery packs would survive beyond a few years or require costly replacements before the rest of the car wore out. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, real-world data is beginning to tell a very different story. Modern EV batteries are proving significantly more durable than expected, with many vehicles retaining most of their original range even after hundreds of thousands of miles. The findings could reshape consumer confidence as the industry continues pushing electric vehicles into the…

The AI industry’s soaring electricity demand has already become a growing concern for governments, utilities, and technology companies. But a new study suggests the next generation of artificial intelligence could make that problem significantly worse. Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have published what they describe as the first comprehensive analysis of the energy cost of AI agents – AI systems capable of reasoning, planning, and completing tasks autonomously. Their findings show that these systems can consume up to 136.5 times as much energy per query as conventional generative AI models, raising fresh questions about…

Fifty years ago, when floppy disks were cutting-edge and the personal computer revolution had barely begun, The Washington Post attempted a remarkably ambitious exercise: predict what life in 2026 would look like. Some of those predictions now read like science fiction. Others feel surprisingly ordinary because they have become part of everyday life. In a retrospective published for America’s 250th anniversary, the newspaper revisited science editor Thomas O’Toole’s 1976 article Inventing the Future, comparing its forecasts with today’s technological reality. The results reveal that while predicting exact timelines is nearly impossible, identifying long-term scientific trends can be remarkably accurate. Fifty…

I’m an avid YouTube Shorts viewer. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not proud of it. But the doomscrolling habit has firmly taken hold, and at this point, I’m not sure there’s any way out. That said, spending this much time on Shorts has also made me notice the little things that get in the way. I’ve never liked the dislike button or the bottom bar constantly popping up while I’m trying to watch videos. It’s an annoyance that adds up when you’re endlessly scrolling. Thankfully, that’s changed — and for the better. YouTube has introduced a couple of new…