Diabetes patients could monitor glucose with lightwaves. Future versions of the noninvasive prototype may be as small as a watch. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. A new, noninvasive blood-glucose monitoring system may allow people with diabetes to finally ditch their painful finger pricks and under the skin sensors. Although the current iteration is comparatively bulky, MIT scientists writing in the journal say they are well on their way to scaling down their invention.

The Chinese video game giant Tencent is now building some of the world's best 3D AI models. This could have implications far outside game design. The video game Valorant, a fast-paced team-based shooter, has recently become a testing ground for a promising new direction in artificial intelligence research. The game's developers at Riot Games (a Tencent subsidiary) are using 3D-native AI models to prototype new characters, scenes, and storylines, according to a researcher familiar with the company's efforts who spoke on the condition of anonymity. While many AI models can generate text, images, and video, Tencent's Hunyuan (混元 or "first mix") family of models can dream up 3D objects and interactive scenes.

It's still not aliens, but the interstellar comet keeps getting weirder. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. As comet 3I/ATLAS continues its exciting journey through our solar system, scientists are still learning everything they can about this special space rock. It is only the second interstellar object ever tracked through our solar system and is among the fastest comets ever observed. As the 3I/ATLAS nears its closest distance to Earth, an international team of astronomers now says the space rock may be covered in active, icy cryovolcanoes.

Large language models often lie and cheat. We can't stop that--but we can make them own up. OpenAI is testing another new way to expose the complicated processes at work inside large language models. Researchers at the company can make an LLM produce what they call a confession, in which the model explains how it carried out a task and (most of the time) owns up to any bad behavior. Figuring out why large language models do what they do--and in particular why they sometimes appear to lie, cheat, and deceive--is one of the hottest topics in AI right now. If this multitrillion-dollar technology is to be deployed as widely as its makers hope it will be, it must be made more trustworthy.

Feedback is entertained by the commotion at the International Association for Cryptologic Research's recent elections, where results could not be decrypted after an honest but unfortunate human mistake The phrase "you couldn't make it up", Feedback feels, is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean there are limits to the imagination, but rather that there are some developments you can't include in a fictional story because people would say "oh come on, that would never happen". The trouble is, those people are wrong, because real life is frequently ridiculous. In the world of codes and ciphers, one of the more important organisations is the International Association for Cryptologic Research, described as " a non-profit organization devoted to supporting the promotion of the science of cryptology ". The IACR recently held elections to choose new officers and directors and to tweak its bylaws.

From Mickey 17 and M3gan 2.0 to a musical about the end of the world, this was an eclectic year for science-fiction films. Some ideas are so compelling, so intuitive, one would sooner recycle them than take them apart to explore. So, in 1950, Isaac Asimov fixed up some puzzle stories into a fiendish, Agatha Christie-in-space sci-fi novel, I, Robot, while in 1968, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey set a high bar for films about (or at least containing) artificial intelligence. There, ideas-wise, the story of robots in cinema pretty much starts to repeat on an endless loop. This year, The Electric State spun a yarn about a robot rebellion, M3gan 2.0 showed you can't keep a good killerbot down and Companion took the femmebot's point of view to give us a decent adult-themed Asimov pastiche. All three toyed with the usual notions around free will and indulged in handwringing about when to treat a machine like a person.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The Wikimedia Foundation revealed the most popular Wikipedia pages of 2025. American politics topped the list. Yesterday, the Wikimedia Foundation revealed the most read Wikipedia articles of 2025 . American politics dominated the top of the list, with the late political activist Charlie Kirk taking the top (#1) spot.

Holiday travelers face increased scammer attacks using leaked personal data from airlines and hotels to send fake flight cancellations and payment requests.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. The Google Home app won't let you "Call Home" anymore Google appears to have nixed a feature that allowed users to "call home" to their Google smart speakers and displays from their smartphones. They say you can't go home again, and for the moment, it appears you can't call home to your Google displays or speakers anymore either. Google Home users on Reddit have been noticing that the "Call Home" button in the Google Home app, which lets you directly call your Google Nest Hub smart displays or Nest speakers from a smartphone, seems to have vanished . I don't see the Call Home button on the Google Home app either, and the sleuths at 9to5Google confirm that after "digging through the Home app, 'Call Home' has completely disappeared."

Environment Animals Pets Dogs Pet dogs can help teens' mental health Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. It's old news that having a dog provides a lot of benefits. Playing with a pooch can help our brains concentrate and relax, a family dog can help prevent food allergies in children, and even fulfill our primal need to nurture. They also may have some sway over some of the tiniest organisms around--the microbes that live in our bodies. A study published December 3 in the journal found that the family dog prompts changes in our gut microbiome that result in better mental health.