Do trees really explode in extreme cold? The answer involves frozen sap, the polar vortex, and a lot of internet exaggeration. Heavy snow fall, not explosions, are far more threatening to trees and yourself. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The majority of the United States is bracing itself for a potentially historic polar vortex winter storm this weekend .

What We Know About the Winter Storm About to Hit the US--and What We Don't A huge portion of the United States is going to be hit with snow or freezing rain this weekend. Exactly where, what, and how much remains uncertain. Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow . At the time, Sublette says, "a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina's Tennessee Valley." Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning.

WIRED analyzed more than 5,000 papers from NeurIPS using OpenAI's Codex to understand the areas where the US and China actually work together on AI research. The US and China are, by many measures, archrivals in the field of artificial intelligence, with companies racing to outdo each other on algorithms, models, and specialized silicon . And yet, the world's AI superpowers still collaborate to a surprising degree when it comes to cutting-edge research. A WIRED analysis of more than 5,000 AI research papers presented last month at the industry's premier conference, Neural Information Processing Systems ( NeurIPS), reveals a significant amount of collaboration between US and Chinese labs. The analysis found that 141 out of the 5,290 total papers (roughly 3 percent) involve collaboration between authors affiliated with US institutions and those affiliated with Chinese ones.

Bungie's Marathon arrives on March 5 How to claim Verizon's $20 outage credit The agentic Health AI will be integrated into the primary care provider's app. Dubbed'Health AI,' Amazon says the tool provides 24/7 personalized health guidance based on your medical records. The company says Health AI can explain lab results, help manage medications, and book appointments for patients. Amazon also says it can analyze images but doesn't specify whether this means medical imaging or user uploaded photos. While the company specifically says the tool complements, but does not replace, a patient's healthcare provider, it also vaguely says the AI can answer general and complex health questions while considering your unique health history.

A new EPIC report says data brokers, ad-tech surveillance, and ICE enforcement are among the factors leading to a "health privacy crisis" that is eroding trust and deterring people from seeking care. When immigration agents enter hospitals and private companies are allowed to buy and sell data that reveals who seeks medical care, patients retreat, treatment is delayed, and health outcomes worsen, according to a new report that describes a growing "health privacy crisis" in the United States driven by surveillance and weak law enforcement limits. The report, published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), attributes the problem to outdated privacy laws and rapidly expanding digital systems that allow health-related information to be tracked, analyzed, breached, and accessed by both private companies and government agencies. EPIC, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on privacy and civil liberties, based its findings on a review of federal and state laws, court rulings, agency policies, technical research, and documented case studies examining how health data is collected, shared, and used across government and commercial systems. "Unregulated digital technologies, mass surveillance, and weak privacy laws have created a health privacy crisis," the report says.

Let's nitpick about the physics of Stranger Things, not its ending Feedback has seen all the fuss about the finale of Stranger Things, but would like to point out that if we're going to dissect the plot, we have bigger things to worry about In common, it seems, with a substantial fraction of the human species, Feedback spent part of our holiday watching the final episodes of Stranger Things . We laughed, we cried, we wondered if it would have even more endings than The Return of the King (it did). As is almost inevitable these days, a group of fans vocally disliked the finale, and went so far as to create a conspiracy theory about it. According to "Conformity Gate" (don't blame us, we didn't name it), the finale wasn't the real finale - despite lasting more than 2 hours, costing an enormous amount of money and being shown in cinemas. No, a super-secret final episode was going to air in January, which would reveal the true ending.

How much is US support for Israel costing Trump? What is a Palestinian without olives? Why are Gaza's homes collapsing in winter? 'The end of the world as we know it': Is the rules-based order finished? Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud at the World Economic Forum: what many call the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had collapsed already.

PCWorld reports that Adobe has introduced an AI-powered Object Mask tool for Premiere Pro that automatically creates masks and tracks moving objects in seconds. The update significantly boosts performance with existing mask tools now tracking objects up to 20 times faster than before. After Effects receives new features including SVG file import and parametric 3D mesh objects, with all AI processing handled locally for user privacy. Adobe has unveiled several new AI-powered features for its Premiere Pro and After Effects video editing and effects software, Engadget reports. Premiere Pro introduces a new AI-powered Object Mask tool that makes it possible to quickly select and track people or objects in moving footage.

Chinese mobile app addresses loneliness crisis as more people live alone. Are You Dead app tops China's paid app charts and ranks sixth in U.S. App Store.

Bungie's Marathon arrives on March 5 How to claim Verizon's $20 outage credit With big power and big range, Volvo's next-gen EV efforts are off to a good start. Volvo hasn't exactly had a great run of EVs lately. The rollout of its flagship EX90 was stymied out of the gate by a bevy of software glitches. The EX30, meanwhile, was too expensive when it launched -- the promised $35,000 model was incompatible with the currently chaotic global tariff situation. Now, it's time for a new generation of EV from Volvo, one that's radically different at its core with a gigacast frame, a much higher-density battery and enough digital and literal horsepower to impress the most jaded of automotive enthusiasts.