Age Verification Is Reaching a Global Tipping Point. Is TikTok's Strategy a Good Compromise? TikTok's new age-detection tech seems like a better solution than automatically banning youth accounts. But experts say it still requires social platforms to surveil users more closely. Governments worldwide are moving to limit children's access to social media as lawmakers question whether platforms are capable of enforcing their own minimum age requirements.

The Math on AI Agents Doesn't Add Up A research paper suggests AI agents are mathematically doomed to fail. The big AI companies promised us that 2025 would be "the year of the AI agents." It turned out to be the year of AI agents, and kicking the can for that transformational moment to 2026 or maybe later. But what if the answer to the question "When will our lives be fully automated by generative AI robots that perform our tasks for us and basically run the world?" is, like that New Yorker cartoon, "How about never?" That was basically the message of a paper published without much fanfare some months ago, smack in the middle of the overhyped year of "agentic AI." Entitled " Hallucination Stations: On Some Basic Limitations of Transformer-Based Language Models," it purports to mathematically show that "LLMs are incapable of carrying out computational and agentic tasks beyond a certain complexity."

Dreading negative outcomes is six times more powerful than anticipating the positive ones. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Dread shapes our decision making and new research published in the journal explores why spinning those negative scenarios affects us more than the possible positive outcomes. The team from the University of Bath in England and the University of Waterloo in Canada analyzed data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The team looked at roughly 14,000 individuals between 1991 and 2024, tracking emotional responses to real-world economic choices including investing, changing jobs, or making health decisions.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that a boom in artificial intelligence infrastructure will power the "largest infrastructure buildout in human history."

PCWorld reports that Microsoft's latest Windows 11 preview update brings AI text generation and improvement tools to Notepad, similar to chatbot functionality. The update also expands Markdown support for easier formatting and adds AI-generated coloring book pages plus a smarter Fill tool to Paint. These AI features remain optional and can be disabled in settings, requiring a Microsoft account for users who choose to enable them. Microsoft has released a preview update for Windows 11 Insiders that adds AI features and easier formatting options to Notepad. The otherwise stripped-down text editor has also been given a new welcome screen that describes the app as "the essential text editor, enhanced."

Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Russia targets Ukraine's energy as trilateral talks loom As the presidents of Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare to hold their first trilateral meeting to end Russia's war in Ukraine this weekend, almost half of Ukraine is without electricity and heat in sub-zero temperatures, following repeated Russian drone strikes targeting energy infrastructure. The strikes appeared designed to break Ukrainian resistance at the negotiating table on territorial concessions to Russia - the one issue Ukraine and the US said remained unresolved at the end of talks in Davos, Switzerland, between Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump this week.

Malaysia was one of the first to ban Grok over the explicit deepfakes scandal earlier this month. After being one of the first countries in the world to block Elon Musk's Grok chatbot, Malaysia has now lifted its ban. Along with Indonesia, the country moved swiftly to temporarily to X's frequently controversial AI chatbot earlier this month, after multiple emerged of it being used to generate deepfake sexualized images of people, including women and children. At the time, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said the restrictions would remain in place until X Corp and parent xAI could prove they had enforced the necessary safeguards against misuse of the above nature. Malaysian authorities appear to be taking X at its word, after the MCMC released a confirming it was satisfied that Musk's company has implemented the required safety measures.

You may have social jetlag. When life gets in the way of your body's ideal sleep schedule, things get messy. Waking up early can be bad for you. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Hours before sunrise, society's earliest larks begin their day.

PCWorld examines how AI data centers are driving up RAM prices and reducing availability for laptop consumers, while manufacturers increasingly solder memory chips directly to motherboards. This trend forces users to pay higher upfront costs for desired RAM configurations since future upgrades become impossible, unlike traditional laptops with replaceable components. The combination of AI-driven demand and non-upgradeable designs creates lasting performance limitations for power users and higher costs for all consumers. By now, you've probably heard a thing or two about AI, specifically how AI data centers are hoarding massive amounts of RAM and taking it away from consumers. That surge in demand has rippled outward, affecting everything from environmental impact to rising RAM prices, and it's a real bummer if you're in the market for a laptop in 2026.

How to claim Verizon's $20 outage credit The new tool can ensure you're looking at a real video and not AI slop. A Ring camera mounted on the wall. Ring has launched a new tool that can tell you if a video clip captured by its camera has been altered or not. The company says that every video downloaded from Ring starting in December 2025 going forward will come with a digital security seal. "Think of it like the tamper-evident seal on a medicine bottle," it explained. Its new tool, called Ring Verify, can tell you if a video has been altered in any way.