In 2005, cell phones were banned for the first time during the conclave, the process by which the Catholic Church elects its new pope. Twenty years later, after the death of Pope Francis, the election process is underway again. Authorities have two priorities: to protect the integrity of those attending the meeting, and to ensure that it proceeds in strict secrecy (under penalty of excommunication and imprisonment) until the final decision is made. By 2025, the Gendarmerie corps guarding Vatican City faces unprecedented technological challenges compared to other conclaves. Among them are artificial intelligence systems, drones, military satellites, microscopic microphones, a misinformation epidemic, and a world permanently connected and informed through social media.

Canada has seen a boom in political books created with generative artificial intelligence, adding to concerns about how new technologies are affecting the information voters receive during the election campaign. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was the subject of at least 16 books published in March and listed on Amazon, according to a review of the site on April 16. Five of those were published on a single day. In total, some 30 titles were published about Carney this year and made available on Amazon -- but most were taken down from the site after inquiries were made.

Overnight Russian drone attacks on east, south and central Ukraine damaged civilian infrastructure and businesses in the Poltava region and injured civilians in the Odesa region, Ukrainian officials said early on Wednesday. Odesa came under a "massive attack" by Russian drones overnight on Tuesday, wounding at least three people, the head of the regional administration, Oleh Kiper, wrote on his Telegram page. A residential building in a densely populated urban area of Odesa, civilian infrastructure and an educational facility were hit, he said. Air defence units repelled Russian air attacks on the Kyiv region and Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv, regional governors said in posts on Telegram channels. Russian forces said they have retaken St Nicholas Belogorsky monastery in the village of Gornal in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops had been based, Russia's TASS news agency quoted a security source as saying.

Google is under the microscope following a court ruling last year that it has a monopoly over online search, but the future of its vast suite of digital services is still uncertain at this stage. Last month, the Justice Department suggested that Google would need to sell off the Chrome browser; if the tech giant does make that move, there's already at least one interested buyer. Bloomberg reports that Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, spoke at a hearing today about the Google monopoly situation and was asked whether OpenAI would be interested in acquiring Chrome. "Yes, we would, as would many other parties," he said. Users can currently use the ChatGPT AI assistant in Chrome through a plugin, but Turley said there could be deeper integrations if OpenAI owned the browser.

Tesla brought in 20 percent less automotive revenue at the end of last year compared to the year previous, the company reported today, as demand for its electric cars appear to have dipped precipitously across the globe. The drop exceeded even some pessimistic Wall Street analysts' predictions. By late afternoon, before CEO Elon Musk and other company leaders appeared for a quarterly update call for investors, stock prices appeared relatively stable on the news. Overall, however, the electric automaker's stock price is down more than 40 percent from its late 2024 high. In a slide deck prepared for investors, Tesla pinned the drop on declines in deliveries, some which it said were related to the need to retool some of its production lines for modified versions of its best-selling electric cars.

Since filmmaker George Lucas introduced audiences to the ways of the Jedi with Star Wars (now titled A New Hope) in 1977, the chronicles of that galaxy far, far away have grown to 11 movies, nine animated shows, five TV series, and a slew of non-canon shows, miniseries, video games, books, and other media. Even if you just stick to the canon stuff, it can be overwhelming, especially if you're trying to figure out how to watch Star Wars in order. But before we dive in, we'll emphasize that there really isn't a "correct" viewing order. There are several ways to enjoy the Star Wars universe as you proceed along your Jedi journey, and you may even be able to create your own method. The prequel trilogy dropped in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the sequel trilogy hit theaters in the 2010s. Various standalone films were released intermittently throughout this timeline, offering fans opportunities to explore specific characters and events more deeply.

I think that communication about the wonderful things that are going on at MIT to the broader community is actually really important,

In the new design, each of the four units has a single flapping wing pointing away from the robot's center, stabilizing the wings and boosting their lift forces. The researchers also improved the way the wings are connected to the actuators, or artificial muscles, that flap them. In previous designs, when the actuators' movements reached the extremely high frequencies needed for flight, the devices often started buckling. That reduced the power and efficiency of the robot. Thanks in part to a new, longer wing hinge, the actuators now experience less mechanical strain and can apply more force, so the bots can fly faster, longer, and in more precise paths.

Reolink has become the first security camera manufacturer to obtain Works With Home Assistant certification for its Wi-Fi home security cameras. This means Reolink's cameras--not including its 4G models--can now process video feeds, AI alerts, and device controls entirely within users' home networks to enhance user privacy. Home Assistant is a free and open-source smart home software platform managed by the Open Home Foundation. It has been embraced by many DIY smart home enthusiasts, and it can run on lots of different hardware, ranging from Raspberry Pi and Arm processors to the 64-bit x86 architecture commonly found in Mini PCs. It can even operate as a virtual machine on a laptop or desktop running MacOS or Windows.

Special relativity could be harnessed to build a novel quantum computer, and creating it this way could let us use machine learning to deepen our understanding of the quantum realm. Microsoft has a new quantum computer – but does it actually work? Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity describes how moving at close to the speed of light would affect travellers' experience of space and time. These insights don't merely give us thought experiments; they are crucial for technologies such as…