Plus: Meta is pausing an AI training program that tracks workers' keystrokes. It's a bit of a schlep to get to the top of ASML's newest machine. It's about the size of a double-decker bus, weighs more than 150 tons, and costs $400 million. But if you want to make the world's most powerful chips, a lithography system like this is essential. The AI era needs ever faster chips, and ASML's machines make that possible. They pattern chip features with extreme-ultraviolet light, or EUV--radiation outside the visible spectrum, produced by shooting lasers at tiny molten drops of tin tens of thousands of times a second.

Plus: Amazon workers who backed data center limits face potential termination. A startup claims it broke through a bottleneck that's holding back LLMs AI startup Subquadratic came out of stealth last month with a huge claim: it had solved a mathematical bottleneck that had held back large language models for almost a decade. The purported breakthrough comes from slashing the number of computations transformers need to carry out to generate answers. The result is a faster and cheaper LLM that uses far less energy than any other model on the market. Many experts remained skeptical--but Subquadratic has started to share the receipts. They suggest that their approach might be worth paying attention to.

Plus: The Pentagon says it used Grok in strikes on Iran. For decades, physicists have hunted for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a leading candidate for dark matter. But their search has run into a new problem: neutrinos. These tiny particles from the sun and other stars can create a "neutrino fog" that drowns out any signal of dark matter. Hitting the neutrino fog does not, however, mean an end to the search. Researchers just have to shift the focus of their hunt.

Plus: SpaceX is now valued higher than Amazon. Solar geoengineering, the controversial idea that we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming, is moving beyond computer simulations and into the practical engineering challenges required to make it real. Researchers are now working on aircraft, materials, and other systems for solar geoengineering. But as they delve into these details, they're finding that even early deployment would require significant new infrastructure, time, and investment. Find out what happens when solar geoengineering encounters the realities of trying to cool the planet . Scientists have a word for how we sense ourselves from the inside: interoception.

The Download: the first brain implant power user and South Korea's AI obsession Plus: The US says it restricted Anthropic AI over foreign intelligence risks. This man with ALS is the first "power user" of a brain implant that lets him speak Casey Harrell has had a set of electrodes embedded in his brain for almost three years. Harrell, who has ALS and is paralyzed, first used his brain-computer interface (BCI) to "speak" in 2023. Since then, he's clocked thousands of hours of use. Harrell can now use the device largely independently. His team has added new features to it, and he also uses it to surf the web and perform his job.

Plus: Anthropic has shut down access to its top models after a US directive. That's good for our health, but bad for the planet: it already accounts for 7% of global electricity use and 3% of greenhouse-gas emissions. Feeling the heat, scientists and startups are hoping to amp up solid-state cooling. These systems move heat through conductive materials, which could cool spaces and surfaces with fewer messy side effects. The catch is whether it can match the efficiency of traditional AC. Find out how the unconventional coolers aim to dial down AC emissions .

Plus: Autonomous drones may have killed soldiers for the first time. Imagine tuning in to the opening kickoff of a World Cup match and seeing a player intentionally kick the ball out of bounds. You may question the logic of surrendering possession seconds into a game. If you were Jesse Davis, though, you'd know that this play could be a prime setup to score. Davis is a professor of computer science at KU Leuven in Belgium and head of its Sports Analytics Lab, which has been at the vanguard of a data awakening in soccer. Using AI and data analytics, his team has uncovered hidden tactical patterns and challenged long-held assumptions about how the game should be played.

Plus: Anthropic has released a safe version of Mythos. The "steroid olympics" were a circus--and a window into our culture A couple of weeks ago, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in Las Vegas, I witnessed a libertarian thought experiment come to life. The inaugural Enhanced Games were the first sporting competition where participants were encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. For supporters of the event, the Enhanced Games offered a glimpse of a future in which medical advances push the human race to new heights--and they never have to get old. As I watched the games unfold, two questions bounced around my head: were they right? And what does that mean for the rest of us?

Plus: OpenAI has confidentially filed for a US IPO. The outspoken longevity scientist David Sinclair has predicted that, one day, you'll go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make you 10 years younger. MIT Technology Review has learned of his latest step toward this: human tests of a "reprogramming" drug. Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, plans to launch the tests in a $101 million competition organized by the XPrize Foundation. The winners will "restore" a person to an earlier apparent age, as measured by improvements in immune, cognitive, and muscle function. The grand prize goes to any team able to show a 10-year (or greater) relative improvement after one year of treatment.

The Download: how the World Cup ball will fly and OpenAI's "super app" Plus: OpenAI plans to turn ChatGPT into a'super app' before its IPO. Why this year's World Cup ball may not fly as far Much is new about this month's FIFA World Cup tournament. It hosts more teams than ever before. It's the first to occur in three different host countries. And, like every World Cup for over half a century, it will employ a football with a brand-new design. Through wind-tunnel experiments, researchers found that long-distance kicks with Adidas's new Trionda ball might not travel as far as they did in the past.