Daniel Okafor
Minnesota Lab Builds a Synthetic Cell That Grows and Divides
A University of Minnesota team says its lab-built "SpudCell" can feed, grow and divide using only non-living parts, a milestone that comes with an asterisk: peer review hasn't happened yet.
Sun’s Strongest Flare in Weeks Could Push Aurora South Friday
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued a G2 geomagnetic storm watch for July 3 after the sun’s biggest flare of the week triggered radio blackouts across North America.
Sony Sets a 2028 End Date for New PlayStation Games on Disc
From January 2028, new PlayStation titles will ship digital-only. Games out before then keep their discs, but the retail box is on its way to becoming a keepsake.
Vera Rubin Observatory Starts Its 10-Year Sky Survey
The world's largest digital camera has begun a decade-long film of the southern sky, imaging it every few nights to catch whatever moves or flares.
Google's Nano Banana 2 Lite Makes AI Images in Four Seconds
Google's cheapest image model yet costs $0.034 per 1,000 pictures and, on the company's own benchmark, edges out its pricier sibling.
Earth May Hold Up to 20 Million Insect Species, Triple the Old Estimate
Genetic data from 1.6 million tropical insects and a wasp survey in Costa Rica suggest most of the planet's insect life has never been recorded.
WhatsApp Opens Username Reservations to Hide Phone Numbers
WhatsApp began letting its three billion users reserve a username on Monday, ahead of a feature that will allow messaging without sharing a phone number.
How NASA's Wind Tunnels and the ISS Shaped the World Cup Ball
Knuckling shots aren't luck. NASA's wind tunnels and space-station experiments explain how the four-panel Trionda ball swerves through this World Cup.
Google Caps Meta's Gemini Access as the AI Compute Crunch Bites
Even the company that builds the most AI infrastructure on Earth is rationing it. Google's cap on Meta's Gemini use shows where the real bottleneck sits.
Perseverance Finds Complex Organic Carbon in Martian Mudstone
The rover's laser found large carbon molecules sitting in ancient riverbed rock. What made them, biology or chemistry, is exactly what no one can yet say.
GTA 6 Will Cost $80, and the 'Physical' Copy Is Just a Box
Rockstar set Grand Theft Auto VI at $80 for the standard edition and $100 for the Ultimate, but the disc-free box is the more telling change.
China's LineShine Tops Supercomputer List, Built Without GPUs
China's all-CPU LineShine system topped the TOP500 at 2.198 exaflops, the country's first No. 1 since 2017, though it lagged on a benchmark closer to AI work.
SpaceX Flies Starfall, Its Secretive Orbital Cargo Capsule
A disc-shaped capsule built to bring cargo back from orbit could open a new business for SpaceX: making things in space and landing them on Earth.
Valve Opens Steam Machine Reservations at $1,049 Before June 30 Launch
Valve priced its Steam Machine from $1,049 to $1,428 and is selling it through a randomized reservation lottery designed to shut out scalpers. The list closes June 25.
NASA's Roman Space Telescope Reaches Florida for an August Launch
The next great observatory came in by barge, sealed in a case the team calls 'the Chariot,' and ahead of schedule.
China Hits MP Materials and USA Rare Earth With Export Controls
Beijing aimed its response to Washington's tech blacklist at the two companies the US has funded most to break China's grip on rare earth magnets.
Webb Finds Salt Clouds on the 'Pink Planet' GJ504b
A faint magenta world too dim for ground telescopes turned out to be hiding clouds of salt — and a lesson about how astronomers read alien skies.
Ubisoft Co-Founder Claude Guillemot Dies in French Plane Crash at 69
Claude Guillemot, who co-founded Ubisoft with his four brothers in 1986 and ran its Thrustmaster and Hercules hardware arm, has died in a small-plane crash in western France at 69.
Ubisoft co-founder Claude Guillemot dies in France plane crash
The Ubisoft co-founder and Guillemot Corporation chief died alongside a flight instructor when their twin-engine plane went down near La Baule.
Windows 11 26H2 Arrives This Fall as a 200KB Switch, Not an Overhaul
Microsoft confirmed Windows 11 26H2 will ship this fall as a roughly 200KB enablement package, the second straight year its annual update flips a switch rather than overhauls the platform.