Figuring out why AIs get flummoxed by some games
With its Alpha series of game-playing AIs, Google’s DeepMind group seemed to have found a way for its AIs to tackle any game, mastering games like chess and Go by…
Supply-chain attack using invisible code hits GitHub and other repositories
Researchers say theyâve discovered a supply-chain attack flooding repositories with malicious packages that contain invisible code, a technique thatâs flummoxing traditional defenses designed to detect such threats. The researchers, from…
âPokĂ©mon Goâ players have been unknowingly training delivery robots
Nearly a decade ago, PokĂ©mon Go turned the real world into a digital scavenger hunt, with virtual creatures hiding in plain sight. The early augmented reality smartphone app prompted hundreds…
Worldâs largest steam locomotive heads out on tour
The worldâs largest operating steam locomotive is hitting the roadâor tracks. Union Pacificâs Big Boy No. 4014 is heading out on its first coast-to-coast steam tour to celebrate the United…
Magnetars drag spacetime to power superluminous supernovae
Some of the most extreme explosions in the universe are Type I superluminous supernovae. âThey are one of the brightest explosions in the Universe,â says Joseph Farah, an astrophysicist at…
The who, what, and why of the attack that has shut down Stryker’s Windows network
Within hours of the US and Israel launching airstrikes on Iran two weeks ago, security professionals warned organizations around the world to be on heightened watch for destructive retaliatory hacks.…
Brothers build a robot to solve Rubikâs cubes in record-setting time
A pair of brothers in the U.K. have officially broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest time solving a four-by-four Rubikâs Cube with a robot. Their DIY machine, which…
Centuries before the Inca, Peru’s wealthy imported parrots from afar
Centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire, a much smaller kingdom on the central coast of Peru already had a sophisticated trade networkâone it used to import live parrots…
We study pandemics, and the resurgence of measles is a grim sign of whatâs coming
In the three decades between 1993 and 2024, measles in the US was relatively rareâa few hundred cases each year, at most. But suddenly, the disease has become so entrenched…
14,000 routers are infected by malware that’s highly resistant to takedowns
Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devicesâprimarily made by Asusâthat have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used…