mspohr shares a report: When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web in 1989, his vision was clear: it would used by everyone, filled with everything and, crucially, it would be free. Today, the British computer scientist’s creation is regularly used by 5.5 billion people — and bears little resemblance to the democratic force for humanity he intended. Since Berners-Lee’s disappointment...

An analysis of film and music release patterns has found that summer and late fall are the optimal windows for movie premieres, while the music industry has no clear “best” month — only a worst one, December, which the report’s author dubbed “Dump-cember.” For films, the calendar splits into distinct strategic zones. Summer months and holidays see elevated box office because audiences have more...

Early hominins in Europe were creating tools from raw materials hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens arrived there, two new studies indicate, pushing back the established time for such activity. From a report: The evidence includes a 500,000-year-old hammer made of elephant or mammoth bone, excavated in southern England, and 430,000-year-old wooden tools found in southern Greece —...

AlphaGenome is a leap forward in the ability to study the human blueprint. But the fine workings of our DNA are still largely a mystery.

UPS said today it plans to eliminate an additional 30,000 operational jobs this year as the shipping giant continues to wind down its partnership with Amazon — previously its largest customer — and push forward a broader turnaround strategy under CEO Carol Tome. CFO Brian Dykes said on an earnings call that the cuts will be accomplished through attrition and a voluntary separation program for...

A bug report filed on the Chromium Issue Tracker inadvertently exposed Google’s desktop Android interface for the first time, revealing a system codenamed “Aluminum OS” running on existing Chromebook hardware. The report, ostensibly about Chrome Incognito tabs, included screen captures from an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5 Chromebook running Android 16. The status bar has been redesigned for large...

An open-source AI agent originally called Clawdbot (now renamed Moltbot) is gaining cult popularity among developers for running locally, 24/7, and wiring itself into calendars, messages, and other personal workflows. The hype has gone so far that some users are buying Mac Minis just to host the agent full-time, even as its creator warns that’s unnecessary. Business Insider reports: Founded by...