MONDAY, 20 APRIL 2026, 13:22
The federal government directs more than $100 billion annually toward information technology, yet roughly 80% of that spending feeds the operation and maintenance of existing systems rather than building new ones. A July 2025 Government Accountability Office audit surfaced 11 critical federal legacy IT systems in urgent need of replacement, with some running on programming […]
Ahead of December’s release of Avengers: Doomsday, Disney has unveiled “Infinity Vision,” reports Kotaku, which they describe as “a new theater-going experience that will be certain to transform your pedestrian $15 night out into an exotic $43 one.” (Though those prices appear to be estimates…) Disney’s announcement calls it “a new certification for premium large format (PLF) theaters,” helping...
Meta is unquestionably winning the face-wearable war. Can you trust the company? Maybe not. But these are some of the nicest glasses I’ve ever worn.
Jeremy Hansen praised for speaking French in space after Air Canada chief’s linguistic snub exposed tensions and drew rebuke from PM
Few people foresaw humanity’s quest for the moon as accurately as the 19th-century French author Jules Verne, whose two works –From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon – anticipated many of the features of modern lunar exploration.
But Verne’s language had...
Our minds evolved to minimise unpredictability. But if we learn to live with doubt, a world of opportunities opens up
It can feel as though the world is tilting towards chaos: political shocks, economic instability, technological upheaval and a constant stream of bad news. Faced with so much uncertainty, many of us default to a sense of impending doom. But is that reaction hardwired – or can...
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Hisense’s midrange U7 TV gets some high-end upgrades, but the competition is only getting stiffer.
Swap out your creaky old box fan for a new model that lights up, mists, or even follows you around the room.
Our top Apple Watch recommendation fluctuates in price. If you’re in the market, now’s a good time to buy.
Whether you’re near or far, keep an eye on your fur baby with our favorite pet cameras.
All good? Busy day? Small talk is a social good with a bad reputation. We dread it, but it’s vital for human connection
Hi there, how’re you? How’s it going? You alright? All good?
As any Briton knows, none of these questions is an inquiry into your emotional state, the material conditions of your life or your opinion on anything. Respond positively – “all good so far, touch wood” is nice...
Back in the 1990s, floppy disks “had a mere capacity of 1.44MB,” remembers XDA Developers, “which would soon become absolutely tiny for the increasingly large pieces of software that would come about.”Floppy disks also felt quite fragile, and while we got “superfloppy” formats that were physically larger and had more capacity, those were pretty unwieldy as portable storage. Enter 1994, when a...
Breakthrough prize in Life Sciences awarded to team who developed Luxturna therapy, which helped a patient see their child’s face for the first time
A married couple who met over a dissected brain and went on to create the first approved gene therapy for blindness have been awarded one of the most lucrative prizes in science.
Molecular biologist Jean Bennett and ophthalmologist Albert Maguire...
As the zoo celebrates its 200th birthday, photographer David Levene captures the people keeping their (sometimes very dangerous) patients healthy and happy. Introduction: Patrick Barkham
• Some images may be upsetting to young audiences
How do you shift a sedated rhino? Can a dormouse be drugged? What happens to a lion with an unusually small ear canal? How does the world’s longest venomous...
Last May Duolingo’s stock peaked at $529.05. But while the learning app passed $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and 50 million daily active users, today its stock price has dropped more than 81%, to $100.51. And there’s been other changes, reports Entrepreneur:In April 2025, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn made headlines after writing a memo calling the company “AI-first.” In the memo, von Ahn announced...
After Artemis II’s astronauts returned to earth, “NASA has Artemis III in its sights,” reports the Associated Press:In a mission recently added to the docket for next year, Artemis III’s yet-to-be -named astronauts will practice docking their Orion capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to have their company’s lander...
Law enforcement rebuffs protesters at breeding and biomedical research farm amid attempt to remove dogs
A chaotic scene unfolded on Saturday at a beagle breeding and biomedical research facility in Wisconsin as about 1,000 animal rights activists seeking to breach the property were rebuffed with rubber bullets and pepper spray by law enforcement.
It was the latest attempt by protesters to take...
“A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor,” writes The Guardian:Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings....
Slashdot reader Bismillah shared this report from ITNews:Research and development engineer Romain Marchand of Paris headquartered Quarkslab obtained a telematic control unit (TCU) from a salvage yard in Poland… Marchand tore down the TCU, which is based on a Qualcomm system on a chip, and extracted the Linux-based file system from the Micron multi-chip package (MCP) which contained NAND-based...
“From 2008 to 2024, the number of four-year computer science degrees granted rose about fivefold…” reports the Washington Post. Then in 2025 CS suddenly dropped from the fourth-largest undergraduate major to sixth, they report (citing data from the nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which compiles numbers from 97% of U.S. universities. The 54,000-student drop was “the biggest one-year...
Yesterday the U.S. Congress approved “a short-term extension” of a FISA law that allows wiretaps without a warrant for surveilling foreign targets, reports CNN — but only until April 30. Republican congressional leaders had sought an 18-month extension, but “failed to secure” the votes after “clamoring from some of their members for reforms to protect Americans’ privacy.”The warrantless...
Wednesday BleepingComputer reported that more than 30 WordPress plugins “have been compromised with malicious code that allows unauthorized access to websites running them.”A malicious actor planted the backdoor code last year but only recently started pushing it to users via updates, generating spam pages and causing redirects, as per the instructions received from the command-and-control (C2)...