FRIDAY, 16 JANUARY 2026, 13:29
A major Verizon outage appeared to impact customers across the United States starting around noon ET on Wednesday. Calls to Verizon customers from other carriers may also be impacted.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese authorities have told domestic companies to stop using cybersecurity software made by roughly a dozen firms from the U.S. and Israel due to national security concerns, two people briefed on the matter said. As trade and diplomatic tensions flare between China and the U.S. and both sides vie for tech supremacy, Beijing has been keen to replace...
The movement of Bitcoin relative to the local currency has become a revealing signal for South Africa’s evolving digital economy. For many households and small businesses, watching the BTC to ZAR exchange rate can now also be a means through which they can measure financial pressures and opportunities. In South Africa, a change is also emerging in […]
Coal power generation fell in China and India for the first time since the 1970s last year, in a “historic” moment that could bring a decline in global emissions, according to analysis. From a report: The simultaneous fall in coal-powered electricity in the world’s biggest coal-consuming countries had not happened since 1973, according to analysts at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean...
Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-5 are accelerating research in math, biology and chemistry. But there is a debate over whether it can do that work on its own.
If SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic go public, they will unleash gushers of cash for Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
McKinsey is asking graduate applicants to “collaborate” with an AI tool as part of its recruitment process, as competence with the technology becomes a requirement in competing for top-level jobs. From a report: The blue-chip consultancy is incorporating an “AI interview” into some final-round interviews, according to CaseBasix, a US company that helps candidates apply for posts at leading...
Decoded genome of meat in pup’s stomach helps scientists build picture of what caused extinction of species
Researchers have shed light on the final centuries of the woolly rhinoceros after studying a hairy lump of meat from the stomach of an ancient wolf cub that became mummified in the Siberian permafrost.
The beautifully preserved remains of a two-month-old female wolf cub were discovered in...
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once told an audience that he views local PC hardware the same way he views a 100-year-old electric generator he saw in a brewery museum — as a relic of a pre-grid era, destined to be replaced by centralized utilities that users simply rent rather than own. The anecdote, shared at a talk a few years ago, positioned Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure as the...
As post-quantum transition expectations accelerate, many enterprises still lack a clear answer to a critical question: which systems create the greatest long-term exposure when today’s encryption approaches reach the end of their usable life. Qryptonic LLC today announced the launch of Q-Scout 26, an enterprise assessment platform designed to autonomously inventory cryptographic usage and...
Matthew McConaughey is taking a novel legal approach to combat unauthorized AI fakes: trademarking himself. From a report: Over the past several months, the “Interstellar” and “Magic Mike” star has had eight trademark applications approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office featuring him staring, smiling and talking. His attorneys said the trademarks are meant to stop AI apps or users from...
In a world where ICE agents are shooting US citizens on the street, the need for militias and extremist groups like the Proud Boys to support far-right interests has evaporated.
Hundreds of records obtained by WIRED show thin intelligence on the Venezuelan gang in the United States, describing fragmented, low-level crime rather than a coordinated terrorist threat.
The chief constable of one of Britain’s largest police forces has admitted that Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant made a mistake in a football (soccer) intelligence report. From a report: The report, which led to Israeli football fans being banned from a match last year, included a nonexistent match between West Ham and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Copilot hallucinated the game and West Midlands Police...
Protests across Minnesota—and around the country—are ongoing, as residents demonstrate against their federal government.
Eskom’s power system is more stable and predictable than it has been for the past half-decade.
The use of the AI tool to digitally undress women has sparked a backlash as well as intervention from the government and regulator.
After spending years pushing digital payments to combat tax evasion and money laundering, European Union ministers decided in December to ban businesses from refusing cash. The reversal comes as 12% of European businesses flatly refused cash in 2024, up from 4% three years earlier. Over one in three cinemas in the Netherlands no longer accept notes and coins. Cash usage across the euro area...
Fewer learners studying mathematics at school level threatens South Africa’s economic competitiveness.
The European Union published guidance on December 30 that reclassified nuclear weapons as acceptable investments under its sustainable finance framework, completing a policy change approved in November that narrowed the definition of banned armaments from “controversial” to “prohibited.” The shift addresses earlier vagueness that the Commission said hindered efforts to raise $932 billion in...
South Africa’s oldest and largest electric vehicle (EV) leasing and management fleet operator Everlectric is seeing increased demand for its offering and plans to radically expanding its model line-up in 2026.