Colin Wright

Blood test developed that could speed up diagnosis of rare diseases in babies Scientists say new approach means effects of many genetic mutations can be analysed at once and yield results in days

Blood test developed that could speed up diagnosis of rare diseases in babies

What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours Stephen Wolfram explores how the number of neural connections affects capabilities like language and abstraction. How far we could go accounting for neural nets and LLMS, the fundamental nature of computation, neuroscience and the operation of brains.

What If We Had Bigger Brains? Imagining Minds beyond Ours

Webb telescope helps refine Hubble constant, suggesting resolution to long-standing expansion rate debate For the past decade, scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of what seemed like a major inconsistency in the universe. The universe expands over time, but how fast it's expanding has seemed to differ depending on whether you looked early in the universe's history or the present day. If true, this would have presented a major problem to the gold-standard model that represents our best understanding of the universe.

Webb telescope helps refine Hubble constant, suggesting resolution to long-standing expansion rate debate

'Wind theft': The mysterious effect plaguing wind farms As wind farms expand, some can accidentally "steal" each others' wind – causing worries over some countries' energy transition to net zero.

'Wind theft': The mysterious effect plaguing wind farms

Hugging Face unveils two new humanoid robots Hugging Face hopes to start shipping two new open-source humanoid robots by the end of 2025.

Hugging Face unveils two new humanoid robots

Bread from seagrass? Cultivating grains in the ocean could be an elegant solution to rising seas. Farmed at scale, seagrass meadows could produce grain in quantities equivalent to 7% of global rice production, a new study finds.

Bread from seagrass? Cultivating grains in the ocean could be an elegant solution to rising seas.

The bad science behind expensive nuclear How 1920s experiments on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing programme made nuclear energy unaffordable

The bad science behind expensive nuclear

Glowing robot cats bring joy to Aussie kids, calm to isolated seniors Designed to look and feel like real cats, the MetaCats purr, meow, and even respond to touch and voice with heart-shaped LED eyes.

Glowing robot cats bring joy to Aussie kids, calm to isolated seniors

Canadian breakthrough cuts 90% energy use for quantum computers Nord Quantique unveils Tesseract Code, a breakthrough in quantum error correction that boosts efficiency and reduces system size.

Canadian breakthrough cuts 90% energy use for quantum computers

You Should Probably Pay Attention to Tokenizers Last week I was helping a friend of mine to get one of his new apps off the ground. I can’t speak much about it at the moment, other than like most apps nowadays it has some AI sprinkled over it. Ok, maybe a bit maybe more just a bit – depends on the way you look at it, I suppose. There is a Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) hiding somewhere in most of the AI apps. RAG is still all the RAGe – it even has its own Wikipedia page now! I’m not sure if anyone is tracking how fast a term reaches the point where it gets its own Wiki page but RAG must be somewhere near the top of the charts.

You Should Probably Pay Attention to Tokenizers

Memory Banks The cloud is very much a material thing.

Memory Banks

Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would quickly die from it. Now, most children in rich countries are cured.

Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable

Dancing Naked on the Head of a Pin: The Early History of Microphotography In 1853, John Benjamin Dancer achieved a feat of seemingly impossible scale: he shrunk an image to the size of a sharpened pencil tip. Anika Burgess explores the invention of microphotography and its influence on erotic paraphernalia and military communications.

Dancing Naked on the Head of a Pin: The Early History of Microphotography

Notes on Managing ADHD Strategies and tactics for staying productive.

Notes on Managing ADHD

The 1,000 Year History of the Strap-On From medieval Europe to Zanzibar, the strap-on dildo has deep lore.

The 1,000 Year History of the Strap-On

The secret British language that was used to outwit the Nazis Very few people outside the island know that Jersey has its own language – or that it was cannily used as a clandestine code during German occupation in WW2.

The secret British language that was used to outwit the Nazis

The Origin of the Research University Universities have existed for more than a thousand years — and for almost all of that time, they weren’t centers of research. What changed in 19th century Germany?

The Origin of the Research University

Fame and Frustration on the New Media Circuit Publicity used to be so straightforward. Now, for stars and their teams, “no one’s sure what works anymore.”

Fame and Frustration on the New Media Circuit

How to Hide a 350-Foot Megayacht Russian oligarchs use the offshore system to shield their luxury assets. The Trump administration is ending an effort to find and seize them.

How to Hide a 350-Foot Megayacht

Why Is IMAX Suddenly Everywhere? Movie studios are putting more emphasis on the IMAX brand as it stands out as a bright spot in the theater business.

Why Is IMAX Suddenly Everywhere?

Supply Chains Are Us Every purchase we make ties us to a vast, hidden network of people, machines, and resources — whether we see it or not.

Supply Chains Are Us

The Rise of the Japanese Toilet Having conquered its home market, the Japanese toilet-maker Toto is selling more bidets in the United States. Toto’s president says not even tariffs will halt its advance.

The Rise of the Japanese Toilet

U.S. Cancels Contract With Moderna to Develop Bird Flu Vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly questioned the safety of mRNA technology, which is used in the company’s shot.

U.S. Cancels Contract With Moderna to Develop Bird Flu Vaccine

Inside Berlin’s first cyber brothel No kids, no animals. But inside Europe’s first cyber brothel, which uses a combination of sex dolls and AI to cater to its users’ demands, pretty much anything else goes. Olivia Petter explores the growth of today’s new tech-augmented sex scene, and asks what the rise in AI bots and cyber sex means for the future of human relationships.

Inside Berlin’s first cyber brothel

DJI drones are everywhere. The U.S. may still ban them No U.S. agency has been assigned to review DJI’s security risks, which could trigger an automatic ban by year’s end.

DJI drones are everywhere. The U.S. may still ban them

Ads Don’t Work That Way There's a meme, particularly virulent in educated circles, about how advertising works — how it sways and seduces us, coaxing us gently toward a purchase.

Ads Don’t Work That Way

The Inventor of This 2-in-1 TV Had a Vision of Togetherness Decades before the proliferation of cheap screens, Allen DuMont came up with an ingenious solution to let families watch two programs on the same TV set.

The Inventor of This 2-in-1 TV Had a Vision of Togetherness

What Is Post-Fascism? by Sven Reichardt

What Is Post-Fascism?

What Art Gets Your Heart Racing? The Art Gallery of Ontario Is Putting It to the Test

How big were wildfires in 2024? Global burned area was about average, but it was a big year for South America.

How big were wildfires in 2024?