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Underwater archaeologists have recovered four medieval spear points from Lake Lednica in Poland.The archaeological team said in a translated statement that one of the spearheads was gilded with precious metals and had elaborate decorations, suggesting it may have belonged to a nobleman or prince.”It is plated with metals such as gold, silver, and bronze, and its surface is intricately decorated with spiral and three-way patterns.” [interlocking geometric designs]” the team said in a statement. There are also wings near the base of the spear tip. you may like The archaeologists said the spear itself “may have functioned as a symbol…
YouTuber and entrepreneur Hank Green’s screen time assistant Focus Friend has been named Google Play’s app of the year. Released in August, this productivity tool lets you block distracting phone apps while motivating yourself with the help of a virtual friend (a little cartoon bean who likes to knit socks and scarves). These can later be replaced with small bean room decorations. The premise behind this app is that if users know that their actions affect others, even if it’s just a small bean and they’d be sad if it interrupted their knitting project, they might be inspired to manage…
On Tuesday, Google released Gemini 3, its newest and most advanced foundational model. This is now readily available through the Gemini app and AI search interface. Arriving just seven months after the release of Gemini 2.5, this new model is Google’s most capable LLM to date and an immediate contender for the most capable AI tool on the market. This release also comes less than a week after OpenAI released GPT 5.1 and just two months after Anthropic released Sonnet 4.5, reminding us of the breakneck pace of frontier model development. A more research-intensive version of this model, called Gemini…
November 18, 2025Ravi LakshmananBug Bounty / Data Privacy Meta announced Tuesday that it has provided a tool called WhatsApp Research Proxy to some researchers who have long offered bug bounties to help them improve their programs and more effectively investigate the messaging platform’s network protocols. The aim is to make it easier to explore WhatsApp’s unique technology, as it remains a lucrative attack surface for state-sponsored attackers and commercial spyware vendors. The company also noted that it is launching a pilot initiative to invite a research team to focus on exploiting the platform, with support from in-house engineering and tools.…
Symphony of Robotic Movement – Collaboration between Caltech and TII – YouTube watch on Engineers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a multimodal robotic system, a humanoid robot with a transforming drone that pops out of its back.The drone, called M4, sits behind a Unitree G1 machine that is a humanoid robot and can transform by switching between driving and flight modes. We’re not talking about Optimus Prime or Megatron here. Rather, the drone-evicting bot resembles Soundwave, a Decepticon with various small drone-like transformers housed in his chest.The system is the result of a three-year collaboration between Caltech’s…
An astrophotographer has captured stunning shots of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS light-bombing distant galaxies in the night sky. The remarkable image, which also captures the comet’s tails, is a reminder of the object’s otherworldly nature, but the photographer insists that doesn’t mean it was created by aliens.Satoru Murata, a New Mexico-based photographer who has worked on multiple astronomical research projects, used a 0.2 meter (0.7 foot) telescope to take the new image just before sunrise on Sunday (November 16). The comet shows the familiar green glow emanating from 3I/ATLAS’s coma, as well as the reappearance of the comet’s long ion tail…
On Tuesday morning, a large portion of the internet was down or not working properly, including ChatGPT, Claude, Spotify, X, and more due to an outage with internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare. Cloudflare said on its status page around 8 a.m. ET that it had identified the issue and was implementing a fix. Less than two hours later, Cloudflare said, “We believe the fix has been implemented and the incident is resolved. We continue to monitor the error to ensure all services return to normal.” Around the same time, Dane Knecht, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer, explained that a potential bug was…
November 18, 2025hacker newsCloud security/compliance Perhaps you’ve already moved, or are planning to move, some part of your business to the cloud. That’s a wise move. It helps you work faster, better serve your customers, and stay ahead of the game. However, as cloud configurations expand, it becomes difficult to control who has access to what. One small mistake, such as the wrong person accessing it, can lead to big problems. We’re talking about data breaches, legal troubles, and serious damage. Additionally, rules vary by region, such as the US, UK, EU, and APAC, making it difficult to adapt. Join…
Waymo will remove safety operators from its Miami robotaxi fleet starting today ahead of commercial launch in 2026. This is the latest in a long series of steps taken this year to expand its U.S. footprint. The company announced in a blog post Tuesday that it will begin offering fully self-driving trips to employees in Miami. Waymo announced it will do the same in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando over the next few weeks. This latest move comes just a week after Waymo announced a major milestone: offering paid rides on freeways in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.…
The pursuit of speed on snow has left a detrimental mark. Despite increased global awareness and racing bans, persistent “permanent chemicals” known as PFAS are still scraped off skis and found their way into the natural environment of Switzerland’s winter sports regions. Empa’s new study detects high concentrations of these long-lasting pollutants in snow samples from the Engadin Valley, issuing an urgent call for recreational skiers to update their ski wax kits. Deep-rooted problems with traditional ski wax Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of synthetic chemicals valued for their water and oil resistance. For decades, they have…