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Amid an unprecedented AI ramp-up, Meta is spending more than most companies. The company is building two large data centers, and reports say it expects to spend as much as $600 billion on U.S. infrastructure over the next three years. Those numbers may not raise eyebrows in Silicon Valley, but Wall Street is starting to worry. The issue surfaced this week when Meta reported its quarterly results, which showed that the company’s operating expenses rose by $7 billion from a year earlier, and capital expenditures reached nearly $20 billion. This was the result of significant spending on AI talent and…
The rock hyrax, better known as a “dassie” in southern Africa, is a furry, bushy creature with short legs and no discernible tail. They spend much of their time sunbathing on rocks.Another thing they sometimes do is drag their butts along the ground. Dog owners know that this behavior can be a sign of a parasitic infection. In the case of hyraxes, this action leaves a characteristic trace in the sand, although the reason for this seems less clear.The African Coastal Paleoscience Center studies traces and footprints (ancient fossilized remains) through the Cape South Coast Ichthyology Project. Over the past…
Archaeologists excavating on the French Riviera have discovered a huge Roman cremation cemetery. Careful work at the site has revealed the step-by-step process the Romans used to cremate their dead and honor them in the afterlife.More than 160 cremation tombs were discovered in the ancient ruins of Olbia. Olbia began as a fortified Greek settlement around 350 BC in what is now southern France. The geographer Strabo stated that Olbia was a city of the Massiliotes, a people near Massilia (modern Marseilles). After Marseille was captured by Julius Caesar in 49 BC, Olbia became a Roman city with an emphasis…
The frigid conditions on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon Titan allow simple molecules in the atmosphere to break one of chemistry’s most fundamental rules, a new study shows.According to this principle, known as “like dissolves like,” mixtures containing both polar and nonpolar components, such as oil and water, typically do not mix and form separate layers.But scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden were surprised to discover that hydrogen cyanide, a polar molecule, forms stable cocrystals with extremely nonpolar hydrocarbons methane and ethane on Titan’s frigid surface. These molecules are usually completely incompatible…
Archaeologists in Iraq have unearthed the remains of a 5,000-year-old building that may have been a temple from the Uruk period, when the world’s first cities were emerging.The buried “monumental” structure was discovered in September at the Qani Shayeh site in northern Sulaymaniyah Governorate, at the foot of the Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq, the statement said.”If the monumental nature of this building is confirmed, which we are currently investigating in detail, this discovery could change our understanding of Uruk’s relationship with the surrounding region,” the researchers said in a statement. you may like The structure dates from the Uruk…
simple factsWhat it is: M82, an edge-on spiral starburst galaxyLocation: Ursa Major, 12 million light years awayShare date: October 23, 2025If you have a small telescope in your backyard, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the Cigar Galaxy (M82) with your own eyes. It is relatively close to the Milky Way and is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky, as well as visible next to the Bode galaxy (M81). M82 is a spiral galaxy that is about four times smaller than the Milky Way, shines five times brighter, and forms stars 10 times faster, which is why…
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are still swiping at each other on Musk’s social media platform X. The two founders of OpenAI, of which Altman is CEO, have since sparred on social media, court filings and company blog posts. The latest exchange began when Altman posted what he called a “three-act story.” The screenshot shows he booked a Tesla Roadster in 2018 and then recently tried to cancel it and request a refund of his $50,000 reservation fee, only to have his email bounced. “I was really excited about this car!” Altman wrote. “I understand the delay. But seven and…
On Thursday, at the end of Coinbase’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Brian Armstrong admitted he was “a little bit distracted” because he was “following the prediction market of what Coinbase will say on its next earnings call.” “And I would like to add the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking, Web3 here just to make sure you understand before the call ends,” Armstrong added. Why blurt them out without clear context? As Mr. Armstrong hinted, these were the words that Kalsi and Polimarket’s Mention Market users were betting would be spoken on the phone. In other words, by speaking, Mr. Armstrong…
AI researchers at Andon Labs (the same people who made a fuss by giving Anthropic Claude an office vending machine) have announced the results of a new AI experiment. This time, they programmed a vacuum cleaner robot with a variety of state-of-the-art LLMs as a way to see how ready LLMs are to materialize. They instructed the bot to help in the office when someone asked the bot to “pass the butter.” And once again, something hilarious happened. At one point, one of the LLMs was unable to dock and recharge its dying battery, sending it into a comedic “doom…
November 1, 2025Ravi LakshmananArtificial intelligence/vulnerabilities The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has issued information regarding an ongoing cyberattack targeting unpatched Cisco IOS XE devices in the country and a previously undocumented implant known as BADCANDY. According to the intelligence community, this activity included the exploitation of CVE-2023-20198 (CVSS score: 10.0), a critical vulnerability that allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to create an account with elevated privileges and use it to seize control of a susceptible system. This security flaw has been actively exploited since last year in 2023, and China-linked threat actors such as Salt Typhoon have weaponized it to infiltrate…