‘We have not yet reached the limit of human longevity,’ research suggests
For more than a century and a half, life expectancy has steadily increased in the richest countries. In the 20th century, remarkable increases in life expectancy have been noted, correlating with declines in infectious diseases and advances in cardiovascular medicine. But for several years, experts have been puzzled by one question: when does this clever […]
Google VP warns two types of AI startups may not survive
The generative AI boom has spawned a flurry of startups. But as the dust begins to settle, two once-popular business models are looking more alarming: LLM wrappers and AI aggregators. Darren Mowry, who leads Google’s global startup organization across Cloud, DeepMind and Alphabet, says startups with these hooks have a “check engine light” on. LLM […]
OpenAI debates whether to report Canadian gunman suspect’s chats to police
The 18-year-old suspected of killing eight people in the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting in Canada reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a way that alarmed the company’s staff. Jesse Van Rootseller’s chat about gun violence was flagged by the company’s LLM abuse monitoring tool and banned in June 2025. According to the Wall Street Journal, company […]
7 days left until Disrupt 2026 ticket price increase
Super early bird pricing for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ends on February 27th at 11:59pm PT. Now you can get one week of the biggest discounts of the year, up to $680 off individual passes and up to 30% off community passes. Sign up now and lock in the lowest rate. From October 13th to 15th […]
“Thermodynamic computers” can mimic AI neural networks – using orders of magnitude less energy to generate images
Scientists have built a “thermodynamic computer” that can generate images from random disturbances, or noise, in data. In doing so, they mimicked the generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities of neural networks, collections of machine learning algorithms modeled after the brain. Above absolute zero, the world becomes noisy with energy fluctuations called thermal noise. These fluctuations […]
AI-assisted attackers compromise over 600 FortiGate devices in 55 countries
Russian-speaking, financially motivated attackers have been observed leveraging commercial generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to compromise more than 600 FortiGate devices in 55 countries. This is according to new findings from Amazon Threat Intelligence, which observed activity from January 11, 2026 to February 18, 2026. CJ Moses, chief information security officer (CISO) at Amazon Integrated […]
Scientists propose new plan to ‘capture’ Comet 3I/ATLAS, but we need to act quickly
The arrival of 3I/ATLAS in our solar system has led to several proposals for rendezvous missions to study it up close. As the third interstellar object (ISO) ever detected, the wealth of information provided by direct study will be groundbreaking in many ways. However, the architecture of a mission to intercept an interstellar comet poses […]
A 2,000-year-old skull reveals ancient Vietnamese people permanently blackened their teeth – a stylish habit that continues today
In some parts of Vietnam, shiny black teeth have been considered a high standard of beauty since at least the late 1800s. But now archaeologists have traced the practice back 2,000 years and discovered that ancient humans used abundant iron resources to dye pearly whites black. In a study published January 22 in the journal […]
Anthropic launches Claude Code Security, an AI-powered vulnerability scan
Rabi LakshmananFebruary 21, 2026Artificial Intelligence / DevSecOps Artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic has begun rolling out new security features in Claude Code that can scan users’ software codebases to find vulnerabilities and suggest patches. This feature, called Claude Code Security, is currently available in limited research preview for Enterprise and Team customers. “By scanning codebases […]
CISA Adds Two Actively Exploited Round Cube Flaws to KEV Catalog
Ravi LakshmananFebruary 21, 2026Vulnerability/patch management The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added two security flaws affecting the Roundcube webmail software to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, citing evidence of active exploitation. The vulnerabilities in question are as follows. CVE-2025-49113 (CVSS score: 9.9) – Untrusted data deserialization vulnerability that allows remote […]