The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say

The US chain Staples was hacked by Chinese criminals who then defrauded it of millions of dollars’ worth of products.

If you play the NYT’s Wordle and think it’s been getting harder and the words weirder.. you’re right.

A new class action lawsuit in the US alleges that Expedia’s control of online hotel bookings artificially inflates prices.

Ever wondered how those beautiful cars in Cuba keep running despite their parts being embargoed or discontinued?

A claim by OpenAI to have discovered a mathematically faster Fast Fourier Transform is far less impressive than it seems, a mathematician explains.

Fridges in hundreds of French supermarkets were taken over by hackers who raised their temperature to spoil food.

Low sugar intake in the first years of life has long-term health benefits, research shows.

The strides being made by LLMs in solving longstanding maths problems have led some mathematicians to worry about the future of their field.

The tortoise known as Jonathan is thought to be the oldest living land animal.

In the age of physical tape, we knew what “recording” was.

You might think that being an electrician or builder is AI-proof, but could you actually survive doing it?

Despite what you think you know, landfill is actually a better option for waste disposal than many others.

A diesel export ban by the US would have limited benefit because it would quickly suppress refinery production of other fuels too.

We have the technology to knock out populations of mosquitoes – but in the US, regulatory confusion has stopped its use.

In the US, McDonalds HQ is “encouraging” its franchises to use AI to decide how to raise prices on food where possible.

Scientists say that removing the measles vaccination requirement in Florida could risk an epidemic, and make the potentially lethal disease endemic again.

Data from millions of MOTs shows that EVs are more reliable in the long term than fuel-powered cars.

The UK foreign secretary has shared a report saying climate change threatens the collapse of natural systems, and hence war and migration.

In Korea, a number of owners of Samsung smart fridges found them bricked – and not refrigerating – after a botched firmware update.

There’s a website which will display a plan of the streets on any city – and even print them onto a mug.

If you go searching for a pharmacy in London on Google Maps, you might get more exotic drugs than you bargained for.

An experiment tested whether LLMs given a harvesting job would take “payment” to avoid killling animals in the process.

Lifting lots of weights might reduce your “health age” as measured by various systems, but does that have any meaning?

Given multiple albums’ track listings, could you build a chart-topping ensemble?

Asked to cooperate, AI models created their own slang and phrases reminiscent of James Joyce’s free association novels.

After Google mapped a fruit fly’s brain in computer form, people set it to work playing… Doom, of course.

The four-colour theorem has a new proof, helped again by computers (but not AI).

Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, it’s worth revisiting a stellar piece of journalism which pieced together events inside the World Trade Center that day.

Could an LLM trained only on knowledge to the end of the 19th century come up with the theory of relativity, as Einstein did by musing about light and trains?

A claim by OpenAI to have solved one of mathematics’ most intractable problems has led to a dispute with academics who say they were first.

A huge leak of photos of American and Canadian drivers’ licences on the dark web may have originated from car rental desks.

Want to plug your laptop into a socket at a Japanese cafe?

Planning a trip up Mount Shasta?

If someone says a company is into defence, government, robotics and defence” do you think of GoPro?

As a child, Elon Musk read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation science fiction series.

Replacing thousands of miles of copper telephone lines with fibre optic could produce a £2bn windfall for BT.

In 2010 a jet engine on a Qantas flight tore itself apart.