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Bluetti’s Sora 500 solar panel is incredibly powerful for its size
The clear winner for anyone who has limited space to store an extra solar panel.
Sony temporarily suspends memory card sales due to shortages
Sony Japan stopped accepting SD and CFexpress card orders from dealers and consumers today.
Anker’s 160W Prime Charger can power three devices at once, and it’s $50 off
That’s the steepest discount since Black Friday.
Senate funds DHS after Trump’s TSA pay promise
About 50,000 TSA agents are on the verge of missing a second paycheck
Sony is raising PS5 prices by $100 in April
Even the PlayStation Portal is getting more expensive.
Walking a tightrope between a global brand and traditional football: Why Como 1907’s entertainment machine is sustainable, unlike RB Leipzig’s
Como 1907 is causing a stir in Serie A. The Lombardy-based club, which just a few years ago was languishing in the lower reaches of Italian football, is on the verge of qualifying for the Champions League. At first glance, this rapid rise may seem like a classic ‘football fairy tale’, but behind it lies a calculated strategy, a pile of money – and a surprising amount of sustainability.
Here’s how to rank the 50 best Apple products ever
With more than 1,200 possible pairings, which product will come out on top?
Google is making it easier to import another AI’s memory into Gemini
Prompt your AI to copy-paste its memory into Gemini.
Apple will reportedly allow other AI chatbots to plug into Siri
Other AI chatbots, like Gemini or Claude, could help Siri fetch answers.
Anker’s wireless charging pad offers Qi2 speeds for $15
You can leave your phone’s case on while you recharge.
My brief, weird time with the Samsung TriFold
A funny thing happened on the way to the TriFold.
Duraisamy: Supercomputing in service of science and society
Across every frontier of science, engineering and medicine, the convergence of computational science, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence is not merely accelerating research; it is transforming what questions we can ask, what problems we can solve and how quickly solutions can reach the people who need it most. This transformation rests on a foundation that…
The versatile Play speaker is a great way into the Sonos world
It works well both at home and out in the world.
DJI’s Avata 360 is a more functional, flexible 360 drone
There’s a second 360-degree drone in town — except in the US.
Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever
Over 26 hours of web browsing in one test.
Razer’s new Blade 16 gaming laptop has an Intel Panther Lake chip and very fast RAM
Thin is still in but AMD is out.
Woot is offering over 20 percent off Switch 2 controllers and games today
Mario Kart World is nearly $30 off right now.
Nintendo is going to charge less for digital Switch 2 games
The new pricing goes into effect in May.
Reddit accounts with ‘fishy’ bot-like behavior will soon need to prove they’re human
Human verification ‘will be rare and will not apply to most users,’ according to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
Dell made its new Pro laptops thinner and tweaked their naming scheme, again
Say goodbye to Plus, Premium, and Max (mostly). And say hello to a series of odd numbers.
Samsung’s Galaxy A57 gets thinner, faster, and more expensive
Samsung’s 2026 midrangers have arrived.
In politics, common decency still matters
I am a conservative. He was a progressive. Still, we had many productive conversations and worked together on a few important issues where our views converged.
The BB-777 is the ultimate in boombox nostalgia
It’s a modern recreation of the iconic Sharp GF-777.
Apple launches iOS 26.4 with AI playlists, purchase sharing, and more
You can now ask Apple Music to generate a playlist based on a description.
Google’s Android Automotive is moving from the dashboard to the ‘brain’ of the car
Better voice assistants and more predictive vehicle maintenance alerts
Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cowork can control your computer
Its only a research preview for now.
Ayaneo says selling its Windows gaming handheld ‘is no longer sustainable’
The RAM shortage claims another victim.
Pacers Sports & Entertainment Launches Fieldhouse Media Network, Delivering First-Of-Its-Kind Global Media Channel for Partners
Deloitte and Yieldmo help PS&E to grow market size through first-party fan data while producing convertible ROI INDIANAPOLIS (March 24, 2026) – Pacers Sports & Entertainment today launched the Fieldhouse Media Network, a first-of-its-kind global AI-powered media platform built on authenticated sports fandom, giving brands measurable access to one of the most engaged audiences – the fan. Developed in collaboration with Deloitte and Yieldmo, the network leverages Yieldmo’s Ymax.ai, an advertising platform with a dedicated sports vertical, and Converge™ by Deloitte for Sports fan data platform built on Deloitte Ascend™ to activate first-party, authenticated data from approximately 250 million sports and entertainment fans worldwide in a privacy-safe, cookieless […]
Pacers Sports & Entertainment Launches Fieldhouse Media Network, Delivering First-Of-Its-Kind Global Media Channel for Partners
Deloitte and Yieldmo help PS&E to grow market size through first-party fan data while producing convertible ROI INDIANAPOLIS (March 24, 2026) – Pacers Sports & Entertainment today launched the Fieldhouse Media Network, a first-of-its-kind global AI-powered media platform built on authenticated sports fandom, giving brands measurable access to one of the most engaged audiences – the fan. Developed in collaboration with Deloitte and Yieldmo, the network leverages Yieldmo’s Ymax.ai, an advertising platform with a dedicated sports vertical, and Converge™ by Deloitte for Sports fan data platform built on Deloitte Ascend™ to activate first-party, authenticated data from approximately 250 million sports and entertainment fans worldwide in a privacy-safe, cookieless […]
Nintendo cuts Switch 2 production amid weakening console sales
Output is reportedly being reduced from six million to four million units, despite the console’s record debut.
Gechter exit sealed? This Bundesliga club is his likely destination
According to a report by 'Sky', Linus Gechter's exit from Hertha is likely a done deal. The 22-year-old Berliner, who is under contract with Hertha until 2028, is reportedly on the verge of moving to ...
Google’s new Pixel 10 ads made me go ‘wait, WHAT are they trying to sell?’
Confusing and a bit creepy.
Two of my favorite color e-book readers are the cheapest they’ve been in months
They’re the cheapest they’ve been since Black Friday.
Every bulb on Govee’s new outdoor string lights can display multicolor effects
Level up your patio.
How the term ‘neurodivergent’ moved from activists to pop culture
Nick Minaj is one of the most recent Trump supporters to identify herself as “neurodivergent,” embracing a narrow definition of a once-niche term commonly associated with autism and ADHD.
Samsung adds native AirDrop support to Galaxy S26 devices
Share files with Apple-using friends
Your Thymus and Your Healthspan
Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.
AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference
Developers say it removes the craft from making games.
Business investment in the era of digital transformation
The weak performance of business investment across the OECD since the Global Financial Crisis holds back potential growth. However, it masks a strong investment dynamic in digital assets such as hardware, software, and databases. This column describes how this divergence between digital and non-digital assets has intensified from the mid-2010s. The strong investment performance of the US relative to the rest of the OECD is almost exclusively a digital phenomenon. A ‘digital divide’ is emerging, where laggard countries are accumulating digital capital per worker more slowly than those with higher initial starting levels.
Halide co-founder is suing former partner for bringing source code to Apple
Startup drama.
The new MacBook Pro is still fast as hell
How big of an upgrade is it for M1 Pro / M1 Max owners?
Windows 11 is finally getting a movable taskbar
Microsoft is also working on a smaller taskbar option
Microsoft is ending the Windows Update nightmare — and letting you pause them indefinitely
Pause updates “for as long as you need.”
This is Microsoft’s plan to fix Windows 11
Microsoft is focusing on performance, reliability, and experiences this year.
NASA Exploration, Science Inspire “Project Hail Mary” Film
Real-life space exploration and big-screen science fiction will converge on Friday. As NASA prepares to launch Artemis II, the first crewed mission under the
Valve’s huge SteamOS 3.8 update adds long-awaited features — and supports Steam Machine
Xbox Ally gets SteamOS improvements too.
Trump’s Reaction to Israeli Strike on Gas Field Exposes Divergent Strategies
President Trump said he complained to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel about the attack, which sent energy markets reeling. But Israeli officials said the Americans were informed beforehand.
Hermès doesn’t include a power adapter with its $5,150 charging case
You can charge your Apple Watch and iPhone for the cost of three MacBook Pros.
Tubi and TikTok are partnering to produce long form series
The Creatorverse Incubator will help TikTok stars launch long-form series.
Adobe’s AI image generator can now be trained on your own art
And maybe on other artists too.
Fitbit’s AI health coach will soon be able to read your medical records
You can also share the records with family and health providers.
Weight-loss treatment is on the verge of a dramatic shift
About 10 weeks after it was approved, the Wegovy pill is now estimated to be part of the daily regimen of about 400,000 Americans. And the field of weight-loss treatment is on the verge of even more head-spinning change.
Ozempic Is About to Go Generic in India, China and Canada
In India, China and several other nations, Novo Nordisk is on the verge of losing patent protection for its blockbuster weight loss drug, opening the door for cheaper competing versions.
Nvidia has lost the plot with gamers
The company at the center of AI and gaming should have known better.
DLSS 5: Has Nvidia’s AI graphics technology gone too far?
Photo realistic like an Instagram filter.
Spotify adds ‘Exclusive Mode’ audiophile feature for Windows PCs
Spotify gets bit-perfect playback.
Now everyone in the US is getting Google’s personalized Gemini AI
Suggestions based on what’s in your Gmail inbox or YouTube viewing history.
Capcom’s next big game explores the horrors of AI
Pragmata is an action game, but it can be a little scary.
Nintendo Switch 2 update adds ‘Handheld Boost Mode’ for original Switch games
Switch 1 games are getting a boost.
Syracuse.com’s 2026 media day baseball coach poll: Most likely to have breakout season? (photos)
Some key players could be on the verge of making a name for themselves this season.
Samsung discontinues its Galaxy Z TriFold after just three months
It didn’t Tri for very long.
Hands on with Aqara’s new Matter-compatible camera
The first Matter camera is here — sort of
DLSS 5 looks like a real-time generative AI filter for video games
Photoreal or Instagram filter-real?
Sony’s AI graphics upscaling for PS5 Pro games is getting a big update tonight
Less flickering and shimmering this time around.
Partisanship and science
I recently participated in a symposium of the Denver-based Institute for Science & Policy, during which I had a “fireside chat” with Tony Mills of the American Enterprise Institute. Mills has written extensively on the politicization of science, and the two of us had a very enjoyable hour-long conversation on the topic. You can watch it below. The main questions we dealt with are why there is such a vast partisan gap in trust of science, and to what extent this is a unique moment. Mills helpfully brings a good deal of data to the discussion, as he did in this useful piece at Issues in Science & Technology. Tusk depends on reader support. To support this work, please become a paid subscriber. Subscribe Note this graph, drawing on a range of survey data to demonstrate partisan attitudes toward science since 1970s. As it demonstrates, there’s been a very sharp partisan divergence in confidence in science during the Trump Era, starting prior to the Covid pandemic. At least in part, we can attribute this to a rise in populist anti-science rhetoric embraced by Trump, his appointees, and those in his media orbit. But as the graph also shows, the partisan divide has existed in the past, and it’s not always in the same direction. The largest divergence in party views toward science prior to 2016 was in the 1970s, when liberals equated scientific achievement with the military-industrial complex and thus trusted it less. That era of scientific mistrust is often overlooked. Indeed, as Mills notes, the Moon landings (1969-72), which today are considered one of the last great moments of national unity, were experienced nothing like that at the time. There was sharp debate back then over whether the Apollo missions were worth the vast expenditures when the country had so much else to deal with. It’s outside the dataset, and we don’t have the partisanship lens for it, but the 1950s was another deeply anti-science decade, with critics of intellectuals and college professors alleging their ties to communism and their lack of commitment to basic American moral beliefs. This was the subject of Richard Hofstadter’s 1962 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, in which he quotes religious leaders like Franklin Graham: [In place of the Bible] we substituted reason, rationalism, mind culture, science worship, the working power of government, Freudianism, naturalism, humanism, behaviorism, positivism, materialism, and idealism. [This is the work of] so-called intellectuals. Thousands of these “intellectuals” have publicly stated that morality is relative—that there is no norm or absolute standard.… This fervor was heavily whipped up by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), although it’s clear that not all his fellow Republicans were on board with his red-baiting. What ended that era? The simple answer is the 1957 launch of Sputnik. Americans became afraid that they were losing to Soviet scientists, and suddenly university researchers and government projects were awash with funding. In our conversation, I asked Mills about the possibility of us having a Sputnik moment again that would rally the American public in favor of science today. Mills argued that the COVID-19 pandemic was essentially a Sputnik moment — a terrifying threat to all Americans that required scientific advances to address. But thanks in part to political polarization and the populist and conspiratorial leanings of Donald Trump, we got the opposite of a unifying moment. Many Americans turned against science, despite science actually stepping up in that moment. As we discussed in the chat, it’s not clear what scientists could or should be doing in this moment to increase faith in their work. As Mills notes, one of the chief complaints against scientists and professors is that they’ve become too political; scholars becoming even more political might not help them achieve their goals. This (mainly Republican-driven) anti-science era will end, of course, but it’s not clear what event will bring that about. Share
Africa’s great divide: Why the continent’s split is so exciting for science
The African continent is splitting along a triple junction of rifts that converge in Afar, Ethiopia. A new ocean may take millions of years to form, but that is giving scientists ample time to glean important discoveries from one of the world’s most inhospitable regions.
I heart this media.
This weekend’s Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Harry Styles had multiple bangers and I’ve been really impressed by the writing team over the past couple seasons. But this latest bit on Weekend Update about the social status of emojis felt exceptional. I don’t want to spoil it, but… “RBF: right before the flags” is some of the smartest writing on the show in a long time. This skit took the aerial tramway directly to my own heart. [Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59CpJqCbxXs]
AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion
The job calls for someone who can “recognize, express, and shift between emotions in a way that feels authentic and human.”
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are the choice — if you have a Galaxy phone
Top choice if you have the right Galaxy device.
The fast rise and epic fall of Clubhouse
On Version History: the story of an audio social revolution that never quite took off
Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is coming to current-gen Xbox consoles this year
AI is coming to your Xbox.
Anthropic’s Claude AI can respond with charts, diagrams, and other visuals now
Claude can now help you visualize topics as you chat.
WordPress launches an in-browser website creator
You don’t need a WordPress account or host to create a private site in your browser.
Microsoft’s Copilot Health can connect to your medical records and wearables
Analyze wearable data with Copilot.
iPhone Fold rumor: iPad-like multitasking, but no iPad apps and no Face ID
Apple’s rumored foldable could cost around $2,000.
Grammarly says it will stop using AI to clone experts without permission
Grammarly fired AI Nilay.
Microsoft’s next Xbox, Project Helix, will barely reach alpha by 2027
We’ll have to wait a while for the new Xbox.
Microsoft says you should build next-gen Xbox games by building them for PC.
We’re in line for Microsoft’s keynote, but look what we spotted at its booth at GDC! “Cross-platform is the future of the Xbox ecosystem,” it writes. “Build for Xbox on PC.” Again, the future of Xbox is W. [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/20260311_085610.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/slack-upload-1773247555310.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/slack-upload-1773247563110.jpeg?quality=90&strip=all]
Intel announces Core Ultra 270K Plus and 250K Plus, its ‘fastest gaming desktop processors ever’
Intel says they finally beat its older chips.
California Democrats Have Made a Mess of the Governor’s Race
As the California Democratic Party gathered in San Francisco last month for its convention, reporters had a frequent question for the retiring political king- (and queen-) maker, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Was her state really on the verge of electing a Republican to succeed Governor Gavin Newsom, as a growing number of partisans had begun to fear?
Oppo’s new foldable isn’t quite creaseless, but it’s pretty damn close
You could say the crease is hard to Find.
Grammarly will keep using authors’ identities without permission unless they opt-out
expertoptout@superhuman.com.
Nvidia’s DLSS 4.5 with 6x Frame Generation is rolling out at the end of March
A big new DLSS 4.5 feature is coming soon.
I reviewed the MacBook Neo, ask me anything
I’ll be here to answer subscriber questions about Apple’s new $599 laptop today at 11AM PT / 2PM ET.
Sonos is releasing its first consumer speakers since 2024
Sonos is moving on from the app debacle.