An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana — but now scientists say they have a solution with the launch of a genetically engineered non-browning banana. The product is the latest in a series of gene-edited fruits and vegetables designed to have a longer shelf life. Scientists say the technology is emerging as a powerful new weapon against food waste, which occurs globally on an epic scale. The banana, developed by Tropic, a biotech company based in Norwich, is said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.
The company has also developed a slow-ripening banana that has been approved in several countries, which it plans to launch later in the year. Other research teams are working on lettuce that wilts more slowly, bruise-resistant apples and potatoes and identifying the genes that determine how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel. […] The company worked out how to disable a gene responsible for the production of an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase, which causes browning. The same gene is silenced in Arctic apples, a genetically modified variety, which has been sold in the US since 2017, and blocking the production of polyphenol oxidase has been shown to work in tomatoes, melon, kiwifruits and mushrooms. In the bananas, Tropic made precise changes to existing genes without introducing foreign genetic material. The report notes that an estimated 33% of the produce that is harvested worldwide is never consumed due to the short shelf-life of many fruit and vegetable products. Bananas are among the most thrown-away foods, with some 5 billion bananas tossed in the U.S. each year.
Over the last month there has been something more than a minor kerfuffle in the space industry over the return of two NASA astronauts from the International Space Station.
The fate of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5, 2024, has become a political issue after President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the astronauts’ return was held up by the Biden White House.
In February, Trump and Musk appeared on FOX News. During the joint interview, the subject of Wilmore and Williams came up. They remain in space today after NASA decided it would be best they did not fly home in their malfunctioning Starliner spacecraft—but would return in a SpaceX-built Crew Dragon.
Microsoft is reportedly developing its own large language model series capable of rivaling OpenAI and Anthropic’s models. SiliconANGLE reports: Sources told Bloomberg that the LLM series is known as MAI. That’s presumably an acronym for “Microsoft artificial intelligence.” It might also be a reference to Maia 100, an internally-developed AI chip the company debuted last year. It’s possible Microsoft is using the processor to power the new MAI models. The company recently tested the LLM series to gauge its performance. As part of the evaluation, Microsoft engineers checked whether MAI could power the company’s Copilot family of AI assistants. Data from the tests reportedly indicates that the LLM series is competitive with models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
That Microsoft evaluated whether MAI could be integrated into Copilot hints the LLM series is geared towards general-purpose processing rather than reasoning. Many of the tasks supported by Copilot can be performed with a general-purpose model. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is currently developing a second LLM series optimized for reasoning tasks. The report didn’t specify details such as the number of models Microsoft is training or their parameter counts. It’s also unclear whether they might provide multimodal features.
Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned at SXSW that agentic AI poses significant privacy and security risks, as these AI agents require extensive access to users’ personal data, likely processing it unencrypted in the cloud. TechCrunch reports: “So we can just put our brain in a jar because the thing is doing that and we don’t have to touch it, right?,” Whittaker mused. Then she explained the type of access the AI agent would need to perform these tasks, including access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends. “It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases — probably in the clear, because there’s no model to do that encrypted,” Whittaker warned.
“And if we’re talking about a sufficiently powerful … AI model that’s powering that, there’s no way that’s happening on device,” she continued. “That’s almost certainly being sent to a cloud server where it’s being processed and sent back. So there’s a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer by conjoining all of these separate services [and] muddying their data,” Whittaker concluded.
If a messaging app like Signal were to integrate with AI agents, it would undermine the privacy of your messages, she said. The agent has to access the app to text your friends and also pull data back to summarize those texts. Her comments followed remarks she made earlier during the panel on how the AI industry had been built on a surveillance model with mass data collection. She said that the “bigger is better AI paradigm” — meaning the more data, the better — had potential consequences that she didn’t think were good. With agentic AI, Whittaker warned we’d further undermine privacy and security in the name of a “magic genie bot that’s going to take care of the exigencies of life,” she concluded. You can watch the full speech on YouTube.
New submitter grandrollerz writes: Despite streaming online since the RealAudio days of the late 1990s, the BBC has announced that most of its radio stations will become unavailable to international users later this year. Starting in Spring 2025, only talk news stations BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 will remain accessible outside the UK. This change is due to rights issues and the launch of a new BBC audio website and app that will replace BBC Sounds for international users. The BBC Sounds app will be available exclusively to UK audiences, although UK users traveling abroad for short periods will still be able to use it. This move has disappointed many long-time international listeners who will lose access to their favorite BBC radio stations. It follows a similar move to further commercialize its services where in 2024 the BBC and Amazon Music struck a global deal to make BBC podcasts available on Amazon Music outside the UK, but only for subscribers to Amazon’s Prime and Amazon Music Unlimited services.
The US military’s robotic mini-space shuttle dropped out of orbit and glided to a runway in California late Thursday, ending a 434-day mission that pioneered new ways of maneuvering in space.
The X-37B spaceplane touched down on Runway 12 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 11:22 pm local time Thursday (2:22 am EST Friday), capping its high-flying mission with an automated reentry and landing on the nearly three-mile-long runway at the West Coast’s spaceport.
The Space Force did not publicize the spacecraft’s return ahead of time, keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of secrecy surrounding the X-37B program. This was the seventh flight of an X-37B spaceplane, or Orbital Test Vehicle, since its first foray into orbit in 2010.
President Trump has signed an executive order to establish a strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies by using tokens already owned by the government. Reuters reports: A “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was seized as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, the White House crypto czar, billionaire David Sacks, said in a post on social media platform X. The order kept open the possibility of the government buying bitcoin in future. The U.S. commerce and treasury secretaries “are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers,” a factsheet on the White House website said. “This is the most underwhelming and disappointing outcome we could have expected for this week,” Charles Edwards, founder of bitcoin-focused hedge fund Capriole Investments, wrote in a post on X. “No active buying means this is just a fancy title for Bitcoin holdings that already existed with the Govt. This is a pig in lipstick.”
The AI industry has a new buzzword: “PhD-level AI.” According to a report from The Information, OpenAI may be planning to launch several specialized AI “agent” products including a $20,000 monthly tier focused on supporting “PhD-level research.” Other reportedly planned agents include a “high-income knowledge worker” assistant at $2,000 monthly and a software developer agent at $10,000 monthly.
OpenAI has not yet confirmed these prices, but they have mentioned PhD-level AI capabilities before. So what exactly constitutes “PhD-level AI”? The term refers to models that supposedly perform tasks requiring doctoral-level expertise. These include agents conducting advanced research, writing and debugging complex code without human intervention, and analyzing large datasets to generate comprehensive reports. The key claim is that these models can tackle problems that typically require years of specialized academic training.
Companies like OpenAI base their “PhD-level” claims on performance in specific benchmark tests. For example, OpenAI’s o1 series models reportedly performed well in science, coding, and math tests, with results similar to human PhD students on challenging tasks. The company’s Deep Research tool, which can generate research papers with citations, scored 26.6 percent on “Humanity’s Last Exam,” a comprehensive evaluation covering over 3,000 questions across more than 100 subjects.
Broadcom’s VMware acquisition has significantly boosted revenue, largely driven by high-priced VMware Cloud Foundation bundles adopted by the majority of its top customers. The Register reports: Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware appears to be a big success, on the balance sheet at least, after the company announced a big majority of its top 10,000 customers have decided to acquire its Cloud Foundation stack and posted strong growth. The chips-and-code company today announced its results for the quarter ended February 2nd, its first for FY 2025. Revenue of $14.92 billion represented 25 percent year-on-year growth. Net income of $5.5 billion was a 315 percent increase on the result from Q1 2024.
Broadcom no longer breaks out VMware revenue: sales of Virtzilla’s wares are all now lumped into its infrastructure software business unit, which posted $6.7 billion revenue for Q1, up from $4.55 billion for the same quarter last year. Direct comparisons of those numbers are not wise as Broadcom owned VMware for four fifths of Q1 2024. Consider, instead, the $1.97 billion Q4 2023 and $7.6 billion FY 2023 software revenue that Broadcom recorded before it acquired VMware.
Know, also, that Broadcom’s software sales grew by just three percent in FY 2023 and four percent in FY 2022. That slow growth means the jump from $1.97 billion software revenue in Q4 2023 to $6.7 billion in Q1 2025 is likely due to VMware, which in its last quarter as an independent company reported $3.4 billion revenue. It therefore looks a lot like Broadcom has added around $1 billion to quarterly VMware revenue in a little over a year.
The measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has reached 208 cases.
Texas officials reported 198 confirmed cases across nine counties as of Friday, with 23 people requiring hospitalization since the outbreak exploded at the end of January. Most of the cases continue to be in children and teens, with 153 of the 198 cases being between the ages of 0 and 17. Eleven cases have no confirmed age listed. All but five cases are in people who are unvaccinated or have no vaccination record.
Texas officials have so far reported one death in the outbreak in an unvaccinated school-aged child with no underlying health conditions. Media reports have identified the child as being a 6-year-old.
Games Done Quick’s next weeklong charity speedrunning shindig kicks off this weekend. Frost Fatales, one of GDQ’s two events celebrating women and femmes, runs from March 9 to 16, raising money for the nonprofit National Women’s Law Center.
Frost Fatales is the winter installment of the pair of events organized by GDQ’s Frame Fatales speedrunning community. (Its summer counterpart is Flame Fatales.) Last year’s Frost Fatales raised $155,000 for the same nonprofit, which fights for gender justice in issues central to the lives of women and girls. Since the first Frame Fatales event in 2019, the biannual speedruns have raised over $1 million for charity.
Studio MDHR
This year’s festivities dive right into the deep end with a run of the charmingly punishing Cuphead at 1PM ET on Sunday, followed by Super Mario Odyssey a mere hour later. Anyone who can beat Cuphead in that time deserves a Medal of Honor.
You can check out GDQ’s schedule for the full lineup of games. The weeklong event streams exclusively on the GDQ Twitch channel (also embedded below), starting with that must-see Cuphead run at 1PM ET on Sunday.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/how-to-watch-games-done-quicks-frost-fatales-speedrunning-event-from-march-9-220017343.html?src=rss
A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies’ scheduled release dates.
According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole “numerous ‘pre-release’ DVDs and Blu-rays” between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly “ripped” the movies, “bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying” and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.
Hale has been charged with “two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods,” the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.
You can stream the first episode of Win or Lose, Pixar’s first original TV series, for free on YouTube. It follows a co-ed middle school softball team (the Pickles), with each episode focusing on a different character’s perspective — including animated personifications of their insecurities and defense mechanisms.
The first episode hones in on the “coach’s kid,” Laurie, the Pickles’ right fielder. She’s rubbish at softball, thanks in no small part to her insecurities, illustrated as a sentient perspiration blob (the aptly named Sweaty).
If Win or Lose floats your boat, you’ll need to hop over to Disney+ — subscription in tow — to watch the remaining seven episodes (the last two of which premiere on March 12). Should you go that route, you can currently save some money on the ad-supported tier of a Disney+ and Hulu bundle.
Pre-release controversy
Disney+
Win or Lose stood at the center of a controversy months before its February 19 debut. The show was initially slated to include an openly transgender character, Kai. While the part, played by trans actress Chanel Stewart, is still included in the series, Disney cut several lines of dialog referencing her gender identity.
A pair of overshadowing circumstances compounded the online backlash over the decision: The news came on the heels of Donald Trump’s election victory, and the show has an openly Christian character (Laurie) who prays aloud to “Heavenly Father” before heading to the plate. The combination led many to assume the moves were an appeasement to the president-elect, right as business leaders were routinely seen visiting Mar-a-Lago and currying favor by cutting DEI programs and trans-inclusive features.
However, Disney framed its decision as being about parental freedom regarding LGBTQ+ storylines. “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline,” a company spokesperson toldThe Hollywood Reporter in December. An off-record source “close to” the project told the publication that the studio chose to cut the lines several months before, which (if true) would have placed it at a point when political forecasters saw the election’s outcome as either a coin flip or slightly favoring former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Regardless, you can check out the first episode below if it sounds like your cup of tea.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/you-can-stream-the-first-episode-of-pixars-win-or-lose-on-youtube-211938945.html?src=rss
Mobile World Congress is taking place in Barcelona this week, offering manufacturers an opportunity to show off new gear without needing to hold their own splashy event. So far, we’ve learned about some new laptops and phones, as well as upcoming AI updates to Android and an internet connectivity announcement from Meta. There’s also been some interesting ideas in the world of headphones and a whole lot of concepts that might never make it to market, but are fun to look at any way.
Among the bigger-name manufacturers, Lenovo has arguably had the busiest MWC so far. The company has revealed a whole bunch of laptops, including upgraded ThinkPads and several intriguing concept models.
The ThinkPad T14s 2-in-1 has a design that’s more aligned with the convertible format of the Yoga lineup than a typical ThinkPad. The 14-inch machine can be equipped with a 400-nit WUXGA touch display. Other ThinkPads are getting spec upgrades, while Lenovo claims the new ThinkPad X13 Gen 6 has “one of the lightest ThinkPad designs ever.” The company has a fresh slate of laptops with generative AI capabilities as well.
Some of Lenovo’s concepts have certainly caught our attention. It’s a bummer that the company doesn’t currently plan to turn the Yoga Solar PC Concept into a commercial device. Thanks to the solar cells on the casing, the laptop can soak up enough energy from the sun in 20 minutes to play an hour of videos. As little as 0.3 watts of light is enough to juice up the battery. While solar-powered laptops aren’t exactly new, the Yoga Solar PC feels polished. Here’s hoping Lenovo does more with the notion in the future.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
In addition, Lenovo showed off some conceptual display accessories for a ThinkBook laptop. There’s an eight-inch screen that attaches to the side magnetically to help you, for instance, keep up with notifications and widgets. The Magic Bay Dual Display Concept adds a 13.3-inch panel to either side of the main display. There’s also a slim second display that’s designed to sit above your laptop screen and provide quick access to things like the time, weather, notifications, a focus mode timer, an AI assistant and notifications.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
On top of all of that, Lenovo offered a look at a new prototype laptop with a flexible display. Building on the tech the company used in the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, the ThinkBook codename Flip AI PC Proof of concept (to give its full name) has a fold-out screen. This allows Lenovo to double the panel’s size from 13 inches to 18.1 inches. The ThinkBook Rollable’s display, on the other hand, can extend to 16.7 inches. Again, Lenovo doesn’t currently plan to release a commercial version of this fold-out laptop, but it’s an interesting idea.
Samsung
Photo by Mat Smith for Engadget.
The main MWC news from Samsung this year is the company’s latest midrange and budget phones. The Galaxy A56 has a larger screen than its predecessor at 6.7 inches, but it’s thinner too at 7.44mm vs. 8.2mm. There’s now a small bump where the volume and power buttons are — a tweak that we feel makes the A56 easier to handle.
Samsung has switched up the camera array in the A56. On the front, there’s a lower-res 12MP lens. On the other side, you’ll find an upgraded 12MP ultrawide, 50MP main sensor and a 5MP macro lens. The A56 has a bunch of AI-powered camera and image editing features, such as enhanced subject detection in portrait mode and an object eraser.
Pre-orders are open in the UK for the Galaxy A56, which costs $499/£499. It will hit the UK on March 19, but folks in the US will have to wait until “later this year” for it.
Samsung also revealed the Galaxy A36 5G and Galaxy A26 5G. Both devices have a 120Hz, 6.7-inch display with brightness of up to 1,200 nits. They also share an IP67 rating and 5,000mAh battery with the A56.
However, the base models of each only have 6GB of RAM (compared with the A56’s 12GB). In addition, the A36 has the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 processor instead of the Exynos 1580 that the A56 boasts, while the A26 has a Exynos 1380 chipset.
Samsung’s concept folding phones and gaming handhelds
In addition to properly launching the trio of A-series phones, Samsung also brought a bunch of concept devices to Barcelona, further showing off its flexible display prowess. We’ve seen reporting of these, like Android Police’s coverage of a “Flex Gaming” handheld. That prototype consists of a 7.2-inch OLED screen that bends in half. Flanking the display are what appear to be controllers and holes where they’d fit when the handheld is folded up. Elsewhere on the internet we also saw Samsung showcase a Galaxy Z Flip-esque device that had two hinges that let it fold in on itself from the top and bottom. Allison Johnson at The Verge has nicknamed it “The Claw,” which to our editor Cherlynn Low is just reminiscent of an MSI device.
Xiaomi
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Unfortunately, Xiaomi doesn’t have plans to bring a handset it showed off at MWC to the US. That’s a real pity, because no other companies are selling phones quite like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in the country these days.
Xiaomi teamed up with Leica to make a smartphone that leans heavily into photography. The camera array includes a 1-inch 50-megapixel Sony main sensor, an f/2.2 50MP ultrawide cam, a 50MP midrange lens with a 70mm focal length and a 200MP periscope array with a 100mm focal length — that equates to a 4.7x optical zoom. Some preset Leica filters help to tie the two brands’ knowhow together.
That’s not all that might be interesting to mobile snappers. Xiaomi’s separate Photography kit includes an add-on camera grip with a physical shutter button, an adjustable dial and dedicated video button. You’ll have the option to attach a standard 67mm filter adapter to a case as well — in other words, some of the equipment you might use on a dedicated camera is compatible with the Ultra 15 as part of this setup.
Moreover, the Ultra 15 has a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and up to 3,200 nits of brightness to help you get a good look at your captures. Plus, unlike some other Chinese phones (like Huawei’s), Xiaomi supports Google services in HyperOS 2, which is an Android skin. The Ultra 15 starts at about €1,499 (around $1,572).
Android
Speaking of Android, Google announced two new AI-powered features for the operating system at MWC. The Live Video function, which Google first previewed at I/O 2024, allows you to share what your phone’s camera sees with Gemini so you can ask the chatbot questions about the footage.
The new screensharing function works in a similar way. You can ask Gemini questions about whatever’s on your phone or tablet’s display.
If they work as well as advertised, these features could be a boon for accessibility. Google will first offer them to Gemini Advanced subscribers starting later this month. Those with a $20 per month Google One AI Premium membership, which is included with some Verizon plans, have access to Gemini Advanced.
Nothing
Image by Mat Smith for Engadget
Samsung wasn’t the only smartphone maker of note to show off two new mid-range devices at MWC. Nothing debuted its Phone 3a Pro and Phone 3a at the event — even though it has yet to unleash the Phone 3.
The 3a Pro has a beefier camera module (quite literally as the device is about 10 grams heavier than the 3a). It contains a 50MP telephoto sensor with a 3x optical zoom; a 50MP primary sensor with f/1.88 lens and dual-pixel phase detection auto-focus (PDAF); and an ultrawide 8MP sensor with a 120-degree field of view. The handset has a telemacro mode too. As for the 3a, that boasts a main 50MP camera with single-pixel PDAF, but the other two sensors are the same as on the 3a Pro.
The cameras are the main difference between the two phones, which both have a 6.77-inch AMOLED LTPS display with a 120Hz refresh rate and up to 1,300 nits of brightness. The phones have a 5,000mAh battery with support for 50W fast charging, and they run on a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset.
The devices have Nothing’s multipurpose Essential Key, a physical button that can take screenshots and help you record voice notes. The phones also have some generative AI features, such as the ability to transcribe said voice notes and describe what’s in screenshots and photos.
As usual, Nothing is initially offering these devices in the US through a beta program. Phone 3a pre-orders are open now and the $379 handset ships on March 11. That’s the date when pre-orders for the Phone 3a Pro go live. The $459 phone can be in your hands on March 25.
Meta
There was more news out of MWC beyond new gear and OS updates. Meta and the Internet Society announced a partnership to bolster affordable internet connectivity around the globe. They’re jointly putting $30 million into the initiative over the next five years.
A major aim of the project is to help build out infrastructure in areas where commercial providers have yet to do so. The Connectivity Co-Funding Initiative will also back training programs, community-centered solutions for underserved areas and locally owned networks. The Internet Society is hoping to find more partners to help with the project.
HMD
Finnish company HMD, which also makes devices under the Nokia brand, brought a bunch of phones to Barcelona this year, but maybe the most interesting thing was some earbuds. The Amped Earbuds are a pair of fairly standard Bluetooth buds, with a twist in the case: It’s got a 1,600mAh battery built in that supports reverse wireless charging. It’s a pretty solid idea — given you’re likely already carrying a phone and some headphones. Perhaps the one issue is that capacity: 1,600mAh is enough to charge a lot of headphones, but it’s dramatically smaller than the battery in your phone. Still, an extra 20 percent of battery life could be an lifesaver.
Update, March 7 2025, 4:05PM ET: This story has been updated twice since publish. Once to include a section on Samsung’s concept folding devices, and once to add a section on HMD’s Amped Earbuds. The introduction of the article was also changed.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/everything-announced-at-mwc-2025-samsung-nothing-lenovo-xiaomi-and-more-tech-news-200029465.html?src=rss
As Gundam GQuuuuuuX gets ready to envision a new lens on the Universal Century, here’s what you need to know about the devastating conflict that defined the original Gundam.
Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho returns to the big screen this weekend with the sci-fi film Mickey 17. If you’re expecting the subtly devastating social commentary of his 2019 drama/horror/thriller-hybrid Parasite, I suspect you’ll be disappointed. Mickey 17 is a very different beast in both aesthetic and tone. When the first trailer dropped, I wrote that the film felt like a darkly comedic version of Duncan Jones’ 2009 film Moon, with a dash of the surreal absurdity of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) thrown in for good measure. I stand by that assessment, and it proves to be a winning combination.
(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)
The film is based on the 2022 novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Ashton’s inspiration for the novel was the teletransportation paradox—a thought experiment pondering the philosophy of identity that challenges certain notions of the self and consciousness. It started as a short story about what Ashton called “a crappy immortality” and expanded from there into a full-length novel. (Ashton also penned a sequel, Antimatter Blues, which was published in 2023.)
