A young woolly mammoth now known as Yuka was frozen in the Siberian permafrost for about 40,000 years before it was discovered by local tusk hunters in 2010. The hunters soon handed it over to scientists, who were excited to see its exquisite level of preservation, with skin, muscle tissue, and even reddish hair intact. Later research showed that, while full cloning was impossible, Yuka’s DNA was in such good condition that some cell nuclei could even begin limited activity when placed inside mouse eggs.

Now, a team has successfully sequenced Yuka’s RNA—a feat many researchers once thought impossible. Researchers at Stockholm University carefully ground up bits of muscle and other tissue from Yuka and nine other woolly mammoths, then used special chemical treatments to pull out any remaining RNA fragments, which are normally thought to be much too fragile to survive even a few hours after an organism has died. Scientists go to great lengths to extract RNA even from fresh samples, and most previous attempts with very old specimens have either failed or been contaminated.

A different view

The team used RNA-handling methods adapted for ancient, fragmented molecules. Their scientific séance allowed them to explore information that had never been accessible before, including which genes were active when Yuka died. In the creature’s final panicked moments, its muscles were tensing and its cells were signaling distress—perhaps unsurprising since Yuka is thought to have died as a result of a cave lion attack.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Executives are turning to a novel structure to fund crypto accumulation vehicles as investor appetite thins. They’re called in-kind contributions, and they now account for a growing share of digital-asset treasury, or DAT, deals. Instead of raising cash to buy tokens in the open market, DAT sponsors contribute large slugs of their own crypto, often unlisted and hard to value.

Digital-asset treasuries are a new breed of public company built to hold concentrated crypto positions. The structure surged in 2025 as small-cap firms, especially in biotech and mining, reinvented themselves as digital-asset proxies. Sponsors provide tokens or raise money to buy them, and the stock then trades as a kind of listed bet on crypto. For insiders, it’s a shortcut to liquidity. For investors, a wager on upside. But not all DATs carry the same level of risk. Earlier deals raised money to buy tokens through regular markets, which offered at least some independent price check. In-kind contributions skip that step — letting insiders decide what their tokens are worth, sometimes before the token even trades publicly. That shift means pricing and trading risks land more squarely on shareholders, many of them retail investors.

Investor faith is already wobbling. Many DATs that once traded above the value of their holdings now trade below it. As insiders supply the tokens and set their price, it’s becoming harder for investors to tell what these deals are really worth, or when to get out. The in-kind structure was on full display in a recent $545 million private placement by Tharimmune Inc., a biotech firm-turned-crypto proxy, to set up a buyer of Canton Coins. About 80% of the raise came in the form of unlisted Canton tokens, priced at 20 cents each, according to an investor presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The token began trading on exchanges Nov. 10 and is now around 11 cents, CoinGecko data show.

More deals are following the same template. In these placements, insiders contribute tokens — sometimes illiquid or unlisted — to form a treasury, lock in valuations and seed the perception of market demand. But when tokens list below deal price, public shareholders absorb the difference. […] Then there’s Flora Growth Corp., a Nasdaq-listed company that announced a $401 million deal to start acquiring Zero Gravity tokens in September. On closer inspection, the firm had raised just $35 million in cash to pair with a $366 million in-kind contribution of then-unlisted 0G tokens. Those tokens were priced at around $3 a piece; they subsequently listed, and are now trading at about $1.20.

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Our best friends come in a fantastic array of shapes and sizes; a Borzoi looks nothing like a Boston terrier, except for a certain fundamental, ineffable (except to taxonomists) doggyness about them. And it’s been that way almost from the beginning. A recent study of dog and wolf skulls from the last 50,000 years found that dogs living just after the last Ice Age were already about half as varied in their shape and size as modern dogs.

“Shaped like a friend” means a lot of different things

Biologist and archaeologist Allowen Evin, of CNRS, and her colleagues compared the size and shape of 643 skulls from dogs and wolves: 158 from modern dogs, 86 from modern wolves, and 391 from archaeological sites around the world spanning the last 50,000 years. By comparing the locations and sizes of certain skeletal landmarks, such as bony protrusions where muscles attached, the researchers could quantify how different one skull was from another. That suggested a few things about how dogs, or at least the shapes of their heads, have evolved over time.

The team’s results suggest that dogs that lived during the Mesolithic (before settled farming life came into fashion in the Middle East) and the Neolithic (after farming took off but before the heyday of copper smelting; 10,000 BCE is a general starting point) were a surprisingly diverse bunch, at least in terms of the size and shape of their skulls.

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Folks who are looking forward to a fresh flavor of life simulation in the form of Paralives will have to wait a while longer before they can jump into the Sims-like game. The game was supposed to hit early access on Steam on December 8, but lead developer Alex Massé and the team at Paralives Studio have pushed back the release date to May 25.

Massé explained that the team expanded its playtests in the lead up to the early access period, “and the latest feedback we received made us realize the game isn’t up to the standard we wanted it to meet for release.” While the character creator and in-depth home builder modes seem to be in a solid place, playtesters encountered “impactful bugs” in the live mode and it appears that there isn’t yet quite enough to do in the town. “We feel it is necessary to work on these before delivering the product to the community,” Massé wrote. The team plans to improve the game’s onboarding experience too.

Paralives has been in development for six years, and the team has grown from two or three people in the first couple of years to an average of 10. Having such a small team meant that the developers “had to alternate long stretches of development” between the three parts of the game, Massé wrote. “We are so proud of what we have built, but now, we just need a bit more time to polish the simulation part of the game. This would ensure Paralives offers a great first experience when it launches, making players come back for every exciting free update and expansion that we will put out afterwards.”

Paralives Studio will stream 45 minutes of gameplay on its YouTube channel at noon ET on November 25. Massé said you’ll get to see what the game looks like now, including some of the current features. The team will provide more details on aspects it plans to improve before the early access release. You can expect more streams and videos in the coming months. It’s expected that Paralives will remain in early access for two years while the team adds the features and content it plans to.

Paralives is an indie alternative to the likes of The Sims and InZOI. There are other life sim games on the way before Paralives debuts, such as Pokémon Pokopia. Animal Crossing New Horizons is getting a major update and a Switch 2 version in January. However, EA will shut down The Sims Mobile that same month.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/the-sims-like-paralives-is-delayed-until-may-2026-174922059.html?src=rss

A Chinese plant scientist at the University of Michigan, who drew national attention in June 2025 when she was arrested and accused along with another Chinese scientist of smuggling a crop-damaging fungus into the US, pleaded guilty on November 12, 2025, to charges of smuggling and making false statements to the FBI. Under her plea agreement, Yunqing Jian, 33, was sentenced to time served and expected to be deported.

Her arrest put a spotlight on Fusarium graminearum, a harmful pathogen. But while its risk to grains such as wheat, corn, and rice can be alarming, Fusarium isn’t new to American farmers. The US Department of Agriculture estimates it costs wheat and barley farmers more than $1 billion a year.

Tom Allen, an extension and research professor of plant pathology at Mississippi State University, explains what Fusarium graminearum is and isn’t.

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Today, short-form videos dominate our free time (and our working time, at that)—but this wasn’t always the case. Before the likes of TikTok and Instagram Reels, online video content was more long-form than not. It might have felt short by the standards of cable TV, but many of the videos on platforms like YouTube were regularly anywhere from two to 10 minutes, if not longer.

The first platform to really popularize short-form content as we think of it now was Vine. These videos were short—a maximum of six seconds at a time, which should have spelled the platform’s doom. Who would want to watch these tiny videos back to back for hours at a time? A lot of us, apparently. Vine compilations garner millions (if not tens of millions) of views on YouTube. While the Twitter-owned platform only lasted about five years, it established itself as a true cultural phenomenon. Quote the first half of a popular vine to a group of young millennials or Gen Zs, and, chances are, they’ll finish the line.

For years, us Vine fans have longed for someone to bring the app back. Sure, short-form video has never been more addicting, but it’s just not the same. Videos on Vine had a much different feel than most of the content you see on TikTok. Maybe it was the limited runtime; maybe it was the stripped-down recording interface. But to me, Vine feels like early YouTube: homemade, indie, and fun.

Divine is the new Vine

It seems that experience might actually be making a comeback. A new app, Divine, is trying to recreate the magic of those six-second loops. Divine, built by former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw-Plath and funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is meant to be a platform to share vines old and new. Of course, you can upload fresh six-second clips, but the app will also feature 150,000 to 200,000 “archived” vines from roughly 60,000 creators. You won’t have to rely on those Vine compilations anymore—you can watch those classic clips directly on Divine.

Those videos aren’t scraped from YouTube compilations, either. According to TechCrunch, Vine’s original library was stored by the organization “Archive Team” in a huge but largely inaccessible archive. Henshaw-Plath studied the library, extracting as much data as possible to build profiles for the original Vine accounts and display metrics like views and original comments. Though not all Vines were archived, including “millions of K-pop-focused videos,” Henshaw-Plath believes “a good percentage” are available on Divine. Vine creators can choose to either take down their videos from Divine or take over their profiles on the app, so long as they prove their identities.

Divine is also a decentralized social media platform running on the Nostr protocol. That means no one company owns it, which means your content is your content. When you post, your videos are tied to you via private keys, so you can always prove ownership. Plus, there are no user-specific algorithms. You have to choose what you want to watch, or jump into an algorithm created by the Divine community.

My favorite part of this experiment, however? No AI. At a time when other social media platforms are inundated with hyperrealistic videos from generators like Sora, Divine has a strict no-AI policy. Divine uses tech from the Guardian Project to confirm whether a video was filmed on a smartphone. If the system detects a video is artificial, it gets taken down. It’s enough to make this tech editor shed a (joyful) tear.

How to join Divine

As you might expect, there’s a lot of demand to try Divine at launch. At this time, the company says its beta test is full. However, you can sign up for the waitlist to be notified when more spots open up. You can also browse clips on the platform’s web app right now, even without an account, but I’ve found it to be a bit glitchy.

While most of the enormous Call of Duty audience buys each annual entry without hesitation for its multiplayer offering, the single-player campaign is also a big part of the experience. CoD campaigns are often big on popcorn silliness and refreshingly tight. Some people just like to start a game and see its credits roll within a weekend, you know? But judging by the early impressions of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 that are beginning to surface online, it sounds like this year’s campaign comes with some pretty major caveats.

I admittedly haven’t played the game myself yet, but IGN is one of the outlets that has gone live with its 6/10 review, which reveals that the campaign’s always-online nature means it can’t be paused, and if you’re idle for what the game deems to be too long it’ll boot you out. For a mode that is traditionally offline and totally separate from the online portion of the game, this might come as a shock to some players.

It gets worse. While the official website for Black Ops 7 states that the campaign can be played solo or with a “squad,” it definitely emphasises its co-op nature first. A campaign that facilitates co-op is usually a good thing, but here it sounds like very few considerations are made for single players. You can’t fill in spots in the four-person squads with AI companions, so if you don’t have three friends handy, you’re not getting the desired experience. 

Objectives clearly designed for multiple players are reportedly tediously repetitive when you have to do all of them on your own. Many games are built entirely around co-op and that’s fine, but it seems like a pretty dramatic departure for a series that has always accommodated the solo player. According to IGN’s coverage there are no checkpoints either, so if you don’t finish a mission in a single sitting — not always possible for people with busy lives — you’ll lose all your progress. As you presumably will if your Wi-Fi dies.

For groups willing to live with all these potentially very awkward conditions, the Black Ops 7 campaign promises “high-stakes challenges across a wide spectrum of environments, from the neon-lit rooftops of Japan to the Mediterranean coast, and even into the deepest corners of the human psyche.” Presumably that last bit doesn’t refer to the rageful thoughts of someone who just lost all their progress because they had to answer the front door.

As you’d expect, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 also offers the traditional multiplayer and Zombies modes that will no doubt keep you busy until next year. It’s out today on Xbox (included with Game Pass), PS5, PS4 and PC.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/you-cant-pause-your-game-in-call-of-duty-black-ops-7s-always-online-campaign-172707048.html?src=rss

Pay television penetration in American households fell to 50.2% in the third quarter and is projected to drop to 50% or lower by December, according to Madison and Wall, a technology and media advisory firm. Fifteen years ago, nearly nine in ten households subscribed to pay television services.

The decline has prompted major media companies to shed cable assets. Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and A&E are seeking to sell or spin off their cable television operations. Paramount stated it would not divest its cable channels but acknowledged that “each quarter is accelerating decline.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TV manufacturers are abandoning their attempts to turn TVs into interactive social devices through smart cameras. Sky announced this month that it will discontinue Sky Live, a camera accessory for its Sky Glass televisions that brought video calls, body-tracked workouts, and motion games to the living room. The device will stop working at the beginning of December. Sky will brick the cameras and reimburse customers. Sky launched the product in mid-2023 as part of an effort to transform televisions from passive viewing devices into interactive platforms.

That vision has not materialized across the industry. LG’s Smart Cam, released in 2023, is out of stock at major retailers and appears discontinued. TCL’s smart TV camera is no longer available. Samsung stopped integrating cameras directly into its television sets, though it still sells an external camera accessory.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you clicked on this story because you don’t know what a fabric shaver is, you’re not alone. That was me not too long ago when I started searching for something that could get rid of the pilling on some of my most loved pieces of clothing. Blessedly, I stumbled upon the Philips Fabric Shaver, a type of device I didn’t even know existed, and decided to give it a shot. It’s now an essential piece of tech in my house, and you don’t have to pay as much as I did for it thanks to this Black Friday deal that knocks it down to $13.

Sure, it may not seem revolutionary — especially if you already knew of the wonders of such devices — but it was for me. I have a lot of T-shirts, joggers, sweaters and more that I’ve had for at least three years and wear regularly. We also have a bunch of throw blankets around the house, partially because I love a good throw, and partially because my cat demands soft spots on which to sleep. All of those well-worn, well-loved fabrics have pilled over time, and I was tired of picking at the pills myself.

This Philips Fabric Shaver makes it so I never have to do that anymore. It runs on two AA batteries, has a simple on-off switch and a shaving head with three sized holes that, as you glide it over your sweater or blanket, catches the pills and shaves them right off. It’s literally as simple as that; after I tried it the first time on a pair of joggers, I spent far too much time running around my house and through my closet de-pilling as many things as I could. All the little fabric bits collect in a removable chamber that you simply empty as often as you need into the trash. If you’re like me and try to make the most of the wardrobe you have and not buy new clothing all the time, this little gadget will keep the pieces in your closet looking fresh.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/you-need-a-fabric-shaver-and-my-favorite-is-only-13-for-black-friday-163402235.html?src=rss

Back in 2012, Dishonored earned the first Game of the Year honor of my tenure at Ars Technica. Looking back on the game some 13 years later, Arkane’s well-constructed world of steam punk magical realism earns its place as a modern classic.

The game does a great job of drawing you into that world immediately, with a memorable opening sequence that sees you framed for the on-screen murder of the empress you’ve been sworn to protect. The scene does a great job establishing the emotional stakes of the coming missions while also throwing you into the deep end of the political infighting that has consumed a besieged, plague-beset kingdom.

A Victorian steam punk world you can lose yourself in.
Credit:
Arkane Studios

Those stakes, and a battle against a real feeling of injustice, drive the plot through some admittedly predictable beats as Dishonored continues through a set of sneak-and-assassinate missions. But it’s hard to care about that predictability when even minor side characters on both sides of the conflict quickly develop from stereotypes to engaging, fleshed-out characters.

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Good deals on Apple products are generally harder to come by throughout the year than with other brands, but sale events are usually the best time to look around. And sure enough, ahead of Black Friday, Apple’s AirTags are cheaper than ever. You can pick up a four-pack of these handy Bluetooth trackers for $65, a record low price. Bear in mind that this deal brings the price per AirTag down to $16 if you were to buy them individually, and when not on sale they usually cost $29.

If you use Apple devices and are prone to losing stuff, AirTags are the obvious choice of Bluetooth tracker to buy. Adding one to your account requires little more than a single tap, and with Apple’s Find My network offering such extensive coverage these days, it’s never been easier to find missing belongings.

Tracking down a still nearby misplaced item is as easy as using your iPhone to trigger a sound from the AirTag’s built-in speaker, or alternatively you can use Precision Finding to pinpoint its location through Find My. You just follow the instructions on your iPhone’s screen, paying attention to its vibrations as you get closer.

If you only need a single AirTag, they’re also on sale right now for $18, another record low. It works out a bit better as a deal if you purchase the four-pack, but if you just want to attach one to your keys or backpack, $65 might seem like a stretch. Just remember that AirTags can’t be attached to items right out of the box. You’ll need to add an accessory in order to turn one into a keyring, or even attach it to your pet’s collar.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/early-black-friday-apple-deals-include-a-four-pack-of-airtags-for-65-161756983.html?src=rss

Cryptocurrency companies and fintech startups are applying to open banks in the United States. Ripple, Coinbase and the UK payments company Wise have submitted applications for national trust charters this year. Trust banks cannot take deposits or make loans but charge fees for safekeeping customer assets and are not FDIC insured. The applications have reached 12 so far this year, more than any of the preceding eight years, according to data compiled by Klaros Group.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said last month that cryptocurrency activity should be done within the banking system if legally permissible and safe. His agency regulates nationally-chartered U.S. banks. The Bank Policy Institute and the Independent Community Bankers of America oppose the applications. BPI sent letters urging the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to reject the Ripple, Wise, and Sony applications. The group said approving Coinbase could significantly increase risks to the U.S. financial system.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The GoPro Hero 13 Black action camera is down to $310 as part of an early Black Friday sale, which is a record low price. That’s a discount of 23 percent or $90.

This model topped our list of the best action cameras, and for good reason. It’s a fantastic device with all kinds of bells and whistles. It’s the most versatile Hero camera that GoPro has ever made. There’s a new family of modular lenses and it can shoot up to 5.3K and handle 2X optical zoom.

The battery is bigger than ever before and offers around 90 minutes of continuous shooting in 4K/30FPS. The camera is waterproof up to 10 millimeters, so don’t worry about puddles. The full-color front screen is vivid and makes it easy to review footage without getting a computer involved.

There’s no internal storage here, but it accepts microSD cards. There’s a camera bundle on sale right now that includes a 64GB microSD, three batteries, a dual charger and a case. That pack costs $349, which is a discount of 30 percent.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-gopro-hero-13-black-is-cheaper-than-ever-ahead-of-black-friday-160154066.html?src=rss

Amazingly, your Mac has only just gained the ability to show you a full list of what you’ve copied. macOS has always allowed you to copy and paste items, but if you copied multiple items back-to-back, there was no way to view the earliest items you added to your clipboard. Sure, third-party apps have filled this gap for many years now, but macOS itself didn’t allow you to easily view multiple items stored in the clipboard, until now. With macOS 26 Tahoe, your Mac’s Spotlight search has added support for clipboard history, which means that you can view pretty much everything you’ve copied in the past 30 days. Here’s how to set up and use clipboard history on your Mac.

How to enable clipboard history on your Mac

Credit: Pranay Parab

Clipboard history is disabled by default on macOS Tahoe, so you’ll have to activate it first. To do this, click the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your Mac’s display and select System Settings. Now, go to Spotlight and scroll to the bottom in the right pane. Enable Results from Clipboard, and then click the drop-down menu below it. This lets you choose how long you want to store your clipboard history for. Apple gives you three choices: 8 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. Once you’ve made your choice, you’ll be ready to use clipboard history on your Mac.

If you copy sensitive items to the clipboard very often, you should probably avoid enabling this feature. I know many people who somehow still store passwords, credit card information, and other banking details in WhatsApp chats or plain text files. The moment you copy sensitive data from unsecured locations, it gets added to your clipboard history, which is not ideal. The good news is that if you copy passwords from Apple Passwords or other password management apps, they don’t appear in your Mac’s clipboard history.

Accessing and using clipboard history on your Mac

Credit: Pranay Parab

You can access your Mac’s clipboard history by using macOS Tahoe’s Spotlight Search. First, copy a few items to your clipboard. These can be text, photos, or other files. Use the Command-Space keyboard shortcut (or click the magnifying glass in your Mac’s top-right corner) to open Spotlight, and press Command-4. This will open your Mac’s clipboard history, where you’ll be able to see all the files you’ve copied recently.

To see older items, scroll down. Next to each item, you’ll see a small copy button, which you can use to copy that item to your clipboard once again. This is useful if you’ve copied multiple items in a row, but forgot to paste the first few. You can also select any item in your clipboard history list and press the return key on your keyboard to paste that item in the app that’s in the foreground.

If you want to quickly clear your clipboard history, fire up Spotlight (Command-Space), followed by the clipboard history page (Command-4), and select the three-dots button on the right. Select Clear History here to erase your entire clipboard. Or you can simply wait—Apple will automatically erase everything in your clipboard after your preset time limit (between 8 hours and 30 days, depending on what you chose in System Settings).

Third-party clipboard management apps are better

Credit: Pranay Parab

I’m aware that some people don’t use Spotlight at all, in favor of better alternatives like Raycast or Alfred. Luckily, those apps come with built-in clipboard managers, too. Spotlight’s implementation is good enough for basic use cases, but it needs a quicker way to access and paste from your clipboard history. While clipboard history in Spotlight is a nice upgrade, I still feel that if you’re serious about clipboard management, third-party alternatives are the way to go. 

The best clipboard managers for Mac will allow you to sync your clipboard history across multiple devices, let you exclude certain apps from your clipboard history, filter clipboard items by type (links, text, images, etc.), copy multiple items and paste them sequentially (useful for filling repetitive forms), extract and copy text from images, and so much more. 

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While I’ve been thinking about the sale prices we might see on Black Friday, Garmin just went and dropped the prices on several of their watches. The Forerunner 265 and 965 are at their lowest prices ever, both $150 off. Several other watches are on surprisingly good sales as well.

Garmin Forerunner 265 Running Smartwatch

$299.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $150.00

$299.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $150.00

Garmin Forerunner 265S Running Smartwatch, Colorful AMOLED Display, Training Metrics and Recovery Insights, Light Pink and Powder Gray

$299.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $150.00

$299.99
at Amazon

$449.99
Save $150.00

Garmin Forerunner® 965 Running Smartwatch, Colorful AMOLED Display, Training Metrics and Recovery Insights, Amp Yellow and Black

$449.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $150.00

$449.99
at Amazon

$599.99
Save $150.00

The Garmin Forerunner 265 is one of my favorite running watches, and you can read my review of it here. It’s got an AMOLED screen, all kinds of advanced training metrics, dual-band GPS, and can connect to a bike power meter, to name a few of the features that set it apart from other watches. I own one myself and highly recommend it. Its original price was $449.99, but it’s sometimes been on sale for $50 or $100 off. It was $100 off for last year’s Black Friday, and has made occasional dips back down to that price since the Forerunner 570 came out this year. (The 570 is basically a 265 plus voice features, and it’s not on sale this year—yet?)

Both sizes are now on sale: the 46-millimeter 265 and the smaller version, the 42-millimeter 265S (S for “smaller”). Both are the same price at $299.99.

The Forerunner 965 has the same features as the 265, plus a few extras—the biggest of which is maps. Normally $599.99, the 965 is on sale for $449.99.

Amazon has these marked as a “limited time deal,” but Garmin has them in their “holiday gift guide,” suggesting this might be the Black Friday price showing up early.

Also on sale:

• Garmin Forerunner 165: $199.99 ($50 off) and 165 Music: $249.99 ($50 off)

• Garmin Vivoactive 6: $249.99 ($50 off). See my review of the Garmin Vivoactive 6.