Section

Technology

Page 9

Technology

Monitored Wildlife Populations Are Down 73 Per Cent on Average Since 1970, WWF Says, but Tigers and Tuna Are Recovering

The 16th edition counts 35,803 monitored populations across 5,790 species, finds freshwater life hit hardest, and says food and finance must now follow energy past a tipping point.

Oct 8, 2026/3 min read

A wild Bengal tiger partly hidden in brush in Ranthambore National Park, India, photographed on 15 February 2025, a file photograph illustrative of the tiger recovery described in the report and not an image from it

Technology

Microsoft Unveils the Surface Laptop Ultra at $2,599 and Pitches Windows as the Safest Place for AI Agents

At its San Francisco event, Microsoft and Nvidia priced their RTX Spark flagship, promised local AI models and agent containment in Windows, and lined up four rival laptops for the same Friday.

Oct 7, 2026/2 min read

A Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio on display in a shop in Nagoya, Japan, photographed on 20 February 2022, a file photograph of an earlier Surface model and not the Surface Laptop Ultra

Technology

Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai Win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Showing How a Tiny Imbalance in Molecules Can Snowball

A French chemist and a Japanese one share the award for the reactions that explain how mirror-image molecules can tip heavily to one side, a puzzle that matters for medicines and for life itself.

Oct 7, 2026/3 min read

A building of the Tokyo University of Science in Tokyo, the university of laureate Kenso Soai, photographed on 20 March 2012, a file photograph and not of the laureates or their laboratories

Technology

Francis Halzen Wins the Nobel Prize in Physics for Turning Antarctic Ice Into a Neutrino Telescope

The Royal Swedish Academy gave the prize to one man for an idea he first floated in 1988: that a cubic kilometre of South Pole ice could catch messengers from the far reaches of the universe.

Oct 6, 2026/2 min read

The IceCube Laboratory at the South Pole, the surface building of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, photographed on 6 January 2023

Technology

Saturn Reached Opposition on Sunday, and Its Rings Are Open Again for the Best View of the Year

Earth passed between the Sun and Saturn on 4 October, putting the ringed planet at its brightest and closest of 2026. A small telescope shows the rings clearly, which was not true a year ago when they were edge-on.

Oct 5, 2026/2 min read

Saturn eclipsing the Sun as seen by the Cassini spacecraft in September 2006, with the rings lit from behind, a spacecraft view and not what a telescope shows from Earth

Technology

Google Is Cutting Free Gemini Users to a Single Model From 9 October

Free accounts will be limited to Flash-Lite, the smallest model, and the $4.99 AI Plus plan loses Pro, according to Google's support pages, a change that pushes heavier users towards paid tiers.

Oct 5, 2026/2 min read

Android-themed dessert statues outside a building at Google's Mountain View campus, photographed in 2014, illustrative of the company and not of the Gemini app

Technology

An OpenAI Safety Lead Quit and Told The Atlantic the Company's Culture Is Broken

David Robinson, who helped write OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, says 'the time for trial and error is over'. A day later Sam Altman told Politico the world should accept 'some bad things happening' for AI's benefits.

Oct 5, 2026/3 min read

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman meeting Israel's president Isaac Herzog in June 2023, a file photograph illustrative of Altman and not of the events in this report

Technology

Peruvian Scientists Name a New Lizard Found Above 4,800 Metres in the Andes, Bringing the Country's Total to 296 Species

A team from the Natural History Museum of San Marcos University described Liolaemus archipensis, a six to eight centimetre lizard from the high puna of Arequipa, in the journal Diversity.

Oct 3, 2026/2 min read

A Liolaemus lizard of a different species, Liolaemus leopardinus, photographed in November 2021 and shown only as an example of the genus, not the newly described species

Technology

Apple Says It Will Tighten Mac 'Full Disk Access' Because AI Agents Make the Risk Grow Substantially

In a developer post on Friday, Apple said some apps use Full Disk Access in ways that put users at risk, and promised new controls so the permission can only be granted by very explicit user action.

Oct 3, 2026/2 min read

A MacBook Pro 16 laptop on display, photographed in November 2021, a file photo of a Mac and not an image of the permission screen Apple described

Technology

Physicists in Japan Cracked a 25-Year Puzzle in Measuring One of the Hardest Forms of Quantum Entanglement

A Kyoto University and Hiroshima University team demonstrated the first method for identifying W state entanglement among three photons, closing a gap that had resisted physicists since the state was first described in the late 1990s.

Oct 1, 2026/2 min read

A laser optics setup at Idaho National Laboratory, illustrative of the kind of photonics apparatus used in entanglement research and not the Kyoto team's own circuit, photographed in August 2007

Technology

Cassini's Old Data Just Showed How Enceladus Sorts Its Ocean Chemistry Into Different Ice Grains

A reanalysis of nearly a thousand ice grain spectra from Saturn's icy moon found that freezing droplets separate salts into distinct pockets, a sorting process that could make it far easier for a future probe to detect organic chemistry from its hidden ocean.

Oct 1, 2026/3 min read

Saturn and its rings photographed by the Cassini spacecraft on 6 October 2004, illustrative of the mission whose archived data was reanalysed and not a new image of Enceladus itself