Featuring the latest in daily science news, Verge Science is all you need to keep track of what’s going on in health, the environment, and your whole world. Through our articles, we keep a close eye on the overlap between science and technology news — so you’re more informed.
With AI, he says, ‘in order to save you, they’ve got to hurt you first.‘
It’s the first step toward Google’s goal of handling AI tasks from space.
Following backlash, YouTube posted on X that when the trailer was “submitted as an ad, it was temporarily restricted by our system. Following review the ad has been cleared to run.” Meta spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said, “This was an error,” and will now run the ads.
Update September 26th: Added statement from Meta.
If you want to know where the power in tech currently lies, you only need to look at this photo of the head table at Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. I see Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Apple’s Tim Cook, and SpaceXaiTesla’s Elon Musk seated by the leaders of the world’s two superpowers. The CEOs and / or founders of Alphabet (Google), OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, Micron, Dell, and… Zoom, were also in attendance.
The blood pressure trends, insulin resistance trends, and sleep breathing quality metrics mentioned at the 2026 Made By Google event weren’t available when the Pixel Watch 5 launched last month, but now Google says they’ll start rolling out to Watch 3 models and later this week. You can set them up in the Google Health app, and trend reports will arrive in “early October.”
Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to stop granting permits to data centers while the state finishes an audit of the facilities that want to connect to its electric grid. Last week, Abbott also told state regulators to “impose legal consequences” on data centers that don’t disclose information about water usage.
If you need an alternative to all the soul-destroying news filling your feeds all day long you can point your browser to Changelog.earth which is a variation on video game patch notes that instead highlights all the positive progress our planet is making. Believe it or not, good things are still happening.
The company will pay $131.5 million to settle an NYC legal dispute that accused DoorDash of underpaying workers. “Our mistakes meant some Dashers were underpaid or paid late,” DoorDash says.
The settlement includes $115 million for more than 260,000 impacted DoorDash workers, as well as over $16 million in civil penalties.
Vee has hands-on coverge of Peloton’s new treadmills, but the highlight for me is that the company has finally launched a full Whoop integration, which will sync detailed metrics and class info from Peloton workouts to the popular health wearable. Full details here.
The new Theragun Mini Y2K Collection exposes the Theragun Mini 3’s tech through a new translucent shell with color options inspired by the original iMac G3. The colors launching today through Therabody’s online store for $229.99 each include blue raspberry, grape blast, orange crush, strawberry splash, and green apple.
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It’s been a poorly kept secret that the company was working towards building its own wet lab. It was hiring biologists and even bought startup Coefficient Bio in April. Now it’s confirmed to TechCrunch that a lab is up and operating in the Bay Area.
Satellite data combined with machine learning gives meteorologists new tools to predict deadly floods sooner.
As New Scientist reports, researchers have named a new species of cat — the “tilcayo” — which lurks on the slopes of the Andes mountains in South America. It’s apparently the first new named species of cat in over a century. Regarding this news, Verge staff have been observed noting disappointment that it’s a wild species, because why can’t we all have one at home? Here, kitty kitty.
Mathematicians have speculated that the company was targeting the Hodge Conjecture next, but after the PR disaster that was Navier-Stokes and its recent failure to keep its models under control, OpenAI may hold off on any announcements. According to The Information:
It could take the company longer to announce the solution, though, because it’s trying to figure out how to collaborate with the math community to make the announcement without triggering another PR nightmare….
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A surprisingly consequential update for the world’s most popular smartwatch.
The shot marks 14 years since Curiosity landed on the Martian surface in 2012. NASA created it by merging two black-and-white panoramas from Curiosity’s navigation cameras then added color “for an artistic interpretation of the scene, with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one.”
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
The mission will include two firsts if regulators approve the launch window and the weather holds: send Starship into orbit, and insert a few dozen of SpaceX’s larger and more capable V3 satellites into the Starlink constellation for the first time. The 26 satellites on Flight 14 will each add 1 Tbps of capacity to the constellation, boosting total network capacity by about 3 percent on just this one flight.
It’s the first official confirmation, delivered by Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink:
“We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”
It’s like the race to build self-improving superintelligence before the other guy does, only with space guns. Meink apparently never saw Gravity.
xAI’s original lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI alleged “anticompetitive conduct” over Apple and OpenAI’s deal to integrate ChatGPT into iOS. Monday’s dismissal filing, reported on by Reuters, specifies that X and SpaceXAI “do not seek to dismiss its claims against” OpenAI.
Water from the Colorado River is getting scarce — and more expensive for everyone.
Chasing unrealistic standards encourages men to turn themselves into DIY science experiments.
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max are made with 50 percent renewables. Apple Watch, which Apple has had to stop describing as carbon neutral, reaches 100 percent renewable electricity. The company has a 2030 target for its suppliers to use “100 percent clean energy” for Apple production.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
It’s to finance the restart of an Iowa plant that’s been closed since 2020. Last year, Google announced a partnership with NextEra Energy to reopen the site to help power the company’s AI data centers. But you won’t see that tidbit in the Energy Department’s press release today.
The president posted an image that purports to show the next generation of United States Space Force dress uniforms and, well… they sure look a lot like Imperial officer garb. (Which itself is inspired in part by German SS uniforms.)
