Scientists crack the code to using DNA like a computer hard drive

Researchers have made DNA storage rewritable, overcoming one of its biggest limitations. The breakthrough could turn DNA into a practical alternative to today’s energy-hungry data centers. The post ...
Science Daily

40,000-year-old signs show humans were recording information long before writing

More than 40,000 years ago, Ice Age humans were carving repeated patterns of dots, lines, and crosses into tools and small ivory figurines. A new computational study of more than 3,000 of these ...
TechCrunch

The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead)

Something strange happened at University of California campuses this fall. For the first time since the dot-com crash, computer science enrollment dropped. System-wide, it fell 6% last year after ...
Nature

AI can write genomes — how long until it creates synthetic life?

The Evo2 genomic language model can generate short genome sequences, but scientists say further advances are needed to write ...
Scientific American

Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud

Mainstream chatbots presented varying levels of resistance to deliberate requests for fabrication, study finds ...
PCMag

It Took Me Just 2 Hours to Vibe Code a Mass Surveillance Site With OpenAI's Codex

With zero coding skills, and in a disturbingly short time, I was able to assemble camera feeds from around the world into a ...
New Scientist

Breaking encryption with a quantum computer just got 10 times easier

The commonly used RSA encryption algorithm can now be cracked by a quantum computer with only 100,000 qubits, but the technical challenges to building such a machine remain numerous ...
City Journal

Yes, Science Has a Political Bias Problem. Here’s One Way to Fix It.

More than 20 percent of Americans express little or no confidence in scientists to “act in the best interests of the public,” according to Pew’s latest polling. Just 13 percent gave that answer in ...

40,000-year-old Stone Age symbols may have paved the way for writing, long before Mesopotamia

Over 40,000 years ago, our early ancestors were already carving signs into tools and sculptures. According to a new analysis ...
The Washington Post

This Maryland lab’s quantum computer could cure cancer — and steal passwords

Inside a warehouse turned laboratory in suburban Maryland, a team of theoretical physicists and engineers is racing to build a quantum processor powerful enough to surpass the most advanced computers ...
Reuters

Not all computer code protected as speech, US appeals court finds in ghost gun case

Court rules not all computer code is protected under First Amendment's free speech shield Gun website loses bid to revive lawsuit over ghost gun code Lawsuit followed New Jersey crackdown on ghost ...

Writing May Have Begun 40,000 Years Ago

Ancient carvings once thought decorative may actually be early attempts to record information. Their statistical complexity matches that of proto-cuneiform, pushing the origins of writing-like systems ...