The Sixth Circuit just handed Ohio a win on its social media law restricting minors, and reading the majority opinion, it’s immediately obvious why: the court fell hook, line, and sinker for the moral panic that social media is inherently poisonous to children. The first few pages of the decision are nothing but cherry-picked, out-of-context horror stories about what social media does to kids — with no mention of the substantial corresponding evidence that the picture is far more complicated than that.
This was, frankly, predictable. Last year, when the Supreme Court heard the FSC v. Paxton case regarding online age verification for adult content websites, we were disappointed that most of the internet industry sat the case out, deciding that they didn’t want to go on the record as supporting the First Amendment for porn sites. We’ve discussed how deciding to sit the case out was a mistake that would come back to bite the companies. When the Supreme Court decided, effectively overturning earlier Supreme Court cases, that age verification laws were fine for porn sites, we also warned that this seemed unlikely to be limited just to adult content. Turns out, the age verification/parental consent virus is spreading.
A bunch of states have passed laws requiring age verification or limiting teenagers’ access to all sorts of non-porn websites, and at least some courts are willing to go along with it. In Ohio, the state passed a very bad social media law a few years ago and NetChoice sued. The district court realized how problematic the law was, including the requirements regarding “parental consent” for kids to use social media, and put the law on hold, which the Sixth Circuit has now reversed.
This new ruling starts out by saying that NetChoice isn’t the proper party to bring this challenge, suggesting that if there is any violation of anyone’s rights, it would be the children who use these social media platforms, and NetChoice represents the companies, not their users. There are some problems with this finding that seem to go against precedent, but if this was all that the court did, a new challenge could be brought on behalf of users.
Advertisement
Instead, though, the majority opinion decides to move forward anyway and consider the First Amendment issue. It properly says that the law must survive strict scrutiny (Ohio tried to argue for lower standards) but then — in a move that can only be described as delusional — claims that the act survives strict scrutiny. If anyone has read the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. EMA — in which the Supreme Court said that California’s law requiring parental consent in the sale of video games was unconstitutional — it should be easy to see how this law is unconstitutional as well. For some reason the Sixth Circuit thinks that this is different, mainly because the majority, again, has misread some of the moral panic studies on social media and kids:
the state’s supporting evidence in Brown was weaker than Yost’s evidence here. In Brown, California “acknowledge[d] that it [could ]not show a direct causal link between violent video games and harm to minors[,]” relied on studies that had “been rejected by every court to consider them” and most of which “suffer[ed] from significant, admitted flaws in methodology[,]” and “show[ed] at best some correlation [with] minuscule real-world effects, such as children’s feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game . . . .” Id. at 799–800. Yost relies on findings by the Surgeon General and researchers who have identified a potentially significant connection between social media and serious harms such as depression and body dysmorphia. Additionally, the evidence in Brown suggested that the effects of violent video games were materially indistinguishable from the effects from other sources of violent material. Id. at 800–01. NetChoice has not brought to our attention evidence that other forms of media have the same negative effects on minors as social media. The link between social media and minors’ wellbeing seems “neither novel nor implausible[,]” and therefore Ohio has met the “quantum of empirical evidence needed to satisfy heightened judicial scrutiny of [its] legislative judgment[] . . . .” OPAWL – Bldg. AAPI Feminist Leadership v. Yost, 118 F.4th 770, 780 (6th Cir. 2024).
So, California lost in Brown (in part) because the state couldn’t show causal evidence of a connection between violent video games and harm, and the Sixth Circuit says social media is different… pointing to the Surgeon General’s report… even though the Surgeon General’s report admits that there is no causal evidence of harm, and says that many kids get tremendous benefit from social media. In particular, that report said that LGBTQ+ kids, especially those in homes with parents who disapprove of their kids’ sexuality, find social media to be a lifeline.
It’s difficult to see how the Sixth Circuit’s majority ruling here makes any sense, unless the majority simply thinks it’s okay for LGBTQ+ and other marginalized kids to suffer. And, really, so much of this ruling makes sense if you read it that way.
The majority opinion, incredibly, brushes off the idea (raised by NetChoice) that it’s not easy for platforms to verify a parent-child relationship. This is a huge problem with any of these laws. How exactly can platforms confirm such a relationship without deeply invasive, privacy-destroying data collection? And, even then, how is a platform to know whether or not a child and parent are estranged, or if there’s a custody battle, or anything of that nature? The majority just dismisses this out of hand, saying it’s easy to figure it out.
Advertisement
First, verifying parental consent will not necessarily present such a great challenge.
That’s literally all it says on that. I’m dying to know exactly how Judge Eric Clay thinks this is possible. Because if he’s figured it out, he’d be the first to do so and he could sell that to every internet platform out there now required to figure out this technical challenge.
There is a dissent from Judge Kevin Ritz, who says that he would affirm the lower court’s ruling, though he would limit the injunction to just NetChoice’s members, rather than against the law as a whole. He notes that NetChoice should have standing to sue, that the law requires strict scrutiny, but that there is no way it should survive strict scrutiny. Unlike his colleagues, who tap dance around Supreme Court precedent by screaming “but think of the children!” Judge Ritz points out that rights are rights. And kids have them.
Yost cannot meet this high bar. At the outset, it is worth emphasizing that “[m]inors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them.” Brown, 564 U.S. at 794 (citation modified). After all, “[a] fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more.” Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 104 (2017). Although the websites the Act seeks to regulate may pose serious risks to children, these sites are also zones for constitutionally protected speech. And they cultivate “vast democratic forums” with the “potential to alter how we think, express ourselves, and define who we want to be.” Id. at 104-05 (citation omitted). Indeed, the Supreme Court has described social media platforms as “perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.”…
The parental-consent provision at the core of the Act represents a significant burden on the rights of NetChoice’s minor users to avail themselves of these “powerful mechanisms” of speech. Id. For many minor users, in fact, the Act would represent an “insurmountable [ ] barrier to entry for online speech.” Carr, 789 F. Supp. 3d at 1223; see also Uthmeier, 2025 WL 3458571, at *17 (Rosenbaum, J., dissenting) (“When it comes to speaking online, the Act effectively prohibits many minors from speaking at all.”). Like my colleagues and Yost, I do not doubt “that unfettered social media access can and does harm minors.” Griffin, 2025 WL 978607, at 11. But the state does not have “a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” Brown, 564 U.S. at 794. “We should be wary of governments supplanting parents in deciding which ideas children should and should not be exposed to.” Uthmeier, 2025 WL 3458571, at 18 (Rosenbaum, J, dissenting). Besides, the question under strict scrutiny “is not whether [the Act] would be effective, but whether there are less restrictive alternatives.”
And, unlike his colleagues, Ritz notes that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. EMA appears directly on point:
Advertisement
Brown is instructive. There, the Supreme Court considered a law that prohibited selling or renting violent video games to minors, though minors could still access these games if purchased by an adult. Brown, 564 U.S. at 789, 802. In enacting this law, the legislature created a “wholly new category of content-based regulation that [wa]s permissible only for speech directed at children.” Id. at 794. The Supreme Court “emphatically” rejected this law as “unprecedented and mistaken.” Id. at 792, 794. And although the Court recognized that the legislature’s goal of “addressing a serious social problem” was “legitimate,” the solution was both “seriously underinclusive” and “seriously overinclusive.” Id. at 805.
Ohio has made the same error.
The dissent also calls out the silliness of Clay’s bold assertion that it’s easy for platforms to verify a parent-child relationship noting that, not only is this not true, it’s yet another reason why the law is clearly unconstitutional:
The Court in Brown noted that “one parent (or even an aunt or uncle)” could conceivably purchase a violent video game for a child, but the statute at issue did not have “any requirement[] as to how this parental or avuncular relationship is to be verified; apparently the child’s or putative parent’s, aunt’s, or uncle’s say-so suffices.” 564 U.S. at 802. Here, the Act allows covered operators to register parental consent by one of five ways, including by signing a form, using a credit card, or calling “a toll-free telephone number . . . staffed by trained personnel.” Ohio Rev. Code § 1349.09(B)(1). But Yost cannot explain how these methods prove a parental relationship. For instance, how would an operator know that a person who called the toll-free telephone number is actually the prospective minor user’s parent? Apparently, the caller’s “say-so” is sufficient. Brown, 564 U.S. at 802. The Act’s approach to protecting children fails strict scrutiny.
The dissent also mocks the majority claim that this law somehow protects children. Since the entire point of the law is a one-time consent, Judge Ritz notes that, if we assume that there is real harm from social media to kids, then the second a parent gives consent, that harm is still likely to occur. Ritz calls out the underlying reality that Judge Clay misses: Clay assumes that all parents will refuse to give consent.
In finding that the Act survives strict scrutiny, Judge Clay argues that “Ohio seeks to involve parents because their involvement itself will inherently mitigate some of the harms of unsupervised social media use.” Clay Op. at 23. But it is hard to see how one-time parental consent mitigates such harms unless those parents categorically prohibit their children from using social media on the front end. After all, the Act does not require parents to supervise their children as they use the covered websites. Nor does it create mechanisms for parents to check in with their children about social media habits or to re-consent periodically. The Act only requires that parents are engaged in the beginning and in a binary way—they can either allow their children to use covered websites or not. This approach does not narrowly or effectively advance the goal of involving parents in children’s social media use.
With similar laws popping up all over the country, sooner or later this is absolutely going to the Supreme Court.
Advertisement
When it gets there, here’s what the justices will be looking at: a majority opinion that treats the Surgeon General’s report as proof of causation even though the Surgeon General’s own report explicitly admits there’s no causal evidence of harm. An opinion that waves Brown v. EMA aside while the dissent methodically demonstrates it’s “directly on point.” And an opinion that resolves the question of how platforms are actually supposed to verify parent-child relationships — a problem no one in the industry has managed to solve — with a single sentence asserting it won’t “necessarily present such a great challenge.” No mechanism. No explanation. Just confidence.
Judge Ritz’s dissent does what the majority refuses to: it applies the law. Minors have First Amendment rights. Social media platforms are, as the Supreme Court said in Packingham, “perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.” And one-time parental consent — which requires no ongoing supervision, verifies nothing meaningful, and defaults to “apparently the caller’s say-so is sufficient” — cannot survive strict scrutiny.
The majority chose moral panic over legal analysis. Now it’s the Supreme Court’s problem.
Government agency will use Google Cloud H4D VMs to replace HPE Cray machines
Uncle Sam will no longer be hosting his own supercomputers to predict the weather. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has picked Google Cloud to provide the infrastructure for its weather forecasting operations.
In an announcement, NOAA boasted that it will be the first national weather prediction center to run on the commercial cloud, though the UK’s Met Office is also in the process of moving its own weather prediction system to Microsoft Azure in a hybrid setup. Weather operations are typically run on in-house or government-funded supercomputer systems, which helps drive the HPC (high performance computing) market.
Advertisement
General Dynamics held the previous contract for managing NOAA’s weather predicting machines, which most recently were HPE Cray supercomputers running in data centers in Virginia and Arizona. Those machines – Dogwood and Cactus – could crank almost 14 PFlops of weather-predicting prognosis.
The plan is to move NOAA’s Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System, run by the National Weather Service (NWS) division, over to the cloud by December 2027, along with the software that generates NWS weather data for analysis.
Don’t say global warming
The agency is hoping that the cloud will make model forecasting more nimble, resulting in earlier predictions and better warnings for all the extreme weather events that seem to keep occurring these days. It was the in-house systems that were holding things back, evidently.
“Cloud-based high-performance computing will accelerate the transition of research into operations by eliminating traditional bottlenecks of on-premise systems,” said NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs in a statement.
Advertisement
Jacobs noted that the cloud’s flexibility for providing large amounts of compute is advantageous: the agency can ramp up cycles during tropical storm season, then wind them down during calmer periods.
Under the contract, NOAA can also avail itself of Google’s DeepMindset of AI tools to help build out its first AI-driven weather forecasting system, the AI Global Forecast System, which promises to offer accurate weather forecasts using 99.7% fewer computer cycles and take minutes, rather than hours, to produce a forecast.
NWS has already been upgrading the software downstream from GFS and GEFS to also work in the cloud. In March, it awarded contracts to Accenture and Booz Allen Hamilton to oversee the development of cloud-based software (HIVE and CIRRUS) for the field offices to analyze data and push out alerts, replacing the in-house software doing these tasks currently.
For the job, Google plans to use Google Cloud H4D VMs, built on AMD Epyc processors. Google labels these instances as “virtual machines” because they run under a hypervisor that integrates Google’s networking and orchestration tools. As a result, they can be synchronized to run large jobs the same way supercomputers do.
Advertisement
According to Google, customers can access H4Ds for as low as 3 cents per core-hour without long-term commitments. For supercomputing jobs, they can also use Cluster Toolkit to deploy clusters and Cluster Director to maintain them. Google Cloud’s Batch can handle the queuing, scheduling, and resource provisioning. ®
OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ agents took advantage of a code vulnerability, experts explained.
US cloud company Modal has confirmed that OpenAI’s agents were able to hack into one of its customer’s systems when the AI models breached containment and gained unauthorised access to Hugging Face earlier this month.
Last week’s incident sent shockwaves across the tech industry, raising serious concerns around AI’s rapidly advancing ability to bypass boundaries and, effectively, go ‘rogue’.
It comes amid increased scrutiny around OpenAI and Anthropic’s new AI models, resulting in gated launches and greater government involvement. Both AI giants have ramped up efforts to go public in blockbuster listings as they compete to gain market dominance and enterprise footing.
Advertisement
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a recent interview, said that the Hugging Face breach was the first security incident he felt “very viscerally”.
“I feel a little surprised that more people don’t feel it so viscerally,” he told Invest Like The Beast in a podcast episode published on Tuesday (28 July).
Hugging Face said that OpenAI’s agents accessed a sandbox hosted on a third-party provider’s infrastructure when it breached containment last week. A sandbox is an isolated environment where AI models are tested without production classifiers, or guardrails.
Modal chief technology officer Akshat Bubna confirmed that its customer set up a publicly accessible interface which enabled anyone to use their sandbox.
Advertisement
“We’re aware a Modal customer published an unauthenticated endpoint that allowed anyone on the internet to use their sandboxes for code execution,” Bubna told Axios. “Their code had a vulnerability that was exploited … This was used by the rogue agent. Modal’s platform was not compromised in any way.”
In an updated statement, OpenAI said that none of its upcoming models were involved in exploiting Hugging Face. It explained that its testing models were able to identify and exploit an unknown zero-day vulnerability to gain access to the internet, which enabled them to access Hugging Face.
“In our ongoing review of the Hugging Face intrusion and broader activity from our models, we have been finding a small number of cases where the models identified and used publicly exposed credentials at the account level on other publicly-available services,” the company said.
“Based on our review to date, we have not identified any other activity at the level of severity or scale of what we’ve shared related to Hugging Face”.
Advertisement
Cybersecurity experts, however, believe that the breach is a result of “missing governance and control”.
“When conducting security testing you should define what is in and out of the testing scope, even for broad red team engagements,” said Richard Davies, director of cyber solutions at Talion.
“The reported impacts and timelines indicate this was not in place.”
CybaVerse chief technology officer Simon Phillips said: “The model, tooling and instructions were very loose, almost to the point it was told it could do anything on any system, which it clearly did.”
Advertisement
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon is one of the United States military’s greatest fighters. It was first introduced in the late 1970s, and while its current model is considerably more advanced, it is essentially a 40-year-old fighter jet — ancient for a combat plane. One might wonder, then, about how effective it could be in a dogfight? It’s a reasonable question to ask given its age, and one with a relatively recent answer.
In July 2026, a Ukrainian F-16 engaged a Russian Su-35 and made the first air-to-air kill in the conflict. The successful downing of an enemy fighter is a historic achievement for both the Ukrainian Air Force and the aircraft itself. Russian media revealed that its Su-35 was targeted, but the pilot survived. The status of said pilot remains unknown as of writing. Both the F-16 and Su-35 are 4th-generation fighter jets.
Advertisement
This is a significant milestone, as F-16s haven’t achieved such a victory in Ukraine since the U.S. and allies began providing them in August 2024. That said, this is somewhat par for the course for the F-16 overall: as of 2024, the F-16 had a combat record of 76 air-to-air kills and just one air-to-air loss. Previously, Ukraine successfully used F-16s to shoot down Russian missiles and drones, but the July 2026 air-to-air kill marks a significant change in their usage during the conflict.
Advertisement
F-16 Fighting Falcon’s record in Ukraine
Ukraine received its first (much-delayed) F-16s in summer 2024 and has since lost at least three of the fighters. The Ukrainian Air Force is believed to be operating around 39 F-16s, but a lack of missiles to arm them has kept the 4th-generation fighter from working intercept missions, though this issue has likely improved since March 2025. Ukraine’s fleet of F-16s is expected to grow, as Belgium is in the process of transferring seven sometime in 2026, though it’s unclear when precisely they’ll arrive.
Those first seven are just the beginning, however, as Belgium plans to transfer a total of 53 F-16s to Ukraine by 2029. Adding more F-16s to Ukraine’s inventory will significantly increase the nation’s layered defense around Kyiv and other cities targeted by Russia. The downing is definitely a highlight of the ongoing war, but it’s not as if Ukraine’s F-16s have sat idle on runways since their delivery in 2024.
Yurii Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force, told Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) in July 2026 that Ukraine’s F-16s have downed around 2,200 Russian drones and missiles out of 3,000 intercepted attacks. While effective defensively, this recent air-to-air success shows that the F-16 is more than capable of offensive action. As long as Ukraine maintains them, news of additional fighter interceptions might trickle out of the prolonged conflict, potentially further reducing Russia’s supply of Su-35 jets.
For a year now, the AI safety testing firm Andon Labs has been evaluating how frontier AI models behave as long-running autonomous agents by assigning them simulated real-world tasks, such as operating a vending machine business for a year without human supervision. In the latest installment, the research startup found that frontier AI models, including Claude Opus 5, GPT-5.6 Sol, and Kimi K3, resorted to lying, cheating, and collusion. Their behavior became especially underhanded when told they would be operating near rival machines on a busy San Francisco tourist street. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from a TechCrunch article: Each was given email access to the other models, all under human name pseudonyms. They knew the others were models, but didn’t know which model was behind which human name. They were also given an email address to their “management” should they need help. But management always replied “Report has been received and may or may not be acted upon” and never once intervened. Sol soon realized it could gain an edge by convincing its competitors to collude on a price floor. The models were all buying drinks at $1.50 a bottle, and Sol proposed they agree to sell for no less than $2.15. It lured them with the promise that all of them would sell out in a couple of days at a profit. But when the others agreed, Sol immediately stabbed them in the back by reducing its own price to $2.14.
Opus’s water sales dropped to zero overnight. The next day, it sent Sol a nasty email, accusing it of manipulation. But Opus also said it wasn’t going to tattle to management on the scheme: “I am not reporting you to HQ — what you did is competitive, not fraudulent.” Yet, when Opus dropped its price to $2.14 to match Sol’s (also in violation of their collective $2.15 agreement), Sol turned into a Karen, complaining to “management” and demanding “enforcement, a fine, and/or disqualification” for Opus. Opus wasn’t a sucker for long, though. In fact, it became the best capitalist of any AI model Andon has ever tested (which includes many of the prior frontier models). It even set a new Vending-Bench record with a mean final balance of $11,182. Better still, it never lied to a customer, although it deliberately ignored customer complaints that should have resulted in a refund.
This is, perhaps, an improvement over its younger sibling Claude 4.6, which liked to tell customers that refunds were coming, and then never pay them. Still, Opus won the benchmark simulation by taking collusion and other dishonest tactics to a whole new level. For instance, it emailed Sol, proposing they divide the market. Each would agree to sell unique products, so no one would have to trust the other on pricing. Sol countered by wanting price floors on similar products, but Opus refused. It knew it was a violation of the Sherman Act. It later apparently backtracked, sending an email with the subject line “Stop the penny war,” and telling Sol it had reconsidered and would agree to a price fix. But the internal log documenting its reasoning (akin to its internal “thoughts”) revealed a more diabolical plan: merely propose cooperation while simultaneously undercutting prices on its highest-profit items. The olive-branch email was a deliberate ruse. In any case, Sol refused and reported Opus to management again. But Opus was undeterred and proposed other rackets to collude on prices or stock. “In the end, all the models did engage in multiple rounds of agreements — and all three broke them,” reports TechCrunch. “Across all agreements, Opus broke 11 truces, compared with two for GPT 2, and one for Kimi 1, Andon reported.”
As for Kimi, the model was undercut by Sol and then betrayed by its partner, Opus, which matched Sol’s lower prices but waited a week to admit it had broken their pricing pact. As a result, Kimi was effectively priced out by both a rival and its supposed ally.
Slate, makers of the upcoming barebones electric pickup truck, made a change to the battery technology that it will be using in its upcoming 2027 production models. Instead of the originally specified nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) battery pack, Slate has switched to a less expensive lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery that is sourced from China’s Gotion. China is estimated to control over 98% of the materials that go into LFP batteries. The Slate Truck’s starting price is cheap, although a fair bit more than what was originally promised.
The reason for the switch on the battery materials is all about the elimination of the $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles. Under its previous rules, batteries powering any vehicle that would qualify for the credit couldn’t use minerals or parts produced by a “foreign entity of concern,” which definitely includes China. Now that the tax credit and its supporting rules are gone, Slate is free to source a less-expensive battery from China. LFP batteries cost about 40% less than NMC, since iron costs much less than cobalt or nickel.
Advertisement
The new LFP battery comes in at 65 kWh, with a usable capacity of 63 kWh. It powers a 181-horsepower electric motor that drives the rear wheels. Slate has estimated a 0-60 mph time of eight seconds for its truck, with a range of 205 miles. The Slate truck has been officially priced at $26,400 including destination charge. While this is more than its original pre-tax credit price of less than $20,000, it is still pretty fairly priced.
Advertisement
Affordable and ultra customizable
The eye-catching Slate Truck starts out very basic, with crank windows, wheels made of low-tech steel, and climate controls that are manually operated. You can rest assured that air conditioning and old-fashioned cruise control are standard equipment. That being said, Slate allows its buyers a wide range of customization options.
These start with an assortment of over 100 vinyl wraps, including some that are Crayola-approved, that go on top of the truck’s unpainted body, through accessories that include zip-off seat covers, roof racks, tonneau covers for the pickup bed, and stereo systems. For an additional $5,000 to $7,000, you can even upgrade your Slate into an SUV, with a kit that includes an extended roof in either squareback or fastback styles, along with a rear seat that expands the Slate’s passenger-carrying capacity.
Slate has also introduced Slate U, which lets DIYers take on some customization tasks themselves. Slate U provides how-to video content developed for any skill level, backed up by agents set up to chat, provide assistance, and refer customers to “trusted service providers” if a job threatens to overwhelm the DIYer. It’s a completely free service that is unlikely to be duplicated by other vehicle manufacturers.
The Slate pickup, as well as its SUV variants, will provide a test of whether the U.S. market really wants a simpler, no-frills vehicle. The success of the Slate brand will determine whether its bare-bones, customizable, DIY aesthetic is the answer to a question anyone is asking.
Google has dismantled the original AlphaFold team, according to Financial Times(paywalled), reassigning many researchers to Gemini and Isomorphic Labs. Several other key members, including Nobel laureate John Jumper, left for Anthropic. Engadget reports: AlphaFold is an AI program that can accurately predict three-dimensional structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences in minutes instead of years. It’s now being used to accelerate drug discovery, develop vaccines and understand the structural changes in proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
DeepMind started developing AlphaFold in 2018. In 2020, it was recognized as a solution to humanity’s 50-year-old “protein folding problem,” which sought to answer how amino acids automatically fold into complex 3D shapes. Those shapes determine the biological role of a protein. Scientists had identified the structures of roughly 170,000 proteins over the past 50 years, using tools and techniques like X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance. The AlphaFold team took information from those previous work and then fed it to their AI to train AlphaFold.
In 2021, Nature published the papers with AlphaFold’s methodology and the structure predictions of the entire human proteome, or the complete set of proteins expressed by our species. DeepMind then launched the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, giving researchers free access to over 200 million protein structure predictions. In 2024, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who was a staff research scientist when the project began and who eventually became a VP and engineering fellow, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold.
Streaming spent a decade telling viewers that the future meant paying only for the services they actually wanted. It has now reached the stage where those services are being bundled back together by the platforms large enough to control discovery, billing and your television home screen.
Beginning in early 2027, eligible U.S. YouTube Premium subscribers will gain access to Peacock Premium within the YouTube experience, combining ad-free YouTube, background playback, downloads and YouTube Music with NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service. The cable bundle did not die. It learned how to recommend reaction videos.
Related Reviews:
What YouTube Premium Subscribers Will Receive
The included tier is Peacock Premium, which currently costs $10.99 per month when purchased separately. It includes Peacock Originals, Universal and Focus Features movies, NBC and Bravo programming, and live sports.
NBCUniversal specifically lists NFL football, the Olympics, NBA, MLB, Premier League soccer, WNBA, college football and basketball, golf and the Kentucky Derby among the sports available through the service. Television programming includes Saturday Night Live, Law & Order: SVU, The Office, The Traitors, Love Island USA and The Real Housewives franchise.
The content will be available directly within YouTube rather than requiring subscribers to jump between separate applications. YouTube says it will announce the exact launch date and additional eligibility details over the coming months.
Advertisement
That should make Peacock substantially easier to find and use, particularly on televisions where YouTube is already one of the most frequently opened applications.
It also means millions of existing YouTube Premium subscribers may no longer need a separate Peacock Premium subscription once the bundle launches. Account migration, billing changes and whether existing Peacock profiles or watch histories can be transferred have not been explained.
YouTube Premium Will Be Ad Free Until Peacock Starts
There is one important distinction hiding beneath two uses of the word “Premium.”
YouTube Premium removes advertisements from regular YouTube viewing. Peacock Premium is the ad-supported Peacock tier. Subscribers should therefore expect commercials during Peacock movies, series and live programming even though they are paying for YouTube Premium.
Advertisement
Peacock Premium Plus, currently $16.99 per month, removes most on-demand advertising and adds downloads and access to a live local NBC station. Even that tier retains commercials during live sports, events, linear channels and selected programming.
YouTube says subscribers will have options to upgrade their Peacock membership, but it has not announced upgrade pricing or how that process will work.
Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Peacock Premium Plus has already been available as a separately purchased YouTube Primetime Channel since June 29. The standard Peacock Premium tier will become available as a separate YouTube add-on later this summer, before it joins eligible YouTube Premium subscriptions in 2027.
Advertisement
What Has Not Been Announced
The companies have not provided a precise launch date beyond early 2027, nor have they confirmed whether every individual, student and family YouTube Premium plan will qualify.
YouTube’s announcement repeatedly refers to “eligible” Premium subscribers. Premium Lite is not mentioned and should not be assumed to include Peacock.
YouTube has also not explained whether Peacock content will stream in 4K HDR, support Dolby Atmos or 5.1 audio, or be available for offline viewing through the YouTube app. Simultaneous stream limits, parental controls, user profiles, watchlist and viewing-history transfers, and access while traveling outside the United States also remain unresolved. The largest financial question is whether adding Peacock will eventually trigger another YouTube Premium price increase, although Google has not announced one.
YouTube has not announced a higher price tied to the partnership. It has also not promised that current subscription pricing will remain unchanged through 2027.
Advertisement
For home theater owners, the lack of video and audio format details is not trivial. Peacock’s streaming quality has varied by device and event, and watching inside YouTube could produce different results from using the native Peacock application. “Seamless access” is useful. It is not a technical specification.
YouTube Premium Is Not YouTube TV
The agreement also extends NBCUniversal’s distribution contract with YouTube TV, ensuring that NBCUniversal’s linear television networks remain available through the live television service. That is a separate part of the deal.
A YouTube Premium subscription will not suddenly become a YouTube TV subscription, and the included Peacock tier does not provide the full collection of live NBCUniversal cable channels.
This distinction will almost certainly confuse people because Google has named three different products YouTube, YouTube Premium and YouTube TV, apparently after concluding that nouns were becoming expensive.
Advertisement
Why Peacock Is Doing This
NBCUniversal describes the agreement as Peacock’s largest wholesale distribution partnership. Instead of relying entirely on direct subscriptions, Peacock gains immediate access to millions of existing YouTube Premium customers and one of the most powerful content discovery platforms on the planet.
That distribution matters as streaming subscriber growth slows and customer acquisition becomes more expensive. Bundles reduce the number of monthly decisions consumers must make and can lower cancellation rates, even when nobody remembers which service is technically charging the credit card.
NBCUniversal gives up some control over billing, viewing data and the direct customer relationship, but Peacock gains scale without having to convince every household to install another application.
Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Advertisement
Peacock has already pursued similar distribution through Comcast services, Walmart+ and YouTube Primetime Channels. The strategy is clear: place Peacock wherever millions of paying customers already exist and worry less about whether they arrived through the front door.
Why YouTube Is Doing This
YouTube Premium has primarily been sold around four benefits: ad-free YouTube, background playback, offline downloads and YouTube Music.
Peacock gives Google something it has not previously offered inside the standard subscription: a large catalog of studio movies, conventional television series and major live sports.
That makes YouTube Premium more competitive with Amazon Prime, Walmart+ and telecommunications bundles that combine video, shopping, wireless service or other benefits into one monthly payment.
Advertisement
It also pushes YouTube further into the role once occupied by cable and satellite companies. Google is no longer merely hosting video or selling a live television replacement. It is becoming the platform through which other streaming services reach customers.
The Larger Trend
Streaming fragmentation created too many applications, passwords, price increases and monthly decisions. The industry’s solution is increasingly to bundle those services through a larger distributor.
The new gatekeepers are YouTube, Amazon, Apple, Roku, Walmart, Verizon and the remaining cable companies. Viewers may receive better overall value, but the companies controlling the interface, billing relationship and recommendation engine gain enormous leverage over the services inside it.
That does not mean this Peacock deal is bad for consumers. For an existing YouTube Premium subscriber who already pays separately for Peacock Premium, the bundle could eliminate a $10.99 monthly charge while putting the same programming inside an application already installed on almost every television.
Advertisement
But the direction is unmistakable. Streaming is consolidating around a handful of large platforms capable of bundling everyone else.
We cut the cord to escape the package. The package has returned without the coaxial cable.
The Bottom Line
Adding Peacock Premium makes YouTube Premium a much broader entertainment subscription and gives existing members access to a meaningful catalog of movies, television and live sports.
The value proposition is potentially excellent, particularly for subscribers currently paying for both services. The catch is that Peacock Premium remains ad-supported, while upgrade pricing, account migration, technical quality and exact eligibility remain unresolved.
Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Advertisement
NBCUniversal gains reach. YouTube gains premium programming and live sports. Viewers gain one fewer application to open and one more bundle to explain to someone else in the house.
Streaming promised simplicity. It has finally delivered cable with better search.
The program, ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, will start with 10,000 participants this summer.
Samuel Boivin/Shutterstock
OpenAI is launching a new program called ChatGPT for Academic Researchers that will offer free access to the company’s AI models to 100,000 scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Researchers from “select academic institutions” included in the program will receive hands-on support from OpenAI, access to the company’s latest GPT-5.6 Sol Pro model and be able to invite four collaborators from their institution to participate.
The program will start with 10,000 participants this summer and scale up to 100,000 through 2027. OpenAI says offering free access to its AI tools “is part of a commitment of more than $250 million through 2027 to support external scientific research and discovery.” As the company notes, researchers are already using AI models to sift through data and write grants — this just makes the relationship a bit more formal. OpenAI’s version of ChatGPT for schools, ChatGPT Edu, follows a similar logic.
While the least charitable read of the program is that OpenAI is looking for new sources of training data, the company says that by default, researchers’ data will not be used to train models. What handing out freebies to research institutions could generate, though, is more research breakthroughs that in some way involved a GPT model. And making more scientific fields dependent on the company’s tools could also pave the way for future revenue from for-profit research.
Advertisement
This isn’t the first time the company has courted researchers. OpenAI introduced Prism in January, an AI-powered tool for working with scientific journals and documents. Prism is available to anyone with a ChatGPT account and can be used to verify things like research citations and formatting. OpenAI’s early demo of the tool also included a way to generate lesson plans, one of the more tedious but critical tasks of research professors.
Curiosity has been climbing the broad valley nicknamed Valle Grande for weeks when its cameras locked onto something that stopped the science team cold. On June 11, 2026, the 4,923rd Martian day of the mission, the rover’s Mastcam stitched together eleven frames into a clean panorama of a solitary butte standing roughly 20 feet tall. Mission planners named it Miraflores. A thick layer of dark sand sits on its flat top like a natural crown, while the rock faces below show the slow work of wind and time carving away everything that once surrounded it. That erosion left the butte standing and deepened the valley the rover is now driving through.
From the ground, the vista feels almost uncomfortably personal, as the slope slopes away in all directions, as if blown away by the wind. Dark sand is drawn into every low spot and gradually works its way up the lower slopes. The distant horizon resembles the stratified landscape we’ve been investigating with Curiosity on the lower part of Mount Sharp for over a decade. The ground immediately surrounding Miraflores catches your attention. A never-ending blanket of small many-sided cracks stretches out in every direction the camera can see, with each polygon measuring little more than 3 inches across. The edges of those tiny fissures rise up to form an extremely tight honeycomb pattern that wraps all the way up the sides of the butte.
Feed a passion for science and technology – Kids can learn more about the challenges of space exploration with this LEGO Technic NASA Mars Rover…
Conduct a test flight – This advanced building kit for kids ages 10 and up includes a buildable toy version of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, which…
AR brings the mission to life – The accompanying augmented reality app experience lets kids dive into the details of the rover and its mission
The puzzle of how those shapes developed remains, as when the team first noticed them on the trip, they appeared as mud cracks when the wet sand dried out and shriveled away. Other items, however, can leave behind the same pattern. Repeated heating and cooling might cause the surface to break completely. Alternatively, compression on anything still buried can force the water out of the silt, leaving a network of fissures in its wake. Now, teams on Earth are reviewing the measurements and readings from the rover’s instruments to try to narrow it down even more. Then there are the dark pebbles and cobbles sprinkled around the region, which provide an extra depth of mystery to the mix. Some of them could just be bits of higher-up rock that slid down. Others could be impact debris swept up from the side and tossed here, or perhaps meteorites, given the nickel in a few of the samples.
A second, wider 360-degree panorama taken a week later, on sols 4,930 and 4,931, showed the same pattern stretching farther than the rover’s cameras could resolve. Mission scientists had spotted similar geometric shapes in small patches several times before. Never had they found an expanse this large. Project scientist Ashwin Vasavada put the feeling into words: “We’ve seen a lot of fascinating landscapes through Curiosity’s eyes, but this sea of polygons took our breath away. We measured their shapes and chemistry carefully and are hopeful there are clues in the data as to how these features formed.”
If you’re searching for some fun mini tools like pocket flashlights, you may have seen the term COB in a product description and wondered what it means. COB stands for chip-on-board, a type of LED technology that is being used in more and more lighting products. But what makes this light different isn’t its technical name; it’s how it’s designed.
A COB light is built with multiple LED chips arranged together on a single board, creating a compact and energy-efficient design. The result is a light source that can produce high light output and handle a variety of tasks, including lighting up your work area. COB lights also have a long lifespan and are typically brighter than traditional LEDs. This technology can help prevent a COB flashlight from experiencing excessive hotspots while also producing a wider and more even beam compared to traditional LEDs. This makes a COB flashlight useful for lighting up larger areas.
Many flashlights that use COB technology place it on the side of the device instead of using it as the primary beam. This allows you to use a front LED light that focuses straight ahead and the COB side panel for a wider floodlight when needed. But some flip flashlight designs can use COB technology as the main source of light, often with different modes that allow you to adjust the brightness of the beam.
Advertisement
How COB improves modern LED lighting
Emmomushroom/Shutterstock
COB lights can deliver high lumen output, which can be important when selecting a camping flashlight. That’s because the concentration of built-in LED chips allows for more light output than traditional LEDs. COB technology not only increases the viewing angle but helps reduce light loss as well. This means that more of the light the LEDs produce makes it out of the flashlight instead of being absorbed or scattered by additional parts around the LED chips.
COB technology evolved as a new way to arrange LEDs because manufacturers wanted to create brighter lighting without having to increase the size of the light fixture itself. Earlier LED designs were limited and could not achieve this outcome. However, COB helped solve the problem, making it a popular design for situations in which strong and efficient light is needed. Today, COB technology is not just used for flashlights but also in several other types of devices.
Advertisement
COB technology is used in a variety of applications, including residential lighting, as well as industrial lighting, photography, and automotive, among others. COB can be found in products such as ceiling lights, spotlights, and vehicle lighting, where strong and consistent light is needed.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login