Technology

1205 articles

Anthropic's Project Fetch Phase Two: Testing Claude on Robotics Tasks

Anthropic has published Project Fetch: Phase Two on its research blog, detailing an August 2025 experiment testing whether Claude can assist Anthropic employees with sophisticated robotics tasks. The study, an extension of a November 2025 Phase One, includes a candid account of a robodog failing to fetch a beach ball, while examining Claude's utility as a human-side collaborator in robotics workflows. The research follows Anthropic's pattern of internal capability evaluations under real working conditions.

Martin Holloway·4 min read·2h ago·3 sources

Brazil's Emergency Alert System Breached in Suspected Hacking Incident

An unauthorized alert was sent to cell phones across multiple Brazilian states on June 20, 2026, in an incident the country's government attributes to a suspected hacking attack. The breach of Brazil's emergency alert infrastructure raises questions about the security of cell broadcast systems globally. Authorities have launched an investigation but have not yet disclosed the attack vector or content of the message.

Martin Holloway·4 min read·12h ago·4 sources

NASA's Swift Observatory Gets a Lifeline: Robotic Servicing Mission Preps for June 2026 Launch

NASA's Swift Boost mission is targeting a June 2026 launch, deploying Katalyst's LINK robotic servicing spacecraft via a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket to raise the orbit of the Swift observatory, which has been operational since 2004. LINK completed testing at NASA Goddard in May 2026, and NASA transitioned Swift's operations posture in February 2026 to prepare for the servicing sequence. Swift's Burst Alert Telescope is expected to remain operational through and after the maneuver.

Martin Holloway·3 min read·12h ago·4 sources

AlphaFold's Nobel: What the 2024 Chemistry Prize Says About AI's Role in Structural Biology

John Jumper and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, alongside David Baker, were awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on AlphaFold and computational protein structure prediction. The prize marks formal scientific recognition that AI-derived results can constitute foundational contributions to chemistry and structural biology. DeepMind's AlphaFold Server has since made high-accuracy structure prediction broadly accessible to researchers worldwide.

Martin Holloway·4 min read·12h ago·2 sources

AMD to Restore TSME on Ryzen 9000 Desktop CPUs via July BIOS Update

AMD announced it will restore Transparent Secure Memory Encryption (TSME) on non-PRO Ryzen 9000 desktop CPUs via a BIOS update planned for July 2026, reversing a prior undisclosed removal of the feature. The company attributed the decision to community feedback. TSME provides hardware-level AES-128 DRAM encryption as a mitigation against cold-boot and physical memory extraction attacks.

Martin Holloway·3 min read·12h ago·2 sources

SMPTE Opens Its Entire Standards Catalog at No Cost

SMPTE has made its entire Standards catalog freely accessible, removing all paywalls from its published Standards and Recommended Practices as of 20 June 2026. The move gives engineers, developers, and educators direct access to foundational media technology specifications — including ST 2110, ST 428, and ST 2067 — without membership or per-document fees. The change is particularly significant for smaller organizations and under-resourced implementers who previously faced real cost barriers.

Martin Holloway·3 min read·12h ago·5 sources

NASA JPL's ERNEST Rover Prototype Covers 16 Miles in Desert Field Test

NASA JPL's ERNEST rover prototype completed a desert field test covering approximately 16 miles over 37 hours at speeds more than 10 times faster than current operational rovers. The 4-foot testbed is designed to advance autonomous, high-speed mobility for future Moon and Mars surface missions. The test result reshapes assumptions about how far and fast a planetary rover could range on a single mission.

Martin Holloway·3 min read·12h ago·4 sources

AI-Generated Images Allegedly Laundered Into The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

A waxy.org investigation published on 20 June 2026 alleges that the original photo-collage illustrations in John Koenig's 'The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows' were replaced with AI-generated images, a practice the piece describes as 'AI-model laundering' of human-authored creative work. The allegations raise questions about substitution fraud, copyright, and the publishing industry's lack of robust content provenance tooling. Key details, including the identity of the party responsible, remain unconfirmed.

Martin Holloway·4 min read·12h ago·3 sources