According to its newest transparency report, Telegram complied with more than 5,000 requests from authorities in the first three months of 2025.  ( 5 min )

23andMe sold the genetic data of 15 million people for $256 million to a pharmaceutical company called Regeneron.  ( 4 min )

The 14 year old's mother left an old laptop in a closet and now alleges it's adult sites' problem that he watched porn.  ( 5 min )

The tool scans for users writing certain keywords on Reddit and assigns those users a so-called “radical score,” before deploying an AI-powered bot to automatically engage with the users to de-radicalize them.  ( 3 min )

We have the technology to detect airborne pathogens in real time. Now we must use it.

Slight changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats. The post ‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 12 min )

This week, we have stories about wild horses, wild chimps, and wild cosmic deaths.  ( 8 min )

This week, we discuss Star Wars' weird little guys, catharticles, and spectacular views.  ( 3 min )

Turbulence is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to study. Mathematicians are now starting to untangle it at its smallest scales. The post New ‘Superdiffusion’ Proof Probes the Mysterious Math of Turbulence first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

The shirts will be returned to China or will be “destroyed under CBP supervision."  ( 3 min )

As gaming on Linux becomes more popular, Denuvo’s “activations” limit will become a bigger problem.  ( 5 min )

"Thinking about your ex 24/7? There's nothing wrong with you. Chat with their AI version—and finally let it go," an ad for Closure says. I tested a bunch of the chatbot startups' personas.  ( 9 min )

Large language models are reflections of the people who program them.  ( 6 min )

Thousands of pages of documents show school districts around the country did not understand how much ChatGPT would change their classrooms, and pro-AI consultants filled in some of the gaps.  ( 6 min )

A research study reveals that some vertebrate genomes mutate 40-times faster than others.

Geometry may have its origins thousands of years ago in ancient land surveying, but it has also had a surprising impact on modern physics. In the latest episode of The Joy of Why, Yang-Hui He explores geometry’s evolution and its future potential through AI. The post How Did Geometry Create Modern Physics? first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 32 min )

From living matter to molecules to elementary particles, the world is made of “chiral” objects that differ from their reflected forms. The post How the Universe Differs From Its Mirror Image first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 7 min )

Flock, which has license plate readers (LPRs) all around the country, wants police to be able to “jump from LPR to person,” according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media.  ( 4 min )

Industrial Light & Magic revealed a short film showcasing how it wants to use generative AI for Star Wars and it’s completely embarrassing.  ( 3 min )

A killed man's AI avatar testifies in court; Meta is developing facial recognition for its smart glasses; and how AI is changing baseball.  ( 4 min )

Kanye’s Nazi song has been chased off of most mainstream platforms, but it’s all over Instagram.  ( 5 min )

Exploring the distant universe, the insides of cells, the abstractions of math, the complexity of information itself and much more, The Quanta Podcast will be a tour of the frontier between the known and the unknown. The post Introducing The Quanta Podcast first appeared on Quanta Magazine  ( 13 min )

A decades-old essay offers newfound appreciation for progress.

Answering this question may seem straightforward, but actually requires an odyssey through information theory and molecular biology.

Are you more likely to die on your birthday? Yes.  ( 6 min )

The modern centrifuge was first designed for milkfat separation in the dairy industry. Today, it is ubiquitous in research laboratories. To whom do we owe its astonishing versatility?

How a chance discovery in bioluminescent jellyfish led to one of the most transformative tools in modern biology: green fluorescent protein.

America’s roads are more dangerous than those of almost every country in the developed world. We know how to change that.  ( 13 min )

Building a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco was never going to be easy — but the critics who write it off are missing the real source of the project’s struggles.  ( 15 min )

Everyone likes the idea of evidence-based policy, but it’s hard to realize it when our most reputable social science journals are still publishing poor quality research.  ( 17 min )

A conversation about the factors that might slow down the pace of AI development, what could happen next, and whether we’ll be able to see it coming.  ( 21 min )

In 2017, there were just over 600 clinical trials initiated in China. By 2023, that number was nearly 2,000. How can American companies kick off a similar boom?

For many years, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) maintained a large library of books on drug use and policy at its New York City headquarters. As researchers shifted to working […]  ( 9 min )

Kelsey Piper and Jasmine Sun talk about microschools, whether localism is the enemy of Abundance, and why Chinese bureaucrats are like Growth PMs.  ( 27 min )

With a litany of gene therapies and longevity medicine staving off biological death, those paid to write about it must reimagine their craft.