techinsightnow

[techinsightnow]

AI site Perplexity uses “stealth tactics” to flout no-crawl edicts, Cloudflare says

AI search engine Perplexity is using stealth bots and other tactics to evade websites’ no-crawl directives, an allegation that if true violates Internet norms that have been in place for more than three decades, network security and optimization service Cloudflare said Monday. In a blog post, Cloudflare researchers said the company received complaints from customers who had disallowed Perplexity…

[techinsightnow]

Tesla awards Elon Musk $29 billion after much larger pay plan blocked in court

The Tesla board approved the interim award yesterday, with recusals from Musk and his brother, Kimbal. The Tesla board is still working on “a longer-term CEO compensation strategy, which we plan to put to a shareholder vote at the November 6 annual meeting,” the letter said. The interim award would vest in two years, and Musk would be required to hold the stock for five years. It has a provision…

[techinsightnow]

Radioactive wasp nests spring up in decades-old nuclear site in South Carolina

  According to the DOE, the site produced 165 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste, which has been evaporated to 34 million gallons. The site has 51 waste tanks, eight of which have been operationally closed, with the remaining 43 in various states of the closure process. Outside experts have been quick to point out critical information missing from the DOE’s nest report, including the…

[techinsightnow]

These are the best streaming services you aren’t watching

Curiosity Stream doesn’t regularly report subscriber numbers, but it said in March 2023 that it had 23 million subscribers. In May, parent company CuriosityStream, which also owns Curiosity University, the Curiosity Channel linear TV channel, and an original programming business, reported its first positive net income ($0.3 million) in its fiscal Q1 2025 earnings. That positive outcome followed a…

[techinsightnow]

With Trump’s cutbacks, crew heads for ISS unsure of when they’ll come back

The next four-person team to live and work aboard the International Space Station departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, taking aim at the massive orbiting research complex for a planned stay of six to eight months. Spacecraft commander Zena Cardman leads the mission, designated Crew-11, that lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast at 11:43 am EDT (15:43 UTC) on Friday.…

[techinsightnow]

At $250 million, top AI salaries dwarf those of the Manhattan Project and the Space Race

Even Space Race salaries were far cheaper The Apollo program offers another striking comparison. Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, earned about $27,000 annually—roughly $244,639 in today’s money. His crewmates Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins made even less, earning the equivalent of $168,737 and $155,373, respectively, in today’s dollars. Current NASA astronauts earn between…

[techinsightnow]

Corporation for Public Broadcasting will shut down in 2026

Despite the protests of millions of Americans, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced it will be winding down its operations after the White House deemed NPR and PBS a “grift” and pushed for a Senate vote that eliminated its entire budget. The vote rescinded $1.1 billion that Congress had allocated to CPB to fund public broadcasting for fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In a press…

[techinsightnow]

Ukraine rescues soldier via drone delivery of complete e-bike

Details from a frontline war zone are almost impossible to verify, but the brigade has shared plenty of footage, including shots of the drone lifting the bike and a soldier riding it back to safety along a treeline. (Both sides are now making widespread use of e-bikes and motorcycles for quick infantry assaults after three years of drone warfare have wiped out many of the traditional armored…

[techinsightnow]

Delta denies using AI to come up with inflated, personalized prices

Delta scandal highlights value of transparency According to Delta, the company has “zero tolerance for discriminatory or predatory pricing” and only feeds its AI system aggregated data “to enhance our existing fare pricing processes.” Rather than basing fare prices on customers’ personal information, Carter clarified that “all customers have access to the same fares and offers based on objective…

[techinsightnow]

ChatGPT users shocked to learn their chats were in Google search results

Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results. Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats “visible to…

[techinsightnow]

Amazon is considering shoving ads into Alexa+ conversations

Since 2023, Amazon has been framing Alexa+ as a monumental evolution of Amazon’s voice assistant that will make it more conversational, capable, and, for Amazon, lucrative. Amazon said in a press release on Thursday that it has given early access of the generative AI voice assistant to “millions” of people. The product isn’t publicly available yet, and some advertised features are still…

[techinsightnow]

Research roundup: 7 cool science stories we almost missed

Physics of tacking a sailboat Credit: Jonathan King/NYU Possibly the most challenging basic move for beginner sailors is learning how to tack to sail upwind. Done correctly, the sail will flip around into a mirror image of its previous shape. And in competitive sailboat racing, a bad tack can lose the race. So physicists at the University of Michigan decided to investigate the complex fluid…

[techinsightnow]

Citing “market conditions,” Nintendo hikes prices of original Switch consoles

Slowed tech progress, inflation, and global trade wars are doing a number on game console pricing this year, and the bad news keeps coming. Nintendo delayed preorders of the Switch 2 in the US and increased accessory prices, and Microsoft gave its Series S and X consoles across-the-board price hikesin May. Today, Nintendo is back for more, increasing prices on the original Switch hardware, as…

[techinsightnow]

Google releases Gemini 2.5 Deep Think for AI Ultra subscribers

Google is unleashing its most powerful Gemini model today, but you probably won’t be able to try it. After revealing Gemini 2.5 Deep Think at the I/O conference back in May, Google is making this AI available in the Gemini app. Deep Think is designed for the most complex queries, which means it uses more compute resources than other models. So it should come as no surprise that only those…

[techinsightnow]

Backpage scandal ends in largest US payout to trafficking victims

Survivors, or their representatives, must submit claims by February 2, 2026. To receive compensation, claims must include at least one document showing they “suffered monetary and/or behavioral health losses,” the claims form specified. Documents can include emails, texts, screenshots, or advertisements. Claims may be further strengthened by sharing receipts from doctors’ visits, as well as…

[techinsightnow]

Microsoft kills Windows 11 SE, another in a long line of failed ChromeOS competitors

Microsoft says it plans to stop providing updates for Windows 11 SE, the special Windows 11 variant intended to compete with Google’s ChromeOS in schools. The change was announced quietly via this Microsoft support document (spotted by the German-language site Dr. Windows), which says that Windows 11 SE will not be getting a version of this year’s Windows 11 25H2 update. Security updates for…

[techinsightnow]

The military’s squad of satellite trackers is now routinely going on alert

As you can imagine, that’s a very sophisticated mission plan for some of these launches based on what we know about them. Certainly, I can’t, in this environment, confirm or deny any of the specific launches… because I get access to more fidelity and more confidence on those launches, the timing and what’s on them, but the precursor for the vast majority of all these launches is that mission…