James Watson, who helped unravel DNA’s double-helix, has died

His work was celebrated, but he was ostracized for racist, sexist comments.

James Dewey Watson, who helped reveal DNA’s double-helix structure, kicked off the Human Genome Project, and became infamous for his racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive statements, has died. He was 97.

His death was confirmed to The New York Times by his son Duncan, who said Watson died on Thursday in a hospice in East Northport, New York, on Long Island. He had previously been hospitalized with an infection. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also confirmed his passing.

Watson was born in Chicago in 1928 and attained scientific fame in 1953 at 25 years old for solving the molecular structure of DNA—the genetic blueprints for life—with his colleague Francis Crick at England’s Cavendish laboratory. Their discovery heavily relied on the work of chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin at King’s College in London, whose X-ray images of DNA provided critical clues to the molecule’s twisted-ladderlike architecture. One image in particular from Franklin’s lab, Photo 51, made Watson and Crick’s discovery possible. But, she was not fully credited for her contribution. The image was given to Watson and Crick without Franklin’s knowledge or consent by Maurice Wilkins, a biophysicist and colleague of Franklin.

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Open Book Touch is a full-featured, open source eReader (crowdfunding soon)

Oddly Specific Objects founder Joey Castillo has designed a couple of interesting open hardware projects over the years. Those include the Sensor Watch and Sensor Watch Pro, which replace the PCB in a classic Casio wristwatch with a new board sporting …

Oddly Specific Objects founder Joey Castillo has designed a couple of interesting open hardware projects over the years. Those include the Sensor Watch and Sensor Watch Pro, which replace the PCB in a classic Casio wristwatch with a new board sporting a bunch of sensors that add functionality. But Castillo’s first attempt at making open […]

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Researchers surprised that with AI, toxicity is harder to fake than intelligence

New “computational Turing test” reportedly catches AI pretending to be human with 80% accuracy.

The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd.

On Wednesday, researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Amsterdam, Duke University, and New York University released a study revealing that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional tone serving as the most persistent giveaway. The research, which tested nine open-weight models across Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Reddit, found that classifiers developed by the researchers detected AI-generated replies with 70 to 80 percent accuracy.

The study introduces what the authors call a “computational Turing test” to assess how closely AI models approximate human language. Instead of relying on subjective human judgment about whether text sounds authentic, the framework uses automated classifiers and linguistic analysis to identify specific features that distinguish machine-generated from human-authored content.

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This kit gives the AlphaSmart Neo2 more of a portable typewriter-like design

The AlphaSmart Neo2 is a portable word processor that was released nearly two decades ago as a device that provides a distraction-free writing experience without all the extra stuff that comes with a full-fledged laptop computer. With a small greyscale…

The AlphaSmart Neo2 is a portable word processor that was released nearly two decades ago as a device that provides a distraction-free writing experience without all the extra stuff that comes with a full-fledged laptop computer. With a small greyscale LCD display, a full-sized keyboard, and compact design, it continues to have fans. But that doesn’t mean […]

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Commercial spyware “Landfall” ran rampant on Samsung phones for almost a year

Targeted attack could steal all of a phone’s data and activate camera or mic.

Another day, another malware attack on smartphones. Researchers at Unit 42, the threat intelligence arm of Palo Alto Networks, have revealed a sophisticated spyware known as “Landfall” targeting Samsung Galaxy phones. The researchers say this campaign leveraged a zero-day exploit in Samsung Android software to steal a raft of personal data, and it was active for almost a year. Thankfully, the underlying vulnerability has now been patched, and the attacks were most likely targeted at specific groups.

Unit 42 says that Landfall first appeared in July 2024, relying on a software flaw now catalogued as CVE-2025-21042. Samsung issued a patch for its phones in April 2025, but details of the attack have only been revealed now.

Even if you were out there poking around the darker corners of the Internet in 2024 and early 2025 with a Samsung Galaxy device, it’s unlikely you’d be infected. The team believes Landfall was used in the Middle East to target individuals for surveillance. It is currently unclear who was behind the attacks.

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The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences

“The FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations.”

The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.

The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”

The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.

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Higher prices, simpler streaming expected if HBO Max folds into Paramount+

The end of HBO Max is “certainly plausible.”

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has a ‘for sale’ sign up. And that could mean big changes for subscribers to the company’s most popular streaming service, HBO Max.

After receiving unsolicited acquisition offers, WBD recently declared itself open to “strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.” WBD drew new attention by being open to selling its streaming business (WBD is also still open to moving forward with previously shared plans to split into a cable company and a streaming and movie studios company next year).

Naturally, mergers and acquisitions talk has heated up since then, with Paramount as one of the most eager suitors. Paramount, which merged with Skydance in August, is reportedly planning to keep “much of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. intact” if a deal happens, per a Bloomberg report that cited unnamed people familiar with the plans of David Ellison, Paramount’s CEO.

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FBI orders domain registrar to reveal who runs mysterious Archive.is site

Tucows subpoenaed in criminal probe for info on “customer behind archive.today.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to unmask the operator of Archive.is, also known as Archive.today, a website that saves snapshots of webpages and is commonly used to bypass news paywalls.

The FBI sent a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows, seeking “subscriber information on [the] customer behind archive.today” in connection with “a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.” The subpoena tells Tucows that “your company is required to furnish this information.”

The subpoena is supposed to be secret, but the Archive.today X account posted the document on October 30, the same day the subpoena was issued. The X post contained a link to the PDF and the word “canary.”

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Questions swirl after Trump’s GLP-1 pricing deal announcement

It’s unclear how much savings the deal provides or how many people will benefit.

At a White House event Thursday, President Trump announced deals with drug makers Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to offer their popular GLP-1 obesity and diabetes drugs at lower prices for some Americans, namely some on Medicare and Medicaid plans. But questions linger about the significance of the deal.

According to the announcement, Medicare and state Medicaid programs will be able to purchase a month’s supply of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound at $245 each for eligible patients. Eligible people on Medicare will have a $50 co-pay for them.

The negotiated price is a significant cut from the drugs’ list prices: The list price for Ozempic is $997; Wegovy is $1,350; Mounjaro is $1,080; and Zepbound is $1,086. But, of course, purchasers rarely pay drug list prices. It’s unclear how much Medicare and Medicaid would have paid for the drugs without this deal and what the savings will be.

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