Author: GT

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Iran’s president has asked the U.S. for a ceasefire.But the U.S. will “consider” the offer only once the Strait of Hormuz is “open, free, and clear,” Trump said on Truth Social.”Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” he wrote.The announcement came hours before Trump was set to deliver an “important update on Iran” in an address to the nation, according to the White House.The address is set for 9 p.m. ET.It was not immediately clear if Iran would confirm or reject Trump’s claim that…

Apple CEO Tim Cook inspects the new iPhone 16 during an Apple special event at Apple headquarters on September 09, 2024 in Cupertino, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty ImagesAs Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary, the company that’s defined consumer electronics since introducing the iPod, and that forever changed user behavior in creating the iPhone, faces a host of critical questions about where it goes from here. Apple first became the world’s most valuable company in 2011, passing Exxon Mobil, and held that title for large chunks of the decade plus that followed, occasionally getting surpassed by Alphabet or Microsoft. Apple is…

OpenAI has closed a deal to raise $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, its largest funding round to date as the company is expected to hit the public markets this year. The round will add to OpenAI’s war chest as it spends enormous amounts of money on AI chips, data center buildouts, and hiring top talent. SoftBank co-led the round alongside Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures, MGX, TPG, and T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft. About $3 billion came from individual investors via bank channels. OpenAI is also going to be included in several…

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — A scrawny hippie and a nerdy engineer who became prank-playing friends vowed to change the world when they founded a Silicon Valley startup on April Fools’ Day 50 years ago and then — no joke — pulled it off. The improbable odyssey began April 1, 1976, when a then-shaggy Steve Jobs and his gadget-tinkering friend Steve Wozniak signed a two-page partnership document that created Apple Computer Co. Jobs, a 21-year-old college dropout, and Wozniak, a 25-year-old Hewlett-Packard employee, each received a 45% stake in Apple, with the remaining 10% going to their 41-year-old adviser, Ron Wayne.The…

“Can we make tissues that are made from you, for you?” asked Jennifer Lewis ScD ’91 at the 2025 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture, organized by MIT.nano, on Nov. 3. “The grand challenge goal is to create these tissues for therapeutic use and, ultimately, at the whole organ scale.”Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, is pursuing that challenge through advances in 3D printing. In her talk presented to a combined in-person and virtual audience of over 500 attendees, Lewis shared work from her lab that focuses on enhanced function in 3D printed components for use…

In February, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to seven U.S. companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He especially wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles — operated by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — rely on input from remote staff. They all refused to say, according to the results of Markey’s investigation, which were released Tuesday. The information published by Markey’s office is the latest example of how hesitant autonomous vehicle companies are to share details about how their operations truly work — despite the fact that they are…

In the horticultural world, some vines are especially grabby. As they grow, the woody tendrils can wrap around obstacles with enough force to pull down entire fences and trees.Inspired by vines’ twisty tenacity, engineers at MIT and Stanford University have developed a robotic gripper that can snake around and lift a variety of objects, including a glass vase and a watermelon, offering a gentler approach compared to conventional gripper designs. A larger version of the robo-tendrils can also safely lift a human out of bed.The new bot consists of a pressurized box, positioned near the target object, from which long,…

Salesforce, the cloud software giant, has been remaking its business around AI, and at a small gathering in San Francisco on Tuesday, CEO Marc Benioff and his team unveiled the latest results of those efforts: an updated version of Slack, with a plethora of new AI features. The most significant of these is a serious glow-up for its AI agent, Slackbot. The 30 new features, which will be available in the coming months, follow a January update that gave Slackbot agentic capabilities — including the ability to draft emails, schedule meetings, and sift through your inbox for specific information. Perhaps…

Students can take many possible routes through MIT’s curriculum, which can zigag through different departments, linking classes and disciplines in unexpected ways. With so many options, charting an academic path can be overwhelming, but a new tool called NerdXing is here to help.The brainchild of senior Julianna Schneider and other students in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group (UAG), NerdXing lets students search for a class and see all the other classes students have gone on to take in the past, including options that are off the beaten track.“I hope that NerdXing will democratize course knowledge for everyone,”…

Anthropic has built its public identity around the winning idea that it’s the careful AI company. It publishes detailed work on AI risk, employs some of the best researchers in the field, and has been vocal about the responsibilities that come with building such powerful technology — so vocal, of course, that it’s right now battling it out with the Department of Defense. On Tuesday, alas, someone there forgot to check a box. It is, notably, the second time in a week. Last Thursday, Fortune reported that Anthropic had accidentally made nearly 3,000 internal files publicly available, including a draft…