Author: Tom Rob Pugh

The publication of a Chinese-developed multimodal model in Nature has reframed a global debate about how artificial intelligence should scale beyond text. With the appearance of “悟界·Emu3” in the journal’s main edition, researchers are now openly questioning whether diffusion-based systems remain the inevitable path for images and video — or whether the same “next-token prediction” logic that transformed language models can also underpin world models and embodied intelligence. In its editorial assessment, Nature highlighted a striking point: Emu3 achieves large-scale unified learning across text, images and video using only next-token prediction, reaching performance comparable to specialised systems on both generation…

A technology once confined to laboratory demonstrations is now edging closer to routine clinical use. Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink, has disclosed that 21 people worldwide are now living with implanted devices as part of its clinical trials — a sharp increase that signals growing confidence in both safety and performance, and sharpens debate over how soon such technology could move beyond experimental medicine. The update, revealed on Wednesday, marks a notable shift from September last year, when Neuralink reported 12 participants. In a field where each additional patient represents surgical risk and regulatory scrutiny, the jump is being…

Apple’s long-anticipated entry into the foldable phone market may not stop with a single device. Even before its first foldable iPhone reaches consumers, the company is already internally debating what comes next — including a smaller, clamshell-style model that would mark a significant expansion of its iPhone lineup. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in his latest Power On newsletter, Apple engineers are actively discussing a square, flip-style foldable iPhone, similar in form factor to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip. The device is described as exploratory rather than committed, with no production timeline and no guarantee it will ever reach the market.…

For more than a decade, the economics of digital creativity have followed a familiar script: creators complain about rising subscription costs, Adobe collects its monthly fees, and most professionals quietly accept the arrangement as the price of entry. Apple’s decision this week to launch a bundled Creator Studio subscription signals a deliberate attempt to disrupt that equilibrium—and, in the process, reshape how creative tools are priced, packaged, and controlled. The move lands at a moment when individual creators, not large studios, are driving growth across video, social commerce, and independent publishing platforms. Subscription fatigue is widespread, and the so-called “Adobe…

The global race for space is no longer about who reaches orbit first. It is about who controls what happens there next. Over the past year, governments and companies have quietly shifted from treating low-Earth orbit as a communications layer to viewing it as strategic infrastructure—part power grid, part data center, part geopolitical leverage. That shift became impossible to ignore when Elon Musk publicly acknowledged that SpaceX has applied to deploy a satellite constellation of a scale never before attempted: up to one million satellites. The application, filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and publicly disclosed in recent…

When China quietly unveiled a new academic institution on January 27, 2026, the announcement barely rippled beyond specialist circles. Yet the decision marks one of the most consequential strategic shifts in the country’s space ambitions in decades — the formal revival of a 69-year-old vision first laid out by Qian Xuesen, the architect of China’s modern aerospace program. The University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences officially inaugurated the Interstellar Navigation Academy, not in a flagship urban campus or near a launch center, but deep in the mountains of Huairou, Beijing. The location, long dismissed as a relic of an…

Samsung is preparing to test a strategy that runs against the grain of today’s flagship smartphone market. While rivals push ever-larger displays, heavier bodies and record-breaking battery sizes, the company says it will unveil the Galaxy S26 series on February 25, rolling out three models built around a deliberate split: a lightweight small-screen flagship, a balanced large-screen option, and a dual-chip strategy tailored to different global markets. With configuration details for the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 Plus now fully exposed ahead of launch, the series offers a clear window into how Samsung plans to defend its premium position amid…

As China’s smartphone makers accelerate release cycles in an increasingly crowded market, Honor is preparing to push battery capacity into new territory. Leaks circulating at the start of February point to the Honor X80 Pro as the company’s first handset built around a 12,000mAh-class battery, a move that underscores how endurance — not raw performance — is becoming a defining battleground in the midrange segment. Honor has already spent January rolling out multiple battery-focused devices, gaining traction among users frustrated by daily charging. The X80 Pro, expected to be formally announced in the coming weeks, appears designed to extend that…

The technologies NASA once designed to keep humans alive on Mars are now being positioned to address one of Earth’s most stubborn crises: affordable housing. According to NASA’s newly released Spinoff 2026 report, innovations developed for off-world survival—ranging from 3D-printed habitats to autonomous robotics—are being repurposed at scale, with real implications for fast-growing cities from the United States to Kenya. The shift is not abstract. In places like Mavoko, on the edge of Nairobi’s expanding metropolitan belt, the promise of faster, cheaper construction speaks directly to a housing backlog Kenya estimates at nearly two million units. NASA’s technology transfer program…

NASA’s plan to send astronauts back around the Moon has collided with an obstacle few associate with Cape Canaveral: winter cold. A rare arctic outbreak sweeping through Florida has forced the space agency to reshuffle a tightly choreographed launch sequence for Artemis II, delaying a critical prelaunch test and compressing an already narrow February launch window. The disruption centers on the wet dress rehearsal, a full-scale fueling and countdown simulation for the Space Launch System rocket. Originally scheduled for Saturday, January 31, 2026, the test has been pushed back to Monday, February 2, after engineers concluded that the combination of…