Stingless bees from the Amazon have become the first insects to be granted legal rights anywhere in the world, in a breakthrough supporters hope will be a catalyst for similar moves to protect bees elsewhere. From a report: It means that across a broad swathe of the Peruvian Amazon, the rainforest's long-overlooked native bees -- which, unlike their cousins the European honeybees, have no sting -- now have the right to exist and to flourish. Cultivated by Indigenous peoples since pre-Columbian times, stingless bees are thought to be key rainforest pollinators, sustaining biodiversity and ecosystem health. But they are faced with a deadly confluence of climate change, deforestation and pesticides, as well as competition from European bees, and scientists and campaigners have been racing against time to get stingless bees on international conservation red lists. Constanza Prieto, Latin American director at the Earth Law Center, who was part of the campaign, said: "This ordinance marks a turning point in our relationship with nature: it makes stingless bees visible, recognises them as rights-bearing subjects, and affirms their essential role in preserving ecosystems."

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More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished over the Indian Ocean en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the marine robotics company that located Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance is preparing to resume its hunt for the missing Boeing 777. Ocean Infinity, a UK and US-based seabed survey firm, began searching a 15,000 sq km priority area in the Indian Ocean in February but called off the expedition in April after 22 days due to poor weather conditions. The company plans to resume operations on December 30 for 55 days under a $70 million "no find, no fee" contract from the Malaysian government. The company has already covered nearly 10,000 sq km and intends to search another 25,000 sq km. Richard Godfrey, an independent aviation investigator, estimates Ocean Infinity has spent "tens of millions of dollars" on ships and equipment. "I don't think they're in this for the monetary reward of $70m, because this search is very, very expensive," Godfrey says. "I think they're in this for the achievement and their ability to market themselves as the greatest underwater-search firm in the world because they found MH370." The search relies on Hugin 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles capable of mapping the ocean floor at depths up to 6,000 metres using sonar, laser, and acoustic technology. Each AUV can operate independently for 100 hours before surfacing. The machines carry magnetometers that can detect metal buried under several metres of sediment. The story adds: One of the biggest challenges Ocean Infinity faces is the risk of being very close to the MH370 wreckage and missing it because of difficult terrain or gaps in the survey data.

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Windows 10's formal end-of-support arrived in October, and while the operating system is generally remembered as one of the "good" versions of Windows -- the most widely used since XP -- many of the annoyances people complain about in Windows 11 actually started during the Windows 10 era, ArsTechnica writes. Windows 10 earned its positive reputation primarily by not being Windows 8. It restored a version of the traditional Start menu, rolled out as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 users, and ran on virtually all the same hardware as those older versions. Microsoft introduced the Windows Subsystem for Linux during this period and eventually rebuilt Edge on Chromium. The company seemed more willing to meet users where they were rather than forcing them to change their behavior. But Windows 10 also began collecting more information about how users interacted with the operating system, cluttered the lock screen with advertisements and news articles, and added third-party app icons to the Start menu without user consent. The mandatory Microsoft Account sign-in requirement -- one of Windows 11's most frequently complained-about features -- was a Windows 10 innovation, easier to circumvent at the time but clearly a step down the road Windows 11 is currently traveling. To be sure, Windows 11 has made things worse by stacking new irritants on top of old ones. The Microsoft Account requirement expanded to both Home and Pro editions, the SCOOBE screen now regularly nags users to "finish setting up" years-old installations and Microsoft's Copilot push changed the default PC keyboard layout for the first time in 30 years.

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Americans are settling into streaming habits that should worry Hollywood executives, as new Nielsen data analyzed by Bloomberg reveals that not a single new original series cracked the top 10 most-watched streaming shows in 2025 -- the first time this has happened since Nielsen began publishing streaming data in 2020. The shift extends beyond original programming as free, ad-supported streaming services are growing faster than their paid counterparts. YouTube has become the most-watched streaming service on American televisions, now larger than Netflix and Amazon combined. The Roku Channel and Tubi have nearly doubled in size over the past two years, while Peacock and Warner Bros.' streaming services have stagnated at roughly half their free competitors' viewership share. Netflix still dominates when it comes to hits, accounting for about two-thirds of original programs appearing in Nielsen's weekly top 10 lists. But that dominance is eroding -- the company's share of streaming viewership has fallen below 20%. Meanwhile, Disney's streaming services haven't increased their share of TV viewing in three years, and Amazon is closing in. The most-watched original series of 2025 was Squid Game's final season, followed by returning shows Wednesday and Love Island.

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Michal Kicinski, who co-founded both CD Projekt and the DRM-free digital games store GOG back in 2008, has acquired 100% ownership of GOG from CD Projekt, bringing the platform full circle to one of its original creators. GOG was already operating as part of CD Projekt through its Sp.z.o.o. subsidiary, but Kicinski now takes complete control of the company. The platform will continue operating independently and maintain its commitment to DRM-free gaming. "The mission stays the same: Make Games Live Forever," GOG said in its announcement. CD Projekt's joint CEO Michal Nowakowski said the parent company's focus on its development roadmap and franchise expansion made this the right time for the move. GOG has signed a distribution agreement ensuring all upcoming CD Projekt Red titles will release on the platform. Kicinski, describing himself as a "mature gamer" who plays classics, said he's personally involved in developing several retro-spirited games slated for GOG in 2026.

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AI-generated video tools like OpenAI's Sora will make individual content creators "far, far, far less valuable" as social media platforms shift toward algorithmically generated content tailored to each viewer, according to Michael Mignano, a partner at venture capital firm Lightspeed and who cofounded the podcasting platform Anchor before Spotify acquired it. Speaking on a podcast, Mignano described a future where content is generated instantaneously and artificially to suit the viewer. The TikTok algorithm is powerful, he said, but it still requires human beings to make content -- and there's a cost to that. AI could drive those costs down significantly. Mignano called this shift the "death of the creator" in a post, acknowledging it was "devastating" but arguing it marked a "whole new chapter for the internet." In an email to Business Insider, Mignano wrote that quality will win out. "Platforms will no longer reward humans posting the same old, tried and true formats and memes," he wrote. "True uniqueness of image, likeness, and creativity will be the only viable path for human-created content."

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A group of researchers is calling on universities to treat consulting work as a strategic priority, arguing that bureaucratic obstacles and inconsistent policies have left a massive revenue stream largely untapped even as higher education institutions face mounting financial pressures. (Consulting work refers to academics offering their advice and expertise to outside organizations -- industry, government, civil society -- for a fee. It's one of the most direct and scalable ways academics can shape the world beyond campus, and the projects are typically shorter in duration and easier to set up than alternatives like spin-out companies.) Writing in Nature, the authors found that fewer than 10% of academic staff at nine UK universities engaged in consulting work, and the number of academic consulting contracts across the country fell 38% over the past decade -- from around 99,000 in 2014-15 to fewer than 62,000 in 2023-24. Academic consulting in the UK is currently worth roughly $675-810 million annually, a figure that represents just 0.6% of the country's $124 billion management consulting market. The authors examined policies at 30 universities and surveyed 76 fellows from a UK Research and Innovation programme. Two-thirds of the surveyed institutions had publicly available consulting policies, and two outright prohibit private consulting. Permitted consulting time ranged from unlimited to 30 days or fewer per year, institutional charges varied from 10-40% of fees, and contract approval timelines stretched from 24 hours to several months. Private consultancy firms are moving into this space, capturing opportunities that universities neglect. Small-scale projects under $6,750 are commonly sidelined by university contract offices because they represent too small an income for strained institutional resources. The authors propose standardized policies across institutions, shared consulting income with departments, and faster approval processes -- reforms similar to those already implemented for university spin-out companies.

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Google's Pixel 10 series arrived this year as the company's first eSIM-only lineup in the United States, forcing users who wanted to review or buy the new phones to abandon their physical SIM cards entirely. Ryan Whitwam, a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, made the switch and now regrets it, he says. "In the three months since Google forced me to give up my physical SIM card, I've only needed to move my eSIM occasionally," Whitwam wrote. "Still, my phone number has ended up stuck in limbo on two occasions." The core problem is how carriers handle verification. When an eSIM transfer fails and you need support, carriers authenticate via SMS -- a message you cannot receive because your SIM is broken. "What should have been 30 seconds of fiddling with a piece of plastic turned into an hour standing around a retail storefront," Whitwam noted. Apple started this trend by dropping the SIM slot on iPhone 14 in 2022. The space savings are modest: the international iPhone 17 has a smaller battery than its eSIM-only counterpart by only about 8%. Google's US Pixel 10 models offer no such trade-off -- they lack the SIM slot but "unfortunately don't have more of anything compared to the international versions." He concludes: "A physical SIM is essentially foolproof, and eSIM is not."

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The AI industry, for all the anxiety about mass unemployment, is quietly minting entirely new job categories that require distinctly human skills -- empathy, judgment, and the ability to calm down a passenger trapped inside a broken-down robotaxi. Data annotators are no longer just low-paid gig workers tagging images. Experts in finance, law, and medicine now train advanced AI models, earning $90 an hour on average through platforms like Mercor, a startup recently valued at $10 billion, according to CEO Brendan Foody. Forward-deployed engineers, a role pioneered by Palantir, customize AI tools on-site for clients; YCombinator's portfolio companies now have 63 job postings for such roles, up from four last year. The AI Workforce Consortium, a research group led by Cisco that examined 50 IT jobs across wealthy countries, found AI risk-and-governance specialists to be the fastest-growing category -- outpacing even AI programmers.

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The world's largest hotel chains are aggressively pushing customers toward direct bookings as they brace for a future where AI "agents" could reshape how travelers find and reserve rooms. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Wyndham have all expanded their loyalty programs and perks in recent months, aiming to reduce their reliance on online travel agents like Expedia and Booking.com that typically charge commissions of 15 to 25%. Marriott's Bonvoy program reached almost 260 million members by the end of September, an 18% jump from the prior year. Hilton has lowered the barriers to elite status and struck partnerships that let members spend points outside its hotel portfolio. AI-powered booking tools could route customers away from brand-conscious decisions, but they could also offer hotels a cheaper distribution channel than traditional OTAs. Marriott CFO Leeny Oberg said at a conference this month that AI bookings "could potentially be cheaper than the OTAs." Wyndham CEO Geoff Ballotti called tools like ChatGPT and Gemini "a unique opportunity" to reduce OTA dependency.

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LG has announced a new premium gaming monitor brand called UltraGear, and the lineup's headline feature is what the company claims is the world's first 5K AI upscaling technology -- an on-device solution that analyzes and enhances content in real time before it reaches the panel, theoretically letting gamers enjoy 5K-class clarity without needing to upgrade their GPUs. The initial UltraGear evo roster includes three monitors. The 39-inch GX9 is a 5K2K OLED ultrawide that can run at 165Hz at full resolution or 330Hz at WFHD, and features a 0.03ms response time. The 27-inch GM9 is a 5K MiniLED display that LG says dramatically reduces the blooming artifacts common to MiniLED panels through 2,304 local dimming zones and "Zero Optical Distance" engineering. The 52-inch G9 is billed as the world's largest 5K2K gaming monitor and runs at 240Hz. The AI upscaling, scene optimization, and AI sound features are available only on the 39-inch OLED and 27-inch MiniLED models. All three will be showcased at CES 2026. No word on pricing or when the sets will hit the market.

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The world's largest accounting body is to stop students being allowed to take exams remotely to crack down on a rise in cheating on tests that underpin professional qualifications. From a report: The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), which has almost 260,000 members, has said that from March it will stop allowing students to take online exams in all but exceptional circumstances. "We're seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards," Helen Brand, the chief executive of the ACCA, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Remote testing was introduced during the Covid pandemic to allow students to continue to be able to qualify at a time when lockdowns prevented in-person exam assessment. In 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK's accounting and auditing industry regulator, said that cheating in professional exams was a "live" issue at Britain's biggest companies. A number of multimillion-dollar fines have been issued to large auditing and accounting companies around the world over cheating scandals in tests.

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Those brief freezes and audio hiccups that plague video calls are not the benign nuisances that most people assume them to be, according to a new study published in Nature that found glitches during virtual interactions can meaningfully damage hiring prospects, reduce trust in healthcare providers and even correlate with lower chances of being granted parole. Researchers from Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City conducted ten studies examining glitches across thousands of participants and real-world parole hearing transcripts. The core finding is that glitches harm interpersonal judgments because they break the illusion of face-to-face contact, triggering what psychologists call "uncanniness" -- a strange, creepy, or eerie feeling typically associated with humanoid robots or CGI characters that look almost but not quite human. In one experiment, participants watching a telehealth pitch chose to work with a health professional 77% of the time when no glitches occurred, but only 61% when brief freezes were present. The job interview studies found similar patterns, and when researchers examined 472 Kentucky parole hearings conducted over Zoom, they found that inmates were granted parole 60% of the time in glitch-free hearings versus 48% when transcripts indicated technical problems had occurred. The researchers ruled out simpler explanations like mere disruption or comprehension difficulties. Glitches inserted during natural pauses in speech -- where no information was lost -- still damaged evaluations. And critically, when participants watched presentations where a shared screen froze rather than a human face, glitches had no effect on judgments at all. The uncanniness only emerged when the technology broke the simulation of sitting across from another person.

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Taiwan's iPass has released a limited-edition prepaid payment card shaped exactly like a 3.5-inch floppy disk. The company, perhaps rightly so, felt the need to include a warning on the product listing: "This product only has a card function and does not have a 3.5mm [sic] disk function, please note before purchasing." The NFC-enabled novelty card went on sale starting Christmas Eve and comes in black or yellow finishes at 1:1 scale. It works across Taiwan's public transport network -- buses, trains, subways, taxis, and bike rentals -- as well as convenience stores like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, supermarkets, pharmacies, and fast-food chains including McDonald's and Burger King. The floppy disk joins an increasingly absurd lineup of iPass form factors. Previous releases have included, Tom's Hardware reports, a Motorola DynaTAC replica, model trains, a flip-flop, an LED-lit Godzilla snow globe, and a blood bag. Taiwan's PCHome24 online store currently lists 838 different iPass card designs. A standard card costs NT$100 (about $3.20) and comes without stored value.

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Toll roads are expanding across the U.S. as the traditional gas tax funding model for highways collapses. Indiana became the first state to authorize tolls on all of its existing interstate highways when Governor Mike Braun signed legislation in June. The federal gas tax hasn't been raised since 1993. In fiscal 2024, the federal government spent $27 billion more on road maintenance than it collected from fuel taxes, and at state and local levels, fuel taxes covered barely a quarter of road spending. Drivers currently pay to access just 6,300 miles of America's roughly 160,000 miles of highway. Most tolling projects have enjoyed bipartisan support -- Florida has more toll roads by distance than any other state, and Texas is second. But as Republicans embrace populism, the politics are shifting. In New York, almost all state Republicans fought congestion pricing, and President Donald Trump attempted to shut it down after taking office. Some Republicans now want to buy back pay-to-drive roads and make them free.

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The first-ever commercial rocket launched at Brazil's Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff late earlier this week, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and shares of South Korean satellite launch company Innospace. From a report: The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff [Monday] at 10:13 p.m. local time (0113 GMT) but fell to the ground after something went wrong 30 seconds into its flight, Innospace CEO Kim Soo-jong said in a letter to shareholders. The craft crashed within a pre-designated safety zone and did not harm anyone, he said. Brazil's air force said firefighters were sent to analyze the wreckage and impact zone. "We are deeply sorry that we failed to meet the expectations of our shareholders who supported our first commercial launch," the CEO wrote in the letter, which was posted on the company's website on December 23. Innospace shares plunged nearly 29% in Seoul in its biggest daily drop and heaviest daily trading volume since its July 2024 listing.

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After more than two decades of promises and false starts in the mesh networking space, the smart home standards that Apple, Amazon and Google have each championed are finally set to escape their respective brand silos and work together in a single unified network. Starting January 1, 2026, Thread 1.4 becomes the Thread Group's only certified standard, bringing a crucial new capability called credential sharing. Devices from different manufacturers can now securely join the same mesh network -- an Amazon Echo Show and an Apple HomePod mini in the same house will both be able to control the same Nanoleaf lightbulb. This marks a significant departure from Thread 1.3, released in 2022, where each brand's mesh network connected only to devices from that same brand. The Thread Group launched in 2014 as a coalition led by Arm, Google's Nest Labs, and Samsung, later welcoming Apple and Amazon into the fold. Thread 1.4 handles low-power smart home devices and sensors, but homes also need high-bandwidth connections for laptops and phones. Wi-Fi 7 mesh serves that purpose and the Matter protocol acts as a translation layer between the two different mesh networks. Both Wi-Fi 7 and Matter arrived in products on store shelves in 2025.

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The global push to put autonomous taxis on public roads is accelerating as ride-hailing companies and technology firms advance from pilot programs toward limited commercial rollouts in cities across China, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. WeRide and Uber launched Level 4 fully driverless robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi in November and began offering robotaxi passenger rides on Uber's platform in Dubai the following month. Amazon's Zoox started offering free rides to select early users in parts of San Francisco in November after launching its autonomous ride-hailing service on the Las Vegas Strip in September. Alphabet's Waymo now operates services in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles -- the latter two having launched in June and November 2024 respectively. Baidu's Apollo Go has been operating without safety drivers in Chongqing and Wuhan since securing permits in August 2022 and has since expanded to Shenzhen and Beijing. Pony.ai launched paid robotaxi services in Guangzhou in February and Shanghai in August. Tesla began a limited paid robotaxi rollout in Austin, Texas in June using Model Y SUVs, though the vehicles still require a safety monitor onboard. The expansion will continue in 2026: Waymo plans to launch an autonomous ride-hailing service in London, and Momenta is preparing a luxury robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi through a partnership with Mercedes-Benz and UAE taxi operator Lumo.

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NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who was confirmed by the Senate just last week after a turbulent nomination process that stretched across most of 2025, said Friday that the United States will return to the moon within President Donald Trump's second term. Isaacman made the comments during an interview on CNBC, calling Trump's recommitment to lunar exploration key to unlocking what he described as an "orbital economy." He said: "We want to have that opportunity to explore and realize the scientific, economic and national security potential on the moon," he said. The potential opportunities include establishing space data centers and infrastructure on the moon, as well as mining Helium-3, a rare gas embedded in the lunar surface that could serve as fuel for fusion power. NASA is currently working on its Artemis campaign alongside SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $9.9 billion to the agency earlier this year. The Artemis II mission, NASA's first crewed test flight using the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, is expected to launch in the near future. SpaceX is contracted to build the lunar landing system for the subsequent Artemis III mission. Isaacman was first nominated by Trump in December 2024 but had his nomination pulled in May over unspecified "prior associations." Trump renominated him in November.

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Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users' mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday. From a report: "Keeping New Yorkers safe has been my top priority since taking office, and that includes protecting our kids from the potential harms of social media features that encourage excessive use," Hochul said in a statement. This month Australia imposed a social media ban for children under 16. New York joins states like California and Minnesota that have similar social media laws. The New York law includes platforms that offer "addictive feeds," auto play or infinite scroll, according to the legislation. The law applies to conduct occurring partly or wholly in New York but not when the platform is accessed by users physically outside the state.

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