A peer-reviewed Nature critique argues that Microsoft’s 2025 Majorana quantum-computing breakthrough – and its claim that it could enable “a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years” – is fundamentally flawed. According to Dr Henry Legg, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, the claims were undermined by omitted data, selective plotting, and basic Python errors that concealed alternative results. Microsoft, for its part, says the bugs were minor and stands by its findings and roadmap.

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• By studying population trends and forecasting models, researchers have come to believe that nearly 15,000 U.S. cities will face noticeable depopulation by 2100.
• Populated areas of the cities in question could experience a decline of up to 44 percent.
• Projections call for the biggest drops in city populations to occur in the Northeast and Midwest.

If you are a Christian living in the Western United States, you have almost certainly been targeted with pro-Israel, anti-Palestine propaganda, paid for directly by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Your searches, location, and internet activity is being monitored by Israel, and your algorithms and search results across multiple platforms are being manipulated by Israeli government in what its American partner calls the “largest geofencing and targeted Christian digital campaign ever.”

Amid a massive drop in support from the Christian community, Israel is spending millions of dollars to target individuals entering churches or Christian colleges with ads, and paying pastors across the country to promote propaganda and false “anti-Palestinian” narratives every Sunday, documents filed with the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show.

The 86-page disclosure reveals that Israel is recruiting Hollywood celebrities and sports stars to promote the country, while also manipulating Christians’ social media feeds. And they are doing it by spying on you through your phone.

“Mathematicians should find it quite striking that tech companies are suddenly interested in their work,” said Kevin Buzzard, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in a statement. “The Leiden Declaration is a well-thought-through response to what is currently happening, as AI continues to disrupt this space.”

The point here is that “AI” grifters are latching onto mathematics, not vice versa. In reality mathematicians invented computers, have been using them ever since, and realize that “AI” has never existed.

As statehouses ramp up for 2026, we’re seeing a familiar and concerning trend of lawmakers rushing to regulate the internet based on shockingly shaky science. From the California State Assembly to the Massachusetts and Minnesota legislatures, a wave of bills is crashing against the digital lives of young people, with proponents of these measures framing social media access as a “public health epidemic,” or a “mental health crisis,” even though we have yet to see any of the settled science that those labels usually invoke.

As a digital rights organization dedicated to the civil liberties of all users, EFF’s expertise lies in reminding lawmakers that young people enjoy largely the same free speech and privacy rights as adults. EFF is not a social science research shop, but we can read the emerging research. What that research shows is much more nuanced than what is claimed by those proposing to ban young people from social media, and it is clear that research and theories used to justify these sweeping bans is far from settled. The rush to ban access to digital platforms is being fueled by “pop psychology” narratives and a collection of statistically flawed studies that do not meet the rigorous standards required for such a massive infringement on youth autonomy and constitutional rights.

Everyone knows that a good joke can liven up a talk. Sadly, however, good jokes are in short supply — at least according to a survey of more than 500 presentations at biology meetings1.

Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a “moderate success”, eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically. In fairness, 42% of jests were spontaneous remarks relating to glitches in presentations, such as slide malfunctions, that were not intended to bring down the house. And audiences might not have expected jokes, making it harder to get them to laugh.

Roughly 40% of the talks monitored were humourless, eliminating the risk of failed jokes, but probably raising the risk of bored listeners. The work is published todayin Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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