Yesterday, Donald Trump announced on social media that he had been planning to “surge” troops into San Francisco this weekend—but was dissuaded from doing so by several tech billionaires.

“Friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” Trump wrote.

Who are these “friends”? Trump named “great people like [Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang, [Salesforce CEO] Marc Benioff, and others” who told him that “the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”

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Earlier this month, Tesla rolled out a new firmware update that added a pair of new driving modes for the controversial full self-driving (FSD) feature. One, called “Sloth,” relaxes acceleration and stays in its lane. The other, called “Mad Max,” does the opposite: It speeds and swerves through traffic to get you to your destination faster. And after multiple reports of FSD Teslas doing just that, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to know more.

In fact, “Mad Max” mode is not entirely new—Tesla beta-tested the same feature in Autopilot in 2018, before deciding not to roll it out in a production release after widespread outcry.

These days, the company is evidently feeling less constrained; despite having just lost a federal wrongful death lawsuit that will cost it hundreds of millions of dollars , it described the new mode as being able to drive “through traffic at an incredible pace, all while still being super smooth. It drives your car like a sports car. If you are running late, this is the mode for you.”

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Meta violated the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to give Facebook and Instagram users simple mechanisms to report illegal content, the European Commission said in a preliminary decision announced yesterday. Meta also failed to give users an effective way to challenge content moderation decisions, the EC said.

“When it comes to Meta, neither Facebook nor Instagram appear to provide a user-friendly and easily accessible ‘Notice and Action’ mechanism for users to flag illegal content, such as child sexual abuse material and terrorist content,” the EC press release said. The EC said that Meta mechanisms seem to “impose several unnecessary steps and additional demands on users. In addition, both Facebook and Instagram appear to use so-called ‘dark patterns,’ or deceptive interface designs, when it comes to the ‘Notice and Action’ mechanisms.”

The EC also found that the content moderation appeal mechanisms used by Facebook and Instagram do not “allow users to provide explanations or supporting evidence to substantiate their appeals. This makes it difficult for users in the EU to further explain why they disagree with Meta’s content decision, limiting the effectiveness of the appeals mechanism.”

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Microsoft is rolling out a new face for its AI, and its name is Mico. The company announced the new, animated blob-like avatar for Copilot’s voice mode yesterday as part of a “human-centered” rebranding of Microsoft’s Copilot AI efforts.

Mico is part of a Microsoft program dedicated to the idea that “technology should work in service of people,” Microsoft wrote. The company insists this effort is “not [about] chasing engagement or optimizing for screen time. We’re building AI that gets you back to your life. That deepens human connection.”

Mico has drawn instant and obvious comparisons to Clippy , the animated paperclip that popped up to offer help with Microsoft Office starting in the ’90s . Microsoft has leaned into this comparison with an Easter egg that can transform Mico into an animated Clippy .

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Electric vehicle startup Rivian announced on Thursday that it has settled a lawsuit with some of its investors. The company continues to deny allegations of making “materially untrue” statements during its inial public offering but says it agreed to pay $250 million to clear itself of distractions as it focuses on building its next EV, the mass-market R2 , which is due next year.

Rivian was first sued by a shareholder in 2022 over claims that the startup knew it would cost far more for it to build each R1T electric truck and R1S electric SUV than the advertised $67,500 and $70,000 prices, respectively. A big surprise price increase would tarnish the nascent automaker’s reputation, the lawsuit claimed, and could lead to many of the almost 56,000 pre-orders being canceled.

Just a few months after its November 2021 IPO, the company had indeed issued a hefty price hike : $79,500 for the R1T and $84,500 for the R1S SUV. After an outcry, the company said it would honor the original price for its existing preorders. By that point, though, the damage was done, and more than a third of the company’s value was erased within a few days, the lawsuit alleged.

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There are three species of bats that eat birds. We know that because we have found feathers and other avian remains in their feces. What we didn’t know was how exactly they hunt birds, which are quite a bit heavier, faster, and stronger than the insects bats usually dine on.

To find out, Elena Tena, a biologist at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, and her colleagues attached ultra-light sensors to Nyctalus Iasiopterus , the largest bats in Europe. What they found was jaw-droppingly brutal.

Inconspicuous interceptors

Nyctalus Iasiopterus , otherwise known as greater noctule bats, have a wingspan of about 45 centimeters. They have reddish-brown or chestnut fur with a slightly paler underside, and usually weigh around 40 to 60 grams. Despite that minimal weight, they are the largest of the three bat species known to eat birds, so the key challenge in getting a glimpse into the way they hunt was finding sensors light enough to not impede the bats’ flight.

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In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte led a disastrous military campaign into Moscow. The death toll was devastating: Out of some 615,000 men, only about 110,000 survivors returned. (Napoleon abandoned his army in early December to return home on a sled.) Roughly 100,000 of the casualties died in battle, while as many as 300,000 perished from a combination of the bitter cold of Russia’s notoriously harsh winter, starvation, and disease.

Scholars have debated precisely what kinds of diseases ravaged Napoleon’s troops. New DNA analysis of some soldiers’ remains has revealed the presence of two pathogens in particular, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. The first is Salmonella enterica , which causes paratyphoid fever ; the second is Borrelia recurrentis , which is transmitted by body lice and causes relapsing fever . (A preprint of the paper appeared on bioaRxiv in July.)

“It’s very exciting to use a technology we have today to detect and diagnose something that was buried for 200 years,” said co-author Nicolás Rascovan of the Institut Pasteur. “Accessing the genomic data of the pathogens that circulated in historical populations helps us to understand how infectious diseases evolved, spread, and disappeared over time and to identify the social or environmental contexts that played a part in these developments. This information provides us with valuable insights to better understand and tackle infectious diseases today.”

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The Universe Browser makes some big promises to its potential users. Its online advertisements claim it’s the “fastest browser,” that people using it will “avoid privacy leaks” and that the software will help “keep you away from danger.” However, everything likely isn’t as it seems.

The browser, which is linked to Chinese online gambling websites and is thought to have been downloaded millions of times, actually routes all Internet traffic through servers in China and “covertly installs several programs that run silently in the background,” according to new findings from network security company Infoblox. The researchers say the “hidden” elements include features similar to malware—including “key logging, surreptitious connections,” and changing a device’s network connections.

Perhaps most significantly, the Infoblox researchers who collaborated with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on the work, found links between the browser’s operation and Southeast Asia’s sprawling, multibillion-dollar cybercrime ecosystem , which has connections to money-laundering, illegal online gambling, human trafficking, and scam operations that use forced labor . The browser itself, the researchers says, is directly linked to a network around major online gambling company BBIN, which the researchers have labeled a threat group they call Vault Viper.

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You need to go up —way up —to fully appreciate the changes underway at the White House this week.

Demolition crews starting tearing down the East Wing of the presidential mansion Tuesday to clear room for the construction of a new $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a recent priority of President Donald Trump. The teardown drew criticism and surprise from Democratic lawmakers , former White House staffers , and members of the public.

It was, after all, just three months ago that President Donald Trump defended his ballroom plan by saying it wouldn’t affect the existing structure at the White House. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he said in July. “It’ll be near it but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

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