PC- and accessory-maker Asus has never been one to shy away from a strange idea, whether it's a tablet that you need to slide your smartphone into before you can use it, a laptop touchpad that's also a screen , or going with " Rock Solid, Heart Touching " as a corporate slogan. But an announcement the company made today stands out: Asus is launching something called the Asus Fragrance Mouse , a fairly regular-looking wireless mouse that also smells.

Yes, the main differentiating feature of the Fragrance Mouse is a "refillable vial" in its underside, next to the place where you put the battery and store its 2.4 GHz USB wireless receiver when not in use. The vial stores "aromatic oils" that "can be washed and refilled with different scents." Asus doesn't make any specific recommendations about the scents that you can put in the vial, so you have a lot of latitude as to what, exactly, you can make your mouse smell like.

Aside from the customizable stink, the Fragrance Mouse is a reasonably full-featured functional PC accessory. It supports Bluetooth as well as the USB wireless dongle, three DPI levels (1,200, 1,600, and 2,400) for customizing responsiveness, and understated white and pink color options. Asus says the mouse's switches are rated for 10 million clicks, ensuring that you will be able to smell your mouse for years to come.

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On May 16, 2024, a powerful derecho swept through Houston, killing seven people and causing significant damage to several of the city's towering skyscrapers. Those buildings were constructed to withstand much stronger hurricane-force winds up to 67 meters per second, as one would get with a Category 4 hurricane. The derecho's winds peaked at 40 meters per second, well below that threshold. And when Hurricane Beryl hit Houston that July with roughly comparable wind speeds of 36 meters per second, the damage wasn't nearly so severe. Why would that be the case?

Engineers at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami think they've found the answer, according to a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Built Environment. "We show that a type of highly localized strong winds called ‘downbursts,’ which were generated during the May derecho, can significantly impact tall buildings and facades due to their unique characteristics in comparison to hurricanes,” said co-author Amal Elawady . This is particularly the case for skyscrapers that are close together, creating a "wind-channeling" interference effect that increases pressure on walls and windows.

One might assume that hurricanes and derechos are similar in that they both produce markedly intense winds, but the origin and characteristics of those winds are very different, per the authors. Hurricanes are vast tropical storms that form over warm ocean waters and affect large areas, usually lasting for several days, accompanied by heavy rains, storm surges, waves, and yes, high winds. By contrast, derechos and downbursts are much more localized convective systems, producing hurricane-force winds but over a much smaller area and shorter period of time.

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Elon Musk apparently no longer believes that crowdsourcing fact-checking through Community Notes can never be manipulated and is, thus, the best way to correct bad posts on his social media platform X.

Community Notes are supposed to be added to posts to limit misinformation spread after a broad consensus is reached among X users with diverse viewpoints on what corrections are needed. But Musk now claims a "fix" is needed to prevent supposedly outside influencers from allegedly gaming the system.

"Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media," Musk wrote on X. "Working to fix this."

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High-revving naturally aspirated engines and their associated screaming soundtracks might be on their way back to Formula 1. Not with next year's rule changes —that will see even bigger lithium-ion batteries and an even more powerful electric motor, paired with a turbocharged V6. But the sport is starting to think more seriously about the technical rules that will go into effect in 2030, and in an Instagram post yesterday, the man in charge of those rules signaled that he's open to cars that might be louder, lighter, and less complicated.

Mohammed Ben Sulayem's tenure as president of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile has been packed with controversy. The former rally driver has alienated many F1 drivers with clampdowns on jewelry and, most recently, swearing, as well as a refusal to explain what happens to the money the FIA collects as fines.

He also ruffled feathers when the FIA opened up the entry process for new teams into the sport and then approved an entry by Andretti Global . While the FIA said yes, the commercial side (which is owned by Liberty Media) and the teams wanted nothing to do with an 11th team— at least until the $200 million anti-dilution fee was more than doubled and Michael Andretti stepped aside.

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Just days after anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the country's top health official , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already pulled back some of its efforts to protect Americans with safe, lifesaving vaccines. The agency has indefinitely postponed a public meeting of its vaccine advisory committee and killed a campaign promoting seasonal flu shots.

Last weekend, a Washington Post columnist noted on Bluesky that the CDC's effective "Wild to Mild" seasonal flu shot campaign had vanished. The campaign highlighted how the seasonal vaccines can prevent influenza infections from becoming severe or life-threatening. It used animals as an analogy for the diminished threat of the flu virus after vaccination, juxtaposing a lion and a domestic kitten in one ad while showing an elephant and a mouse in another. The CDC page no longer leads to a "not found" landing page, but it wasn't restored either. It now redirects to a 2023 article announcing the campaign, which does not contain the shareable resources found on the original page. The removal is startling given that the US is currently battling one of the worst flu seasons in 15 years.

NPR first reported that CDC staff were told in a meeting Wednesday, February 19, the campaign was halted. In a story Thursday, Stat News added more context to the decision. According to the outlet's sources, the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for public affairs informed the CDC that Kennedy wanted vaccine advertisements to emphasize "informed consent" instead.

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Rust, a modern and notably more memory-safe language than C, once seemed like it was on a steady, calm, and gradual approach into the Linux kernel.

In 2021, Linux kernel leaders, like founder and leader Linus Torvalds himself, were impressed with the language but had a "wait and see" approach . Rust for Linux gained supporters and momentum, and in October 2022, Torvalds approved a pull request adding support for Rust code in the kernel .

By late 2024, however, Rust enthusiasts were frustrated with stalls and blocks on their efforts, with the Rust for Linux lead quitting over " nontechnical nonsense ." Torvalds said at the time that he understood it was slow, but that "old-time kernel developers are used to C" and "not exactly excited about having to learn a new language." Still, this could be considered a normal amount of open source debate.

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In December, roughly a dozen employees inside a manufacturing company received a tsunami of phishing messages that was so big they were unable to perform their day-to-day functions. A little over an hour later, the people behind the email flood had burrowed into the nether reaches of the company's network. This is a story about how such intrusions are occurring faster than ever before and the tactics that make this speed possible.

The speed and precision of the attack—laid out in posts published Thursday and last month —are crucial elements for success. As awareness of ransomware attacks increases, security companies and their customers have grown ever savvier at detecting breach attempts and stopping them before they gain entry to sensitive data. To succeed, attackers have to move ever faster.

Breakneck breakout

ReliaQuest, the security firm that responded to this intrusion, said it tracked a 22-percent reduction in the “breakout time” threat actors took in 2024 compared with a year earlier. In the attack at hand, the breakout time—meaning the time span from the moment of initial access to lateral movement inside the network—was just 48 minutes.

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YouTube dominates online video, but it's absolutely crammed full of ads these days. A YouTube Premium subscription takes care of that, but ad blockers do exist. Google seems to have gotten the message—a cheaper streaming subscription is on the way that drops YouTube Music from the plan. You may have to give up more than music to get the cheaper rate, though.

Google started testing cheaper YouTube subscriptions in a few international markets, including Germany and Australia, over the past year. Those users have been offered the option of subscribing to the YouTube Premium plan, which runs $13.99 in the US , or a new plan that costs about half as much. For example, in Australia, the options are AU$23 for YouTube Premium or AU$12 for "YouTube Premium Lite."

The Lite plan drops YouTube Music but keeps ad-free YouTube, which is all most people want anyway. Based on the early tests, these plans will probably drop a few other features that you'd miss, including background playback and offline downloads. However, this plan could cost as little as $7–$8 in the US.

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Last month, DeepSeek turned the AI world on its head with the release of a new, competitive simulated reasoning model that was free to download and use under an MIT license . Now, the company is preparing to make the underlying code behind that model more accessible, promising to release five open source repos starting next week.

In a social media post late Thursday , DeepSeek said the daily releases it is planning for its "Open Source Week" would provide visibility into "these humble building blocks in our online service [that] have been documented, deployed and battle-tested in production. As part of the open-source community, we believe that every line shared becomes collective momentum that accelerates the journey."

While DeepSeek has been very non-specific about just what kind of code it will be sharing, an accompanying GitHub page for "DeepSeek Open Infra" promises the coming releases will cover "code that moved our tiny moonshot forward" and share "our small-but-sincere progress with full transparency." The page also refers back to a 2024 paper detailing DeepSeek's training architecture and software stack.

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