April 2025

Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, gets ‘agentic’ abilities

April 9, 2025
Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview. During its Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, Google said Code Assist can now deploy new AI “agents” that can take multiple steps to accomplish complex programming tasks. These agents can create applications from product specifications in Google Docs, for example, or […]

A new biosensor can detect bird flu in five minutes

April 9, 2025
Over the winter, eggs suddenly became all but impossible to buy. As a bird flu outbreak rippled through dairy and poultry farms, grocery stores struggled to keep them on shelves. The shortages and record-high prices in February raised costs dramatically for restaurants and bakeries and led some shoppers to skip the breakfast staple entirely. But…

This Texas chemical plant could get its own nuclear reactors

April 9, 2025
Nuclear reactors could someday power a chemical plant in Texas, making it the first with such a facility onsite. The factory, which makes plastics and other materials, could become a model for power-hungry data centers and other industrial operations going forward. The plans are the work of Dow Chemical and X-energy, which last week applied…

A 25-year-old police drone founder just raised $75M led by Index

April 8, 2025
If you ever call 911 from an area that’s hard to get to, you might hear the buzz of a drone well before a police cruiser pulls up. And there’s a good chance that it will be one made by Brinc Drones, a Seattle-based startup founded by 25-year-old Blake Resnick who dropped out of college […]

Instagram is beefing up its search to compete with TikTok

April 8, 2025
Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the company is looking to improve the app’s search functionality, admitting this is an area where Instagram could do more to compete. The remarks, made on a recent episode of the “Build Your Tribe” podcast, come at a time when younger Gen Z users often turn to social apps like […]

Deep Cogito emerges from stealth with hybrid AI ‘reasoning’ models

April 8, 2025
A new company, Deep Cogito, has emerged from stealth with a family of openly available AI models that can be switched between “reasoning” and non-reasoning modes. Reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 have shown great promise in domains like math and physics, thanks to their ability to effectively fact-check themselves by working through complex problems step […]