April 24, 2026

Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model V4 matters

On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek’s previous models, V4 is open source, meaning it is available…

Technology

The Download: turning down human noise, and LA’s stunning subway upgrade

April 21, 2026
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The noise we make is hurting animals. Can we learn to shut up? As human society has expanded, animals have started struggling to hear one another. For many birds, the noise…

Digging for clues about the North Pole’s past

April 21, 2026
In the past, even with an icebreaker and during peak melt season, getting to the North Pole wasn’t a sure bet. It took favorable winds to crack the frozen ocean surface, and ships had to fight through ice that had grown many meters thick over several winters. In the summer of 2025, though, Jochen Knies…

The Download: murderous ‘mirror’ bacteria, and Chinese workers fighting AI doubles

April 20, 2026
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. No one’s sure if synthetic mirror life will kill us all In February 2019, a group of scientists proposed a high-risk, cutting-edge, irresistibly exciting idea that the National Science Foundation should…

Colossal Biosciences said it cloned red wolves. Is it for real?

April 20, 2026
If you want to capture something wolflike, it’s best to embark before dawn. So on a morning this January, with the eastern horizon still pink-hued, I drove with two young scientists into a blanket of fog. Forty miles to the west, the industrial sprawl of Houston spawned a golden glow. Tanner Broussard’s old Toyota Tacoma…

Chinese tech workers are starting to train their AI doubles–and pushing back

April 20, 2026
Tech workers in China are being instructed by their bosses to train AI agents to replace them—and it’s prompting a wave of soul-searching among otherwise enthusiastic early adopters.  Earlier this month a GitHub project called Colleague Skill, which claimed workers could use it to “distill” their colleagues’ skills and personality traits and replicate them with…