In a major step forward for neurobiology and bioelectronics, scientists at Northwestern University have created a wireless device that uses light to transmit information directly into the brain. The technology bypasses traditional sensory routes in the body and instead delivers signals straight to neurons. The device is soft and flexible, fitting beneath the scalp while resting on the skull. From this position, it sends carefully controlled light patterns through the bone to activate specific groups of neurons across the cortex.

Quilt, the startup based in Redwood City, California, that’s created sleek, customizable heat pumps, has raised $20 million in a Series B round that closed recently. The company previously raised a $33 million Series A, which it announced in April 2024. The new round was led by Energy Impact Partners and Galvanize with participation from Alumni Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Incite Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital. Veery Maxwell at Galvanize will be joining the board, as will former Nest CFO Tom vonReichbauer. (The latter should come as no surprise given that many Quilters used to work at Nest.)

We thought Black Friday and Cyber Monday would bring the lowest prices of the year, but apparently not. Right now, you can snag Apple’s Watch Series 11 in the 42mm configuration with GPS for a new all-time low of $299 ($100 off) at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy. That beats the $70 discount we saw at the beginning of the month, which means if you didn’t take advantage then, you can save even more now. The 46mm model with GPS is also down to its lowest price yet of $329 ($100 off) at…

At present, the mantelpiece of Paul Thomas Anderson remains strikingly light on major trophies. Despite being responsible for some of the films widely acknowledged to be the best of the century so far, including There Will Be Blood, The Master and Phantom Thread, the writer-director is yet to win an Oscar, Golden Globe or more than one Bafta (original screenplay for 2021’s Licorice Pizza). This year’s Golden Globe nominations suggest this is about to change, with his counterculture epic One Battle After Another leading the pack of nominees with nine mentions on the shortlist, including for best comedy or musical, best director, best original screenplay, leading actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, leading actor for Chase Infiniti, supporting actress for Teyana Taylor and two chances to scoop supporting actor – for Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro.

Anthropic is launching Claude Code in Slack, allowing developers to delegate coding tasks directly from chat threads. The beta feature, available Monday as a research preview, builds on Anthropic’s existing Slack integration by adding full workflow automation. The rollout signals the next frontier in coding assistants isn’t the model; it’s the workflow.  Previously, developers could only get lightweight coding help via Claude in Slack – like writing  snippets, debugging, and explanations. Now they can tag @Claude to spin up a complete coding session using Slack context like bug reports or feature requests.

We all know that boxing is a brutal sport. Fighters can die and be maimed in the ring. There have been several examples of this. A lot of fighters make public shows of their dislike of their opponents in preparation for fights. Some boxers actually do dislike their opponents. This is why a friendship between two fighters, who have competed against each other professionally, is really something to be celebrated. Two-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Riddick “Big Daddy” Bowe and four-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield fought each other three times, including twice for world titles from 1992 – 1995 in one of the most fascinating rivalries in world heavyweight boxing, with Bowe winning two fights and Holyfield winning the other one.

Slack users can now access Anthropic’s Claude Code directly in Slack by tagging Claude on coding-related messages and threads. The new feature is launching today in beta as a research preview. When Claude is tagged, it will now automatically scan the message to see if it’s a coding task and, if so, route it to Claude Code using the context from the related Slack thread and the code repositories you’ve authenticated in Claude Code. Slack users can also directly tell Claude that a request is a coding task. For instance, you could ask Claude to investigate a bug report you’re discussing in Slack without needing to manually copy all the context into Claude Code.

A recent study reports that using reduced amounts of approved immunotherapy for malignant melanoma may lead to better control of tumors while also limiting side effects. The findings come from researchers at Karolinska Institutet and were published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "The results are highly interesting in oncology, as we show that a lower dose of an immunotherapy drug, in addition to causing significantly fewer side effects, actually gives better results against tumors and longer survival," says last author Hildur Helgadottir, a researcher at the Department of Oncology-Pathology at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study.

OpenAI and Instacart are launching a grocery shopping experience inside of ChatGPT, allowing customers to brainstorm meal ideas, make a grocery list, and check out, all without leaving the chat interface. This builds upon an existing partnership between OpenAI and Instacart; more than two years ago, Instacart launched an in-app AI search tool powered by ChatGPT, which helps shoppers ask questions about what to make for dinner or how to accommodate dietary restrictions. The relationship between OpenAI and Instacart seems to have only deepened after former Instacart CEO Fidji Simo…

Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president now in prison for plotting a coup, is getting the biopic treatment. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, is reportedly filming a “heroic” portrait of the rightwing ex-politician in secret. Dark Horse, directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh and written by Mário Frias, who served as secretary of culture under Bolsonaro, started shooting three months ago in Brazil, where Bolsonaro served as president from 2019 until 2023. He was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison in September 2025 for leading a criminal conspiracy to stop his leftwing rival, …

Teased at Google I/O, Project Aura is a collaboration between Xreal and Google. It’s the second Android XR device (the first being Samsung’s Galaxy XR headset) and is expected to launch in 2026. Putting it on, I get why the term “smart glasses” doesn’t exactly fit. Is it a headset? Smart glasses? Both? Those were the questions running through my head as I held Project Aura in my hands in a recent demo. It looked like a pair of chunky sunglasses, except for the cord dangling off the left side, leading down to a battery pack that also served as a trackpad.

An increasing number of browsers are experimenting with agentic features that will take actions on your behalf, such as booking tickets or shopping for different items. However, these agentic capabilities also come with security risks that could lead to loss of data or money. Google detailed its approach to handling user security on Chrome using observer models and consent for user action. The company previewed agentic capabilities on Chrome in September and said these features will roll out in the coming months. The company said it is using the help of a few models to keep agentic actions in check.

An international group of scientists led by Professor Marc-Emmanuel Dumas at Imperial College London & CNRS, along with Prof. Patrice Cani (Imperial & University of Louvain, UCLouvain), Dr. Dominique Gauguier (Imperial & INSERM, Paris) and Prof. Peter Liu (University of Ottawa Heart Institute), has identified an unexpected natural compound that helps counter insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The compound, trimethylamine (TMA), is a metabolite created by gut microbes from dietary choline. According to a study in Nature Metabolism, TMA can interrupt a key immune pathway and contribute to healthier blood sugar levels.

Did Netflix just exacerbate a bunch of seasonal affective disorders in cinephiles? Timed to ruin holidays like a round of end-of-year layoffs, the streaming giant announced plans to buy Warner Bros, a movie and television studio with a full-century legacy. It’s possible that the acquisition won’t actually go through – and if it does, it won’t be for at least a year. But the news still looms over year-end awards and list-making, and it’s going to take more than a jingle-bell heist to steal back any holiday cheer for the entertainment industry, much less halt the march of corporate consolidation and monopolization.

TikTok is launching “Shared Collections,” a new way for users to share and organize TikTok content in one place with friends or family. The company also teased the upcoming launch of “Shared Feeds,” which will let users watch TikTok content together through a shared interest-based feed. TikTok rolled out individual Collections earlier this year to let users save content in custom folders. With Shared Collections, users can now do things like create a space to share cookie-swap plans and holiday-dinner ideas with their family. Or, they can create Shared Collections to organize decor inspo or secret Santa ideas.

You know what I love more than OLEDs? Cheap OLEDs. And that’s exactly what drew me to the 14-inch HP OmniBook 5. It’s a $700 Windows laptop with a Snapdragon X Plus processor and an OLED screen. That means it should have great battery life and a beautiful screen. I consider these important in any laptop, so color me intrigued. You’re probably familiar with the phrase “good, cheap, fast — pick two.” I wasn’t fond of the higher-end OmniBook I reviewed last year. It was fast, but it had a dim IPS screen, terrible speakers, and cost $1,200.

Diego Pacheco (24-0, 18 KOs) faces Kevin Lele Sadjo (26-0, 23 KOs) this Saturday, December 13th, in the 12-round main event at the Stockton Arena, Stockton. Pacheco vs. Sadjo is a Matchroom-promoted card on DAZN. The WBC Silver and WBO International super middleweight titles will be at stake. A lot is at stake for both unbeaten contenders, as they need a win to push them up the rankings and get in position for a title shot. The event will be shown live on DAZN beginning at 8:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm PT.

A unique opportunity to observe deep brain activity in a person with obesity and loss of control eating provided new insight into how tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound, interacts with the brain. Recordings showed that the medication reduced activity in the brain's reward center, a region linked to food noise and compulsive cravings, although this reduction did not last. Researchers noted that tirzepatide is a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist originally created for Type 2 diabetes. Early findings suggest it may also help with conditions related to impulse control, including binge eating disorder.

Last week, pet products and services giant Petco confirmed that it experienced a data breach involving customers’ personal information, without specifying what type of data was affected. On Friday, in a legally required filing with Texas’ attorney general’s office, Petco reported that the affected data included: names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial information such as account numbers, credit or debit card numbers, and dates of birth. 

We’re one year into the experiment of running The Verge with subscriptions, and so far things are going quite well — but we’ve heard a lot of feedback so far, and we’ve got some exciting changes in store to try and make this thing even better. We hit our subscriber goals for 2025, and an astonishing 85 percent of you are choosing annual plans, which is the sort of durable, long-term relationship we can count on as we hire more reporters, get in more trouble, and pay for David’s podcasting greenscreen.

50-41 50 Nourished by Time – The Passionate Ones Marcus Elliot Brown, AKA one-man project Nourished By Time, has a classic R&B singing voice in the style of Freddie Jackson or Luther Vandross: warm, earnest and with every word enunciated as if to express his keenness of feeling. But his music is quite different: a slippery layer cake of samples, multitudinous keys and lo-fi pop production, with Brown singing of a world where “the ebb and flow isn’t ebbing right”, be it in love or civic life. There is still room for an instant-classic R&B ballad though, in Tossed Away.

The time of day when a patient receives cancer immunotherapy could likely impact their outcomes—a new study suggests that treatment before 3PM is more beneficial.  Image credit:©iStock.com, SergeyChayko Mounting evidence suggests that the time of day at which cancer patients receive treatment could impact their outcomes. This effect is likely due to the circadian rhythm-dependent fluctuations in the function of immune cells as well as proteins that regulate their function, also called checkpoints.

Meta will soon give Instagram and Facebook users in the European Union the option to limit personalised ads, in an effort to comply with the bloc’s tech rules. The European Commission announced that the new advertising options will be rolled out in January 2026, and that this is “the first time that such a choice is offered on Meta’s social networks.”

President Donald Trump said on Monday he plans to ink an executive order this week that would limit states from enacting their own regulation of AI technology. “I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week,” Trump posted on social media. “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something.” “There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” Trump said. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS…AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY!” 

Frederick Brathwaite AKA Fab 5 Freddy, concept, actor, musical director I was part of the New York graffiti artists the Fabulous 5, who were primarily known for painting whole subway cars on the Lexington Avenue line. Lee Quiñones was the group’s Michelangelo. I’d been running with Jean-Michel Basquiat and wanted to take graffiti art into art spaces. I thought that an underground independent film could tell our story in the way we wanted. At an art show in Times Square I met Charlie Ahearn, who’d made an underground kung fu film, The Deadly Art of Survival, on Super 8.