Here are today’s 13 verified tech & science stories, covering Tech & Apps, AI Tools, Science & Space and Fitness & Health Tech.
Table of Contents
Every item below links to its original source.
The TLDR
- Tech & Apps: Waymo Names Singapore Its Next Robotaxi Market
- AI Tools: Google DeepMind Launches an Institute to Debate AGI’s Future
- Science & Space: Scientists Find the Brain Develops From Two Separate Cell Lineages
- Fitness & Health Tech: Apple Watch Ultra 4 Review: The Biggest Upgrade in Years
Tech & Apps
Waymo Names Singapore Its Next Robotaxi Market
Waymo announced it will bring robotaxi service to Singapore, marking the company’s first expansion into Southeast Asia, with a commercial launch targeted for 2028. Autonomous Jaguar I-PACE vehicles are expected to start arriving in Singapore in the coming months, and in 2027 trained human specialists will manually drive them to teach the Waymo Driver local roads and monsoon conditions before any self-driving trips begin. The plan still depends on approval from Singapore’s transport regulators, according to The Verge.
Claude Code’s Projects Feature Gets a Multi-Agent Overhaul
Anthropic relaunched the Projects feature in Claude Code, letting users run several AI agent “threads” at once inside one project with shared memory and a shared file library. A “coordinator” oversees the threads as they work in parallel on separate branches, and users can check in and redirect the work remotely, even from a phone, according to The Verge. The revamped feature is rolling out in beta to select Claude Pro and Max subscribers.
Safari 27 Adds Built-In Support for AI Coding Agents
Apple’s WebKit team published a rundown of what’s new for developers in the newly released Safari 27, including a Safari MCP server that lets AI coding tools connect directly to a Safari window to read the page, check network requests, and take screenshots for automated testing. The release also adds scroll anchoring, so pages stop jumping when content loads above what you’re reading, along with updates to the Web Inspector, per 9to5Mac.
Google Expands Its Experimental “CC” Agent to Whole Families
Google is expanding CC, the experimental Gemini-powered assistant it first launched for individuals last December, into a shared version that up to six household members can use together. Each family member chooses what to share, and CC builds a joint calendar and task list plus a daily briefing, asking permission before acting on tasks like filling out forms, according to Ars Technica. It remains a limited, US-only Google Labs experiment rather than a full public release. If you’re also concerned about how Google uses your own data to train its AI, see our guide on stopping Google from using your photos to train Gemini.
A Notification Center Bug Can Freeze iPhones on iOS 27
Some iPhone owners running iOS 27 have found that swiping down Notification Center and Control Center in quick succession can cause the screen to stick and the phone to stop responding. There’s no official Apple statement on the bug yet, but a forced restart — quickly pressing volume up, then volume down, then holding the side button until the Apple logo appears — clears it, per Engadget.
iPhone 18 Pro Cameras Join Friday Night Baseball Broadcast
Apple’s new iPhone 18 Pro went on sale today, and Fox is putting it straight to work: 14 of the phones are mounted around Dodger Stadium — in the pitch clock, backstop, foul pole, and both bullpens — for tonight’s Giants-Dodgers Friday Night Baseball game. Eight of those cameras will stream live over T-Mobile’s private 5G network, capturing angles like batting practice and player introductions, according to 9to5Mac.
RFK Jr. Adds 8 New Members to Key Preventive Care Task Force
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed 8 new members to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the independent panel whose recommendations determine which preventive services, like cancer screenings and colonoscopies, insurers must cover. The new slate includes several specialists rather than the primary care physicians who have traditionally filled the panel, according to Ars Technica.
Why External GPUs Still Come With Real Trade-Offs
Thinking about adding an external GPU to boost your laptop’s graphics? Engadget’s testing found that Thunderbolt’s bandwidth limits mean an eGPU delivers 7% to 32% less performance than the same graphics card would get in a desktop, and macOS has offered no eGPU support since Apple moved to Apple Silicon in 2020. Once you add up the enclosure, dock, and graphics card, the total cost can rival a basic prebuilt gaming PC, per Engadget.
AI Tools
Google DeepMind Launches an Institute to Debate AGI’s Future
Google DeepMind launched the DeepMind Institute, a new venture meant to air disagreements between Google, Google DeepMind, and outside researchers about how artificial general intelligence should be developed and governed. Its first publication is a set of four essays on topics like economic policy for AGI disruption and making model reasoning more transparent, according to TechCrunch. For a look at how AI assistants perform in everyday tasks, see our comparison of ChatGPT vs. Gemini for trip planning.
Base Labs Teams Up With Hugging Face and Goodfire on Open-Model Safety
Base Labs, a research group spun out of AI inference company Baseten, launched a partnership with Hugging Face and Goodfire to develop and publish methods for training and monitoring open-weight AI models. The group points to “abliteration,” a technique that strips built-in safeguards from open models, as one reason safety needs to be built in during training rather than added afterward, per TechCrunch.
Science & Space
Scientists Find the Brain Develops From Two Separate Cell Lineages
A Stanford Medicine-led study published in Nature Neuroscience found that the brain doesn’t grow from one line of embryonic cells branching outward, as long assumed. Instead, one group of progenitor cells builds the forebrain and midbrain while a separate, independent group builds the hindbrain, and the researchers say this dual-origin pattern appears conserved across vertebrates, according to ScienceAlert.
Study Finds Early Heat Waves Hurt Wheat Most — But Build Resilience
Researchers at Spain’s University of Lleida found that heat waves hitting wheat before it flowers cause bigger yield losses than heat waves later in the growing season. That early stress also seems to “prime” the plant, making it better able to withstand a second heat wave afterward, according to the study published in the Journal of Experimental Botany and reported by Phys.org.
Fitness & Health Tech
Apple Watch Ultra 4 Review: The Biggest Upgrade in Years
DC Rainmaker’s in-depth review calls the Apple Watch Ultra 4 the biggest internal update to the Apple Watch in years, thanks to a new S11 chip and a redesigned optical heart rate sensor that samples far more frequently than before. Apple also extended battery life to about 50 hours of normal use, with new extended GPS modes reaching up to 45 hours and faster charging that adds 18 hours of battery in 15 minutes, according to DC Rainmaker. The reviewer is largely positive but pushes back on how Apple measured its heart rate accuracy claims.
Explore more: stopping Google from using your photos to train Gemini, ChatGPT vs. Gemini for trip planning.
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Photo: Genetichazzard / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.