I have good news for fans of sinister conspiracies, gangsters and ninjas. That's everyone, right?

A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep sea by an international team of researchers steering a remotely operated submersible. The sighting was announced Tuesday by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. The squid filmed was a juvenile about 1 foot (30 centimeters) in length at a depth of 1,968 feet (600 meters) in the South Atlantic Ocean. Full-grown adult colossal squids, which scientists have uncovered from the bellies of whales and seabirds, can reach lengths up to 23 feet (7 meters) — almost the size of a small fire truck. The squid was spied last month near the South Sandwich Islands during an expedition to search for new sea life. Researchers waited to verify the species identification with other independent scientists before releasing the footage. “I really love that we have seen a young colossal squid first. This animal is so beautiful,” said Kat Bolstad, a squid researcher at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, who helped confirm it. Researchers are testing different cameras in hopes of catching an adult colossal squid, Bolstad said. The young squid is almost entirely transparent, with thin arms. As adults, the squids lose this glassy appearance and become an opaque dark red or purple. When full grown, they are considered to be the world’s largest known invertebrates. —Christina Larson, AP science writer AP video journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this report. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

You remember those old-time spy movies where someone fairly important would walk to a retina scanner and hunch over, while light would shine into their eye, identifying them. I always found that technology fascinating, but impractical. Not only was it an incentive to have people rip your eyeballs out, the procedure seemed just a little too complicated. Turns out, AliPay (a subsidiary of Chinese giant Alibaba) has a solution – and it just involves scanning your palm. Palm recognition has been around for a decent amount of time (we actually wrote about a smart door lock that uses the tech too), but AliPay’s PL1 gives it mass adoption. Designed to facilitate payments, the PL1 lets you hold your palm up against a sensor to approve transactions, letting you make payments without making contact with POS terminals and their potentially germ-ridden keypads. Designer: Alipay (Hangzhou) Information Technology Co., Ltd The way it works is simple, the PL1 recognizes palm prints as well as palm vein biometrics or the shape of the network of veins underneath your skin (which are absolutely impossible to fake). The technology is implemented in a POS terminal that authenticates your approval with a palm scan rather than a fingerprint, a PIN code, or an OTP. Just hold your palm over the sensor (some may call it a ‘Roman salute’), and the sensor does the rest in seconds. The technology holds promise for multiple reasons. Apart from being absolutely infallible and impossible to trick (you can’t counterfeit a palm with vein structures, can you?) it’s also fast, and contact-free, making it perfect for most societies, except for probably places where you’re wearing gloves, whether because of the cold or because of safety. The PL1’s application isn’t limited to payments either, AliPay says it can be used for authentication, access, and even be deployed in large numbers at terminals in public transport like subways or buses, enabling contact-free and secure modes of access and payment in a society largely relying on fingerprints that are easy to fake, and facial recognition that has a pretty large error rate. The post Pay With Your Palm – AliPay Debuts Palm-Recognition Tech That Makes Secure Contactless Payments first appeared on Yanko Design.

A new AI agent from the startup Simular switches between different AI models depending on the task at hand.

Macworld CalDigit has produced some of the best docks in Macworld’s list of the best Thunderbolt docking stations for Mac since the iconic TS3 Thunderbolt 3 dock, followed by the award-winning TS4 Dock when Apple started adding Thunderbolt 4 to its Macs. Coming later in April 2025, the Thunderbolt 5 hosting CalDigit TS5 Plus looks like it will boast more top-of-the-range ports than any other Mac docking station on the market. (Read what is Thunderbolt 5 for Mac to find out why that matters). The TS5 Plus will host 20 ports, including three Thunderbolt 5 ports. The upstream Thunderbolt 5 port can fast-charge even the top-end 16-inch MacBook Pro at 140W, and each of the downstream Thunderbolt 5 ports offers an industry-first 36W charging power—compared to the standard 15W. There’s also a USB-C port that offers the same 36W of power situated at the front of the dock. 36W is enough power to charge a 15-inch MacBook Air at full speed, or an iPad Pro, which charges at 20W. Recently, the top docks have started swapping Gigabit Ethernet for 2.5Gb Ethernet as this fast level of network is becoming popular in professional environments. The TS5 Plus jumps this and even skips 5GbE by including a top-of-the-range 10Gb Ethernet connection with a data rate of up to 10 billion bits per second, which is backwards compatible all the way back to 1Gb networks so is ideal for the fastest networks and future-proofing for later upgrades. There’s only one Mac docking station that measures up to the TS5 Plus, and that’s a Thunderbolt 4 model. The iVanky FusionDock Max 1 boasts 21 top ports—one more than the TS5 Plus—and the ability to support up to four 6K external displays. It has two video ports and four downstream Thunderbolt 4 ports. It has so many Thunderbolt ports because it has something (or things) no other dock possesses: dual built-in Thunderbolt 4 chips. The TS5 Plus has just the one Thunderbolt 5 chip but it is the only dock to feature Dual USB Controllers for its ten USB ports. Traditionally docks have one USB controller that is shared by all the USB ports. The TS5 Plus has one 10Gbps controller for the front ports, and another for the back ports, which helps to increase USB bandwidth. CalDigit 1 x Thunderbolt 5 Host Port (Up to 120Gbps) 2 x Thunderbolt 5 Downstream Ports (80Gbps) 5 x USB-C (10Gbps) 5 x USB-A (10Gbps) 1 x DisplayPort 2.1 1 x SD 4.0 (UHS-II) 1 x microSD 4.0 (UHS-II) 1 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet 1 x Front Combo Audio In/Out (3.5mm) 1 x Rear Audio Out (3.5mm) 1 x Rear Audio In (3.5mm) 1 x DC In (24V 13.75A) The $499.99 TS5 Plus is shipping in the US in late-April, and in the UK in late-May. CalDigit TS5 for lesser mortals If that is just too many ports for your needs, the CalDigit is more restrained but still highly specked with 15 ports, including 2.5GbE, 140W charging, and four Thunderbolt 5 ports. 1 x Thunderbolt 5 Host (Up to 120Gb/s) 3 x Thunderbolt 5 (80Gb/s) 3 x USB-C (10Gb/s) 1 x USB-A (10Gb/s) 1 x USB-A (480MB/s) 1 x SD 4.0 (UHS-II) 1 x microSD 4.0 (UHS-II) 1 x 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet 1 x Front Combo Audio In/Out (3.5mm) 1 x Rear Audio Out (3.5mm) 1 x Rear Audio In (3.5mm) 1 x DC In (20V 12A) The TS5 is shipping in the US in late-May, and in the UK in late-June. The US price is $369.99.

The Camera Control button is a new physical control on the side of the entire iPhone 16 lineup. Here's everything you need to know, and how to get the most out of it.Use the Camera Control button to improve your photosApple's Camera Control buttin is both physical and touch sensitive. With a firm press it will click like a real button, but a light-press gives you Taptic feedback like with Apple's Mac trackpads.Subscribe to AppleInsider on YouTube Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Starting with next month's opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) design for the new V&A East Storehouse will be presented in a preview installed inside the fair’s Applied Arts Pavilion.  The special project will be exhibited for the duration of the Biennale and places the soon-to-open design for an open art storage facility in dialogue with others in the storage typology, which supports our broader economy of things. DS+R is on track to inaugurate the new East London project in late May. Internal render view of the central Collection Hall in V&A East Storehouse, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, 2021. Image: © Diller Scofidio + RenfroFor On Storage, the firm directed a six-channel video installation that will present a filmed depiction of a typical consumer product’s journey through the rigors of global storage and logistical stages at different scales (think of Bill Mason‘s 1966 film Paddle to the Sea). The exhibition will also present...

The second of two episodes of Don’t Nod’s newest narrative adventure title Lost Records: Bloom and Rage launched earlier this week, and the developer has now provided a brief update on how the title, which has received critical acclaim, is performing on the commercial front. In its recently published quarterly fiscal report, Don’t Nod stated that it has got off to “a great start” in the early months of 2025, with Lost Records: Bloom and Rage mentioned as one of the reasons. The developer says that thanks in part to a partnership with Sony and critical acclaim, the narrative adventure title has seen sales that are in line with what the studio expected prior to release. “Backed by a strategic partnership with Sony, the game’s sales are in line with forecasts, in an increasingly selective market,” the developer says. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Read our review of the game’s first episode through here, in which we gave it a score of 7/10, praising its dual-storytelling, characters, and art style, while reserving criticism for occasionally rough writing and visual glitches.

Infinite Reality — a fast-moving company focused on AI, immersive technology and digital media — has agreed to acquire agentic AI firm Touchcast for $500 million in cash and stock. Infinite Reality has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Touchcast in a deal that comes just a few weeks after Infinite Reality acquired Napster for $207 million. And Infinite Reality said the transaction agreement values the company at $15.5 billion. Boca Raton, Florida-based Infinite Reality has been on an acquisition binge to assemble what used to be popularly known as the metaverse, a term coined by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson decades ago in his novel Snow Crash. But after Meta entered this market, a lot of people became skeptical and metaverse is kind of a dirty word. Using the phrase immersive technology instead, Infinite Reality has been acquiring companies to build the metaverse. Amish Shah, Infinite Reality’s chief business officer, acknowledged in an interview with GamesBeat that the company no longer refers to itself as a metaverse company. There was too much hype associated with the word, which was coined by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash, a 1992 sci-fi novel. “The difference here is we’ve been around with seasoned entrepreneurs building towards what’s happening today,” said Shah. “A lot of others are just coming out of blue, raising valuations where you don’t know what their vision is, what their product is, what their team is. I think the difference here is there is a story behind us. Our CEO Jon (Acunto) is a five-time entrepreneur. I’ve had exits. And Edo (Segal) is a five-time exit entrepreneur. It’s a great question and we get it all the time.” Touchcast lets you use generative AI to create a web store with a human-like avatar guide. “All three of us, unfortunately, are in our 50s. We’re not in our 20s. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, we’ve learned a lot,” Shah said. “We’ve become aligned, and this is why I think the story is so compelling, and the AI market is just insane right now. There’s no right answer, but we didn’t go down a traditional path. Valuations are what investors believe. We have done due diligence. For eight months, we looked at the marketplace.” He said the teams met at the Web Summit last year and then started talking. And They figured out the deal in the subsequent months. Edo Segal, Touchcast founder and CEO, said in an interview that this is the fifth company he has sold in the AI space, and he said Touchcast’s powerful agentic AI platform, known as Mentorverse, generates an infinite universe of specialized AI mentors who engage in natural and face-to-face video conversations. He showed me a demo of the tech, which has some time delays but enables pretty good human avatars who can hold conversations with players or users, depending on the app that they are offering help for. And, unlike traditional chatbots or static web experiences, Touchcast can consistent personalities with deep domain expertise to deliver genuinely helpful guidance through natural, multimodal interactions. The integration of Touchcast’s technology across Infinite Reality’s portfolio of products and services will enable iR customers to tap AI agents for a number of tasks that drive user engagement, customer support, and sales.  For example, within Napster (recently acquired by iR), Touchcast tech will enable subscribers to easily generate immersive social listening spaces and leverage knowledgeable AI agents for music playlisting, community management, and  music trivia, among other engaging features. For iR Enterprise and iR Studio customers, the Touchcast toolkit empowers Fortune 500 brands, small and medium-size companies, and creators with knowledgeable, trained, and on-brand AI agents designed to power global and scalable sales and customer service functions.  A number of people might blink their eyes or shake their heads when they learn that Infinite Reality, a company with 300 or so employees, is worth $15.5 billion. I asked Shah how the company can convince people that its efforts are real. When the company raised $3 billion at a valuation of $12.5 billion in January, some tech experts were skeptical as Infinite Reality did not reveal the investor that made it possible. Shah noted that the investor was not seeking fame, but he said it would likely become evident as more announcements happen. A Touchcase human avatar is your mentor. Infinite Reality has, however, revealed its roster of other investors and shareholders including RSE Ventures, Liberty Media, Lux Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Ruttenberg Gordon Investments, Gross Labs Investments, Sterling Select (Sterling Equities), MGM, T-Mobile Ventures, Courtside VC, Exor, Terracap, Live Nation, Harvard Investment Group, as well as notable individuals such as Producer/DJ Steve Aoki, Grammy Award-winning band Imagine Dragons, and NBA All Star Rudy Gobert. The deals included acquisitions of Obsess, Stakes, Drone Racing, Ethereal and Action Face. It also bought a majority stake in Super League Gaming. Back in January, Infinite Reality said it raised $3 billion at a valuation of $12.25 billion. And in 2024, the company raised $350 million and bought Landvault. Touchcast, built on OpenAI and delivered on Microsoft Azure via a $50 million strategic partnership, provides a suite of groundbreaking AI delivery systems that dramatically improve response times for AI interaction. For businesses, this means the ability to deliver seamless, human-like experiences while boosting efficiency and reducing costs—a vital edge in today’s competitive digital landscape. Touchcast’s platform is turning what once required entire teams and years of work into one-click solutions with multiple products ranging from AI mentors to transforming websites into interactive AI experiences, and more. Touchcast’s enterprise-grade technology is SOC2 compliant with global scalability. The company holds 27 patents related to AI and interactive video technology, including systems for coordinated presentations, video conferencing enhancements, and intelligent virtual assistant systems. Touchcast’s AI mentors interact like humans, not chatbots, work together as a team of specialized agents to build on each other’s expertise and solve complex challenges, and deliver immediate ROI by elevating the online experience. Led by seasoned entrepreneurs and trusted by top global enterprises across automotive, home improvement, management consulting, and education categories, Touchcast is transforming how businesses adopt AI by making these advanced capabilities accessible to anyone, regardless of technical expertise. ​”Agentic AI is a big part of how consumers and businesses will interact with the web in the future,” said John Acunto, CEO of Infinite Reality, in a statement.  “The Touchcast technology has immediate  applications across our entire business portfolio and will no doubt provide our customers with instant benefits – whether those customers are Napster subscribers and artists, global Fortune 500 brands, or small businesses.  What Edo Segal and his team have developed at Touchcast will no doubt accelerate Infinite Reality’s mission to lead a transition to a more immersive, personalized and conversational web.” Touchcast is selling for $500 million. Segal is a serial entrepreneur and AI pioneer who has spent over two decades building companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human communication. Segal is leading breakthrough innovations in how people access and share expertise through AI, fundamentally reimagining human-AI collaboration. Prior to Touchcast, he founded and successfully sold multiple companies including Relegence (acquired by AOL), Brainboost (acquired by Answers.com), and Screencaster (acquired by Livestream), consistently positioning himself at the forefront of technological transformation. “Joining forces with Infinite Reality represents the ideal next chapter for Touchcast,” said Segal. “From day one, our mission has been to humanize AI— moving beyond chatbots to create intelligent, emotionally resonant experiences that feel intuitive and alive. iR not only shares that belief and has the platform to bring our technology to scale across industries and audiences, but together we can empower a new generation of creators and businesses to deliver expertise, storytelling, and service in ways that were unimaginable until now.” “With LLMs, with this big breakthrough, it facilitates so many different things for us,” said Segal. “We’re entering the state where the world models really allow us to create what used to require a tremendous amount of effort and time, which is really where these projects went to die. It now does it automatically.” He said the company can take any website, any commerce website, and automatically create an entire store that’s a full 3D experience, literally with one click. He did a demo of his Mentorverse doing just that, using agentic AI to create a new website for VentureBeat in just a quick minute or so. It had its own agent, a human-like greeter, and then displayed stories on the site in 3D. “Agentic AI automatically created what you’re seeing on the screen, doing what used to take a year of work and cost a million dollars to do,” Segal said. “Now this is a click away and it could happen for any website.” I had him switch to GamesBeat and it worked fine. There were some glitches, but it all happened in a minute or so. He also showed a more polished demo of a website for Imperial College, where professors had their own virtual twins who could talk with students 24/7. Touchcast has raised $60 million to date, and one of its biggest customers was Accenture. A year ago, it launched a strategic deal with Microsoft. “Joining with IR is the next big chapter at a time where AI is exploding,” said Segal. “We feel like we have a few years headstart.” Touchcast itself has 70 employees. “The acquisition of Touchcast marks our largest transaction thus far, and represents a perfect continuation of our strategic growth trajectory, building on the momentum from the iconic Napster acquisition and recent $3 billion funding round,” said Shah. “The addition of Touchcast’s agentic AI technology serves as a powerful building block for our platform as we look to provide our customers with the tools they need to succeed in the modern AI-powered era.” GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Zoom suffered a major outage this afternoon that prevented people from connecting to video calls and accessing its website. As shown by Cisco’s ThousandEyes platform, site connectivity dropped off at around 2:40PM ET before coming back online nearly two hours later. Users across X posted about the outage, with some getting an “Unable to Connect” error message when entering meetings, and others unable to sign in at all. The Zoom website was also completely down, as it displayed a 502 Bad Gateway error, and its press email didn’t work either. It’s still not clear what caused the issue, but one Reddit user, u/TastesLikeOwlbear, mentioned that the Zoom.us domain may have been in a server hold. This happens when a domain is “not activated in the DNS,” according to ICANN, making it completely inaccessible due to verification, fraud, or security issues. As noted in the Reddit post, the domain registry issue was fixed at 4:12PM ET, but it might take some time for Zoom to come back online for everyone, as DNS servers pick up and propagate the corrected information. “Service has now been restored after the earlier outage, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding,” Zoom said in a post on X at around 5PM ET. The Verge reached out to Zoom and GoDaddy with requests for more information but didn’t immediately hear back. Update, April 16th: Added an update from Zoom.