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FedEx unveiled a two-armed robot called DexR this week that’s designed to automate one of the trickiest tasks facing the company’s human employees—loading a truck with packages. The new robot aims to use artificial intelligence to stack rows of differently sized boxes inside a delivery truck as efficiently as possible, …

On Sunday, a capsule carrying a one-of-a-kind sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu careened through the atmosphere and landed in the Utah desert. But the OSIRIS-REx mission isn’t quite over: That precious cargo needs to be kept safe, then carefully opened one step at a time, before any science can …

Anyone who has shopped on Amazon will have seen the Buy Box with its peppy yellow and orange Add to Cart and Buy Now buttons. The US Federal Trade Commission has seen it too, and made it central to an antitrust case filed against Amazon today. The long-anticipated government complaint, …

One of the weirder side effects of climate change is what it’s doing to rainfall. While most people think about global warming in terms of extreme heat—the deadliest kind of natural disaster in the United States—there is also an increasing risk of extreme precipitation. On average, it will rain more …

washington’s biggest problem these days isn’t partisanship. It’s that far-right lawmakers are living in their own reality. Extremist Republicans have broken off from the rest of their party to create an alternate universe in which they’re in charge, empowered by Donald Trump’s followers. This disconnect is fueling an internal GOP …

First thing’s first: Misinformation and disinformation are bad. False tweets that go viral, government conspiracy theories, lies about vaccines—these are all huge problems online, and they’re poised to get worse thanks to generative AI. There are a few exceptions, though. The best of these came to light over the weekend …

Nearly 1,500 US police departments operate drones but only about a dozen routinely dispatch them in response to 911 calls, according to ACLU research. Drone maker Skydio aims to see that change, with a new model launched last week called the X10. The goal, cofounder and CEO Adam Bry said …

Today, young people are becoming disabled in record numbers with all the various impacts of long Covid, which is estimated to affect between 8 and 25 percent of people who have been infected. The disabled future is coming to pass now, and we need to create inclusive and accessible environments …