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Feds get ready to rewrite car headlight rules

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Roundtables: A Conversation With the Creator of AI-Designed Viruses
Friday, October 16, 2026 Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Join senior AI reporter…
President Trump awards Big Tech donors with nation’s highest science prizes
Together, the awardees have donated nearly $6 billion to efforts tied to Trump and his administration.

US plans livestream of execution by firing squad
The United States' execution of the Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed, anonymous officials from the Defense Department told the BBC and Associated Press. The planned execution of Nidal Hasan, the former US Army major convicted of killing 13 people at the Texas military base, was announced this week. He is scheduled to be executed […]

Anthropic launches free AI security scans for open-source projects
Anthropic's offering to help open-source projects track down security vulnerabilities with a new service called OSS Scanner. It says open-source projects that opt-in will get "thorough, periodic security scans by our strongest models at no cost." That could mean open-source projects get alerted about possible security issues sooner, but the trade-off is that OSS Scanner's […]

SpaceX calls for better coordination in orbit after near-misses with Starlink
"These led to conjunctions of tens of meters to hundreds of meters. Way too close to comfort."

SpaceX announces plan to become a ‘major mobile carrier’
SpaceX has acquired a portfolio of low-band spectrum licenses - a move the company says "will pave the way" for its Starlink Mobile service to become a "major" US carrier. When the Federal Communications Commission signs off on the deal, SpaceX says it will deploy its new architecture that combines its satellite-to-mobile constellation with a […]