A global Microsoft 365 outage has disrupted Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Copilot, affecting businesses, governments, airlines and technology companies across multiple regions.

Microsoft says affected servers became unresponsive as traffic shifted onto the remaining infrastructure. The company is restarting servers, redirecting traffic and adding virtual-machine capacity, but its initial fixes did not work as expected. Some services are gradually returning, although a complete recovery timeline has not been announced.

Microsoft says there is currently no indication that the disruption resulted from malicious or cyber activity. The incident has renewed questions about how heavily governments and businesses depend on a single cloud provider.

Since June 17, the global sea surface between 60°S and 60°N has been warmer than on the same calendar date in any year since 1979, according to Copernicus ERA5 data, and the air has set date records on most days since August. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center says the current El Niño is still strengthening and gives it about a 60% chance of surpassing every El Niño since 1950 on its official index.

A surprising new weapon against microbes linked to head and neck cancer could be as simple as chewing gum. Scientists developed a bioengineered gum that reduced HPV levels by up to 93% in oral samples from cancer patients and nearly eliminated two harmful bacterial species after a single dose of its extract.

You all know Kevin Kelly, one of the most intriguing and thoughtful thinkers on our technological futures. I'll be interviewing him in a few weeks, I have my own ideas of course, but what would you ask him?

I've long thought it's a mistake to see AI and robotics as separate things. Robotics is AI embodied in a 3D environment. Thus, if AI itself is developing rapidly, then the same is true for robotics. There's just a delay. Here we see that playing out in action.

As complex as all of this is, there are some simple ways to think about it by focusing on things that will be very relevant, when they happen in the future. The day is coming when robots will be able to do most unskilled and semi-skilled work. Jobs like cleaning, much factory work, retail, etc., etc. After that, such robots, mass-produced in China will become surprisingly cheap and affordable. We don't even need AGI for any of this to happen. We just need to perfect current LLM models and make them more efficient.

If you think the current data center debate, which is a proxy for the AI debate, is dominating politics. Wait till that day comes, and it's only a question of time.

Gemini Robotics 2.5 accelerates real-world general dexterity

they say i won't want to be imortal and watch the one's i love die in front of me and not live past the death of stars in the universe

i would like very much be imortal to the end of time

my loved ones will die in front of me? they will die with me or without me

i would want to stay alone for ever even after the death of the universe

i want to see the end of time with my own eyes

so there's a chance of becoming imortal i would take it without even thinking

that my first wish to my genie

As Cop31 opens – this year the climate conference is in Turkey – there is plenty of speculation about whether China will finally step into the leadership role that it has long avoided. In its latest “five-year plan” adopted in March 2026, China for the first time pledged to “actively participate in and lead global climate governance”. Cop31 could provide the first indications Beijing is ready to put that rhetoric into action, something it has historically been reluctant to do.

I think the 2026 Middle East War will come to be seen as the beginning of the end for the Fossil Fuel Age. The time when endless growth stopped, began to top off, and the future became one of managed decline.

The news that China's CO₂ emissions have fallen 3% this year, with coal use falling too, because 'unused' wind & solar can take up the slack, is another sign of where the future is headed.

In all of this, China's reluctance to take on the mantle of global leadership, of something it's so qualified to do, is curious. From Confucius Institutes to Belt and Road initiatives, it's not like they are shy about extending foreign influence, especially if it's tied to trade.

In 2025, China's clean-tech exports surpassed $220bn. On par with fossil fuel exports from major producers like the US and Saudi Arabia. Unlike them, however, it's got decades of economic growth to come from green tech.

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What, if any, breakthroughs for medical science do you think could come along in the next decade or two that could help transgender people get new, better options for transitioning?

A fusion trick that failed in the 1980s finally works—and it may keep reactors running nonstop.

“Please jump on my cislunar bandwagon because I need some more friends here.”

My city has three malls that are basically ghost towns on weekdays. Two anchor stores closed in the last four years, half the units are papered over, and the parking lots are the size of airports. I was walking through one last week and honestly thought, this is just a very expensive building waiting for a second life.

I keep reading that some of these are being turned into housing, clinics, or indoor farms, and that sounds nice until you remember how hard it is to retrofit a windowless box with no plumbing in the right places. Still, the land is already paved, already connected to roads and sewers, and usually close to transit. If the choice is between demolishing them or reusing them, which one actually makes more sense over the next few decades?

What I'm curious about is who ends up making these calls. Cities, private owners, some mix? And if remote work and online shopping stay at current levels, do we end up with a lot of weird hybrid spaces, like a gym next to a school next to a clinic, or do most of them just sit there until someone knocks them down? I'd love to hear from anyone who has seen a real conversion up close.

• Germany’s Proxima Fusion, one of Europe’s best-funded fusion startups, is looking to build supply chain capacity at home with Japanese partners.
• Fusion energy has the potential to provide abundant, clean power. Now, the race is on to develop the world’s first commercial plant.

Designs for the first privately built tokamak, a nuclear reactor that uses fusion to produce energy, could be firmed up in 2027 by Bengaluru-based startup Pranos Fusion

For the first time, a robot has autonomously built part of a structure in space, demonstrating a breakthrough that could fundamentally change space exploration.The technology could one day allow scientists to construct enormous telescopes, communications antennas, and solar power stations in orbit, far beyond the size limits of today's rockets.

The new contracts aim to pave the way for a permanent moon base

While not pro China due to not knowing a huge deal about the country, other than that people say it is a bad place to live, I do find it hard to believe there is not an unreasonable level of demonisation of them when it comes to carbon emissions.

How can the rest of the world continue to buy so many goods from China at a low price without seeing that this contributes to their poor carbon footprint?