These days, raising a new venture fund can seem like an uphill battle. First-time managers are competing with much bigger funds that can lure founders with rich valuations—as well as track records that can wow limited partners.
But what if you had unfettered access to some sage advice from a seasoned investor and executive?
That’s the case for Ayesha Arora-Hughes, the daughter of Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora. Ayesha is raising her own VC fund, Permanent Partners Collective Fund I, according to a securities filing and people with knowledge of the matter—and she counts Nikesh as an adviser to the firm, one of the people said.
Apple sure takes its own sweet time. On Monday, the company sent out invitations to a product announcement happening next Wednesday, which the company’s marketing chief teased in a message on X: “Can’t wait to pro and tell next week.” That’s likely a reference to a new MacBook Pro from the company, which Bloomberg has reported will be Apple’s first touchscreen laptop.
Apparently pigs really do fly. For over a decade, Apple has treated touchscreen laptops like some kind of mutant offspring of computers and tablets, a category it had zero interest in. On a 2012 earnings call, Apple’s then-CEO Tim Cook had a memorable response to a question about the growing number of touchscreen Windows laptops coming on the market: “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.”
“We’re not going to that party,” Cook added.
A number of things have changed since then. Touchscreens have become somewhat normalized as laptop features. About one in every five notebook computers sold has such capabilities, by one estimate. More recently, Cook handed off the Apple CEO baton to John Ternus, a longtime hardware engineering executive who is much more of a product guy than his predecessor.
Clearly, a new touchscreen laptop had to have been in the works long before Apple’s leadership transition. Still, it wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Ternus’ rising stature within the company had something to do with it. Whoever was behind the decision, the first wave of products from the Ternus administration—the iPhone Duo foldable smartphone, HomeView smart display and now possibly a touchscreen MacBook—seems to be sending the message that Apple is ready to embrace categories it previously ignored. That’s a good thing.
Check out today's episode of TITV in which Akash Pasricha speaks to the CIO of Palo Alto Networks Meera Rajavel about the company’s AI agent security strategy.
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The Information's WTF Summit returns to Napa Valley, bringing together the women shaping tech, media and finance. Confirmed speakers include Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble), Anne Wojcicki (23andMe Research Institute), Kim Posnett (Goldman Sachs) and comedian & entrepreneur Whitney Cummings, with more to come. Expect candid conversations and a room built for meaningful exchange. Tickets are selling fast—reserve your spot now.
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More detailsOpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week told employees about three proposals the industry has discussed for how to safely develop AI, a stark framing that comes just as the Trump administration sets up its first system for policing “superintelligence” developers like OpenAI.
One path involved developing an international organization, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, that would enforce safety standards, a scenario Altman appeared to support, said two people with knowledge of the comments. Another option would involve merging all of the AI labs into a single body to develop new AI safely.
Prosecutors allege that the OpenAI employee accused of bugging OpenAI’s office had ties to the Saudi Arabian royal family, according to a Sunday filing from the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco.
The FBI arrested Saudi Arabian national Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, on October 9 after OpenAI ...
The Information is pleased to announce new reporters who will carry on the publication’s rich track record of reporting exclusive news on the most important people and companies in business. They’ll report on OpenAI, Google, Asia and finance.
Jemima McEvoy, OpenAI
Jemima McEvoy is changing roles to take on the OpenAI beat.
In just over a year at The Information writing for the Weekend section, Jemima has proven herself to be a resourceful, industrious and sharp-eyed reporter with a flair for colorful features and a knack for breaking news. Her run of illuminating stories includes profiles of Epstein-linked investor Masha Bucher, Midjourney founder David Holz and ultra-secretive investor Zach Frankel. An adept collaborator, she also co-authored great reads on OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife Anna, Sequoia’s leadership duo and Anthropic “first lady” Cami Clark—not to mention The Information’s inaugural 50 Most Influential People in Tech list. And she has helped deliver scoops on Valar Atomics and Shield AI and deconstructed trends such as the rise of padel.
Jemima joined The Information after five years at Forbes, where she made her bones writing about billionaires and their businesses. She has also interned for CBS News and was editor-in-chief of Washington Square News, the independent student newspaper at her alma mater, New York University.
Ryan Barwick, Google
Ryan Barwick is joining us to cover Google. Ryan comes to us from Axios, where he spent the past year-and-a-half delivering exclusives as a consumer-industry deal reporter for Axios Pro.
Ryan cut his reporting teeth covering advertising technology, giving him a deep understanding of the economic engine that has long powered Google’s core business. Before Axios, he was the senior reporter for Morning Brew’s advertising vertical, where he landed scoops on companies including Meta, Amazon and Twitter as well as Google, and covered the search giant’s battle with regulators. Prior to that, he wrote about the ad industry at Adweek, was a broadcast associate at CBS News and covered the intersection of policy and technology as a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity.
Claudia Chong, AI and Data Centers (Asia)
Claudia is covering the intensifying AI race from Singapore, where both Chinese and U.S. tech companies are staffing up. She also may report on topics including chip smuggling, crypto and anything else she digs up.
Claudia joins us from S-RM, a UK-based risk advisory firm where she specialized in APAC disputes, investigations, and corporate due diligence. Prior to that, she worked on ByteDance’s LLM training operations in Singapore and spent nearly six years as a correspondent at The Business Times, the premier business publication in Southeast Asia, covering venture capital, tech, and private wealth across the region.
Her journalistic work earned her a Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) Media Award for Excellence in 2024 for the investigation into Singapore’s largest money laundering scandal. Beyond training LLMs and conducting due diligence, her skills also extend to M&A, having conducted research that helped with the SPH’s acquisition of the Tech in Asia publication in 2024.
Alex Eichenstein, Tech Capital Markets
We’re excited to announce that Alex Eichenstein is joining the finance team, covering tech capital markets. Alex comes to us from The Deal, where she spent more than two and a half years covering healthcare deals. She regularly broke PE acquisition news while also writing deeper dives on major investing shifts, including how buyout firms’ struggles to find exits for practice rollups fueled a shift toward health tech investments.
We’re excited for Alex to help deepen our finance coverage in her new role, focusing on the fast-evolving debt and equity markets and deals redefining how tech companies fund themselves. Alex is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and worked as a social media editor at Protocol prior to that.
Tattoos are pretty permanent decisions, and laser removal is often described as more painful than actually getting them in the first place. But what about a design that can only be seen when you want to see it? Engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder are working on a new type of tattoo ink to answer that question. Their dye is specifically concocted to physically alter depending on exposure to visible or ultraviolet (UV) light.
The team described their invention in a study published earlier this month in the journal Matter & Light, and they didn’t only demonstrate the capabilities in the lab on silicone and pig skin. One of its creators, Carson Bruns, has already tattooed himself with the ink.
“[It’s] almost a tradition,” the study co-author recently told Nature.
Bruns, a nanoscientist at UC Boulder, previously developed a now-commercialized tattoo product called “Magic Ink” that turns magenta depending on its exposure to UV light. To highlight its efficacy, Bruns gave himself “solar freckles” as a method to track his exposure to sunlight. In similar fashion, he recently completed a similar session on his leg using the disappearing ink.
The formula currently comes in three colors—yellow, blue, and magenta—and essentially relies on the same principles behind transition lenses and some textiles. Each dye is composed of tiny spheres of acrylic glass. These beads contain photochromes, which are chemical compounds engineered to absorb specific light wavelength photons. In this case, the photochomic dye’s spheres begin in their original color, but then flatten into transparency after absorbing corresponding light photons exposed to UV rays. The dye remains this way until it absorbs visible light photons, which destroys the chemical bond and allows the spheres to return to their original shape.
Aside from the lab tests, Bruns tattooed his own leg over about 12 months using various dye combinations, all of which responded as intended to UV and visible light exposure. The ink also remained effective for over two years—but the team’s intention is go beyond a nifty parlor trick. Future ink iterations may be particularly useful in medical procedures, such as temporary markings to help maintain accuracy during direct radiotherapy sessions. For now, however, the photochromic tattoo dyes remain for laboratory (and Bruns’) use only until further safety assessments are completed.
The post Scientist tattoos himself with disappearing ink appeared first on Popular Science.
Not far from the Black Sea, a child’s grave uncovered in present-day Bulgaria has provided archaeologists a somber look at Roman funerary practices. Flagged in the city of Stara Zagora during a site survey for a new apartment complex and parking garage project, the burial contained stunningly preserved gold earrings as well as a single, small coin known as an antoninianus. But while the currency’s age is traceable to within a year of its minting, the bronze piece may also represent a grieving family’s hopes for their child’s safe passage into the afterlife.
The Roman empire at its height included over 1.9 million square miles of territory, including much of central Europe and central Asia. Rome annexed the region of Thrace in 46 CE, and eventually renamed the city of Stara Zagora as Ulpia Augusta Traiana in honor of Emperor Trajan (98 to 117 CE). Augusta Traiana quickly grew into one of Thrace’s most prominent urban hubs, becoming so prosperous that Rome ultimately granted permission to build its own coin mint during the second and third centuries CE.
Over 1,750 years later, Augusta Traiana’s remnants exist underneath a city once again known as Stara Zagora. Ruins of the Roman empire are regularly unearthed through the town, including the recent discovery of a large cemetery used for nearly three centuries outside Augusta Traiana’s original walls. Among the 135 graves, researchers identified a child buried with a pair of gold earrings and one of Thrace’s bronze coins. Although details about the young individual’s death and identity remain unclear, the coin clearly dates to either 274 or 275 CE. Archaeologists assume the child likely died either around that time period, or soon after.
While researchers may never learn the precise circumstances of the burial, ancient Greek and Roman funerary beliefs suggest the coin served a specific purpose. It’s possible the child’s family intentionally placed the currency with the deceased as payment to Charon, the ferryman who brought souls to the afterlife. Knowing this, it may be that grieving relatives hoped to impart one final gift to their loved one.
The post Roman child’s grave contains coin to pay afterlife entry fee appeared first on Popular Science.
Elon Musk pledged on X to give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year, and will do more such gifts in the future.
According to estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, about 21.1% of the U.S. population is under 18 years old, which translates to about 73 million children. At ...
DeepSeek is working closely with Huawei Technologies to shape the design of future AI chips, two people familiar with the matter said, in a collaboration that could help China build frontier AI models without Nvidia’s technology.
The relationship goes beyond the kinds of conversations companies have with chip suppliers about their semiconductor road maps. Huawei engineers are incorporating DeepSeek’s requests and suggestions into design decisions, such as how models calculate and move data between processors, for chips that will come out next year and beyond, the people said. To do this work, the Huawei engineers have been stationed at DeepSeek’s offices for an extended period, one of the people said.
Japan launches a ground-breaking mission to the Mars moon Phobos today, and you can watch live.
The JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission aims to collect samples from Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two moons, and deliver it back to Earth for analysis. If successful, the samples could help solve long-standing mysteries about Mars’ moons, including their origin.
In 1877, US astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos and its smaller sibling, Deimos. The moons have arguably the most bad-ass names in our solar system: Phobos comes from the ancient Greek word φόβος (phobos), meaning “fear,” and Deimos originates with the ancient Greek word Δεῖμος, which translates to “dread.”
Despite increased attention on Mars in recent decades, astronomers don’t know exactly how the celestial bodies formed. Theories include asteroids or debris leftovers from way back when the solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
“The samples from MMX will bring forth paradigm-shifting science on the Mars system for generations to come, especially as NASA prepares to send the first humans to Mars,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator and Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a statement. While a JAXA mission, NASA worked with the agency to provide instruments and technologies to assist.
The MMX spacecraft launches on top of an H3 rocket at Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center today at 3:41 p.m. EDT (4:41 a.m. Japan Standard Time on October 20). You can watch it live on JAXA’s YouTube page. The mission will get to Phobos in August 2027 and spend at least 16 months surveying the surface before collecting samples. The samples will not return to Earth until at least 2031.
The post How to watch Japan’s mission to Mars appeared first on Popular Science.
In the last month, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have released more than a dozen new models. If you thought that pace was crazy, don’t expect things to slow down anytime soon.
Anthropic is preparing to release a new model that is better in its reasoning and intuition than the Anthropic models that are currently available commercially, according to a person who has used it. The unreleased model is especially good at discerning a person’s underlying intentions and goals even if they don’t give the model much information, such as explicitly stating those goals, the person said.
For instance, a person might ask the model to fix a single bug, and the model might go off and instead identify the underlying class of problems that caused the bug and ask whether it should fix the whole class of problems, said the person who has used it.
The Anthropic model is also better at thinking outside of the box rather than regurgitating common sense advice or solutions, the person said. For instance, if a user asks for advice on how to invest in stocks, rather than providing generic advice like looking at price-to-earnings ratios, the model might come up with its own creative algorithms to predict future stock performance, the person said.
Snakes will bite, rattle their tails, and even spit venom to escape danger. But of all the world’s species, southeast Asia’s dwarf reed snake (Pseudorabdion longiceps) relies on an especially fascinating escape method. When threatened, the diminutive serpent rolls away like a speeding wheel.
An adult dwarf reed snake typically measures less than 12 inches long, but its unique locomotive maneuvers allow it to retreat as fast one foot per second—about four times faster than it travels by simply slithering on the ground. It’s not a flailing getaway, either. The snake also easily rolls along a straight path while somehow keeping its head both stable and facing forward.
Now, researchers finally have a better understanding of how the dwarf reed snake achieves such dizzying acrobatics. In a study published today in the journal Current Biology, a team at Japan’s Toho University detailed the specific physiology that enables its locomotion after filming the snakes with high-speed cameras. Essentially, the snake doesn’t rotate its entire body in a singular, forward motion—it whips one side of its body forward towards the ground while an arched portion swings down by its head in what the study’s authors call a “stroke.” The snake then alternates between its left and right side coming into contact with the ground for each successive stroke. Essentially, it’s like twirling a rope in a lateral circle while holding one end in your hand—except that end is the snake’s head.
The cumulative efforts bypass the traditional idea of a wheel requiring something like a central axle. Instead, this ingenious, highly controlled movement allows the animal to keep its head and sensory organs upright and facing ahead while traveling at such high speed. This is compounded by the dwarf reed snake directing regions of its body to engage in large, alternating rotations while stabilizing its head.
By gaining better insight into these biological mechanisms, researchers also highlight the difficulty in trying to predict an animal’s capabilities based solely on its physiology. A snake may have primarily evolved to slither—but that doesn’t mean it can’t get creative when necessary.
The post This snake cartwheels to escape danger appeared first on Popular Science.
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