Following a quarter in which his company delivered record revenue, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins announced that the company's latest round of layoffs begins today.

In a blog post yesterday, Robbins was quick to boast that Cisco’s fiscal Q3 2026 earnings saw revenue increase 12 percent year-over-year to $15.8 billion. He told employees that he and the rest of Cisco’s executive leadership team “could not be prouder of the growth you have all delivered for Cisco.”

But that pride could apparently not save the company’s successful employees from unemployment.

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Scientists said this week that a developing El Niño is likely to amplify heatwaves, droughts and floods this year, but warned that the long-term warming caused by burning fossil fuels remains the main driver of climate extremes.

El Niño is the warm phase of a semi-regular temperature oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, during which massive amounts of heat stored in the ocean are released into the atmosphere, temporarily raising the average annual global surface temperature by as much as 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

During an online briefing this week, researchers said that the consequences of a moderate or strong El Niño today are more damaging than those of similar events just a few decades ago because the entire global climate system is now substantially warmer.

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Motorola was early to foldable phones, announcing its first Razr-branded foldable in 2019. Since then, the company has churned out a series of foldable flip phones, but the new Razr Fold is its first attempt at a tablet-style foldable. Samsung, Google, and others have been making devices like this for a while, so we know the formula, and the Razr Fold doesn't change the game.

Like the competition, the Razr Fold has flagship specs and a giant foldable display that fits in your pocket. It also comes with a hefty $1,900 price tag. While Motorola has made progress overcoming some traditional shortcomings of foldables, the phone still feels rather impractical, while still being very cool.

Is "cool" enough reason to spend almost two grand on a phone, though?

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Donald Trump has very little leverage heading into two days of meetings with China's leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this week, experts say.

The thinking goes that Trump came into office with a plan that has since largely failed. He hoped to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, settle things down with Israel and Gaza, launch his Liberation Day tariffs, and quickly diversify US supply chains, all of which would have given him substantial leverage over China.

But none of that happened, and instead, Trump's escalations in Iran have only handed China even more leverage heading into talks, and Xi knows it.

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A solar-powered drone has been lost at sea after a record-breaking flight lasting eight days between late April and early May. The crash also marks the untimely demise of the pioneering aircraft Solar Impulse 2, which previously performed the world’s first solar-powered crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans before becoming an uncrewed test platform for US military missions.

The carbon-fiber aircraft could perform such feats of aeronautical endurance while running solely on renewable energy and batteries because of a 236-foot (72-meter) wingspan—comparable to a Boeing 747 jumbo jet’s wings—covered with more than 17,000 solar cells. The company Skydweller Aero purchased and modified the original Solar Impulse 2 aircraft to become a test platform for “perpetual uncrewed flight” with the capability of carrying up to 800 pounds (363 kilograms) of payload.

Skydweller Aero was conducting test flights for maritime patrol mission scenarios with the US military, and the company also holds contracts with the Navy and Air Force . So the Skydweller drone was operating in that capacity when it took off on its final flight in the early morning hours of April 26.

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The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved EchoStar's sales of spectrum licenses to AT&T and Starlink operator SpaceX. The deals are worth $40 billion in total.

The orders, issued by the agency's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Space Bureau, aren't surprising given that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr essentially forced EchoStar to sell the licenses. Last year, Carr threatened to revoke the licenses after SpaceX alleged that EchoStar subsidiary Dish Network “barely uses” the spectrum to provide mobile service to US consumers.

Dish had obtained a deadline extension for its network deployment obligations from the Biden-era FCC, and Carr objected to the agreement made with the previous administration. After Carr's threat, the Charlie Ergen-led EchoStar struck deals to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $17 billion and to AT&T for $23 billion .

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Humanity's ancestry has grown far clearer thanks to our ability to obtain ancient DNA. We now know that, as humans left Africa, they interbred with the groups they met there, Neanderthals and Denisovans. Evidence from the Denisovan genome also suggests that this was nothing new; the Denisovans had apparently interbred with an even earlier group. But the identity of that group remained a bit of a mystery.

Now, some evidence from ancient proteins suggests that the mystery group was Homo erectus , a species that left Africa over a million years ago and spread throughout Eurasia. And, thanks to the Denisovans, it appears that modern humans inherited some of that Homo erectus DNA.

In the teeth

Without access to all the repair enzymes made by living cells, DNA rapidly degrades. The double helix fragments, and bases change identity or fall off entirely. While cooler, drier environments slow this process, it sets a hard limit on how far back in time we can obtain DNA sequences. So far, it seems that Homo erectus remains on the far side of that time limit.

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Four Australian men have given new meaning to the term “ bricked printers .”

According to a press release from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Border Force (ABF) today, three men have been sentenced for trying to use five printers to smuggle 22.4 kg (49.4 pounds) of cocaine into Australia.

In 2019, Australian news outlets reported that the printers were Xerox brand and that the drugs had a street value of approximately 9.3 million AUD to over 12.4 million AUD ($6.7 million to over $9 million).

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Pity poor Princeton.

The ultra-elite university has a mere $38 billion in endowment money. Many of its dorms lack air conditioning . And it's in New Jersey.

I kid about New Jersey, of course. Despite not being allowed to pump one's own gas there, the "Garden State" grew on me during three years spent in the Princeton area. I still keep up with its goings-on, which led me to this week's article in the Daily Princetonian on how AI was disrupting the university's long-running traditions.

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