For as long as we've known that soil bacteria manufacture molecular weapons to fight each other, we've been swiping their battle plans. In clinics and hospitals, those turf-war weapons have become miraculous drugs of modern medicine—antibiotics—that blow away otherwise deadly infections.

But, of course, there's a dark side of mimicking microbial munitions—bacteria have defenses, too, namely antibiotic resistance. You're probably aware that we're facing a rising threat of drug resistance among disease-causing bacteria, one that is rendering much of our stolen weaponry obsolete and making infections harder to defeat.

Often, this growing crisis is framed as a clinical failure: We're overusing and misusing antibiotics, hastening our bacterial foes' natural ability to develop and spread resistance. While this is certainly true, a new study in Nature Microbiology this week identifies a potentially new driver of rising antibiotic resistance—and we're at least partly to blame for this one, too.

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PCAST, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, is generally not a high-profile group. It tends to be noticed when things go wrong, such as when the PCAST head named by Biden had to resign due to abusive behavior. Biden, who was generally supportive of science, didn't even name the members of PCAST until eight months after his inauguration. So it's no surprise that an administration that's been hostile to science took even longer to staff its version of the group.

The list of appointees was finally released on Wednesday , and it's notable for its almost complete absence of scientists. There are still nine unfilled vacancies on the council, so it's possible more scientists will be named later. But for now, PCAST is heavily tilted toward extremely wealthy technology figures.

These include investor Marc Andreessen, Google's Sergey Brin, Michael Dell of Dell, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, Lisa Su of AMD, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. But many of the lesser known names have similar backgrounds. Previously named chairs of PCAST are investor David Sacks and a former investment company CFO and current head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Kratsios. Of the new appointees, Safra Catz also comes from Oracle, Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, and David Friedberg is another investor.

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Google is dramatically shortening its deadline readiness for the arrival of Q Day, the point at which existing quantum computers can break public-key cryptography algorithms that secure decades' worth of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments, and nearly every individual on earth.

In a post published on Wednesday, Google said it is giving itself until 2029 to prepare for this event. The post went on to warn that the rest of the world needs to follow suit by adopting PQC—short for post-quantum cryptography—algorithms to augment or replace elliptic curves and RSA, both of which will be broken.

The end is nigh

“As a pioneer in both quantum and PQC, it’s our responsibility to lead by example and share an ambitious timeline,” wrote Heather Adkins, Google’s VP of security engineering, and Sophie Schmieg, a senior cryptography engineer. “By doing this, we hope to provide the clarity and urgency needed to accelerate digital transitions not only for Google, but also across the industry.”

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Meta has lost the first of three child safety trials it's facing this year after a jury in a New Mexico state court found that the social media giant's platforms do not effectively protect kids from child exploitation.

On Tuesday, the jury deliberated for only one day before agreeing that Meta should pay $375 million in civil damages for violating state consumer protections and misleading parents about the safety of its apps.

The trial followed a 2023 lawsuit filed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez after The Guardian published a two-year investigation exposing child sex trafficking markets on Facebook and Instagram. Torrez's office then conducted an undercover investigation codenamed "Operation MetaPhile," in which officers posed as children on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The jury heard that these fake profiles were "simply inundated with images and targeted solicitations” from child abusers, Torrez told CNBC in 2024. Ultimately, three men were arrested amid the sting for attempting to use Meta's social networks to prey on children.

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Millions of iPhone owners in the UK will be asked to verify they are over 18 in order to access several Apple services, following pressure from the UK government on smartphone makers to do more to protect children online.

The UK is believed to be the first European market where Apple is rolling out its new age controls, which are designed to ensure that only adults can download apps rated on its App Store as being suitable for over-18s.

Following an iOS software update that was pushed out on Wednesday, adults who do not verify their age will face restrictions on web browsing, as well as “communication safety” checks to their messages and FaceTime video calls, which are designed to detect nude photos and videos.

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OpenAI's recently announced plans to shutter its Sora video-generating app have also scuttled the company's planned $1 billion licensing partnership with Disney, according to multiple press reports.

"As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere," Disney said in a statement provided to media outlets. "We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators."

Disney and OpenAI announced the blockbuster three-year licensing deal in December, saying that over 200 Disney-owned characters would be available for use in Sora-generated videos. At the same time, Disney said it would be making a $1 billion equity investment in the AI company.

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Earlier this month Honda decided to cancel a trio of electric vehicles it was planning to build in the US. And those cancellations are having a ripple effect. Today Sony Honda Mobility—the automaker's joint venture with the electronics and entertainment company—announced that it won't bring its EVs to market either.

Although Honda was an early adopter of hybrid technology, it has been left badly lagging when it comes to developing battery-electric cars. The diminutive Honda e might look like the most adorable city car you've ever seen , but it struggled to find more than 12,000 buyers in four years across Europe and Japan.

Here in North America, the Prologue has done much better: Honda sold 33,000 in 2024, and another 39,000 last year. But the rebadged GM, which shares a platform with the Chevrolet Blazer, has seen sales implode since the end of the federal clean vehicle tax credit last fall, and it, too, leaves production at the end of the year. An earlier plan to use GM's battery platform for lower-cost EVs, meant to arrive in 2027 , died in late 2023 .

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By the time you read this, the Audi RS6 Avant is dead. Production at the factory in Neckarsulm, Germany, has already switched over to new models ; any unsold wagons at dealerships will be the last of their kind. Time moves on, leaving the unelectrified 2026 RS6 Avant Performance as a relic from a bygone age where people didn't care quite so much about melting glaciers. In this regard progress is good and climate catastrophe is bad, but there are other things to like about the RS6 Avant, and much that Audi could and should bring to its other cars.

The car was always something of a unicorn here in the US. As the SUV became ascendant, the station wagon suffered a corresponding decline with the general public, and automakers like Audi responded by not importing them anymore. The economics, we were told, didn't add up: wagon sales would just cannibalize SUV sales but at too small a rate to make the imported wagons profitable. But with smaller volumes, the math made more sense, which is why in 2019 the car maker buckled to pressure and said fine, we'll import the RS6 Avant . And with a starting price of $130,700, you can understand why this is a low-volume model.

Subtly swollen

A look down its flanks reveals wheel arches that bulge to accommodate larger wheels, part of Audi Sport's RS transformation applied to the sedate A6 starting point. Larger wheels provide clearance for larger brakes, which in turn help stop it from prodigious velocities—if you have a long enough runway or the right stretch of German Autobahn, top speed for this version, the Performance, tops out at 190 mph (305 km/h). Under the hood, hidden from view by plastic paneling, lies a twin-turbocharged 4.0 L V8 engine, which generates 621 hp (463 kW) and 627 lb-ft (850 Nm), sending power to all four wheels via an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission.

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Bourbon is a multi-billion-dollar market, but the American barrel-aged whiskey also produces a lot of wasted grain at distilleries. Chemists at the University of Kentucky developed a method to transform that stillage into electrodes and used those electrodes to build supercapacitors with energy storage capacity on par with existing commercial devices. They presented their work at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in  Atlanta, Georgia.

US distillers began making bourbon in the 18th century, particularly in Kentucky, but it really took off commercially, in terms of consumption and exports, after World War II. Legally, a whiskey can only be sold as bourbon if its mash is comprised of at least 51 percent corn, with any other cereal grain (usually rye and barley) making up the remainder.

The grain is ground up and mixed with water, and mash from a previous distillation is added to create a sour mash. The addition of yeast launches fermentation, after which the mash is distilled to a clear spirit called "white dog." That spirit is poured into charred new oak barrels for aging of at least two years. It's the caramelized sugars and vanillin in the charred wood that give bourbon its distinctive dark color and flavor. The barrels are never reused for bourbon, typically being recycled for making barrel-aged beer, wine, and even barbecue and hot sauces.

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