We're on the verge of being screwwormed.

The biological barrier was breached, they're slithering toward our border, and the US Department of Agriculture is now carpet-bombing parts of Mexico with weaponized flies to stave off an invasion.

This is not a drill. Screwworms are possibly the most aptly named parasites imaginable, both literally and figuratively. Screwworms—technically, New World Screwworms —are flies that lay eggs on the mucous membranes, orifices, and wounds of warm-blooded animals. Wounds are the most common sites, and even a prick as small as a tick bite can be an invitation for the savage insects.

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On Thursday, Anthropic announced significant upgrades to its AI assistant Claude, extending its research capabilities to run for up to 45 minutes before delivering comprehensive reports. The company also expanded its integration options, allowing Claude to connect with popular third-party services.

Much like Google's Deep Research (which debuted on December 11) and ChatGPT's deep research features (February 2), Anthropic first announced its own "Research" feature on April 15. Each can autonomously browse the web and other online sources to compile research reports in document format, and open source clones of the technique have debuted as well.

Now, Anthropic is taking its Research feature a step further. The upgraded mode enables Claude to conduct "deeper" investigations across "hundreds of internal and external sources," Anthropic says. When users toggle the Research button, Claude breaks down complex requests into smaller components, examines each one, and compiles a report with citations linking to original sources.

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After several years of escalating AI hysteria, we are all familiar with Google's desire to put Gemini in every one of its products. That can be annoying, but NotebookLM is not—this one actually works. NotebookLM, which helps you parse documents, videos, and more using Google's advanced AI models, has been available on the web since 2023 , but Google recently confirmed it would finally get an Android app. You can get a look at the app now, but it's not yet available to install.

Until now, NotebookLM was only a website. You can visit it on your phone, but the interface is clunky compared to the desktop version. The arrival of the mobile app will change that. Google said it plans to release the app at Google I/O in late May, but the listing is live in the Play Store early . You can pre-register to be notified when the download is live, but you'll have to tide yourself over with the screenshots for the time being.

NotebookLM relies on the same underlying technology as Google's other chatbots and AI projects, but instead of a general purpose robot, NotebookLM is only concerned with the documents you upload. It can assimilate text files, websites, and videos, including multiple files and source types for a single agent. It has a hefty context window of 500,000 tokens and supports document uploads as large as 200MB. Google says this creates a queryable "AI expert" that can answer detailed questions and brainstorm ideas based on the source data.

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The distinctive chirps of singing cicadas are a highlight of summer in regions where they proliferate; those chirps even featured prominently on Lorde's 2021 album Solar Power . Now, Japanese scientists at the University of Tsukuba have figured out how to transform cicadas into cyborg insects capable of "playing" Pachelbel's Canon . They described their work in a preprint published on the physics arXiv. You can listen to the sounds here .

Scientists have been intrigued by the potential of cyborg insects since the 1990s, when researchers began implanting tiny electrodes into cockroach antennae and shocking them to direct their movements. The idea was to use them as hybrid robots for search-and-rescue applications.

For instance, in 2015, Texas A&M scientists found that implanting electrodes into a cockroach's ganglion (the neuron cluster that controls its front legs) was remarkably effective at successfully steering the roaches 60 percent of the time. They outfitted the roaches with tiny backpacks synced with a remote controller and administered shocks to disrupt the insect's balance, forcing it to move in the desired direction

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President Donald Trump escalated his attack on NPR and PBS on Thursday when he signed an executive order demanding the end of all federal funding supporting the news outlets.

In his order, Trump claimed that unlike in the 1960s, when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was funded to ensure Americans had access to critical news, there are plenty of news options today. He has joined other Republicans accusing NPR and PBS of promoting a left-leaning bias. In a White House statement , he ordered any agency directly or indirectly funding the outlets' allegedly "woke propaganda" to "end the madness" as soon as possible, cutting off current funding "to the maximum extent allowed by law" and declining "to provide future funding."

Trump's authority to cut off CPB's funding continues to be disputed. In March, his administration reportedly planned to direct Congress to rescind CPB funding—as both NPR and PBS are fully funded through 2027 —but according to PBS , budget director Russell Vought has yet to send over any guidance.

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Have you ever pulled an all-nighter because of anxiety? Found yourself doomscrolling on your phone when you should have gone to bed hours ago? Purposely downed too many cups of coffee at three in the morning? There are some insomniac flies who would like a word.

It appears that fruit flies that spend their days lazily buzzing through the lush orchards and rainforests of Queensland, Australia, live in paradise. That changes at sunset. After dark, the flies are plagued by the Gamasodesqueenslandicus mites, which can attach themselves like ticks and literally eat the flies alive in their sleep. Researchers led by University of Cincinnati biologist Joshua Benoit have now discovered that flies that have had enough of the mites will stay awake at the expense of their health.

These mite-resistant flies drain their nutrient reserves to stay up all night, making them more susceptible to starvation. Insomniacs consumed more oxygen and were generally more active than non-resistant flies; they also experienced changes in gene activity related to their metabolisms.

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The White House released a "skinny" version of its budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 on Friday, including financial information for all federal agencies. A "skinny" budget simply means that while the document contains top-line numbers for agencies and their programs, it does not provide much in the way of specific allocations.

The document was delivered to the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Friday and signed by Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. A "full fiscal plan" will follow in the coming weeks. This is the first step in the budget process, in which Congress has the critical role of actually writing a budget.

"I look forward to working with you to achieve significant budgetary savings for the American people within the spending programs under your jurisdiction," Vought wrote.

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After a federal court issued a scathing order Wednesday night that found Apple in "willful violation" of an injunction meant to allow iOS apps to provide alternate payment options, app developers are capitalizing on the moment. Spotify may be the quickest of them all.

Less than 24 hours after District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple had sought to thwart a 2021 injunction and engaged in an "obvious cover-up" around its actions, Spotify announced in a blog post that it had submitted an updated app to Apple. The updated app can show specific plan prices, link out to Spotify's website for plan changes and purchases that avoid Apple's 30 percent commission on in-app purchases, and display promotional offers, all of which were disallowed under Apple's prior App Store rules.

Spotify's post adds that Apple's newly court-enforced policy "opens the door to other seamless buying opportunities that will directly benefit creators (think easy-to-purchase audiobooks)." Spotify posted on X (formerly Twitter) Friday morning that the updated app was approved by Apple . Apple made substantial modifications to its App Review Guidelines on Friday and emailed registered developers regarding the changes.

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It has been over six years since Epic started undercutting Steam's 30 percent revenue share for developers , asking for just 12 percent of sales on its then-new Epic Games Store. Now, Epic is going even further by reducing those fees to zero for a game's first $1 million in annual sales.

The newly announced fee structure will go into effect in June, Epic said, and will apply to a developer's revenue on a "per app" basis. After the first $1 million in annual sales, apps will be charged the usual 12 percent fee for listing on the Epic Games Store.

This isn't the first time Epic has offered a financial break to smaller developers. Back in 2011, the company eschewed royalty payments for the first $50,000 in sales for projects made with the newly free Unreal Development Kit. By 2020, that royalty-free grace period for Unreal Engine projects was increased to cover the first $1 million in lifetime sales for a project.

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