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A Pew Research senior data scientist analyzed 500,000 English-language webpages from the past five years with an AI detection tool to estimate how many were likely written or edited by AI: Of all the pages in this sample, 10% show significant signs of AI authorship... If we filter old webpages out of our samples and look at only the pages published after the release of ChatGPT, the trend is even more pronounced. In the July 2026 snapshot, signs of AI authorship can be found in over one-third of pages published after ChatGPT was released. This is in line with other studies that have shown that large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI. AI-authored text is not evenly spread across the web. When ChatGPT was first released, the kinds of linguistic patterns that can signal AI authorship appeared at similar rates across the main top-level web domains (.com, .org, .edu and .gov). But in samples from 2026, around one-in-ten pages with a .com domain show signs of AI authorship - about double the share on .org domains (4.6%), and 10 times the rate on .edu or .gov domains (both around 1%). They even identified specific ways online text has changed, "comparing the internet of today to a snapshot from 2023." Em dashes appear twice as often Oxford commas increased 63%. Words used more frequently by AI (like "delve," "interplay" or "testament") have more than doubled in usage. "Negative parallelism" comparisons ("it's not just X, it's Y") have nearly tripled.

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24 Aug 2026 4:34am GMT

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24 Aug 2026 4:27am GMT

3,346 backers pledged $1,198,844 on Kickstarter to build the (modular) handheld Linux computer, the Mecha Comet. It's slightly bigger and heavier than your smartphone, with a 4-inch AMOLED display and loaded up with things like microphones, speakers, a SIM tray, two USB ports and a mini HDMI port. There's three separate kill switches for wifi, microphone and camera - plus a "boot mode" switch for the SD card, and even three pins for instant access to its debug console. It's now expected to ship in October or November (and is still available for preorder). Snap-in extensions include a keyboard (with programmable colors for its backlit keys), a gamepad, and a special IO Breakout that exposes the 40 pogo pins for modules, sensors, and MCUs. They're all open hardware, and founder Shoaib Merchant says "I'm looking forward to more community designs over the upcoming months." He shows the screen in action in a video on Kickstarter, demonstrating native apps like Music, Notes, Settings, and Files - as well as a Terminal app running on its color screen. A Linux correspondent at How-To Geek notes its ships "with a custom, hardware-optimized Linux distro out of the box," so "it's like having a dedicated Linux terminal in your pocket." And they argue the new device "could be the future of Linux smartphones." I should also mention that you don't necessarily have to use the battery; it can power on over USB PD without one. Overall, you're getting the same I/O you'd expect from a computer in a smartphone-like form factor, complete with modular input devices - and it's running Linux under the hood. For me, that's the most innovative gadget I've seen in the Linux hardware space in a long time... It's powerful enough to run most Linux terminal apps, which opens up a lot of possibilities. You're also getting an NPU built right into the SoC, which opens up the possibility for on-device AI workflows - something not possible in budget smartphones. Now, I personally plan to use it for SSHing into my main computer and home lab and operating them remotely. That's also why I'll be putting the LTE modem in the M.2 slot rather than an SSD - mobile data means I can reach my machines even when there's no Wi-Fi around. I also showed it to my partner, and she sees this as the ideal minimalist phone for digital detoxing. There's a built-in media player, a basic notes app, and you can even run Spotify from the terminal if you want.

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24 Aug 2026 2:31am GMT

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24 Aug 2026 2:17am GMT

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24 Aug 2026 1:33am GMT

It's "radically different from other quantum computers" reports Phys.org. The Helios system uses trapped ions - charged atoms suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields. But it operates with 98 qubits - making it the largest trapped-ion quantum computer built so far. Quantinuum, the company behind the device, is based in Cambridge, U.K., and Broomfield, Colorado. It demonstrated earlier machines operating on 32 qubits in 2023 and 56 qubits in 2025... It relies on two major advances - one in hardware and one in software. First, the four-way X junction lets the system handle several tasks at once rather than one at a time, which is much faster. That was impossible in earlier QCCD [quantum charge-coupled device] machines, which could only move data back and forth in a single line or loop. Second, judicious use of the freedom offered by the two dimensions of the X junction relies on new classical control software called Helios runtime, which plans the smartest, fastest route for moving and processing the data. Together, these represent a substantial advance in the engineering of quantum computers. An important consequence is that Helios can perform computations that cannot be performed even on the largest supercomputers using known methods within reasonable amounts of time and power consumption. This demonstrates the ability of this device and its successors to surpass the computational prowess of classical computers - although their algorithms and hardware are rapidly advancing, too. Having said that, Helios' computations have just been random benchmark tests, so the practical importance of this leap forward is still limited. To perform quantum computations of practical importance in science and commerce, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that quantum computers must be enormously bigger and better - of the order of a million qubits.

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23 Aug 2026 11:53pm GMT

Catch up on the latest Linux news: kernel 7.2, AerynOS August update, Bazzite 44, COSMIC Desktop 1.6, VirtualBox 7.2.16, Firefox 154, and more.

23 Aug 2026 10:13pm GMT

The Arch Linux-based Omarchy has secured $8 million in backing through the new Omacom Foundation, which has become Hyprland's exclusive sponsor.

23 Aug 2026 9:37pm GMT

"The Chang'e 7 mission does not meet the conditions for launch."

23 Aug 2026 2:30pm GMT

Contour 0.7 is out with native GUI tabs, split panes, saved layouts, a command palette, GUI settings, and experimental daemon sessions.

23 Aug 2026 12:22pm GMT

Enormous eruptions altered Earth's climate and societies all over the globe.

23 Aug 2026 11:02am GMT

Hibernation cuts down on synapses, but mice seem to retain memories anyway.

22 Aug 2026 11:22am GMT