NASA's SPHEREx space observatory has officially begun its two-year mission to map the entire sky in 102 infrared wavelengths, capturing about 3,600 images daily to create 3D maps of hundreds of millions of galaxies. Its goal is to unlock new insights into cosmic inflation, the origins of galaxies, and the building blocks of life in the Milky Way by using spectroscopy to analyze light and matter across the universe. From a press release: From its perch in Earth orbit, SPHEREx peers into the darkness, pointing away from the planet and the Sun. The observatory will complete more than 11,000 orbits over its 25 months of planned survey operations, circling Earth about 14.5 times a day. It orbits Earth from north to south, passing over the poles, and each day it takes images along one circular strip of the sky. As the days pass and the planet moves around the Sun, SPHEREx's field of view shifts as well so that after six months, the observatory will have looked out into space in every direction.

When SPHEREx takes a picture of the sky, the light is sent to six detectors that each produces a unique image capturing different wavelengths of light. These groups of six images are called an exposure, and SPHEREx takes about 600 exposures per day. When it's done with one exposure, the whole observatory shifts position -- the mirrors and detectors don't move as they do on some other telescopes. Rather than using thrusters, SPHEREx relies on a system of reaction wheels, which spin inside the spacecraft to control its orientation.

Hundreds of thousands of SPHEREx's images will be digitally woven together to create four all-sky maps in two years. By mapping the entire sky, the mission will provide new insights about what happened in the first fraction of a second after the big bang. In that brief instant, an event called cosmic inflation caused the universe to expand a trillion-trillionfold.

Spotify has submitted an iOS app update that would allow US customers to use payment options beyond Apple's system, the company said Thursday. The move follows Wednesday's Epic Games v. Apple ruling, which prohibits Apple from taking a cut of non-Apple payment systems and from controlling how developers inform users about alternative payment methods.

If approved, the update would enable US users to view subscription pricing details and promotions directly in-app, purchase subscriptions via external links, seamlessly switch between Premium plans, and access payment options beyond Apple's system. Spotify suggested the update could eventually facilitate additional purchasing opportunities, including audiobooks. "While other governments around the world have taken steps against Apple's harmful practices, this is, by far, the most consequential action to date," Spotify said, calling it "absurd" that these "basic services" weren't permitted despite being ordered by a judge four years ago. Patreon has similarly announced plans to submit an iOS app update allowing creators to accept non-Apple payments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A new memo from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is calling on defense contractors to grant the Army the right-to-repair. The Wednesday memo is a document about "Army Transformation and Acquisition Reform" that is largely vague but highlights the very real problems with IP constraints that have made it harder for the military to repair damaged equipment.

Hegseth made this clear at the bottom of the memo in a subsection about reform and budget optimization. "The Secretary of the Army shall identify and propose contract modifications for right to repair provisions where intellectual property constraints limit the Army's ability to conduct maintenance and access the appropriate maintenance tools, software, and technical data -- while preserving the intellectual capital of American industry," it says. "Seek to include right to repair provisions in all existing contracts and also ensure these provisions are included in all new contracts." [...]

The memo would theoretically mean that the Army would refuse to sign contracts with companies that make it difficult to fix what it sells to the military. The memo doesn't carry the force of law, but subordinates do tend to follow the orders given within. The memo also ordered the Army to stop producing Humvees and some other light vehicles, and Breaking Defense confirmed that it had. "This is a victory in our work to let people fix their stuff, and a milestone on the campaign to expand the Right to Repair. It will save the American taxpayer billions of dollars, and help our service members avoid the hassle and delays that come from manufacturers' repair restrictions," Isaac Bowers, the Federal Legislative Director of U.S. PIRG, said in a statement.

Apple said a majority of its devices shipped into the U.S. in the June quarter will originate in India and Vietnam, a move to allay investor concerns about the impact of tariffs on its operations. From a report: The company was among the hardest-hit of the tech giants last month because of its exposure to China, a primary target of the Trump administration's global tariff pressure. Most of Apple's devices are assembled in the country, and investors are closely watching its efforts to shift final assembly of devices bound for the U.S. to India and other countries.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said the impact in the June quarter from tariffs, assuming existing policies remain in place, would add $900 million to Apple's costs, a figure he suggested could be worse in future quarters. He also said that there was limited impact from tariffs in March. [...] He added that Apple would continue to diversify its supply chain away from China. "What we learned some time ago was that having everything in one location had too much risk with it," he said. Further reading: JPMorgan Says India-Assembled iPhone Within Spitting Distance of China Price.

Microsoft has taken its most significant step yet toward eliminating passwords by making new Microsoft accounts "passwordless by default." The change means new users will never need to create a password, instead using more secure authentication methods like biometrics, PINs, or security keys.

The move builds on Microsoft's decade-long push toward passwordless authentication that began with Windows Hello in 2015. According to company data, passkey sign-ins are eight times faster than password and multi-factor authentication combinations, with users achieving a 98% success rate compared to just 32% for password users. Microsoft also said it now registers nearly one million passkeys daily across its consumer services.

Donald Trump's crypto company created a digital dollar called USD1, which is now being used by a big investor in Abu Dhabi to help fund a $2 billion deal with Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Reuters reports: Stablecoins are an increasingly lucrative cog in global crypto trading. Their issuers typically profit by earning interest from the Treasuries and other assets that underpin them. The value of USD1 in circulation reached about $2.1 billion on Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap data, making it one of the fastest-growing stablecoins. The identity of its major holders, however, remains unclear. An anonymous cryptocurrency wallet that holds $2 billion worth of USD1 received the funds between April 16 and 29, according to data from crypto research firm Arkham. Reuters could not ascertain the owner of this wallet.

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, who was incarcerated in the United States last year after pleading guilty to violating U.S. laws against money laundering, met Zach Witkoff and two other World Liberty co-founders in Abu Dhabi, according to a photo posted on social media site X on Sunday. "It was great to see our friends," in Abu Dhabi, posted Zhao in response to the photo, tagging Witkoff. Zhao, who in 2023 stepped down from his role at Binance as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. over the illicit finance charges, remains a major shareholder of Binance.

Separately, Zach Witkoff announced that USD1 would be integrated into Tron, the blockchain of Hong Kong-based crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. Sun is the biggest known investor in World Liberty and an adviser to the venture, according to his social media posts, having poured at least $75 million into the project. Sun was fighting a U.S. securities fraud lawsuit at the time of his first investment in World Liberty. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February paused its case against him, citing public interest.

Following a major court ruling limiting Apple's control over App Store payments, Patreon plans to update its iOS app to allow payments outside Apple's system, letting creators keep more of their earnings. Spotify and Proton are also preparing similar updates. The Verge reports: "This is a huge moment for creators and their businesses," [spokesperson Adiya Taylor] says. "The iOS app is the number one platform for fan engagement on Patreon, and we believe this ruling allows creators to get paid without giving Apple 30 percent. As a first step, we will submit an app update for review by Apple to enable payments outside of IAP so creators keep more from iOS based fan payments."

Last year, Patreon said it was forced to switch to Apple's in-app purchase system, which applied a 30 percent fee to all new memberships purchased in the app, or else risk "being removed from the App Store." "When we first announced rolling out Apple's IAP requirements last year, we shared that we used three principles to guide our decision in how we wanted to move forward: transparency, control, and stability," Taylor says. "Keeping with those principles, we're exploring further action we can take, and we'll continue to keep creators and fans posted on any changes to our experience." Taylor wasn't able to share a timeline for when the update might be rolled out. Further reading: Epic Games Is Launching Webshops To Circumvent App Store Fees

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Epic Games is taking a victory lap. After notching a big win against Apple in a years-long legal dispute, Epic announced that its Epic Games Store will allow developers to open webshops, which can offer players out-of-app purchases to circumvent fees from Apple and Google. [...] With the Epic Games Store's new webshops feature, other developers will be more easily able to follow suit.

Usually, Epic takes a 12% share of a developer's earnings from the Epic Games Store, which is still a better deal than what developers get from Apple. But starting in June, Epic Games will not take a cut from the first $1 million each game earns annually. Only after a game eclipses $1 million in revenue will Epic begin taking a cut. "With new legal rulings in place, developers will be able to send players from games to make digital purchases from webshops on any platform that allows it, including iOS in the European Union and United States," Epic said.

Meta's Reality Labs posted a $4.2 billion operating loss in Q1 2025. According to CNBC, cumulative losses since 2020 now exceed $60 billion. From the report: Meta's Reality Labs unit is responsible for the company's Quest-branded virtual reality headsets and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. It's the key business unit that anchors CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plans to build a new computing platform involving digital worlds accessible via VR and augmented reality devices. [...]

Wall Street has questioned Meta's big spending on the metaverse, which Zuckerberg has said could take many years to turn into a real business. The company must now also contend with sweeping new tariffs from President Donald Trump and the likely increase in costs that will follow, potentially leading to higher-priced devices. Last week, Meta said that an unspecified number of Reality Labs employees were laid off. Those workers were part of the Oculus Studios unit, which creates VR and AR games and content for Quest VR headsets.

Sam Altman's eye-scanning identity project, now called World, officially launched in the U.S. with six in-person registration sites. CNBC reports: Here's how it works: You go up to an Orb, a spherical biometric device, and it spends about 30 seconds scanning your face and iris, then creates and stores a unique "IrisCode" for you verifying that you're a human and that you've never signed up before. Then you get some of the project's cryptocurrency, WLD, for free, and you can use your World ID as a sign-in with integrated platforms, which currently include an open API integration with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Discord.

Starting Thursday, the company is opening six flagship U.S. retail locations where people can sign up to have their eyeball scanned: Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville, Miami and San Francisco. At an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the venture announced two high-profile partnerships: Visa will introduce the "World Visa card" this summer, available only to people who have had their irises scanned by World, and the online dating giant Match Group will begin a pilot program testing out World ID and some age verification tools with Tinder in Japan.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: The House of Representatives on Thursday voted to block California from implementing plans to block new sales of gas-powered vehicles in a decade. In a 246-164 vote, members approved House Joint Resolution 88, which seeks to withdraw a waiver granted by the Environmental Protection Agency to California during the Biden administration to implement the ban. Thirty-five Democrats joined 211 Republicans in backing the measure. [...] The House also approved two other measures which withdraw waivers on the state's plans to increase sales of zero-emissions trucks in a 231-191 vote, along with the state's latest nitrogen oxide emission standards for engines in a 225-196 vote.

Following Thursday's vote, Newsom's office issued a statement saying the House illegally used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the state's Clean Air Act waivers. The governor's office also said the move contradicts the Government Accountability Office and Senate Parliamentarian who have ruled the CRA does not apply to the state's waivers. "Trump Republicans are hellbent on making California smoggy again. Clean air didn't used to be political. In fact, we can thank Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon for our decades-old authority to clean our air," Newsom said. "The only thing that's changed is that big polluters and the right-wing propaganda machine have succeeded in buying off the Republican Party -- and now the House is using a tactic that the Senate's own parliamentarian has said is lawless. Our vehicles program helps clean the air for all Californians, and we'll continue defending it." Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) said in a statement: "House Republicans' misguided and cynical attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and undercut California's climate leadership ignores the reality of California's strength as the fourth largest economy in the world...

... If Senate Republicans take up these measures under the Congressional Review Act, they will be going nuclear by overruling the Parliamentarian, all to baselessly attack California."

Nature: A forthcoming policy from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will target - and at least temporarily stop -- funding to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States, threatening thousands of global-health projects and international collaborations on topics such as emerging infectious diseases and cancer.

The NIH, the world's largest funder of biomedical research, plans to release the policy in the next week. Some agency staff members have already been instructed to hold funds for foreign institutions that are part of both new research grants and grants coming up for renewal, according to multiple agency employees who spoke to Nature under the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

Chinese scientists have achieved a significant nuclear breakthrough by successfully refueling a thorium-based reactor while it remains operational, according to reports from Chinese state media.

The experimental 2-megawatt thermal reactor, which came online in June 2024, represents the revival of technology originally developed and abandoned by the United States in the mid-20th century. The milestone was revealed during a closed meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where project leaders shared results demonstrating the reactor's ability to be refueled without shutdown -- a capability conventional uranium reactors lack.

Though small compared to MIT's 6-megawatt research reactor, this achievement shows China's accelerating nuclear ambitions. The country has surpassed France in nuclear generation and recently approved 10 new reactors worth over $27 billion in investment. This thorium reactor joins other revived nuclear concepts, including molten-salt cooling systems and high-temperature gas reactors, as developers look to the past for solutions to advance nuclear energy's future.

A "small percentage" of Google's users in the US will begin seeing an AI Mode tab in Google Search "in the coming weeks," the company said Thursday, marking the tool's first deployment outside the company's experimental Labs environment.

Unlike traditional search results that display URLs based on user queries, AI Mode generates conversational responses from Google's search index. The feature will appear as a dedicated tab positioned before the standard "All," "Images," and other search filters. The deployment represents Google's direct challenge to LLM-powered search engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT.

AI Mode differs from existing AI Overviews in Google Search, which merely insert AI summaries between the search box and web results.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The video game website Polygon has been sold to click-farm powerhouse Valnet and much of its masthead has been laid off, Kotaku has learned. The sale was subsequently announced in a press release. Multiple staff members have posted online about losing their jobs or about colleagues now being out of work.