Space nerds delight: you can now play as an astronaut in Fortnite. You can even team up with your buddies to build a lunar habitat based on real future missions of the European Space Agency. Designed by Epic Games, Lunar Horizons is set at the lunar south pole. This is the point on the Moon deemed most suitable for human habitation due to the possible existence of water ice. Epic Games worked with ESA’s human and robotic exploration experts to create a lifelike 3D environment for the game. This includes replicating the Moon’s micro-gravity. In Lunar Horizons, you’re free to… This story conti ..read more

Dutch ebike maker VanMoof has begun selling ebikes on its own website once more, following an almost year-long hiatus after it went bankrupt in July last year.   The models on offer are refreshed versions of the S5 and A5, which were first released in 2022. Although the upgraded ebikes look exactly the same, they’ve been re-engineered in almost every aspect, says the company’s co-CEO Eliott Wertheimer. While this is just the beginning of VanMoof’s lengthy relaunch, the ability to sell bikes directly once more “represents an enormous milestone for us as a company,” Wertheimer told TN ..read more

A weird technology has emerged as a leader in the quest for net zero. But this form of carbon capture, called Enhanced Rock Weathering (or ERW for short), still requires innovation — and government oversight. Society has a knack for embracing new technologies, often driven by a blend of vanity, curiosity, and a desire to be ahead of the curve. Whether it’s being the first to own the latest gadget or pioneering eco-friendly initiatives like EV charging ports, early adopters pave the way for progress—despite the initial hurdles of high costs and imperfect implementations. From the infancy of th ..read more

Homeowners delight: a startup from Slovenia has created what might just be the most badass security camera ever made.  The “world-first” device is called Eve, but she ain’t no saint. Eve is an AI-powered home security system that fires paintballs and tear gas pellets at intruders.  Via computer vision technology — that also works at night — the cam can recognise individual faces and even animals. Users can designate guests as friend or foe using an app. (Good luck to the kid just trying to get his frisbee back!) Here’s where it gets really interesting. If an unknown intruder appears ..read more

Ever heard of hybrid matter-photon implementation of verifiable blind quantum computing? No? Neither had we, until today. But it could just be what will make next-generation quantum computers securely accessible to “millions of individuals and companies” — without exposing any of their data. At least, according to scientists at Oxford University Physics. A team of researchers at its UK Quantum Computing and Simulation Hub claim to have hit a major milestone for connecting two separate quantum entities — say a person at home accessing the cloud through an interface and a quantum computer serve ..read more

German startup Bluu Seafood today launched Europe’s first pilot plant for cultivated fish. The facility in Hamburg brings lab-grown seafood a step closer to the market. Bluu had previously developed the controversial food in a small lab in Lübeck, Germany. The new site expands the work across 2,000 square metres of customised research, production, and office space. At the plant’s core are new fermenters for cultivating muscle, fat, and tissue cells from Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. The current devices have a capacity of 65 litres. But Bluu said they can increase to 2,000 ..read more

Open source is at a crossroads. For the past few years, venture capital has directly or indirectly paid for many of the contributors and much of the infrastructure it needed to keep going. That was until the past 24 months or so, when funding started to slow down, leading to less internal development or funding resources going toward open source. Companies suddenly had to justify themselves, have a real business model, cut costs, and fundamentally start to return something to investors. On the other hand, this reckoning has led to refocusing, new pure open-source forks of commercially-minded ..read more

A British R&D unit today unveiled a futuristic vision of “quantitative safety guarantees” for AI. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) compares the guarantees to the high safety standards in nuclear power and passenger aviation. In the case of machine learning, the standards involve a probabilistic guarantee that no harm will result from a particular action. At the core of ARIA’s plan is a “gatekeeper” AI.  This digital sentinel will ensure that other AI agents only operate within the guardrails set for a specific application. ARIA will direct £59 million towards th ..read more

With the geopolitical landscape turning more unstable by the day, EU relations with China are also becoming increasingly turbulent. At the core of the rising tensions lies the quest for tech supremacy as well as economic and national security. “In a world powered by technology, those who lead are those who control the most critical technologies, and their supply chains,” EUcompetition chief Margrethe Vestager said during a speech on Tuesday. With cleantech one of the critical technologies for the bloc, Vestager also announced a new round of investigations into Chinese producers of wind turbin ..read more

A German startup has secured new funding for a peculiar twisted-looking reactor that could prove a quicker path to clean, virtually limitless fusion energy.  Proxima Fusion has raised €20mn as it looks to bring its designs for the so-called stellarator fusion reactor to life.  “We are working to deliver a demonstrator of net-energy production in continuous operation by 2031, and a first-of-a-kind power plant in the mid-2030s,” Dr Francesco Sciortino, CEO and co-founder of Proxima Fusion, told TNW via email. Much like the more well-known tokamak, a stellarator confines plasma using g ..read more