This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 16)

Every week, we scour the web for important, insightful, and fascinating stories in science and technology.

May 16, 2026

Robotics

Unitree Will Sell You a Massive ‘Transformable Mecha’ for $650,000Jess Weatherbed | The Verge

"Unitree is already one of the most recognizable names in the humanoid robot industry, but now it’s pursuing even nicher sci-fi tech: giant mech suits. The Chinese robotics company has debuted the GD01, which it describes as 'the world’s first production-ready manned mecha,' and it can be yours for a paltry $650,000."

Biotechnology

How an ‘Impossible’ Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer BreakthroughGina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins | The New York Times ($)

"A drug nearing regulatory approval, daraxonrasib, is the first to substantially extend the lives of patients with pancreatic cancer. It works by targeting a cellular protein that fuels not just nearly all pancreatic tumors, but also many lung and colon cancers. ...Now, some scientists predict that the approach could wind up being the most significant advance in cancer treatment in 15 years, since the arrival of immunotherapy."

Tech

Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their BrainsEmanuel Maiberg | 404 Media

"Developers talk not just about how the AI output is often flawed, but that using AI to get the job done is often a more time consuming, harder, and more frustrating experience because they have to go through the output and fix its mistakes. More concerning, developers who use AI at work report that they feel like they are de-skilling themselves and losing their ability to do their jobs as well as they used to."

Space

A Plan to Make Drugs in Orbit Is Going CommercialAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review ($)

"Varda Space Industries, a startup that’s been pitching its ability to perform drug experiments in space, says it has signed up the pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics in what may be remembered as a notable step toward in-orbit manufacturing."

Biotechnology

Rebooting Stem Cells Builds Aged Muscles and Assists Injury RecoveryAlice Klein | New Scientist ($)

"Old mice grow bigger muscles and recover from injuries better when stem cells are taken out of their aged muscles, given a reboot, then put back in. A similar approach may allow rejuvenation of aging muscles in people too. 'In theory, if you took an elderly person’s muscle stem cells out, charged them up and put them back in, they would probably be more functional,' says James White at Duke University in North Carolina."

Artificial Intelligence

Google Stopped a Zero-Day Hack That It Says Was Developed With AIStevie Bonifield | The Verge

"It’s the first time Google has found evidence that AI was involved in an attack like this, although Google’s researchers note that they 'do not believe Gemini was used.' Google says it was able to 'disrupt' this particular exploit, but also says hackers are increasingly using AI to find and take advantage of security vulnerabilities."

Future

Can Some Very Tiny Particles Cool the Planet? One Tech Company Says Yes.Eric Niiler | The New York Times ($)

"Stardust executives said that initial effort to begin atmospheric cooling would cost about $10 billion. ...By adding 10 million tons of the reflective particles to the atmosphere over the course of several years, the atmosphere could be cooled by 1.5 degrees Celsius, the company said."

Artificial Intelligence

Anthropic Blames Dystopian Sci-Fi for Training AI Models to Act 'Evil'Kyle Orland | Ars Technica

"Those with an interest in the concept of AI alignment (i.e., getting AIs to stick to human-authored ethical rules) may remember when Anthropic claimed its Opus 4 model resorted to blackmail to stay online in a theoretical testing scenario last year. Now, Anthropic says it thinks this 'misalignment' was primarily the result of training on 'internet text that portrays AI as evil and interested in self-preservation.'"

Computing

Forget Smart Glasses, These Earbuds Can See, Hear, and Remember Everything for YouShimul Sood | Digital Trends

"Smart glasses have always felt a little awkward to me. Sure, they can play music, take calls, snap photos, and even throw notifications in front of your eyes, but at the end of the day, they’re still just tiny screens sitting on your face. Now imagine removing the screen entirely. That’s exactly what this new pair of AI-powered earbuds is trying to do. ...And honestly, this might be one of the more interesting directions wearable AI has taken so far."

Biotechnology

A Single Infusion Could Suppress HIV for Years, Study SuggestsApoorva Mandavilli | The New York Times ($)

"For about a decade, scientists have had remarkable success curing some blood cancers by modifying a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and kill the malignant cells. That same approach may help control HIV, among the wiliest of viruses, scientists will report on Tuesday. After a single infusion of immune cells engineered to recognize the virus, two people in a new study have suppressed their HIV to undetectable levels, one of them for nearly two years."

Energy

The Tesla Semi Could Be a Big Deal for Electric TruckingCasey Crownhart | MIT Technology Review ($)

"Globally, trucks and buses represent about 8% of total vehicles on the road, but they create 35% of carbon dioxide emissions from road transport. Tesla’s latest addition to its vehicle lineup, the Class 8 Semi, could be part of the solution to cleaning up this polluting sector."

Tech

World’s First Native Color Lidar Gives Machines Human-Like VisionOmar Kardoudi | New Atlas

"LiDAR sensors—the laser-based eyes of self-driving cars, industrial robots, and inspection drones—build precise 3D maps of their surroundings, but everything is built of monochrome geometric shapes. Ouster's new Rev8 sensor family aims to change that, not by bolting a camera onto a LiDAR unit, but by fusing color directly into every point of data the sensor captures."

Future

The Creative Risk of Letting AI Do All the WorkNatalie Nixon | Fast Company

"[MIT's Sinan Aral] calls this 'diversity collapse,' the slow homogenization of output that occurs when AI, trained on the same publicly available internet, starts flattening the edges that make creative work distinctive. The more a team delegated to AI, the more productive they became—and the more vulnerable they were to this collapse."