Science & Technology — October 16, 2026

Tesla's new Roadster leaps over cars. After nearly a decade of delays, Tesla unveiled its next-generation Roadster in Texas, demonstrating SpaceX cold-gas thrusters that let the car briefly jump over other vehicles.

TechCrunch · Read more →

Meta and Apple launch joint AI model. The longtime rivals released Muse Spark Open, billed as the most capable U.S. open-weight AI model to date, optimized to run locally on Apple silicon.

The Verge · Read more →

Strokes nearly double among younger adults. Stroke rates in adults ages 20 to 54 have nearly doubled over almost three decades, researchers found, and the underlying causes remain unclear.

Science Daily · Read more →

Leap second abolished after 54 years. Governments voted Thursday to end the leap second immediately, replacing it with a leap hour that lets clocks and Earth's rotation drift up to an hour apart.

The decision came through a vote at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, according to The Verge, which reported the change is intended to prevent Y2K-style failures in technical infrastructure. The practice of inserting occasional one-second adjustments had been in place for 54 years to keep atomic clocks aligned with the planet's rotation. Under the replacement approach, that alignment will be corrected far less frequently, allowing a much larger gap to accumulate before any adjustment.

The Verge · Read more →