Technology

Billion dollar tech company Google is embracing bugs. Literally. Not digital ones, but real, living insects that the Silicon Valley giant plans to release into the air.

It's an initiative known humorously as the "Debug Project." First announced a decade ago, the latest iteration of the project aims to introduce 64 million mosquitoes — male mosquitoes, to be clear, entirely sterilized by the miracle of a naturally occurring bacteria — across California and Florida in the near future.

SEE ALSO: Florida becomes first state to sue OpenAI over ChatGPT's alleged links to violence

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the midst of reviewing the proposed release, according to a new filing in the Federal Register. Google's plan is to use these selectively infected bugs to curb the spread of dangerous diseases, including dengue, which have been introduced to U.S. areas primarily by non-native mosquito populations. The hoard of non-reproductive bugs would reduce spawning rates and shrink the population over several generations, and, as Google explains, male mosquitoes cannot bite or spread disease themselves.

Google calls them the "good bugs."

"Mosquitoes kill more people than every other animal combined," the company explains on the Debug Project homepage. "One species, Aedes aegypti, carries diseases such as dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya, which make hundreds of millions of people sick every year. And these diseases are spreading faster than ever."

Controlling the spread of mosquito-transmitted diseases has been a global goal for decades. Scientists and vector control specialists have successfully introduced male bugs sterilized by radiation in the past. Other methods to reduce mosquito populations, such as draining standing water and using pesticides, have been in place for even longer. But the bugs are outpacing human efforts.

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Google has already completed field trials of their bug army, including a 2018 Fresno, California study that resulted in a 95 percent drop in the wild female mosquito population during peak season. The company has collaborated with outside partners on the project, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and National Environment Agency (NEA) of Singapore.

More in line with its reputation as a tech leader, Google is also designing new software and monitoring tools to aid the project, the Los Angeles Times reported, like sensors and traps to track releases and pinpoint treatment areas.

The compact SUV segment has become one of the most competitive corners of the market, but also one of the most predictable. Many models prioritize practicality, comfort, and reliability above all else, often at the expense of design flair and driving engagement. As a result, buyers looking for something more premium or enjoyable to drive are frequently pushed toward higher-priced luxury alternatives.

GM's refusal to support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay on its EVs might be irksome, but there is a way around it if you're willing to take a chance. EV Play is selling an adapter, the $199 EV Play LT, that provides wired and wireless versions of both technologies on electric cars from Cadillac, Chevy, and GMC.

The stock Jellyfin Android app gets the job done, but it's hard not to notice just how much more polished the Plex app feels. Frankly, it's no contest—and it’s one of the reasons so many people drift away from Jellyfin. Fortunately, Jellyfin’s open-source nature has allowed developers to build their own clients, offering far more refined ways to stream your content.

Most people think of a NAS as a box that stores backups, media, documents but undersells what a NAS can do when it is already sitting on your network all day.A NAS is one of the few machines in a home lab that is usually powered on, connected by Ethernet, and stable enough to trust with small infrastructure jobs. That makes it a good place to run a private DNS server.

Automating a bedtime routine is harder than you might expect. You don't want your smart home to shut down for the night when someone is still up, or you're reading a book in bed. An NFC tag stuck under the nightstand was all it took to solve the problem.

Paramount+ is having a loud start to the summer. The Taylor Sheridan machine is still purring along with Dutton Ranch, The Madison, and Marshals, Michael Fassbender's The Agency is back for a second season, and, whether you like it or not, the whole streaming platform is bracing for June 14, when the UFC descends on the White House lawn.

SAVE $40: The Igloo Kool Tunes (red) is on sale at Amazon for $99.99, down from the normal price of $139.99. That's a 29% discount and the lowest we've ever spotted at Amazon.

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Summer has finally arrived. If you'll be packing up the cooler and heading out to the lake for a day outside, you'll probably be packing beverages for hydration and a portable Bluetooth speaker for vibes. Instead of packing both, consider this two-in-one option that's on a great discount ahead of Amazon Prime Day.

As of June 5, the Igloo Kool Tunes (red) is on sale at Amazon for $99.99, down from the normal price of $139.99. That's a 29% discount and the best price we've seen at Amazon.

Last summer, Mashable Senior Shopping Reporter Haley Henschel reviewed the Igloo Kool Tunes and mentioned it was one of her favorite products she reviewed in 2025. "It's not a gimmick, but a fun fusion of summer party gear that's priced mostly fairly. All the better if you can find it on sale," she wrote in the review. And since it's on sale, it's a great time to make the upgrade for summer.

SEE ALSO: The Bluetti AC70 portable power station is $100 off at Amazon ahead of Prime Day

One of the strongest pros of the cooler is that it still had ice after 24 hours of Henschel's testing. That's something we'd expect to see in an Igloo cooler since the brand excels at making insulated coolers. But how's the speaker? According to Henschel, "I really do think the KoolTunes' audio is pleasantly clear and crisp, not tinny or muffled. Music playing from it sounded balanced, while voices on podcasts were undistorted."

The Igloo Kool Tunes is a 14-quart cooler with the classic Igloo cooler design that uses a molded-in handle for the upper part of the cooler, making for easy carrying. Igloo mentions this size is capable of holding 26 cans (without ice) and says playtime reaches about 10 hours per charge. Igloo includes a three-foot USB charging cable with the cooler. Plus, its water-resistant rating of IP56 makes it beach and pool-worthy.

Snag the Igloo Kool Tunes for your own camping adventures this summer, or consider it as a thoughtful Father's Day gift that'll cost you under $100.

Meta can't build AI data centers fast enough, so the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has resorted to running these computing facilities inside tents.

According to data center tracker Cleanview (as reported by TechCrunch), Meta is currently running six AI data centers just outside of New Albany, Ohio in recently erected tents. 

Michael Thomas, founder of Cleanview, posted photos on X showing the construction and finished tents. Thomas said it appeared that Meta had scrapped its original plans to build out the data center buildings and instead went with "rapid deployment structures" as they're officially called.

"The AI race has officially entered its Mad Max phase," Thomas posted on X alongside the photos.

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According to Thomas, he reviewed city permits that show that Meta began building five 125,000 square foot tents between April and June. In contrast, the first five buildings that Meta built as part of its original plans in New Albany, Ohio took approximately two to three years to build out.

Thomas says Meta has also signed a decade-long deal to build off-grid power plants to power the data centers. The power plant construction started last year and is almost built.

As TechCrunch points out, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously told The Information that the company was going to build weatherproof tents for its data centers. Meta isn't done utilizing tents for its AI data center construction strategy either. According to Thomas, the company is building data center tents at its AI data center site in Tennessee as well.

Big Tech companies like Meta have announced massive increases in capital expenditures to build new data centers to power AI products. However, a growing backlash to data centers, combined with normal bureaucratic obstacles, has put some data center rollouts behind schedule, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

You probably don’t think about your subscriptions until the moment you do—and when you finally add them up, it’s never a comfortable number. The good news is that you can replace many of these subscriptions with free, open-source software. Here are three FOSS apps that can help you save money by canceling some of the subscriptions you’re probably paying for right now. The only catch is the setup, which can take a couple of hours—but that’s exactly what weekends are for.

NASA astronauts briefly sheltered in their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Friday during a Russian repair attempt on a leaky transfer tunnel of the International Space Station. 

The work was later halted for further analysis, and the crew resumed their normal tasks on the space station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth.

The cracks in the Zvezda service module's transfer tunnel, known as PrK, are the latest sign of aging infrastructure at the 26‑year‑old outpost, which has already weathered a separate coolant leak on a docked Soyuz spacecraft. These incidents have forced NASA and Russia's Roscosmos space agency to coordinate on protecting the crew and keeping the station operational.

SEE ALSO: A NASA orbiter around Mars suffered an abrupt demise

The PrK tunnel on Russia's Zvezda service module "has suffered from cracks and leaks for some time, and has been mitigated by Roscosmos as much as possible to date," NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens said in a statement on X. She said the cracks "have always been a concern that NASA watches very closely."

New leaks led Roscosmos to start a more extensive structural repair on June 5, prompting NASA to direct the four Crew‑12 astronauts — Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, Russia's Andrey Fedyaev, and Europe's Sophie Adenot — and NASA's Chris Williams, who flew to the space station separately in November 2025, to take shelter inside the Dragon capsule as a safety precaution. 

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In an update about one hour later, Stevens said Roscosmos had paused the repair effort to take measurements and assess the data. With hands‑on work interrupted, NASA told the crew they could go back to business as usual.

"We continue to work with our Russian counterparts, along with the rest of the international community that supports the space station, to arrive at a more permanent resolution," she said, adding that NASA intends to work with Roscosmos on a collaborative approach to address the leaks.

In a separate incident involving different hardware about 3.5 years ago, NASA and Roscosmos juggled a coolant leak on the Soyuz MS‑22 spacecraft docked to the station, which investigators attributed to a likely micrometeoroid strike on an external radiator line. Russia launched a replacement Soyuz to get the crew home. 

NASA plans to operate the space station through 2030 before deorbiting it into the Pacific Ocean, while Roscosmos has committed to the partnership until at least 2028. Both agencies plan to transition to new destinations.

SAVE $300: As of June 5, the Ecovacs Goat O1000 RTK robot lawn mower is on sale at Amazon for just $699.99 instead of $999.99. That's 30% off and matches its lowest price ever on record.

Opens in a new window Credit: Ecovacs Ecovacs Goat O1000 RTK $699.99 at Amazon
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While Amazon Prime Day is only a few weeks away (officially running from June 23 through 26), your lawn isn't going to magically halt its growth until then. If you're already sick of mowing season, perhaps you should hand off the work to a robot lawn mower. They're not the cheapest investments, but Amazon just dropped the price of the Ecovacs Goat O1000 RTK robotic lawn mower once again to save you a big chunk of change.

As of June 5, the Ecovacs Goat O1000 RTK robot mower is on sale for just $699.99 at Amazon. That's $300 or 30% off its list price of $999.99 and its lowest price on record.

This IPX6 waterproof mower's advanced mapping system generates a layout of your yard before going to work, ensuring no spot goes unmowed. You can customize it in the app to add or remove zones, split areas, or adjust the cutting height between 1.2 and 3.1 inches. Built-in 3D obstacle detection will keep it away from your pets, their toys, and anything else that may be out in the yard. And don't worry if your lawn isn't completely flat and wide open. The Goat O1000 RTK can climb slopes of up to 24 degrees and squeeze into spaces as narrow as 2.3 feet.

The Ecovacs Goat O1000 RTK is best suited for yards up to 1/4 acre. If your yard is around that size and relatively easy to navigate with segmented zones, this is the robot lawn mower for you. And now's a great time to grab it since it's the cheapest it's ever been.

Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and other cloud sync services are great options if you need to collaborate with other people. However, when you're only syncing files between your own computers, those services are often more overhead than you need.

If you're a Netflix subscriber in the U.S., you likely have your gaze fixed on either J.Lo and Brett Goldstein's new romantic comedy, Office Romance (which Goldstein wrote for Jenny from the Block) or the new season of Tina Fey's dramady series The Four Seasons. But there's also a good chance that you've been waiting for some great new documentaries to appear on the streaming service, and that's where I come in.

Samsung has a new smartwatch coming out, the Galaxy Watch 9. We haven't seen it yet, but the Samsung Health app is already getting ready for its arrival.

The Korean tech giant announced in a blog post on Thursday that Samsung Health is getting an update starting on June 8 that will "showcase the key health features included in the upcoming Galaxy Watch." Of course, we haven't actually seen the watch yet (which we expect to be similar to the Galaxy Watch 8), but all available information suggests it will be announced in late July at a Galaxy Unpacked event in London.

SEE ALSO: A Samsung phone price increase could be on the way. Thank RAMageddon. Here's the Vitals screen. Credit: Samsung

As with the recent Google Health app update, AI is very much at the center of the new Samsung health portal.

“Samsung Health is evolving to connect health data measured by the Galaxy Watch with AI-based insights, enabling users to understand their physical condition more easily and intuitively,” said Hon Pak, Samsung SVP and Head of the Digital Health Team, in a blog post. "Samsung Electronics will continue to expand proactive and personalized health management experiences based on the connected Galaxy ecosystem and digital health innovations."

Anyway, as for the specific Samsung Health update, it brings a UI overhaul and some key new features that might hint at what to expect from the Galaxy Watch 9.

Samsung has "streamlined" (their words) the layout of the app into five key components: Sleep, Activity, Nutrition, Mindfulness, and Vitals. The Vitals display is a new one, as it studies several metrics, including heart rate, skin temperature, and blood oxygen, while you sleep in order to compare them to your baselines and identify any potential problems.

There's also a new Heart Health Score, which combines several heart-related metrics into one easy-to-digest score. The new app also includes a Daily Cardio Load measurement, as well as a Fitness Index that exists to judge the effectiveness of your workouts. In all, it sounds like a pretty substantial update befitting a brand new smartwatch. We'll likely find out more in late July at the rumored Galaxy Unpacked event.

People buy 3D printers for all sorts of reasons. I recently saw someone cite their NERF dart blaster hobby as the catalyst for their printer purchase. The more I dug into the scene, the more I realized that 3D printing and NERF are a match made in heaven.

There was a time when you could get by with a few minor tweaks to the default settings, or even some lightweight de-bloating script when setting up a fresh Windows system. That time was before Windows 11. The vanilla version of Windows 11 is practically unusable for me, and it takes a whole rigmarole to make it usable. This is how I customize my Windows installation.

Printers are pretty old tech made for a job that's already losing relevance in many contexts. They really don't need to do anything other than connect to the devices we want to print from. So, imagine my surprise when I fired up my router logs one boring Sunday and saw my office inkjet chatting away to a bunch of servers I never asked it to talk to. As suspicious as it seems, this is apparently what printers do now: constantly send data back to the mothership. Pretty cool, I suppose. Or is it?

Gone are the days when we would willingly put Instagram filters on our photos because we thought they looked good. Now, your photos are still being edited, even if you're not the one doing it. Most people don't even know what a real photo taken on a smartphone (with zero processing) would look like. Thankfully, I've found an app that lets me snap away with no processing — and I'm shocked by the results.

Even astronauts have down days.

Kellie Gerardi, the director of human spaceflight at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences and the 90th woman to fly to space, is also just a working mom juggling it all.

When she’s not parenting or teaching astronauts-in-training about microgravity, Gerardi documents her fertility challenges and motherhood journey on Instagram — the research astronaut recently gave birth to her second daughter, who was conceived through IVF.

In June of 2026, at just 8 weeks postpartum, Gerardi returned to work and became the first woman to pump breastmilk in microgravity during a parabolic flight for the IIAS. (Her device of choice was a breast pump from Willow's lineup.)

For those who find the science interesting [and] want to understand why it matters to research," Gerardi wrote alongside a recent Instagram post, "breast milk contains bioactive lipids that reflect things like maternal metabolism, inflammation, stress responses, and overall physiologic adaptation during the postpartum period. So studying how those molecules change in response to a controlled physiologic stressor like microgravity / high g can help us gain a better understanding of how maternal physiologic stress is reflected in milk during postpartum recovery."

After more than eight years of secondary infertility, the birth of her daughter was a vision finally realized. As a way to give back to her community, Gerardi teamed up with online registry site Babylist to establish a pair of IVF grants.

Gerardi, 37, is happy to serve as a role model for her 2.5 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, but not in the my-life-is-perfect way. Gerardi literally reaches for the stars, but also remains completely down to Earth about the heaps of expectations placed on women.

"I gained about 60 pounds across my most recent round of IVF and through this pregnancy,” Gerardi posted recently. "Those pounds are mostly still with me and I suspect they might be for a bit, and it’s such a relief to know I just… don’t have to spend mental energy feeling any sort of way about that.”

Two and a half years after visiting space on Virgin Galactic’s Galactic 05 Mission, Gerardi was recognized for her achievements when a Barbie doll was created in her likeness as part of a celebration of International Women's Day.

Gerardi had the perfect Instagram caption to mark the occasion: “When you worked your butt off the past 20 years so your daughter(s) can say Mommy is an astronaut AND a Barbie."

A throughline to much of Gerardi's online content is her belief that women — and girls — contain multitudes. It's not just something that she says, though; it's something she lives.

From YouTubers and TikTok stars to streamers and podcasters, Mashable talks to creators about how they built their platforms, the gear they swear by, and the trends they see coming next. Read more of our creator coverage or see more of this year’s Mashable 101 to discover the internet's most exciting voices.