In 2023, there are cameras and microphones that match and surpass the capabilities of human sight and sound. But for all of our technological advancements, humans haven’t quite managed to build a better nose. After all, evolution has had millions of years to perfect the receptors humans, animals and inspects use to identify odors. But, with the help of nature, scientists may have made a breakthrough on that front.

In a study published Monday in the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics, a group of researchers from Tel Aviv University (via Neuroscience News) said they recently created a robot that can identify a handful of smells with 10,000 times more sensitivity than some specialized electronics. They describe their robot as a bio-hybrid platform (read: cyborg). It features a set of antennae taken from a desert locust that is connected to an electronic system that measures the amount of electrical signal produced by the antennae when they detect a smell. They paired the robot with an algorithm that learned to characterize the smells by their signal output. In this way, the team created a system that could reliably differentiate between eight “pure” odors, including geranium, lemon and marzipan, and two mixtures of different smells. The scientists say their robot could one day be used to detect drugs and explosives.

A YouTube video from Tel Aviv University claims the robot is a “scientific first,” but last June researchers from Michigan State University published research detailing a system that used surgically-altered locusts to detect cancer cells. Back in 2016, scientists also tried turning locusts into bomb-sniffing cyborgs. What can I say, after millennia of causing crop failures, the pests could finally be useful for something.

Microsoft could announce wide-sweeping layoffs within the next few days. The possibility of the tech giant laying off a significant part of its workforce was first reported by Sky News and later corroborated by Bloomberg. Sky put the number of the cuts at approximately five percent of the company’s 220,000-person workforce or about 11,000 employees total. Bloomberg said it couldn’t find out the scale of the layoffs but reported they would affect “a number of engineering divisions” and that they’re set to be “significantly larger” than other rounds of job cuts undertaken by Microsoft over the last year.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Engadget the company does not comment on rumor and speculation. If the 11,000 figure is accurate, it would equal the 11,000 jobs Meta eliminated last year and fall short of the 18,000 positions Amazon expects to cut once the retailer is done with its far-reaching layoffs. In any case, Microsoft seemingly finds itself on a familiar trajectory. The company saw profits soar during the first two years of the pandemic, and it tried to capitalize on the moment by going on a hiring spree, adding 50,000 employees over that same time frame. But as recently as this past October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned of imminent belt-tightening due to worsening macroeconomic conditions. “We're focused on helping our customers do more with less, while investing in secular growth areas and managing our cost structure in a disciplined way," he told investors and analysts at the time. He’ll likely have more to say about Microsoft's current position when the company announces its second-quarter earnings on January 24th.

DoorDash and Starbucks plan to expand their delivery partnership to all 50 US states by March this year, the companies announced Tuesday. Following a pilot that began last year in Atlanta, Houston and Sacramento (and later expanded to Seattle, Portland and New York City), people in North California, Texas, Georgia and Florida can now turn to DoorDash when they want a Starbucks coffee delivered to them.

According to Starbucks, it will offer 95 percent of the items found on in-store menus through DoorDash. You can also customize your order just like when you order in person. The app allows you to specify whether you want syrup in your drink, your milk preference and your choice of expresso roast. DoorDash also promises prompt delivery of coffee orders but stops short of a specific guarantee. DashPass customers won’t need to pay additional delivery fees to get their pumpkin spice latte orders to their door. For everyone else, DoorDash’s standard delivery and service fees apply.

Uber Eats has offered nationwide delivery of Starbucks orders since 2019, making the timing of the DoorDash expansion somewhat puzzling. By all accounts, the era of massive growth delivery firms saw during the first two years of the pandemic has come to an end. Between the easing of lockdown restrictions in many jurisdictions and cost of living increases, fewer people are using delivery apps.

What could become only the second lithium mine in the US received backing from the Biden administration this week. In an announcement spotted by Bloomberg, the Department of Energy said it would provide mining company Ioneer with a conditional loan valued at up to $700 million to develop the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada’s Esmeralda County. Once operational, the mine is expected to produce enough lithium for about 370,000 electric vehicles annually. Ioneer already has supply agreements with automakers like Ford and Toyota, though the project likely won’t start producing lithium until 2026.

The Biden administration made the funding available through the Energy Department’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. To secure the money, Ioneer must obtain all the necessary permits from relevant state and federal agencies. The Center for Biological Diversity has come out against the project due to the risks it poses to a species of endangered wildflower in the area known as Tiehm’s buckwheat. The US Interior Department has yet to bless the project for that same reason. The Department of Energy said Ioneer revised its plans for the site to avoid direct impacts on the plant. However, it’s worth noting lithium mining requires a lot of water to carry out.

Still, the mineral is essential to many technologies needed to transition the world to a zero-emissions future. What’s more, lithium supply is expected to fall short of global demand by 2030. That gap will make it difficult for the Biden administration to meet its goal of ensuring half of all cars sold in the US by the end of the decade are electric vehicles.

With its first event of 2023 in the books, GDQ’s Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) has raised more than $2.6 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Following more than a week of some of the world’s best speedrunners showing off their skills, AGDQ 2023 saw 21,527 donors give an average of $66.35. While the event fell short of the record-breaking $3.4 million AGDQ 2022 collected for charity almost exactly a year ago, AGDQ 2023 saw one $100,000 donation. In one of the marathon’s more memorable moments, one also player set a new world record in Super Mario Galaxy 2.

For the third year in a row, AGDQ took place entirely online. The event was initially scheduled to take place in Flordia in front of a live audience. However, organizers eventually decided against that plan due to the state’s COVID-19 policies and “increased aggression towards LGBTQ+ individuals.”

AGDQ 2023 also marked the final event for Games Done Quick founder Mike Uyama. “I realized that I need to take care of my health and kind of focus on different activities,” he told The Verge before the start of this month’s marathon. During Uyama's 13 years at GDQ, the organization raised more than $41 million for charity. Pretty good for an event that started in a basement. You can watch all the speedruns from AGDQ 2023 on GDQ’s YouTube channel. The organization’s next major event will take place in the spring when Summer Games Done Quick kicks off on May 28th. Last year, the event raised more than $3 million for Doctors Without Borders.

While jurisdictions like California and New York move toward banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, one US state wants to go in the opposite direction. Wyoming’s legislature is considering a resolution that calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035. Introduced on Friday, Senate Joint Resolution 4 has support from members of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate.

In the proposed resolution, a group of lawmakers led by Senator Jim Anderson says Wyoming’s “proud and valued” oil and gas industry has created “countless” jobs and contributed revenue to the state’s coffers. They add that a lack of charging infrastructure within Wyoming would make the widespread use of EVs “impracticable” and that the state would need to build “massive amounts of new power generation” to “sustain the misadventure of electric vehicles.”

SJ4 calls for residents and businesses to limit the sale and purchase of EVs voluntarily, with the goal of phasing them out entirely by 2035. If passed, the resolution would be entirely symbolic. In fact, it’s more about sending a message to EV advocates than banning the vehicles altogether. To that point, the final section of SJ4 calls for Wyoming’s Secretary of State to send President Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom copies of the resolution.

“One might even say tongue-in-cheek, but obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion,” Senator Boner, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told the Cowboy State Daily. “I’m interested in making sure that the solutions that some folks want to the so-called climate crisis are actually practical in real life. I just don’t appreciate when other states try to force technology that isn’t ready,” 

While the resolution has the markings of a political stunt, it does allude to genuine economic anxiety. Wyoming produced 85.43 million barrels of oil in 2021, making it the country’s eighth-largest crude oil producer that year. The state’s Carbon County is also home to one of the largest wind farms in the US. Something that’s not talked about enough when it comes to climate change is how the world transitions to a zero-emissions economy in an equitable way. People in many rural US states are rightfully mistrustful of so-called green technologies because they haven’t benefited from more recent technological shifts as much as their urban counterparts. Take the advent of the internet, for instance. In 2018, Microsoft found that many rural communities don’t have access to broadband internet. That’s something that has contributed to diminishing economic opportunities in those places.

Twitter appears to have deliberately cut off third-party clients from accessing its API. Since Thursday evening, many of the most popular apps you can use to scroll Twitter without going through the company’s own software, including Tweetbot and Twitterrific, have not worked, with no official communication from Twitter. On Sunday, The Information shared messages from Twitter’s internal Slack channels that suggest the company is aware of the outage and likely the cause of it as well.

“Third-party app suspensions are intentional,” reads one message seen by the outlet in a channel the company’s engineers use to triage service disruptions. On Friday morning, one employee on Twitter’s product partnerships team reportedly asked when their team could expect a list of “approved talking points” related to “3party clients revoked access.” Per The Information, a product marketing manager told their co-worker that same morning that the company had “started to work on comms,” but could not offer a timeline for when those would be ready. The Information notes it could not learn the reasoning behind Twitter’s actions.

Twitter did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. It has not operated a communications department since Elon Musk started downsizing the company’s workforce. Musk has also not tweeted about the outage, and the developers of Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Fenix and other third-party clients say they’ve not heard anything from the company. “We’re in the dark just as much as you are,” wrote Paul Haddad, the co-creator of Tweetbot in a recent Mastodon post.

England will ban businesses from selling and offering a variety of single-use plastics, including plates and cutlery, by the end of the year, the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced on Saturday. The government will begin enforcing the legislation in October 2023. In addition to some plastics, the ban will cover single-use trays and certain types of polystyrene cups and food containers but will exempt plates, trays and bowls included with supermarket-ready meals; the government intends to target those through a separate plan that incentives manufacturers to meet higher recycling standards.

According to one estimate cited by the environment ministry, English consumers use about 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery every year, and only about 10 percent of those are recycled. The department said 95 percent of people it consulted before today’s announcement were in favor of a ban. "We have listened to the public and these new single-use plastics bans will continue our vital work to protect the environment for future generations," said Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey.

Per AFP, Scotland and Wales previously passed similar legislation. It’s also worth noting, England already restricts the sale of other single-use items, including straws and cotton swabs. Additionally, the environment ministry is considering measures that would target other “problematic plastic items.” Specifically, the government could also ban wet wipes and tobacco filters or mandate package labeling designed to show consumers how to dispose of those items correctly.

The ban on disposable plates and cutlery is part of a broader push by governments across the world to curb the production and use of single-use plastics. Last March, the United Nations began working on a first-ever global plastic pollution treaty. While the agreement won’t be complete until 2024 at the earliest, it could be among the most significant efforts to curb climate change since the Paris agreement in 2015.

Twitter’s “For You” tab, which debuted on iOS devices earlier this week, has begun rolling out to desktop web browsers. The new interface replaces the “sparkle” icon that previously allowed you to toggle between the platform’s algorithmically generated and reverse chronological feeds.

As The Verge notes, the For You tab is now the default view you see when you first visit Twitter after the update is available on your web browser. That said, the desktop version doesn’t appear to force you to stick with the For You feed like Twitter’s updated iOS app does. When I visited the website on my computer, I switched to the “Following” view and then closed the tab where I was viewing my feed. When I opened a new tab and navigated back to Twitter, the site defaulted to the Following view.

On Friday, Twitter said the new interface would roll out to Android devices “soon.” Twitter introduced a similar feature in 2022, only to abandon the idea days after a chorus of users complained they didn’t want the previously named Home feed imposed on them. However, at the end of last year, Musk tweeted that Twitter would move forward with the change. “Main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between the top, latest, trending and topics that follow," he said at the time. "Twitter search nav already sorta does this after you search."

SoundHound, the company that once said it wanted to challenge Amazon and Google’s dominance in the AI voice market, has reportedly cut about half its workforce. According to Gizmodo, the firm laid off about 200 employees last week as part of a company-wide restructuring. If Gizmodo’s reporting is accurate, the mass layoffs would mark the second staff reduction SoundHound has undertaken in less than a year. In November, the company reportedly laid off 10 percent of its workforce. Before the first round of cuts, SoundHound employed approximately 450 people.

A trio of former employees who spoke to Gizmodo described a “pitiful” severance package contingent on the company raising more money. They claim the package includes no healthcare and only two weeks of severance. The company did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. SoundCloud went public via a special-purpose acquisition company in early 2022. According to data from CrunchBase, the firm has raised more than $300 million to date. SoundHound customers include Pandora, Mercedes-Benz and Snap.

In an email obtained by Gizmodo, SoundHound CEO and co-founder Keyvan Mohajer blamed the layoffs on recent macroeconomic conditions. “When we set course in early 2021 to become publicly listed, high-tech companies like SoundHound were the darlings of the investor community. Companies who could achieve high growth, despite high costs, were seen as engines of a future economy, ” he wrote. “However, as a result of changing economic conditions, including high interest rates, rising inflation, and fears of recession, companies with our profile became much less desirable.” Mohajer reportedly went on to add investors “were concerned” SoundHound did “not have the heart to let go of its people.”

In the last few months, mass layoffs have been a frequent occurrence at many tech companies. At the start of November, Facebook parent Meta cut about 13 percent of its workforce, a move that saw more than 11,000 people lose their jobs. More recently, Amazon expanded the scope of its company-wide layoffs to affect more than 18,000 employees.