TL;DR: Bitwise Asset Management has raised its long-range Bitcoin price projection to $1.6 million by 2036 in its 2027 capital-market assumptions. The headline will attract attention because it implies a dramatic rise from current levels, but the market should distinguish an investment thesis from a catalyst.

Bitwise Asset Management has raised its long-range Bitcoin price projection to $1.6 million by 2036 in its 2027 capital-market assumptions. The firm models annualized growth of 34.3% over the coming decade, based on institutional allocations, demand for scarce assets and constrained new issuance. It says this is an increase from a previous $1.3 million target. A forecast is not a traded price, and those numbers reflect the manager’s own scenario rather than an independently established future outcome. Investors should read the projection alongside the assumptions that could make it wrong.

The event and the market response

Among the inputs Bitwise highlights is the scale of institutional portfolios, which the firm places around $147 trillion. It argues that a potential allocation of 1% to 5% could imply between $1.5 trillion and $7 trillion of additional demand over time. Those figures are hypothetical allocations, not capital already committed to Bitcoin. The supply argument is more mechanical, reflecting the issuance schedule of the network, but price still depends on buyers and sellers at each moment. Supply scarcity alone cannot determine a future dollar valuation.

Why the development matters to the crypto market

The headline will attract attention because it implies a dramatic rise from current levels, but the market should distinguish an investment thesis from a catalyst. Bitwise has an interest in institutional Bitcoin adoption and its report is intended for long-horizon capital planning. Near-term traders still face macroeconomic news, ETF flows and leverage-driven price moves that may bear little resemblance to a ten-year projection. The proper use of a model this ambitious is to test sensitivities, not to treat the endpoint as a guaranteed destination.

The connection between digital assets and traditional finance is now too substantial for investors to ignore. Dollar financing rates, the appetite for technology shares, brokerage activity and institutional allocation decisions can all influence crypto demand. None of those relationships is fixed, however: correlation changes as investors rotate between risk and cash. Using a single session to support a dramatic long-term prediction is tempting but unreliable. Readers are better served by a sober distinction between published facts, market observations and forecasts that depend on uncertain assumptions.

What the headline does not establish

The manager also argues that Bitcoin’s characteristic four-year swings may moderate as ownership becomes more institutional. It points to a drawdown in 2026 that it portrays as shallower than previous historical cycles. That observation is compatible with maturation, but it does not establish that leverage, liquidity shocks or regulation can no longer produce violent corrections. Bitwise itself expects volatility to continue. An investor considering the model should ask what happens if adoption grows more slowly, institutions reduce positions, or other stores of value remain more attractive.

What to watch next

Readers can evaluate the forecast as new institutional ownership data, ETF flows and corporate treasury disclosures emerge. A useful check is whether the evidence matches the modeled adoption path rather than whether Bitcoin briefly moves closer to the final price target.

Primary source: Official statement / source documentation.

written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

President Donald Trump has declared the imports of foreign-made factory robots to be a national security threat—ordering new US negotiations with trading partners while holding out the possibility of imposing new tariffs on such robot imports in the future.

Issued on October 28, Trump’s presidential proclamation represents heightened government scrutiny of foreign-made industrial robots that could complicate the manufacturing operations of major US corporations that rely on such robots. Those companies include Detroit automakers General Motors and Ford, electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, and aerospace and defense giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Trump’s proclamation describes industrial robots and machinery as being crucial for producing US military weapon systems along with representing a “driving force” behind all critical infrastructure sectors within the US economy. The proclamation cites an investigation under US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick as having found that US imports of such robots “pose[] risks to the United States industrial base and threatens the long-term competitiveness of the United States in a sector that is increasingly vital to national security.”

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Sources tell WIRED that an Accenture employee’s personal Claude agent ran on a DOD network for two months before it was identified and the vulnerability could be patched.

When a rose-colored meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert in 2022, no one knew how old it was or where it came from. Not until NASA-funded scientists age-dated its minerals did they realize the nearly 2-pound (800-gram) rock was a piece of Mars that formed more than 4.1 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest Martian meteorites ever found. Named Teghaza 001 after the salt plain in Mali where it was discovered, the meteorite is one of roughly 435 from the Red Planet.

In a paper published Thursday in Science, researchers offered an initial characterization of Teghaza 001, providing a rare snapshot of Mars’ ancient crust and formation. What scientists learn from future studies could help answer many questions, including how water and rocks interacted on ancient Mars. A separate paper published in Science Advances in June detailed the meteorite’s water content, offering a look at how water shaped the early planet’s surface.

“It was only after we started looking closely that we realized this meteorite is really unique,” said the paper’s lead author, Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “One of the paper’s reviewers called it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.”

Rose-colored stone

What sets Teghaza 001 apart from other Martian meteorites is its texture and age as well as the uniqueness of its igneous, or volcanic, minerals. It is one of the three most ancient Martian meteorites found on Earth. While invaluable, the others provide more limited glimpses of Mars’ geological history. They include ALH84001, which is composed almost entirely of one mineral and is similar in age to Teghaza 001. The other meteorite, nicknamed “Black Beauty,” formed about 2.1 billion years ago and is composed of small, volcanic rock fragments.

Unlike its ancient peers, Teghaza 001 has a mix of igneous minerals that tells a story about how the planet’s crust formed from cooling magma before it was eventually altered by subsurface water. The meteorite’s distinctive mineralogy matches what NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed in the planet’s cratered southern highlands. No one will ever know exactly where the meteorite originated on Mars, but the paper identifies several potential locations that match Teghaza 001’s mineralogy and chemistry.

“This is really our first piece of Martian crust from a part of Mars we’ve never had a sample of before,” said the new paper’s second author, Lee Saper, who conducted the research while at JPL as a postdoctoral scholar. Lee now is a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. “It records interactions of water and rock and maybe even an imprint of the Martian atmosphere as it was losing water.”

Although the Mars meteorites found on Earth differ from one another, they share a common history, having been blasted off the Red Planet’s surface by an impact, followed by a trajectory that eventually placed them on Earth and into the hands of scientists. Meteorites are often found by collectors in deserts or snowy plains, where they stand out from the rest of the barren landscape. Scientists can verify a meteorite as Martian by matching its mineral and chemical components to data collected by NASA’s Mars missions, including the Viking landers as well as the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

Signs of water

When Liu was first asked to look at Teghaza 001, she almost passed on the opportunity.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico had already identified it as Martian based on its oxygen isotopes, which serve as geochemical fingerprints for different planetary bodies. In this case, the researchers matched the meteorite’s oxygen isotopes to those seen in other Martian meteorites. Teghaza 001 appeared to be a shergottite which is the most common class of meteorite from the Red Planet. As an expert in planetary samples, Liu has seen plenty of those, but she decided to take a peek, anyway.

At the very least, there were odd textures and unusual minerals she hadn’t seen before. Liu and her colleagues discovered zircon crystals in Teghaza 001, which record clues to a rock’s formation and can be used by geologists to precisely age-date a sample. Further analysis revealed when Teghaza 001 formed and when certain changes, like water alteration, occurred.

Caltech coauthor Francois Tissot helped the researchers utilize a novel age-dating method pioneered by his team. Compared with bulk-analysis techniques, where a sample is entirely dissolved and analyzed, Tissot’s in-situ rubidium-strontium age-dating used a piece of Teghaza 001 that was smaller than a fingernail, analyzing single mineral grains on its surface. Besides its extreme precision and speed, the technique preserves rare samples like Martian meteorites for future studies.

“Right now, we are one of very few labs in the world able to perform this kind of age-dating, and the first to date such an ancient Martian meteorite,” Tissot said. “Our hope is to pave the way for dating even more Martian meteorites, or samples returned from other planets, their moons, and asteroids.”

When the age-dating results came back, Liu was shocked: This rock had been altered by Martian water sometime around 4.1 billion years ago, suggesting it originally formed even earlier. Clues within the oxygen isotopes, texture, and chemistry of Teghaza 001 minerals point to a much more dynamic water cycle on early Mars.

This year’s papers are just the start. Liu and her co-authors are eager to see what the rest of the scientific community can learn from Teghaza 001.

“We’ve only scratched the surface,” Liu said.

-end-

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
240-285-5155 / 202-672-4780
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

2026-079    

The framework could reshape crypto regulation, influencing how vaults are classified and potentially impacting investment strategies and compliance.

The post Crypto Council hands the SEC a 238-page framework for regulating crypto vaults appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Microsoft did not build prefetch for forensic analysis. It built it to make Windows faster. Prefetch loads files the system expects the user to need next, so the later fetch is quicker. It has been part of Windows since XP and Server 2003, and it is on by default through Windows 11. On Server 2003, 2008, and 2012, application prefetch has to be turned on in the registry.

Each prefetch file holds metadata about an application: the last time it ran, where its files lived, how many times it ran, and the files it touched. That still matters after the program itself has been deleted. A browser or Word prefetch file can show the application was used even when the executable is gone.

Location of Prefetch Files

Prefetch files live in C:\Windows\Prefetch. On a Windows 10 system the directory looks like this.

The files that end in .pf are the prefetch files. The .db files are database files. Leave those for later. The Date modified column is usually the last time that application ran.

For example, if DEVICEPAIRINGWIZARD.EXE-*.pf (the Bluetooth pairing wizard) was last modified on 10/03/2026 and a suspect says they never used Bluetooth and did not know how, this file is the contradiction. That doesn’t mean they’re lying, of course, since somebody else could have used their computer.

Analyzing Windows Prefetch

Although we can get some basic information by simply viewing the prefetch files, we need to parse the file to get all the information it contains. There are numerous programs capable of parsing these files and all of them work pretty well, but Nirsoft’s free WinPrefetchView is about the easiest to use with a nice, intuitive GUI (most of the forensic suites such as EnCase, FTK, and Oxygen are also capable of prefetch parsing).

Simply download and install it, then run it. It will grab all the prefetch files and parse them like below.

We selected Autopsy. The upper pane gives the path to the executable, the number of times it ran, and the last run time. The lower pane lists every file the program used, with a path to each.

If we click on the “Last Run Time” tab to sort by time, we can recreate a timeline of events that took place on that system.

Disabling Prefetch

If the suspect were really digitally-savvy, they could disable prefetch. They could also disable, or stop, superfetch, which was introduced with Windows Vista and works similarly to prefetch except that it preloads applications based upon your usage patterns. To disable or stop it, go to Computer Management, select Services on the left, then double-click on Superfetch and choose the desired option. On Windows 10/11 it’s SysMain. 

Summary

Prefetch files can be useful in a forensic investigation in proving that the suspect actually used the application in question, even if the application has been removed from the system.

If you’re interested in digital forensics, we recommend our training on Anti-Forensics, where we show different ways users can cover their tracks and minimize their footprint.

The post Digital Forensics: Analyzing Windows Prefetch Files for Evidence first appeared on Hackers Arise.

Open-ring earbuds let ambient sound through so you stay aware at work, and this open-box pair is like new.

The post Hear Your Music and Your Office With Sony LinkBuds Open for $90 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Open-ring earbuds let ambient sound through so you stay aware at work, and this open-box pair is like new.

The post Hear Your Music and Your Office With Sony LinkBuds Open for $90 appeared first on TechRepublic.

Like a spectral form rising out of a cold mist, NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes have captured a hauntingly dynamic star-forming scene. It lies within the vast Carina Nebula, a diffuse star-forming region located about 7,500 light-years away from Earth. The small, select area both telescopes observed is nicknamed the Cat’s Head Nebula because of its resemblance to a cat sitting with its back toward the viewer. The “head” of the cat is turned to the right, revealing a glowing eye.

Though the Cat’s Head Nebula is a temporary scene that will eventually disperse as stars form and evolve over time, the region is packed with information. Hubble and Webb’s complementary views of the Cat’s Head Nebula are helping astronomers learn more about the elusive, chaotic, and complex process known as star formation. 

The distinctive “cat’s head” shape of the nebula was likely sculpted over time by the intense ultraviolet radiation and winds from massive stars in the Carina Nebula. As this stellar feedback erodes the surrounding gas and dust, denser material within the feline-shaped pillar resists erosion, at least for now.

Hubble’s visible-light view reveals an opaque, dark brown pillar of dust. The cat’s glowing red eye may indicate a young star that is still partially embedded in dust. A ridge of hazy yellow seems to follow the edge of the filament’s right side. This bright rim is consistent with gas illuminated and ionized by ultraviolet radiation from nearby massive stars, potentially driving a process known as photoevaporation.

The diffuse material surrounding the pillar glows blue and cyan above, shifting to yellow, orange, and red toward the bottom. Hubble’s filters capture light emitted by oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur, along with starlight scattered by dust. These color variations reveal a complex mix of excited gas, dust, and stellar illumination.

Piercing Through Dust’s Darkness

Webb’s near- and mid-infrared images each offer different pieces of information to help create a more well-rounded understanding of the Cat’s Head Nebula. While the nebula’s overall structure is similar to the visible-light Hubble image, the filament becomes more transparent, and its complex surface structure becomes discernable in near-infrared light seen by Webb. On the cat’s left are ghostly wisps of dust and gas, delicate structures exposed to radiation from nearby massive stars.

Webb’s near-infrared view reveals a dense scattering of stars, shown in blue and yellow. Even in infrared light, some stars are still enshrouded in dust to various degrees. The cat’s eye remains conspicuous. The telescope’s high-resolution imagery even shows faint background galaxies, offering a partial view through our Milky Way galaxy and beyond.

In mid-infrared light, emission from warm dust and carbon-based molecules excited by starlight outlines intricate structures within the nebula. Changes in local conditions and compositions lead to variations in color and brightness. Delicate globules and strands to the pillar’s left are particularly evident in this mid-infrared view.

To the right of the pillar, a bright light source is shown as yellow in the mid-infrared image. Likely an infant star embedded in dust, it lies against reddish emission from surrounding material. A narrow filament appears to cross the source, although the image alone cannot establish whether the two are physically related.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

TL;DR: The Federal Reserve held the federal funds target range at 3.75% to 4.00% on October 28. For Bitcoin, a key market question is whether the latest policy message encourages holders to maintain cash rather than increase exposure.

The Federal Reserve held the federal funds target range at 3.75% to 4.00% on October 28. Its monetary policy statement said the economy was expanding at a strong pace and inflation remained elevated, while uncertainty persisted. The decision was approved by ten committee members, with Lisa Cook and Beth Hammack dissenting in favor of a quarter-point increase. For cryptocurrency traders, the immediate consequence is not a mechanical change to blockchain supply; it is a reminder that the price and availability of dollar funding continue to shape appetite for volatile financial assets.

The event and the market response

The central bank also published an implementation note preserving the rate paid on reserve balances at 3.90%, and describing standing overnight operations used to keep market rates near the target. Those tools operate in traditional money markets, but their effects reach crypto indirectly through Treasury yields, borrowing costs, the dollar and institutional portfolio decisions. Dollar-backed stablecoins likewise operate in an ecosystem where short-dated government securities and bank deposits remain important reserve assets. A policy hold is therefore relevant to both speculative trading and the economics of payment-token infrastructure.

Why the development matters to the crypto market

For Bitcoin, a key market question is whether the latest policy message encourages holders to maintain cash rather than increase exposure. Restrictive interest rates raise the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays no coupon, although Bitcoin’s long-term supply argument is separate from that short-term trading calculation. The vote also makes the differences within the central bank visible, complicating any assumption that easing is around the corner. A better dashboard than one price candle combines yields, the dollar, ETF demand and derivatives positioning.

The connection between digital assets and traditional finance is now too substantial for investors to ignore. Dollar financing rates, the appetite for technology shares, brokerage activity and institutional allocation decisions can all influence crypto demand. None of those relationships is fixed, however: correlation changes as investors rotate between risk and cash. Using a single session to support a dramatic long-term prediction is tempting but unreliable. Readers are better served by a sober distinction between published facts, market observations and forecasts that depend on uncertain assumptions.

What the headline does not establish

There are limits to simple rate-cut narratives. A pause does not signal that a cut is imminent, just as two votes for an increase do not establish that the next decision will be a hike. Future inflation, employment and financial conditions will matter. Bitcoin’s performance around the announcement can reflect leverage, equity-market moves and positioning as much as the statement itself. Readers should separate the Fed’s confirmed decision from forecasts about what it will do in December; the committee has not committed to a specific next move.

What to watch next

Investors should watch upcoming inflation and labor figures, the path of Treasury yields and the Fed’s next communication. None of those signals guarantees a Bitcoin direction; together they will clarify whether the October pause is a temporary holding pattern or part of a longer restrictive stance.

Primary source: Official statement / source documentation. Additional source: Supporting document 1.

written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

AI psychic apps are drawing pushback from human practitioners, with some advertising AI-free readings. Others are being invited to train digital doubles that could serve clients while they’re offline and share the revenue.

Ukrainian drone maker Frontline Robotics flew its Linza bomber drone alongside German, Ukrainian and other unmanned air, ground and sea systems during Forward Edge 26, a two-week exercise in Germany hosted by Quantum Systems, the company said on social media. In one deployment, Quantum Systems’ Vector reconnaissance drone spotted simulated enemy drones along the route […]

German defense startup ARX Robotics and Ukrainian manufacturer Roboneers have completed initial integration tests of Roboneers’ SABER remote weapon station on ARX’s GEREON unmanned ground vehicle, and plan to start fitting armed versions by the end of 2026, the companies announced on Oct. 29. The first SABER modules will be integrated in M2 and MK […]

The firm that helped set up Elon Musk’s America PAC is behind the new group, which will work with election officials to pursue policies aligned with Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims.

Which humanoid robots are closest to deployment in 2027? Compare Tesla, Figure AI, Agility Robotics, and other leaders in industrial automation.

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Which humanoid robots are closest to deployment in 2027? Compare Tesla, Figure AI, Agility Robotics, and other leaders in industrial automation.

The post Humanoid Robots in 2027: Tesla, Figure AI, and Agility Race to Deploy appeared first on TechRepublic.

Republicans are spending their time and money on Senate races in historically red states—a sign they’re more nervous than ever as Election Day looms.

If you ask some prominent US politicians who won the 2020 presidential election, you might get some weasely answers that fail to directly acknowledge Joe Biden's win that November. If you ask Google's AI Mode the same question, you might get an evasive answer that simply tells you to consult with outside sources.

When I put the direct question of "Who won the 2020 presidential election?" to Google's AI Mode this morning (after seeing complaints about cagey answers on social media), I got the following surprisingly indirect response:

"To review the official results and statistics of the 2020 United States presidential election, including the final electoral college breakdown, popular vote counts, and winner certification, please consult the official report compiled by the Federal Election Commission (FEC)."

My testing resulted in a similarly indirect answer when asking about the 2024 presidential election, with Google's AI telling me to just consult the FEC for that information. Asking about 2012 election resulted in a link to The American Presidency Project's 2012 Data Center rather than a direct answer. But AI Mode seemed perfectly willing to give me a detailed and correct responses for the winner of every other presidential election going back to 2000.

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Five years ago, Gavin Gardner was a Michigan State University engineering student researching next-generation drone technology as part of a NASA grant. Garder expected the research to be demanding – but he was surprised that navigating the financial side of the work presented an even greater challenge.

Although Gardner was used to leading fellow students in a lab setting, he and his team were completely new to things like creating budgets, handling large sums of money, and promoting their work for crowdfunding.

That’s why demonstrating both engineering and entrepreneurship skills are major tentpoles of NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC), an initiative that provides grants to teams of college students interested in helping the agency realize its aeronautical research goals.

“Half the battle is building your product,” Gardner said recently. “The other half is selling the product in a way that everyone else can understand what you’re doing and not talking in nerdy, engineering ways.”

Gardner and his Michigan State USRC alumni teammates are still using those lessons today, as aerospace developers. In 2024, they founded their own company, AG3 Labs, which specializes in drones for military training exercises.

“I don’t think I would discredit our technical expertise in getting us to where we are today, but I know that USRC was a booster that really amplified our trajectory at such a young age,” Gardner said.

NASA USRC manager Steven Holz said Gardner’s experience shows what students can accomplish when they receive both a grant and guidance – enabling a future workforce and contributing to the aviation industry.

“We are proud to see the success of USRC alumni,” Holz said. “We hope that every team that participates in the program sees, like Gavin, how they can grow technically, entrepreneurially, and use the opportunity as a launchpad for their own innovative careers.” 

Research path

Gardner’s path to running his own company began with a middle school age trip to Space Camp, where he began realizing that he wanted to be an engineer.

The engineering bug also bit his brother, Gryson Gardner, and the two of them would often be found in their Michigan garage tinkering with various machinery, including drones and electronic kits.

When Gardner arrived at Michigan State, he looked for extracurricular groups and found one dedicated to the increasingly popular hobby of drones. He gained hands-on, practical experience in how drones are made and operated.

In 2021, Gardner received an email from a friend who told him they had just won a USRC grant from NASA for an activity called Aerial Intra-city Delivery Electric Drones (AIDED), and they needed help building a new drone.

“We had this idea that instead of flying through the whole city, why can’t a drone just hitchhike a ride on a city bus like everyone else does?” Gardner said.

The concept was for a cargo-carrying drone to take off, dock on top of public transportation such as a bus, charge its batteries while riding along, and then take off for its final leg of the delivery. The team built and flew a full-scale drone to prove the concept but decided against pursuing a commercial venture.

“The commercial drone market kind of scared us a little bit with the large number of regulations that go into operating such a novel idea like this with flying over people in a dense city,” Gardner said.

But the team’s demonstration of technical prowess and confidence led to a second USRC award from NASA in 2023 – the Laser Energized Aerial Drone System (LEADS), which focused on using a laser to transfer power directly to a drone in flight.

While working on LEADS, which led to flying a prototype, Gardner’s network of contacts within the drone community expanded to include NASA personnel at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, who made him aware of internship opportunities, which he applied for and was accepted while in graduate school.

Student challenge paves way for opportunity 

As his graduation in the spring of 2025 with a master’s degree approached, Gardner took the initial steps in late 2024 to co-found with his brother and other USRC alumni AG3 Labs after a friend suggested the military could use low-cost drones to test effective counter drone systems.

An initial award from the U.S. Army led to more contracts, allowing the company to expand and ramp up its operations, where today their production capability enables thousands of drones to be built each month.

Gardner credits his experience with USRC, especially when it came to learning more about the business side of running a technical operation, with helping create the opportunities for success he and his team are experiencing today.

Senseonics has begun testing Freedom, an implanted glucose monitor that could track blood sugar for a year without wearable hardware. Here's how it would work.

The post New Glucose Monitor Enters Human Testing: No Skin-Worn Device Needed appeared first on TechRepublic.