Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

Meals can include classic Midwestern meats and twos, but also barramundi filets topped with a “Niçoise” olive topping, Caribbean-spiced chicken thighs, and the occasional premium-priced filet mignon with truffle butter. More than half of meals contain 30 grams or more of protein, and more than half are no-gluten-added, usually with rice or potato sides. (Though take note that Factor is not prepared in a fully gluten-free facility.)In the past couple years, Factor has also branched out to add more fresh ingredients and even baked goods. There are calzones now. Flatbread pizzas. Mixable salads and warmable soups, each available as a…

StepFun has released Step 5 Preview, its new flagship model for agentic work. The target workloads are software engineering, professional knowledge work, and finance. The main pitch is cost. StepFun team states the model delivers comparable intelligence at a substantially lower task cost. That is the ‘Pareto frontier’ framing in the launch title. Is it deployable? Yes, as a hosted API and on the StepFun platform. Self-hosting waits for open weights. StepFun says open weights land on October 15, 2026. By simple arithmetic, 600B parameters need about 1.2 TB in BF16, before KV cache. Plan…

Threat actors are leveraging ClickFix-like lures to deliver a previously undocumented remote access trojan (RAT) called ChainScript. “ChainScript has appeared under multiple build names, including ComponentTask33, UpdateDigital, HostShared, and OrchidViolet66, while presenting itself as Spotify, Zoom Workplace, and Microsoft Teams software,” Blackpoint Adversary Pursuit Group (APG) researchers Sam Decker, Andi Ursry, and Nevan Beal said. Like many malware families observed in recent months, ChainScript employs an EtherHiding-style command-and-control (C2) discovery technique that makes use of a Polygon smart contract to locate its active WebSocket infrastructure. ChainScript is a full-featured RAT that provides extensive remote access to the operator, including interactive…

Crypto markets are demonstrating robust resilience to start the week, with bitcoin approaching the $84,000 threshold, for the time being at least shrugging off the immediate hawkish sentiment from last week’s Federal Reserve rate hike, which pushed the benchmark target to 4.00%.The macro calendar centers on midweek U.S. jobless claims and housing and durable goods figures. Meanwhile, cross-asset markets continue to digest the policy path following recent rate decisions from the Bank of Japan and Bank of England. On the market structure front, attention centers on the SEC opening its tokenized securities pilot framework.What to Watch(All times ET)CryptoSept. 22: The…

At some point between the tiny world of particles and atoms and the much larger world we experience every day, quantum behavior appears to fade away. Quantum mechanics allows particles to exist in combinations of possible states, a phenomenon known as superposition. That strange feature inspired Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment involving a cat that is both alive and dead until it is observed. Yet objects in the everyday world do not behave that way. Physicists call the loss of these distinctly quantum effects decoherence. Exactly why decoherence happens, and whether gravity plays a role, remains one of the major open…

Low-emission uncrewed aviation specialist Flylogix has crossed an international maritime boundary to survey an oil platform for methane emissions, marking the UK’s first civilian cross-border offshore drone operation. Statfjord B; Credit: Equinor A Flylogix uncrewed aircraft has surveyed Equinor’s Statfjord B platform for methane emissions during a 4-hour, 50-minute round trip, covering 290 nautical miles from its UK base into Norwegian waters and back, testing a low-emission surveillance model designed to scale across multi-jurisdictional energy basins. Sindre T Johnsen, Polaris ACC, Avinor ANS – the state-owned provider responsible for safe and efficient air traffic control in Norwegian airspace – said: “The…

Every time a public figure in entertainment speaks up about politics in a way deemed “controversial”, it is as if it’s the first time that has ever happened. The outrage is fresh; critics rediscover and announce, as if they have just captured an elusive, profound notion, that art should be separate from politics. A form of disciplining is dispensed. Please, Mr or Miss Moneybags, with your preening notions that you have anything intelligent or informed to say about immigration policy or Palestine. Stick to football. Stick to pop music. Stick to acting. Stick to children’s shows.Even at a time when…

PRESS REVIEW – Monday, September 21: The Independent’s climate 100 list for 2026 is out, featuring names like Pope Leo and Sir David Attenborough. Climate change is having an undeniable effect on animals across the world, some of which are seeking human help. And finally: are people’s dating patterns shifting? The Independent has published its 2026 list of the world’s leading environmentalists. It’s a list celebrating the “campaigners, change makers and innovators who are making a positive and significant difference to turn the tide on the climate crisis”. It includes names like Erin Brockovich, Pope Leo and Sir David Attenborough.  Speaking…

Ed Davey rejects claims party is ‘sleepwalking into irrelevance’ under his leadershipGood morning. Ed Davey became Lib Dem leader in 2020, which means he is technically the longest-serving leader of a national party in the UK. (“Technically” because, while Nigel Farage only became leader of Reform UK in his current incumbency in 2024, he had led it before when it was called the Brexit party and, if you include Ukip, he has been leader of the anti-migrant, anti-EU right in British politics for more than 20 years.) After six years in charge, it is inevitable that some Lib Dems are…

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! One of the stickier problems for autonomous vehicle developers, regulators, and the public is determining when self-driving technology is safe enough for the road. So far, that question has largely fallen to industry to answer — companies that are applying their autonomous vehicle technology to self-driving trucks, robotaxis, and maybe someday personally owned passenger vehicles.  Today, there is no standardized…