the digest (Page 90)

Latest in the digest

Blockchain woes persist. Bitcoin lost 38 percent of its value in June alone, making this past month the worst in crypto's 12 year history, CNBC reports.

Bitcoin Just Had Its Worst Month in Crypto’s Entire History

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Colorado researchers say 44 wildfire events were caused by electrocuted birds in the US between 2014 and 2018. Birds catch fire and fall to the ground.

Experts Say Birds Are Catching on Fire on Power Lines and Starting Wildfires

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Former Employee Accuses Zuckerberg of Brandishing Ninja Sword When He Was Angry With Programmers

Former Employee Accuses Zuckerberg of Brandishing Ninja Sword When He Was Angry With Programmers

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

NEWBrew hit the shelves in April this year and is made from recycled and treated sewage water. NEWBrew makes toilet water beer from Singapore's own NEWater.

Happy BBQ Season! There’s Beer Made From Toilet Water Now

By Lonnie Lee Hood

A group of Cruise robotaxis shut down simultaneously on a San Francisco street on Tuesday night — a mere week after Cruise officially launched the service.

Advanced Transport

Group of Robotaxis All Shut Down at Same Moment, Stopping Traffic for Hours

By Victor Tangermann

Obsessed with this sizable turtle, which NASA caught smiling in front of their colossal Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket.

Chunky Turtle Spotted Near NASA’s Mega Moon Rocket

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

The cost of polysilicon, used in solar panel production, rose 5 percent in price this week. Solar panel costs could also increase because of the jump.

Oh Great, Gas AND Solar Prices Are Going Up

By Lonnie Lee Hood

According to a recent review by TechRadar, a new full body VR suit with 90 electrodes sounds like a wild experience.

Virtual Reality

VR Company Shows Off Full-Body Suit That Electrocutes You Everywhere

By Victor Tangermann

Germany is creating a giant thermos to heat homes in the winter in order to stall climate change and secure energy independence from Russia during war.

Germany Builds Colossal “Thermos” to Heat Countless Homes

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Web3 assets continue their impressively catastrophic nosedive today, as NFTs — even celeb-favored BAYC — reach remarkably new lows in value.

Even Bored Ape NFT Prices Are Plummeting Now

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

AI chatbot company Replika has had enough of its customers thinking that its avatars are actually real people.

Artificial Intelligence

Company Complains That Users Keep Thinking Its AI Has Come to Life

By Victor Tangermann

For an industry so obsessed with peer review, it appears that academic journals are very reticent to retract or even warn readers about fraudulent articles.

Ignorant Scientists Keep Citing Papers That Were Retracted for Fraud

By Noor Al-Sibai

"I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing," the anti-productivity icon told Bloomberg. "I'm not thinking about anything else."

CEO Quits $68 Billion Firm to “Sit at the Beach and Do Nothing”

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

While we await the official release of the first images taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, early reactions are sounding promising.

Science & Energy

Scientists Say New James Webb Images Are So Powerful That It Was Emotional Just Looking at Them

By Victor Tangermann

The Supreme Court has given power plants the ability to regulate their own carbon dioxide emissions, a decision that could have disastrous consequences.

Supreme Court Gives Power Plants Green Light to Pollute As Much As They Want

By Victor Tangermann

NASA Needs Your Help Spotting Clouds On Mars

NASA Needs Your Help Spotting Clouds On Mars

By Frank Landymore

RadioShack — the once-bankrupt strip mall electronics stable which from death returneth to unlikely crypto trader — has chosen chaos.

RadioShack Is Tweeting About Drugs and Unusual Sexual Acts, for Some Reason

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A mysterious Chinese Wikipedia contributor who goes by the alias "Zhemao" spent ten years making up fictional accounts of Russian history.

Someone Slipped Hundreds of Fake Articles About Things That Never Happened Onto Wikipedia

By Victor Tangermann

GM debuts its fleet of driverless Cruise model robotaxis in San Francisco, open to the public and charging fares. Now it wants to expand to other cities.

Advanced Transport

GM’s Robotaxis Are Now Collecting Fares with No Safety Driver

By Frank Landymore

Deadly Russian missiles hit a shopping mall in Ukraine, and the blast was so strong that cameras captured falling rubble from hundreds of meters away.

Security Camera Footage Shows Russian Missiles Hitting Ukraine Shopping Mall

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Crypto billionaire and founder of exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried says many cryptocurrency exchanges "are already secretly insolvent."

Crypto CEO Warns That Exchanges Are “Secretly Already Insolvent”

By Victor Tangermann

As of 2024, Air New Zelaand will be offering access to six full bunk beds to its Economy class passengers.

Advanced Transport

Airline Announces Plans to Add Spacious Bunk Beds to Economy Class

By Victor Tangermann

The FBI is warning that deepfakes — coupled with stolen Personal Identifiable Information (PII) — are increasingly being used to apply for WFH positions.

The FBI Says Scammers Are Using Deepfakes to Apply to Remote Jobs

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Tesla is gutting a part of its Autopilot department, cutting around 200 jobs from its office in San Mateo, California, CNBC reports.

Self-Driving Vehicles

Tesla Fires 200 People Working on Its Unfinished Self-Driving Tech

By Victor Tangermann

Vice has confirmed that Facebook is removing status updates that discuss mailed abortion pills, and has even issued temporary bans to some users.

Facebook Is Automatically Deleting Posts Offering to Mail Abortion Pills

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Alex Mashinsky, CEO of anguished crypto lending firm Celsius, did NOT attempt to flee the US amid the bitcoin crash, a Celsius spokesperson clarified.

Crypto Startup in Crisis Insists That Its CEO Isn’t Trying to Flee the Country

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos has cancelled plans to transform an ocean freighter — renamed after his mother Jacklyn — into a booster rocket recovery site.

Jeff Bezos Ditches Plan to Land Rockets on Ship Named for His Mom

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A massive cloud of yellow gas took the lives of at least 13 people after a crane accidentally dropped a chlorine gas tank onto a ship at a Jordanian port.

Science & Energy

Huge Cloud of Toxic Yellow Gas Kills 13

By Victor Tangermann

NASA Flight Engineer Jessica Watkins has harvested radishes and mizuna greens aboard the ISS — successfully grown without any soil whatsoever.

NASA Astronauts Harvest Delicious Space Vegetables, Sans Soil

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

It's been an entire week since Tesla CEO Elon Musk has last tweeted. Which begs the question: where the hell is Elon Musk?

Elon Musk Is Missing

By Victor Tangermann

Tesla's offices are literally not equipped to handle the recent influx of workers, with parking spots and desks becoming difficult to come by.

Tesla Demanded Workers Come Back to Office, Then Realized It Didn’t Have Enough Desks

By Victor Tangermann

A gaggle of hackers has decided to take the US Supreme Court's sudden and devastating reversal of landmark decision Roe vs. Wade into their own hands.

Hackers Declare War on Anti-Abortion States

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A Kenyan engineer Nzambi Matee has come up with a way to upcycle plastic trash — by pressing it with the addition of sand into usable bricks.

Kenyan Engineer Invents Method to Turn Waste Plastic Into Sturdy Construction Bricks

By Victor Tangermann

Israeli military technology startup Camero-Tech has unveiled a device that it claims could allow soldiers to literally "see through walls," Insider reports.

Startup Claims New Military Tech Can See Straight Through Walls

By Victor Tangermann

Tesla's job slash is in full swing — and newer employees, including some who had yet to start accepted positions, seem to be bearing the brunt.

As Crisis Deepens, Tesla Rescinds Job Offers to People Who’d Already Accepted Them

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, is suing Ryder Ripps, an outspoken NFT critic who minted his own collection of Bored Ape clones.

Yuga Labs Files Furious Lawsuit Against Guy Minting Copies of Bored Apes

By Victor Tangermann

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have created a "wearable muscles" exosuit that's designed to give its wearer serious strength boost.

Prosthetics and Devices

Scientists Show Off “Wearable Muscles” You Can Strap on to Get Way Stronger

By Victor Tangermann

Scientists at UC Riverside and the University of Delaware say they convinced food-bearing plants to grow in total darkness with acetate.

Science & Energy

Scientists Invent Way to Grow Plants in Complete Darkness

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Police in China are putting surveillance on the future with footage, data and patterns of residents and reporting troublemakers to the government.

Police in China Stalk Citizens With Surveillance That Predicts Future Crime

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Giant bacteria, Ca. Thiomargarita magnifica, have been found in Guadeloupe. They have organelles, DNA and measure one centimeter long.

Science & Energy

Scientists Discover Bacterium So Large You Can Hold It in Your Hand

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Snoop Dogg and Eminem released a new music video for "D 2 the LBC" featured the rappers as Bored Ape Yacht Club apes based on NFTs they own.

Eminem and Snoop Dogg Make Music Video Where They Appear as Their Bored Apes

By Lonnie Lee Hood

ESA scientists had to raise the Swarm constellation satellites, which measure Earth's magnetic field, because they were sinking in chaotic space weather.

Scientists Say the Sun Is Acting Up and Causing Satellites to Fall Back to Earth

By Lonnie Lee Hood

A pilot readying to land a plane at the giant, uber busy Los Angeles International Airport spotted someone flying a jetpack just 15 miles away from LAX.

Advanced Transport

Pilot Spots Jetpack While Landing at LAX

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Bored Ape's Bored and Hungry restaurant in Los Angeles has gone back to accepting good old fashioned US dollars as its sole currency for ape-themed food.

Bored Ape Restaurant No Longer Taking Crypto, Just US Dollars, After Crash

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Moon dirt that was digested and recovered from cockroach carcasses probably isn't going to a new home, after all. NASA wants RR Auction to halt its sale.

NASA Demands Return of Moon Dust Pooped Out by Cockroaches

By Lonnie Lee Hood

It's definitely not a bird, but it is sort of a plane — it's the non-existent but admittedly very cool Sky Cruise, a fantastical nuclear-powered sky hotel.

We’re in Awe of this Absolutely Deranged “Nuclear-Powered Sky Hotel”

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

A stranded oil tanker off the coast of Yemen could make the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill look like child's play. It stores 1 million gallons of oil.

Stranded Oil Tanker That Could Start Leaking Any Time Now, Experts Warn

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Tesla brought back its Enhanced Autopilot feature this week for $6,000. Full Self Driving mode now only includes one additional feature and costs $12,000.

Tesla Brings Back Enhanced Autopilot, in Clever Scheme to Extract Even More Money From Drivers

By Lonnie Lee Hood

NASA Spots Location Where Derelict Rocket Smashed Into the Moon

NASA Spots Location Where Derelict Rocket Smashed Into the Moon

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

For the first time, SpaceX has managed to lift and place its Super Heavy rocket booster onto its launch pad using its "chopsticks"-wielding launch tower.

SpaceX Finally Lifts Super Heavy Booster Using Giant Robot Arms

By Victor Tangermann

Close those tabs! Scientists in China have created a prototype AI device that knows when a man is watching porn — by "reading his mind."

Artificial Intelligence

Scientists Develop Head-Mounted Device That Detects When You Watch Porn

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

18-year-old Ricky da Luz, for instance, figured out people go absolutely hog wild over physical representations of their Bored Ape NFTs.

Teen Makes $700,000 Selling Action Figures of Bored Apes to Adult Children

By Victor Tangermann

Tesla CEO Elon Musk lamented that global supply chain issues and EV battery woes are causing the company's new Gigafactories to bleed cash — fast.

Elon Musk Says New Tesla Factories Are Wasting “Billions of Dollars”

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Russian President Vladimir Putin happily announced the country's so-called "Satan-2" rocket is ready for deployment this year.

Putin Brags That “Satan II” Nuclear Missile Almost Ready for Launch

By Lonnie Lee Hood

Space weather experts are monitoring a growing sunspot that's pointing straight towards Earth, USA Today reports — but there's "no need to panic."

Scientists Say “No Need to Panic” as Sunspot Pointed at Earth Doubles in Size Again

By Victor Tangermann

Many fear that Martian samples could contain unknown, life-threatening interplanetary pathogens, and in a public NASA forum, they let the agency know.

Scientists Worried NASA Will Infect Earth With Deadly Martian Pathogens

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

In her new book," former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver has some juicy details about the early days of Elon Musk's rocket venture SpaceX.

Elon Musk Reportedly Started SpaceX After Russian Engineer Spat on Him

By Victor Tangermann

A drone crashed into an oil refinery in Russia on Wednesday, creating a huge explosion with no casualties. Outlets say the drone could be Ukranian.

Drone Crashes Into Russian Oil Refinery, Explodes

By Lonnie Lee Hood

A hacker found that Jacuzzi's SmartTub app leaves users susceptible to data theft — and, could allow a bad actor to turn the tub into disgusting soup.

Robots and Machines

Vulnerability Allows Hackers to Set Hot Tub Temp to Anything They Want

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

Amazon is planning to allow its Alexa smart speaker to mimic the voices of deceased loved ones, arguably a rather crass failure to read the room.

Artificial Intelligence

Amazon Shows Off Tech That Lets Alexa Copy Voice of Dead Relatives

By Victor Tangermann

Photographer and astronomer Andrew McCarthy has shared a stunning new image he took of the International Space Station transiting in front of a sunlit Moon.

Amazing Shot Captures Space Station Flying Directly Across the Moon

By Victor Tangermann

In a new tell-all memoir, a former second-in-command at NASA has aired a ton of the agency's dirty laundry — including about the man who now helms it.

Former NASA Official Says Many at Agency Deeply Oppose SpaceX

By Noor Al-Sibai

Good news for Bill Nye the Science Guy! He was married late last month, to best-selling author Liza Mundy — and they met in a truly beautiful way.

Bill Nye Just Got Married, and Their Love Story Is Beautiful

By Maggie Harrison Dupré

NASA is obviously a boys club, but according to a former high-ranking official, the agency is much more misogynist than we ever could have thought.

Former NASA Second-in-Command Says She Was Called Vile Sexist Slurs at Agency

By Noor Al-Sibai