Effective altruism effectively self-serving. “realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me” A brutal little parody of how effective altruism can slide into longtermism, where made up futures start to outweigh living […]
Announcing the first microbe for Mars. “So, we engineered an organism that lets you build a city over 4 years by landing just one rocket on Mars.” Pioneer Labs’s PL.001 is an engineered bacteria that turns Martian dirt, water, and […]
Whiskers for drones. “Our entire tactile perception pipeline runs onboard using just 34 kilobytes of memory, allowing a tiny drone to sense and respond to its environment in real time.” Delft researchers built a <100g drone that navigates in darkness, […]
Counterfeit labels slipped through USPS every day. “Postal Service tracking data showing 97% of counterfeit labels were still processed for delivery from October 2023 through February 2026.” USPS lost an estimated $3.1B in two years, and the crackdown also “mistakenly […]
Wellness day party. “It is partly to ‘rage bait the millennials,’ he added with a laugh.” Gen Z’s “wellness darty” trend swaps keggers for noon workouts, cold plunges, and energy drink shotgunning, and the intergenerational discourse is half the spectacle. […]
The age of wonders and terrors. “The test is this: if we took the news of these past few weeks and sent it back in time twenty years, would I agree that it looked like the beginning of an AI […]
Skincare without guessing. “Everyone owns skincare products, but nobody knows what’s actually working.” Maryanne Alhallak is launching Lumoscope, “a multispectral camera that clips onto your phone and scans your skin at home with the same light used in clinics,” then […]
Apple’s new acquisition makes ‘breakthrough sensing technology’. Sonera says it “non-invasively measures magnetic fields” generated by the brain and body. Use cases could include: “advanced prosthetics control, continuous monitoring of neuromuscular conditions, discovery of disease biomarkers, and sport performance tracking.” […]
AIs will hack everything. “Vulnerabilities are called loopholes, exploits are called tax avoidance strategies, and black hats are called accountants.” Bruce Schneier maps classic hacking onto the tax code, markets, and even democracy, then warns that AI will find exploits […]
Someone hacked the FBI. “A sample of 5,000 alleged agents seen by 404 Media includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and details on FBI employees’ spouses.” I think this reinforces my default assumption that all of our data is effectively public, […]