Kea parrot missing his upper beak “has rewritten what disability means for behaviorally complex species.” Bruce the kea—a species of alpine parrot native to New Zealand—lost his upper beak in an accident as a young bird. But that hasn’t stopped him from becoming the dominant male in his kea…
How does HEVC implementation really work these days? You don’t notice good video compression—until it’s not there. For years, people have streamed high-resolution video without thinking about the tech behind it. But when companies clash over which hardware, software, and services can use modern codecs like HEVC/H.265, the idea that…
Blue Origin’s reused first stage hit its targets, but New Glenn’s upper stage did not. The third flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn launcher began Sunday with the company’s first successful reflight of an orbital-class booster, but ended with a setback for Jeff Bezos’ flagship rocket, a key…
The laser was used to study the physics of stellar interiors and fusion energy, among other things. If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math, and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you’ll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped…
The sharks might also be the most physiologically vulnerable to warming waters. The evolutionary edge that fueled great white shark dominance for millions of years could soon become its greatest downfall. The ocean’s most iconic predators maintain warmer body temperatures than the surrounding seawater and are paying an increasingly…
Grinex says needed hacking resources “available exclusively to … unfriendly states.” Grinex, a US-sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange registered in Kyrgyzstan, said it’s halting operations after experiencing a $13 million heist carried out by “western special services” hackers. Researchers from TRM, which has confirmed the theft, put the value of stolen…
Is $20,000–$25,000 a sweet spot for secondhand electric cars? We think so. Whether you’re considering an electric vehicle because of gas prices or climate change, there has probably never been a better time to buy a used EV, despite that the Trump administration abolished the used clean vehicle tax…
The two newest Fire Sticks block apps from outside of Amazon’s store. The writing was on the wall, and now it’s on Amazon’s website. Newly released Fire Sticks will not support the sideloading of Android apps or any other software from outside Amazon’s official app store. The proof comes…
Prices for “critical components” are surging because of massive data center investments. The rising costs of RAM and other computing components are pushing up the price of Meta’s Quest VR headsets, which the company says will increase by $50–$100 (about 12–20 percent) starting on April 19. In announcing that…
Blue Origin will soon launch the third flight of its New Glenn rocket, this time with a reused booster. Welcome to Edition 8.37 of the Rocket Report! NASA is still climbing down from the high of the Artemis II mission, the first flight by humans to the Moon since…
