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News Image Early Prime Day Deal: The Apple MacBook Air M2 Is Already 20% off

Save 20% on the 2022 Apple MacBook Air in the lead-up to this October's Prime Day event.

Investing and Stocks Possible ad Read on Gizmodo
News Image Buy Microsoft Office For Windows or Mac Once, Use It Forever – Lowest Price of the Year!

Don't miss, ends this week! Get a lifetime license for Pro for Windows for 84% off or Home & Business for Mac for 68% off at StackSocial.

Business Possible ad Read on Gizmodo
News Image Trump Says He’ll Prosecute Google If He Retakes Power

The former president insists Google is hiding positive news stories about him.

Crime and Courts Read on Gizmodo
AI dominated both YC Demo Day and startup news

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week was a busy one for the startup and VC world, with its fair share of funding news and, of course, the latest edition of YC’s […]

Business Read on TechCrunch
News Image DC Studios’ Lanterns Show Has Reportedly Narrowed Down Its John Stewart Actor

HBO is said to be eyeing either Aaron Pierre or Stephan James to co-star in the upcoming series.

Entertainment Read on Gizmodo
News Image Weather radar showed a strange blue mass in the eye of Hurricane Helene. What was it?

Birds are incredible navigators, capable of traveling thousands of miles each year to the same location. But sometimes even they end up in the wrong place at the wrong time — like inside a hurricane.  Last night, as Hurricane Helene was making landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, radar spotted a mass in the eye of the storm that experts say is likely birds and perhaps also insects.  See this blue blob on radar. These are birds stuck in the eye of Hurricane Helene! pic.twitter.com/traq2BQqWD Helene was a massive storm when it traveled across the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week. Seabirds likely fled the storm’s extreme winds — which reached 140 miles per hour — and ended up in the eye, where it’s calm. Once inside, they essentially got trapped, unable to pierce through the fierce gusts of the eye wall. When the storm dies down, the mass of birds will probably dissipate, Kyle Horton, a researcher at Colorado State University who studies bird migration, told Vox.  Storms like Helene can blow seabirds like petrels, jaegers, and frigatebirds far inland. Exhausted, they end up in unfamiliar habitats where they can’t easily find food. “It’s a challenging situation,” said Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration expert at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “We know that birds do die in these things.”  Indeed, frigate birds — large seabirds with angular wings and a forked tail — were spotted by birders in central Georgia and even Tennessee this Friday as the storm churned inland.  Though remarkable, it’s not uncommon for birds and insects to get trapped inside the eye of tropical cyclones, according to research by Matthew Van Den Broeke, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. Reports dating back to the 19th century — many of which come from ships — have documented this phenomenon, noting in some cases that the air was “filled with thousands of birds and insects.” One report documented an owl inside the storm. In a 2021 study, Van Den Broeke analyzed radar from 33 Atlantic hurricanes that hit the US mainland or Puerto Rico between 2011 and 2020. Each one showed signs of birds and insects inside the eye of the storm. Hurricanes like Helene can also substantially impact fall migration, when several billion birds migrate south ahead of winter. A map of migration from Thursday night, when Helene made landfall, shows that millions of birds were migrating west of the storm in places like Texas and Louisiana, but few if any were moving through Florida. When skies clear after a storm, however, birds resume their migration en masse, Farnsworth said. “After the storm passes, we see these big explosions of birds at night,” he told me.  It’s also worth remembering that birds have evolved with these storms for millennia. They can likely detect a coming hurricane by sensing things like changes in atmospheric pressure and they know how to hunker down when storms arrive, such as by orienting their aerodynamic bodies toward the wind. “They’ve adapted to this, they’ve evolved with it,” Farnsworth said. “Yes, storms are getting more extreme. But birds know how to deal with these things.”

Environment Read on Vox
News Image Pick Up This DeWalt 20V Max Cordless Drill for 45% off and Then Buzz It Twice as You Are Compelled To

Get a DeWalt 20V Max cordless drill for a solid 45% off. Act fast for Early Prime Day!

Politics Possible ad Read on Gizmodo
News Image Chat Podcasts Rule the Market—and Always Will

“That appointment—that relationship—is everything,” says audio executive Eric Eddings. But that doesn't mean the industry isn't innovating.

Entertainment Read on WIRED Culture
News Image This robot arm can detach its hand to grab things

Researchers from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed an articulated hand that can extend the reach of a robotic arm by detaching and crawling away on its own to grab things. The research was recently presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and was spotted by IEEE Spectrum magazine. Due to their strength and speed, robotic arms are typically permanently attached to floors or other structures for added stability, which limits their reach. The goal of the research, conducted at the EPFL’s Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), was to develop a bimodal robotic hand with expanded grasping capabilities, including occasional independence from the robot...

Politics Read on The Verge Science
News Image Europe’s space agency will destroy a brand-new satellite in 2027 just to see what happens

The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to launch a satellite into Earth’s orbit in 2027 to watch it get wrecked as it reenters the atmosphere. The project is intended to help understand how exactly satellites break apart so that scientists can learn how to prevent the creation of more space debris. Space junk is becoming a bigger problem as we send more satellites into orbit, but there are efforts to try and address it. This mission is part of the ESA’s Zero Debris Charter initiative to stop the creation of additional space debris by 2030. The mission is called the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (DRACO), and the insides of the satellite will collect data as the craft gets destroyed during reentry into the atmosphere. It...

Environment Read on The Verge Science
News Image “Not a good look”: Google’s ad tech monopoly defense widely criticized

Enlarge Google wound down its defense in the US Department of Justice's ad tech monopoly trial this week, following a week of testimony from witnesses that experts said seemed to lack credibility. The tech giant started its defense by showing a widely mocked chart that Google executive Scott Sheffer called a "spaghetti football," supposedly showing a fluid industry thriving thanks to Google's ad tech platform but mostly just "confusing" everyone and possibly even helping to debunk its case, Open Markets Institute policy analyst Karina Montoya reported. https://t.co/XnAv3yRLnn pic.twitter.com/gOhEAuPw6u "The effect of this image might have backfired as it also made it evident that Google is ubiquitous in digital advertising," Montoya reported. "During DOJ’s cross-examination, the spaghetti football was untangled to show only the ad tech products used specifically by publishers and advertisers on the open web."

Business Read on Ars Technica
News Image Nintendo’s shiny new museum needs more dirt

The Nintendo Museum in Kyoto is a slick and playful trek through the company’s century-long history. But it’s lacking much in the way of revelations.

Politics Read on The Verge
Dutch authorities take down 2 crypto exchanges, seize €7 mil. in money laundering bust

The Dutch authorities took down two major cryptocurrency exchanges, pm2btc and Cryptex, and seized 7 million euros worth of cryptocurrency in a money laundering investigation that “ran pa

Crime and Courts Read on NL Times
News Image Study: Cats in little crocheted hats shed light on feline chronic pain

“When you spend more time putting electrodes back on than you do actually recording the EEGs, you get creative." experiments. That's what researchers at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, did to learn more about assessing chronic pain in cats—and they succeeded. According to their recent paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, it's the first time scientists have recorded the electrical activity in the brains of conscious cats. According to the authors, one-quarter of adult cats suffer from osteoarthritis and chronic pain that worsens with age. There are currently limited treatment options, namely, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which can have significant side effects for the cats. An injectable monoclonal antibody tailored for cats has recently been developed to neutralize excessive nerve growth factor, but other alternative treatment options like supplements and regenerative medicine have yet to be tested. Nor has the effectiveness of certain smells or lighting in altering pain perception in felines been tested. That was the Montreal team's primary objective for their experiments. Initially, they tried to place electrodes on the heads of 11 awake adult cats with osteoarthritis, but the cats kept shaking off the electrodes.

Health Read on Ars Technica
U.S. charges Joker's Stash and Rescator money launderers

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced charges against two Russian nationals for operating billion-dollar money laundering services for cybercriminals, including ransomware groups....

Crime and Courts Read on Bleeping Computer
News Image Vikings Sailed to The Ends of Earth to Search For Ivory, DNA Suggests

A crucial moment in the history of our species.

Environment Read on ScienceAlert
News Image Robert Aramayo Talks Elrond’s Surprise Big Moment on Rings of Power

All eyes turned to the future ruler of Rivendell on Rings of Power—both on the battlefield and in a surprising personal moment.

Entertainment Read on Gizmodo
News Image Scientists Figured Out How to Recycle Plastic by Vaporizing It

A new technique could prevent tons of waste in the future—if it can scale.

Environment Read on WIRED Science
US government charges three Iranian hackers with Trump campaign hack

Three Iranian hackers working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted the Trump campaign in an attempted hack-and-leak operation, according to the Department of Justice.

Crime and Courts Read on TechCrunch
Iranian hackers charged with hacking Trump campaign to ‘stoke discord’

Three Iranian hackers working for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted the Trump campaign in an attempted hack-and-leak operation, according to the Department of Justice.

Crime and Courts Read on TechCrunch