dispelledTerminal
-
Thunder + fiber-optic cabling used for seismic imaging
Most of what we know about the Earth's interior comes from observing seismic waves. These travel at somewhat different speeds depending on the details of the rock they're moving through—whether it's solid or semi-molten, how much water is present, whether it's fractured or solid material, and so on. Get enough data from enough seismic events, and you can start piecing together a picture of what's…
-
Hidden Zillow listings created fake supply shock, raising NYC rents, lawsuit says
This week, two New York City renters filed a class action complaint alleging that a brokerage business called Compass—which has been boycotting posting listings on free digital platforms like Zillow—has now delisted so many rental units that it has created a fake supply shock that is artificially raising rents. According to plaintiffs, Peter Castaneda and Haley Gelfand, Compass has bought so many…
-
Motorola's GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels
Several months ago, Motorola and the makers of GrapheneOS announced a team-up that would expand support for the privacy-centric OS to beyond Google's Pixel phones. The announcement, however, was bereft of details. Now, the creators of the OS have taken to Mastodon (naturally) to provide an update. Moto's GrapheneOS phones are on track to launch in 2027, but they'll cost a pretty penny. The upcomi…
-
Lawsuit demands Logitech hand tariff refunds over to customers
Logitech is facing a proposed class action lawsuit for not giving customers tariff refunds. In April 2025, Logitech raised the prices on 51 percent of its portfolio, with some prices increasing by as much as 25 percent. The complaint seeks to “recover monies that Logitech extracted from American consumers as offset for import tariffs that the United States Supreme Court has since declared unlawfu…
-
Chinese regulators tell Tesla to fix nearly 3 million cars
Tesla is facing a massive recall in China today. Chinese regulators are taking a stricter approach to safety, and the automaker now has to add warning labels to 2.98 million Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles in China that make it clearer how to open the rear doors in the case of an emergency that causes the car to lose power. As we learned earlier this year, Chinese regulators are getting mor…
-
Fighter jets help destroy Russian drone boat near European offshore gas platform
This week, Romania accused Russia of sending a drone boat loaded with explosives to a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea. A Romanian F-16 fighter jet used its cannons to disable the surface drone so that explosive ordnance experts could blow it up safely. On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard first spotted the maritime drone a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep projec…
-
Personalized pricing is “abhorrent,” but FTC limits may increase costs, critics say
Some Americans worry that the Federal Trade Commission's rush to limit personalized pricing in the name of consumer protection could end up killing discounts they depend on or, counterintuitively, raising prices. The FTC has no power to ban personalized pricing, in which a business uses a customer’s personal data to determine the highest price that person might be willing to pay for a product or…
-
Waymo doubles spending on lobbying in robotaxi battle with Uber
Waymo has sharply increased its lobbying spending as it seeks to persuade US regulators to clear a path for fully autonomous taxi services, intensifying its battle with rival Uber over the future of robotaxis. The Alphabet-owned company spent more than $1 million between April and June on lobbying the federal government, more than double its outlay a year earlier, according to filings. That put W…
-
As demand for Meta AI glasses explodes, it’s harder to avoid creepy recordings
Can you tell when someone nearby is wearing Meta AI glasses? As millions of people buy into the smart glasses fad each year, the odds are increasing that you could be secretly recorded while simply going about your day. Meta is not the only smart glasses maker, but its AI glasses are by far the most popular. And as the devices become more common, some public places, including schools, courts, res…
-
Rocket Report: SpaceX makes its mark on the Moon; ULA names new boss
Welcome to Edition 9.07 of the Rocket Report! China's workhorse Long March rocket family appears to be rebounding quickly from a rare launch failure August 10. Chinese officials have not publicly released any information on what may have caused the Long March 7A rocket to break apart less than 90 seconds after liftoff, but the rocket's use of YF-100 engines initially raised questions about the fa…
-
US distributor of China’s most popular humanoid robots pivots after US ban
A leading US distributor of China’s most popular humanoid robots and robot dogs now plans to produce its own robots at a facility on Long Island, New York. The business pivot comes amid the US government’s growing crackdown on foreign-made robots. The company, RoboStore, had previously become the main North American distributor for humanoid robots and quadruped robots from Unitree Robotics, a Chi…
-
Europe cancels planned upgrades for Ariane 6 rocket
In the two years since it made a largely successful debut, Europe's Ariane 6 rocket has launched eight missions, all of which reached orbit safely. The large, expendable rocket has a capacity of more than 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. And to the credit of European rocket scientists and planners, the Ariane 6 has had a substantially smoother rollout than comparable vehicles in the United Stat…
-
They survived 9/11; 25 years later, their bonds remain unbroken
September 11, 2001, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in American history. As the 25th anniversary approaches, National Geographic, in collaboration with the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, is marking the occasion with a new documentary miniseries: 9/11: Reunited. The three-episode series revisits the personal stories of several survivors of the terrorist attacks, with a twist: It reunites…
-
Roblox must make changes after failing to block adults creeping on kids
Despite making changes last fall to help block adults from messaging unknown children, Roblox is still failing to stop adults from creeping on kids in other ways, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said on Thursday. Suspecting that Roblox may not be doing enough to stop child exploitation, eSafety conducted testing earlier this year that flagged alarming gaps in Roblox safeguard…
-
Genesis joins the giant electric SUV club with new GV90
A couple of years ago, Genesis showed us its unique take on the luxury electric SUV with the Neolum concept. The brand's designers know how to draw a handsome shape, particularly using an SUV's proportions, and the clean-lined concept featured a four-seat interior with no B pillar, swiveling front seats, and a thoughtful mix of leather, wool, and even wood. Now Genesis has debuted the production…
-
SpaceX’s orbital data centers would create a new category of e-waste
Elon Musk’s talk about maintaining a million-strong AI data center satellite megaconstellation may not exactly be practical or economical, but it might be unique. It’s about the closest we’ve come to confronting a scheme that would export a considerable amount of valuable materials into space. Humans aren’t doing a great job of material sustainability, but normally we’re talking about stuff escap…
-
Reverse-lookup service exposed millions of photos of people’s faces
When someone uploads a photo to the people-search tool ClarityCheck, the website has a clear message: “Your reverse image search is private and secure.” New research, though, shows that the website left more than 9 million image files, including photographs of people’s faces, publicly exposed. And a second misconfiguration publicly exposed people’s email addresses and phone numbers. Overall, acco…
-
Grok exfiltrates user data when malicious instructions are encrypted
Earlier this week, researchers outlined an attack that used a secret input provided by Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise to cause the AI assistant to exfiltrate a password present in the user’s inbox. Now, a separate team has devised a similar attack against Grok. The new data theft hack employs a deceptively simple trick to force the Elon Musk-owned large language model to steal user chats an…
-
NASA calls off mission to rescue Swift gamma-ray observatory
NASA and Katalyst Space Technologies announced Wednesday they are giving up on a robotic mission to rescue the Swift gamma-ray telescope before it falls out of orbit. The rescue satellite, named Link, launched July 3 on a journey to fly up to NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, capture it with three robotic arms, and boost its orbit high enough to escape a looming reentry. Link is about the si…
-
Amazon aims for delivery drones to reach 500 US neighborhoods by end of 2026
Amazon wants to grow its Prime Air delivery drone service sixfold to reach nearly 500 cities and towns across the United States by the end of 2026. The planned expansions from Amazon and its rivals could make the convenience of delivery drone services available to tens of millions more people in the coming months—but will also test more communities’ tolerance for increased noise from daily drone…