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"Elon Musk complains about China's ban on X."

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Russ Roberts (https://hawaiisciencejournal.blogspot.com).

 ARS Technica

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Elon Musk complains about China’s ban on X

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Elon Musk has objected to a lack of reciprocity in the US-China tech relationship, a rare criticism from the billionaire on issues sensitive to Beijing after US president-elect Donald Trump prepared to offer a reprieve to TikTok on a ban in the US. Musk, who has long sought to maintain close ties with Communist party officials in China, a core market and production centre for his electric-car com

Sleeping pills stop the brain’s system for cleaning out waste

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Our bodies rely on their lymphatic system to drain excessive fluids and remove waste from tissues, feeding those back into the blood stream. It’s a complex yet efficient cleaning mechanism that works in every organ except the brain. “When cells are active, they produce waste metabolites, and this also happens in the brain. Since there are no lymphatic vessels in the brain, the question was what w

Edge of Mars’ great dichotomy eroded back by hundreds of kilometers

Ars Technica - All content / 1h

For decades, we have been imaging the surface of Mars with ever-finer resolution, cataloging a huge range of features on its surface, studying their composition, and, in a few cases, dispatching rovers to make on-the-ground readings. But a catalog of what's present on Mars doesn't give us answers to what's often the key question: how did a given feature get there? In fact, even with all the data

Today

Report: Apple Mail is getting automatic categories on iPadOS and macOS

Apple Mail app redesign arrives April

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Ars Technica - All content / 1h

A report from Mark Gurman in Bloomberg makes the very reasonable suggestion that automatic email categorization in Apple Mail, already present since iOS 18 arrived on the iPhone , is coming to Macs and iPads in a few months. The feature should arrive with macOS 15.4 and possibly iPadOS 18.4, both due in April. Similar to Google's server-side Gmail sorting, which debuted in May 2013 , Apple's Mail

DC-area veterinarians on heightened alert amid potential inauguration risks

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Veterinarians in the Washington, DC region have been put on alert for any unusual illnesses in their non-human patients amid today's presidential inauguration—a nod to the significance of potential zoonotic bioterror threats. In a recent letter to Virginia veterinarians, the state health department requested assistance in the "enhanced surveillance," while noting that, currently, there is no repo

Robotic hand helps pianists overcome “ceiling effect”

Robotic exoskeleton enhances pianist performance

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

Fast and complex multi-finger movements generated by the hand exoskeleton. Credit: Shinichi Furuya When it comes to fine-tuned motor skills like playing the piano, practice, they say, makes perfect. But expert musicians often experience a "ceiling effect," in which their skill level plateaus after extensive training. Passive training using a robotic exoskeleton hand could help pianists overcome t

“Project Mini Rack” wants to make your non-closet-sized rack server a reality

Mini racks revolutionize homelabs

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Ars Technica - All content / 3h

I have one standard rack appliance in my home: a Unifi Dream Machine Pro. It is mounted horizontally in a coat closet, putting it close to my home's fiber input and also incidentally keeping our jackets gently warm. I can fit juuuuuust about one more standard rack-size device in there (maybe a rack-mount UPS?) before I have to choose between outer-wear and overly ambitious networking. Were I star

Peeing is contagious among chimps

Chimpanzees exhibit contagious urination behavior

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Ars Technica - All content / 7h

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go, and if it sometimes seems like the urge to pee seems more pressing when others nearby are letting loose—well, there's now a bit of science to back that up. It turns out that humans may not be the only species to experience "contagious urination," according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. Chimpanzees living at the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan

Life is thriving in the subsurface depths of Earth

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From the flamboyant blossoms and birds of rainforests to the living rainbows of coral reefs, Earth’s surface is teeming with life. But some of its most diverse and fascinating biomes are thriving in the darkness below. We used to think that the subsurface was a far-from-ideal place for living things. Habitats that can soak up light and warmth from the Sun have the energy to sustain many forms of

TikTok is mostly restored after Trump pledges an order and half US ownership

TikTok banned in the US

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Ars Technica - All content / 9h

TikTok disappeared for a portion of the weekend, following a Supreme Court decision that upheld a 2024 federal law requiring the app to cease operations in the US unless it was sold by its Chinese owner, ByteDance. TikTok is gradually resuming service in the US, but it has an unclear road ahead. TikTok started greeting US users late Saturday night with a notice stating that "Sorry, TikTok isn't a

Anthony Fauci granted preemptive pardon in the last hours of Biden’s term

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With just hours left in office, President Joe Biden has issued a preemptive pardon for Anthony Fauci, America's top infectious disease expert. For nearly four decades, Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He advised seven presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan and, among his many accomplishments, played a crucial role in the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic

Jan 18, 2025

Has Trump changed the retirement plans for the country’s largest coal plants?

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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News , a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here . There is renewed talk of a coal power comeback in the United States, inspired by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and forecasts of soaring electricity demand. The evidence so far only shows that some plan

Jan 17, 2025

Under new law, cops bust famous cartoonist for AI-generated child sex abuse images

Darrin Bell arrested for child pornography

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Late last year, California passed a law against the possession or distribution of child sex abuse material (CSAM) that has been generated by AI. The law went into effect on January 1, and Sacramento police announced yesterday that they have already arrested their first suspect—a 49-year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning cartoonist named Darrin Bell. The new law, which you can read here , declares that A

Camera owner asks Canon, skies: Why is it $5/month for webcam software?

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Photography enthusiasts pay a lot for their very powerful cameras. How much more should they pay to put them to much, much easier work as a webcam? However many hundreds of dollars you paid, Canon thinks you should pay $5 per month—or, heck, just $50 per year—to do that. Roman Zipp detailed his journey from incredulousness to grim resignation in a blog post . He bought his Canon PowerShot G5 X Ma

Hollywood mourns the loss of David Lynch

David Lynch dies at 78

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Visionary filmmaker David Lynch —whose work spanned midnight movie staples like Eraserhead (1977), neo-noir psychological thrillers like Mulholland Drive (2001), and beyond— has died at 78. According to Deadline Hollywood , the director had to evacuate his home due to the LA wildfires. He had been diagnosed with severe emphysema a few years ago and rarely left his house due to COVID-19 fears. Fol

GM faces ban on selling driver data that can be used to raise insurance rates

GM banned from selling data

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General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar agreed to a settlement that prohibits them from sharing driver location and behavior data with third parties, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. The proposed settlement comes less than a year after GM responded to public backlash by announcing that it stopped sharing driving data from its connected cars with companies such as LexisNexis. The

Trek FX+ 7S e-bike is a premium city commuter

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Post-pandemic, my creed became "Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise." That belief is why I’ve almost exclusively used a bike to move myself around Portland, Oregon since (yes, I have become a Portlandia stereotype ). However, that lifestyle is a lot more challenging without some pedal assistance. For a few summers, I showed up sweaty to appointments after pedaling on a $200 single-

Switch 2 sports ~7.9-inch screen, 33% bigger tablet surface—Ars video analysis

Nintendo Switch 2 features new Joy-Cons

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Thursday's teaser trailer for the Switch 2 made it abundantly clear that the upcoming console will be quite a bit larger than the original Switch that came before it. But Nintendo is still being coy about the specific dimensions of the Switch 2's expanded tablet and Joy-Cons. Fortunately, the trailer itself features a number of head-on shots of the Switch 2 hardware next to a known quantity—the o

Wegovy and Ozempic top list of 15 drugs up for next price negotiations

Medicare Part D drug prices double

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Blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic top the list of 15 drugs selected for the second round of federal price negotiations, which are scheduled to begin this year, with resulting bargained prices going into effect in 2027. The first round of negotiations , involving 10 high-cost drugs, wrapped up in August, with resulting prices being 38 percent to 79 percent lower than li

iOS 18.3 beta disables news notification summaries after high-stakes errors

Disable Apple Intelligence notification summaries

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Apple released new beta versions of iOS 18.3 to developers and the public yesterday, and one of the changes coming with the new software update will (at least temporarily) disable Apple Intelligence notification summaries for all apps in the App Store's News and Entertainment category, at least temporarily. Apple said earlier this month that it would be instituting updates to how these notificati

A solid electrolyte gives lithium-sulfur batteries ludicrous endurance

Solid electrolytes enhance lithium-sulfur

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Lithium may be the key component in most modern batteries, but it doesn't make up the bulk of the material used in them. Instead, much of the material is in the electrodes, where the lithium gets stored when the battery isn't charging or discharging. So one way to make lighter and more compact lithium-ion batteries is to find electrode materials that can store more lithium. That's one of the reas

TikTok loses Supreme Court fight, prepares to shut down Sunday

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TikTok has lost its Supreme Court appeal in a 9–0 decision and will likely shut down on January 19, a day before Donald Trump's inauguration, unless the app can be sold before the deadline, which TikTok has said is impossible. During the trial last Friday, TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco warned SCOTUS that upholding the Biden administration's divest-or-sell law would likely cause TikTok to “go dark—

European Union orders X to hand over algorithm documents

EU probes X for content violations

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Brussels has ordered Elon Musk to fully disclose recent changes made to recommendations on X, stepping up an investigation into the role of the social media platform in European politics. The expanded probe by the European Commission, announced on Friday, requires X to hand over internal documents regarding its recommendation algorithm. The Commission also issued a “retention order” for all relev

More cancer, less death? New alcohol-risk reviews offer conflicting takeaways

Surgeon General links alcohol to cancer

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Heavy drinking is clearly bad for your health. But it's long been questioned whether moderate drinking is also risky—and, if so, how risky, exactly. Health researchers have consistently found links between alcohol consumption and several types of cancers (namely mouth, throat, colon, rectal, liver, and breast), as well as liver diseases, injuries, and traffic accidents. But nailing down the healt

Rocket Report: Starship experiences a RUD; Blue Origin nails its debut launch

Musk finds Starship explosion entertaining

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Welcome to Edition 7.27 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was an eventful day in super heavy lift launch, with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket having a highly successful debut launch before dawn in Florida, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Then, on Thursday afternoon, an upgraded Starship took flight from South Texas. The first stage performed well, but the Starship upper stage experienced a ra

Fire destroys Starship on its seventh test flight, raining debris from space

SpaceX plans Starship flight tests

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SpaceX launched an upgraded version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas on Thursday, but the flight ended less than nine minutes later after engineers lost contact with the spacecraft. For a few moments, SpaceX officials discussing the launch on the company's live webcast were unsure of the outcome of the test flight. However, within minutes, residents and tourists in the Turks and Ca