Featuring the latest in daily science news, Verge Science is all you need to keep track of what’s going on in health, the environment, and your whole world. Through our articles, we keep a close eye on the overlap between science and technology news — so you’re more informed.
Kevin O’Leary wants to cover 40,000 acres. Residents say, ‘Not in my backyard.’
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) announced the Energy Cost Fairness and Reliability Act, which would put new requirements on “energy-intensive facilities,” in an effort to lower the strain on the energy grid. It doesn’t yet have co-sponsors, but hits on an issue that’s become central to many communities and elections.
Turns out one of Trump’s top infectious disease officials is a former penile implant specialist, which is odd considering some of the administration’s other policy positions.
Ada:
I’m surprised that a Trump official has such an interest in gender affirming care.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Single-use vapes were banned last year, but that hasn’t stopped the deluge. Six million vapes and vape pods are being thrown out there every week, and the sheer volume is proving impossible to keep up with. Plus, the lithium-ion batteries inside are causing fires. According to The Guardian:
Recycling them is not simple. Each bucket holds between 40 and 50 devices, and over the course of a shift, she gets through about half a bucket. Using a hammer, she has to smash each vape open, pry out the batteries and separate each component into a different container.
Sometimes the entire story about Trump and RFK’s attitudes towards public health is right there in the headline. CNN reports:
Before he joined the Trump administration last year, [Dr. Brian] Christine was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants […] He’s said the Covid pandemic led to a wider government plot to control people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and suggested the Covid vaccine had little effect in stopping the pandemic.
Oh, and of course, “he once hosted a YouTube show called ‘Erection Connection,’ a professional YouTube series on erectile dysfunction for fellow urologists.”
Personalized health is the holy grail, but there’s a long way to go before algorithms can factor in chronic conditions.
Journal editors and peer reviewers are being flooded with AI-generated papers that are almost impossible to detect.
President and COO Gwynne Shotwell took to X to comment on yesterday’s vague commitment by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to plug the long-standing gaps in rural US coverage, as frustrated residents adopt solutions from Starlink, Amazon, and AST SpaceMobile:
Weeeelllll, I guess @Starlink Mobile is doing something right! It’s David and Goliath (X3) all over again — I’m bettin’ on David :)
Although Shotwell’s SpaceX is hardly the underdog with over 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and the only company with a fleet of proven relaunch vehicles.
And the jobs they promise don’t really exist.
Last year, EchoStar agreed to offload 65Mhz of its spectrum to SpaceX for its direct-to-cell service, while AT&T snapped up 50Mhz of its spectrum to build out its 5G network. Now it’s official, with the FCC noting that SpaceX will be able to use its spectrum for “terrestrial, space-based, and hybrid network architectures.”
[The Wall Street Journal]
Calbee, the Japanese snack company, is temporarily switching its packaging on some items to grayscale, citing “supply instability affecting certain raw materials amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East.” CNN reports that it wasn’t clear what component was at risk — but it’s just the latest industry to feel the pinch as a result of the US and Israel attacking Iran in February.
The Trump Administration has made another website, this time a dedicated Pentagon page with “new, never-before-seen files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
There’s definitely plenty of darkness, shadow effects, and PDFs with all kinds of stamps — let us know if you find anything interesting this time.
Following its acquisition by Elon’s other company, xAI is now being referred to as SpaceXAI. Presumably this is only the start of the brand synergy to come.
tuff_ghost:
Excited for X to become SpaceX X by XAi
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
In Wednesday’s annoucement of its compute partnership with Anthropic, the company formerly known as xAI referred to itself as “SpaceXAI.” It was the first time I had seen that name, and while I don’t think it’s a good one, it made some sense following SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI.
According to Elon Musk, “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX.”
That’s according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Similar numbers of both Republicans and Democrats also cite data centers, which are quickly becoming a bipartisan issue, as a major reason for higher costs.
[Pew Research Center]
Shepard’s historic spaceflight helped set the stage for future launches — culminating in the Artemis II mission this year.
The $140 million funding round, led by Thiel, values Panthalassa at nearly $1 billion, according to the Financial Times. Data centers in space, data centers in the ocean… where won’t they try to put data centers?
[Financial Times]
App analytics firm Kochava and its subsidiary, Collective Data Solutions, will be prohibited from “selling, licensing, transferring, sharing or disclosing” sensitive location data without express consent from consumers. The ban settles the FTC’s lawsuit alleging that Kochava sold sensitive geolocation details that could track people seeking or performing abortions.
It told my spouse to drink alcohol nightly and wants us to battle for sleep supremacy.
Instead, President Trump said he’s nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general. While Saphier doesn’t appear to be running the wellness grifter playbook and does, in fact, have a current medical license, she’s also a Fox News commentator with a MAHA-derate stance on vaccines. When will my suffering end?
That’s the finding of a new study from researchers at the University of Oxford, published in Nature today. The researchers found AI chatbots trained to be warmer were significantly more likely to make factual errors and agree with false beliefs than the originals. Cold models didn’t experience the same drop in accuracy.
That’s the title of a paper that 404 Media reports was recently published by Alexander Lerchner, a Senior Staff Scientist at Google DeepMind. Regardless of grand pronouncements from folks, including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, about AGI’s potential, the paper states that “phenomenal consciousness” is a physical state, and “not a software artifact that can be accidentally or deliberately created.”
After 404 reached out for comment, the DeepMind letterhead was removed, and a disclaimer about it representing the author’s “personal views” was moved to the top.
To encourage breaks that focus on carbs instead of doomscrolling and texting, KitKat in Panama created a limited edition Faraday cage wrapper for your phone that blocks cell signals. The wrapper is made from layers of copper, polyester, and polypropylene and is expected to work for about a year at which point you can recycle it.
Meta announced a new deal this morning with Overview Energy, a space-based solar company with plans to demo beaming “energy wirelessly from space to a solar farm on Earth” in 2028, ahead of commercial delivery in 2030.
Its satellites sit in geosynchronous orbit roughly 22,000 miles above Earth’s equator, where sunlight is constant, collecting energy in space and beaming it to Earth-based solar facilities on the ground as low-intensity, near-infrared light. This means solar farms that currently sit idle at night can keep producing electricity around the clock, maximizing their output and creating more energy for the grid.
Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t seem to know what a peptide is, which might not entirely surprise you.
Electric Mayhem:
Color me shocked that the person who puts lemon juice in their alkaline water might not have an intuitive grasp of biology.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Sure seems like the Goop founder is just repeating wellness buzzwords.
Launch, Ascent, and Vehicle Aerodynamics (LAVA) is the tool NASA uses to model reentry, aerodynamics, and fluid dynamics for Mars landers and the SLS (Space Launch System) that launched Artemis II. And now it’s available for researchers and commercial aerospace companies, even those without a supercomputer:
Aerospace engineers rely on “scale-resolving simulations” to capture high-fidelity renderings of phenomena that can have profound effects on missions, including pressure waves, turbulent swirls, and acoustic signatures. Those were once resource- and time-consuming. Now, LAVA runs them on modest computing resources, making them readily available and easy to produce, even for novice users.
That’s listed among SpaceX’s “substantial capital expenditures” in the S-1 registration filed ahead of its IPO, reports Reuters.
The space / AI / social network company is working with Intel to build its “Terafab” chip plant that Musk said could rely on a new 14A chip manufacturing process.
