CDC Finds No Smallpox in Frozen Vials Suspiciously Labeled ‘Smallpox’

Vials of smallpox vaccine sit on a counter before a vaccination December 16, 2002 at Mid-Florida Biologicals in Altamonte Springs, FloridaPhoto: Chris Livingston (Getty Images)Days after a Pennsylvania lab was locked down because a worker discovered vials labeled “smallpox” in a freezer, the CDC says there’s no reason to fear a viral outbreak. Late Thursday…

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MediaTek Aims to Beat Qualcomm With New Flagship Smartphone Chip

Image: MediaTekMediaTek’s smartphone chips typically play second fiddle to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors, but MediaTek just announced its new flagship Dimensity 9000 system-on-chip, and it features a number of notable firsts.The Dimensity 9000 is both the first smartphone chip to be built using TSMC’s new 4nm process and the first chip to feature Arm’s new Cortex-X2…

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S&P Trying to Snag Some of That Snazzy Meme Stock Energy by Mining Twitter

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand (Getty Images)The S&P Dow Jones Indices is monitoring stock Twitter in real-time to see how positively people feel about 200 S&P 500 companies (Tesla) with the top sentiment scores. Today, it launched two Twitter sentiment analysis tools to measure the level of positivity toward companies (or their profit potential) via “$cashtags.” According…

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Robinhood Reveals Hackers Stole ‘Several Thousand’ Phone Numbers

Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP (Getty Images)More than a week after popular investment and trading platform Robinhood revealed that hackers had obtained access to a “limited amount” of its customers’ personal information, the company has now stated that some of the stolen information included thousands of phone numbers.In a Tuesday blog update, Robinhood said that…

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AMC CEO Proudly Declares That the Company Now Accepts Various Cryptocurrencies as Online Payment

Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)AMC, one of the biggest memestocks of them all, is embracing another meme power player: cryptocurrency. And its CEO is really excited about it.CEO Adam Aron proudly tweeted on Friday that the company would now accept a slew of cryptocurrencies for online payment. Prefacing with “drumroll, please,” Aron announced that bitcoin,…

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8 Ways Sabrina’s Archie Comics History Spells Mischief for Riverdale

Sabrina as she appears in Archie’s Madhouse #22.Image: Dan DeCarlo Orlando Busino Bob White Vincent DeCarlo/Archie ComicsIn Riverdale’s upcoming sixth season, the long-running CW Archie adaptation is finally living up to its crossover potential by calling Kiernan Shipka’s Sabrina Spellman in for a little assistance. If you want to know more before the premiere, there’s…

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Todd Howard, Man Who Announced Elder Scrolls VI 3 Years Ago, Wants You to Know the Fallout Show Is Still Happening

They don’t want to set the world on fire, but they might have to to pass the time until the Fallout TV show.Screenshot: BethesdaMaking games is hard. So is making television. But there is something slightly ominous about Bethesda’s Todd Howard explaining why the TV show the studio announced with Amazon last year to bring…

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A New Black Lotus BTS Video Talks About Honoring Blade Runner’s Legacy

Image: Adult Swim/CrunchyrollAlong with its moody lighting and cyberpunk atmosphere, what defines the Blade Runner franchise are its Replicants. These androids have been the inciting incidents of both Ridley Scott’s 1982 original and Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 follow up, Blade Runner 2049. While the two movies are about Replicants, the beings are viewed primarily through the…

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Boeing Wins FCC Approval for Satellite Internet Despite SpaceX’s Best Attempts

This long-exposure image shows a trail of a group of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites passing over Uruguay on Feb. 7, 2021.Photo: Mariana Suarez / AFP (Getty Images)SpaceX’s Starlink will eventually have more competition in the satellite broadband business—and rural Americans will have more providers to choose from. The FCC on Wednesday gave Boeing the go-ahead to…

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Last Action Hero Is an Underappreciated Time Capsule of Meta-Movie-Magic

A crop of the poster for Last Action Hero by Drew StruzanImage: Sony Pictures“Last Action Hero is a joyless, soulless machine of a movie. An $80 million-plus mishmash of fantasy, industry in-jokes, self-referential parody, film-buff gags, and too-big action set-pieces.” That’s what the Hollywood trade Variety wrote in late 1992 just before the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led,…

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Planetary Scientists Recreate Arrakis From Dune, and It Really Is a Hellhole

Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. Image: Warner Bros.By modifying a well-known climate model and applying it to the fictional world of Arrakis, a group of scientists has shown that Frank Herbert’s depiction of a desert planet in the book series Dune was surprisingly apt, though with some surprising differences.Arrakis—Dune—Desert…

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Apple’s Privacy Policy Cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an Estimated $9.85 Billion in Revenue

Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)With its App Tracking Transparency feature launched in April, Apple overhauled its iPhone lineup’s privacy settings to give users more control over their data. The feature has cost Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube an estimated $9.85 billion in lost revenue in the second half of this year, the Financial Times reports.…

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Somehow Adolf Hitler Has Received a Covid Vaccine Passport in the EU

Photo: JOEL SAGET/AFP (Getty Images)The former supreme leader of 1940s Germany would appear to be alive and well, if the European Union’s digital vaccination certificate program is to be believed. Actually, he’s doing better than “well”—he’s been vaccinated for covid-19. Yeah, no, Hitler is still dead—don’t worry. But it would appear that someone has gotten…

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5-Day Brain Stimulation Treatment Highly Effective Against Depression, Stanford Researchers Find

A magnetic resonance imaging machine. MRI scans are used to customize the brain stimulation to the patient.Photo: Alain Jocard/AFP (Getty Images)Stanford researchers think they’ve devised an effective and quick-acting way to treat difficult cases of depression, by improving on an already approved form of brain stimulation. In a new trial published this week, the researchers…

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Relentless ‘Facebook Papers’ Leaks Will Continue Until Morale Improves

In this image from video, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 25, 2021.Photo: House Energy and Commerce Committee (AP)You’ve likely seen the deluge of damning news stories about Facebook everywhere this past week. Those came thanks to Facebook whistleblower Frances…

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T-Mobile Delays Shutdown of Sprint’s 3G Network and Throws Shade at Partners

Photo: John MacDougall / AFP (Getty Images)T-Mobile is delaying its planned January shutdown of Sprint’s legacy 3G network, or CDMA network, because it claims some of its partners “haven’t followed through on their responsibility” to transition their customers to new networks. In a recent passive aggressive news release, spotted by the Verge, T-Mobile said it was…

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The Candy Corn Has Been Hacked

Photo: Wikicommons/Evan AmosJust in time for Halloween, a ransomware gang has targeted Ferrara Candy—the massive confectionary responsible for producing Brach’s well-known candy corn—the most OG of holiday treats. Ferrara, which is based in Chicago, is responsible for 85 percent of the candy corn production in the country during the Halloween season—and reportedly churns out approximately…

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Saudi Arabia Is Building a Tourism Resort Based on an Oil Rig to Try to Make Destroying the Planet Cool

It seems that the world’s largest oil producing countries will stop at nothing to keep drilling, despite the fact that doing so aggravates climate change and its devastating effects. Oil-producing heavyweight Saudi Arabia recently unveiled a new tactic: making oil rigs look cool. The country’s Public Investment Fund, its sovereign wealth fund, has announced a…

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Ransomware Hackers Reportedly Targeted 3 Different U.S. Water Facilities This Year Alone

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Ransomware gangs targeted multiple water facilities in the U.S. this year, a new government report claims. The news represents a frightening escalation in cybercrime—showing that hackers are increasingly willing to put people’s lives at risk for the sake of money.A joint advisory, published Thursday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,…

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Former Boeing Manager Indicted for Lying to FAA About 737 Max Plane Before Crashes

File photo of Boeing’s headquarters in Chicago, Illinois.Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas has indicted Boeing’s former chief technical pilot for allegedly lying to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Aircraft Evaluation Group (FAA AEG) about Boeing’s 737 Max airplane, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of…

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Report: Amazon Used Sales Data to Duplicate Popular Products and Box Out Retailers

Photo: Sajjad Hussain (Getty Images)Reuters has uncovered damning evidence about the extent to which Amazon has systematically planned to rip off its third-party sellers in India—to the extent that it’s virtually impossible for the company to keep up a years-long charade.According to documents obtained by the outlet, Amazon’s India branch employed a detailed campaign to…

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Tesla Halts Rollout of Full Self-Driving Beta to Drivers With ‘Perfect’ Safety Scores

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)A planned rollout of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving beta version 10.2 to roughly 1,000 Tesla owners with “perfect” safety scores was delayed on Saturday. In explaining the delay, CEO Elon Musk stated that there were “a few last-minute concerns about the build.” Tesla owners were abuzz with excitement earlier this week when…

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Company That Sold Fake Shares in Real Companies for NFT ‘Fantasy Startup Investing’ Has Already Pivoted

Photo: Jack Taylor (Getty Images)After considerable criticism, creators of an online game based around “fantasy startup investing” have said they plan to ditch their original plans to charge users for gameplay and will now adopt a “free-to-play” model. The company, Visionrare, had planned to sell users NFT shares in real companies for the purposes of…

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The Justice Department Has a New Team of Crypto Cops

Photo: Jonathan Ernst-Pool (Getty Images)The U.S. Justice Department has announced the launch of a new investigative team focused on disrupting “criminal misuse” of cryptocurrency. Dubbed the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, or NCET, for short, the team will target crooked crypto exchanges, money launderers, and other unsavory elements that occupy the dark recesses of the digital…

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Major Banks Hit by Infuriating Customer Service Phone Outage [Update]

Photo: OLI SCARFF/AFP (Getty Images)A phone system glitch linked to Verizon made it impossible for countless customers to call their banks and other companies.On Wednesday evening, customers (including me) began contacting companies complaining that the customer service phone numbers listed on their websites would not go through, returning a “your call cannot be completed as…

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Biden Administration Plans to Convene 30 Countries to Discuss Solutions to Ransomware Threat

Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)The Biden administration plans to meet with officials from dozens of countries later this month in an effort to better coordinate a crackdown on cybercriminal gangs—particularly ransomware. “This month, the United States will bring together 30 countries to accelerate our cooperation in combatting cybercrime, improving law enforcement collaboration, stemming the illicit…

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United Airlines Will Let iPhone Users Show Proof of Vaccination in the Apple Health App

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Flying during pandemic times just got a bit more convenient for iPhone users traveling on United Airlines. On Friday, United announced that it would allow iPhone users demonstrate they’ve been vaccinated against covid-19 using the Apple Health app. In order to take advantage of this new service, you must be running iOS…

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League of Legends’ Vi and Jinx Are Sisters-in-Arms in Netflix’s Arcane Trailer

Now you owe me a coke.Image: Riot Games/NetflixThe much-anticipated prequel series to the beyond-popular League of Legends multiplayer battle arena game is nigh! As part of its fun but miserably named Tudum event, Netflix has released an all-new trailer for Arcane, the animated TV series which will chronicle the origins of fan-favorite Champions Jinx and…

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The Witcher Has Been Renewed for Season 3, Another Anime Film Is on the Way, and a Spinoff… for Kids

The Witcher’s back (get it?) for season three.Image: NetflixHow was Netflix going to put an exclamation point on its three-hour barrage of weekend news called Tudum? How about the ultimate news dump for one of its biggest, most popular fantasy adaptations: The Witcher?First up, before season two’s December 17 release, Netflix has already renewed the…

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Facebook to Appear at Senate Hearing After Leaked Research Shows Instagram’s Harmful Effects

Photo: Joël SAGET / AFP (Getty Images)Representatives from Facebook will soon return to the hallowed halls of Congress where they will resume their favorite pastime: getting screamed at by legislators about how they’re ruining America. This time, the lucky company representative is Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, who will be facing down charges…

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FDA Authorizes Pfizer Boosters for People 65 and Older and Those at High Risk for Severe Covid-19

Photo: Francois Monier / AFP (Getty Images)After weeks of wondering who will get covid-19 booster shots and when—and receiving confusing advice from a variety of public officials—the Food and Drug Administration has made a decision. On Wednesday, regulators at the FDA decided to amend Pfizer-BioNTech’s emergency use authorization and allow for a single booster shot…

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Catastrophic Volcanic Eruption Prompted Construction of Ancient Maya Pyramid, Research Suggests

The pyramid, known as the Campana structure, with volcanic mountains in the background. Image: Akira IchikawaAround 1,500 years ago, a powerful volcanic eruption laid waste to what is now El Salvador, sending the Maya civilization into a temporary period of decline. New research suggests a monumental pyramid located near the volcano was built by the…

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Elon Musk, the Man Who Almost Never Meets Deadlines, Says Starlink Will Come Out of Beta Phase Next Month

This long-exposure image shows a trail of a group of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites passing over Uruguay on February 7, 2021.Photo: Mariana Suarez / AFP (Getty Images)SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday announced that Starlink, the company’s satellite internet service, will come out of its public beta phase in October. While that would be exciting news,…

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Internal Facebook Documents Show How Badly It Fumbled the Fight Against Anti-Vaxxers: Report

A patient receiving a coronavirus vaccine from the Oakland County Health Department clinic in Southfield, Michigan, in August 2021.Photo: Emily Elconin (Getty Images)The Wall Street Journal has had something of a banner week tearing down Facebook. Its series on a trove of internal company documents obtained by the paper has unveiled Facebook’s secret system for…

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Steve Wozniak Appears to Be Launching a Space Garbage Company

Photo: Steve Wozniak, 2015. (Rich Fury) (AP)Step aside, space barons. Steve Wozniak has announced space plans. On Sunday night, Wozniak tweeted a cryptic announcement: “A Private space company is starting up, unlike the others.” The embedded video ad for the company, Privateer, deceptively resembles most other billionaires’ space announcements with platitudes like “together, we’ll go…

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Companies Tied to Fugitive Chinese Billionaire Behind Right-Wing Social Network Must Pay SEC $539 Million Settlement

Guo Wengui, fugitive Chinese billionaire, seen here giving a news conference in November 2018 in New York.Photo: Don Emmert / AFP (Getty Images)The Securities and Exchange Commission has penalized companies tied to Guo Wengui, the fugitive Chinese billionaire who fled the nation in 2014 and has since ingratiated himself with several prominent right-wing personalities in…

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Apple: Don’t Attach Your iPhone to Motorcycles, Mopeds, or Scooters if You Want the Camera to Last

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Apple has a message for iPhone users with high-power motorcycles, mopeds, and scooters: Don’t attach your phone to them you value your camera. In a support document with a uniquely-long and oddly-specific title published on Friday—which was called, “Exposure to vibrations, like those generated by high-powered motorcycle engines, might impact iPhone cameras,”…

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In Ron’s Gone Wrong, the Social Network Has Been Roboticized

Best friends don’t cleave each other, Ron.Screenshot: 20th CenturyThose kids today. Always on their phones! It seems like they’ve stopped talking to each other except through Instagram and TikTok and the Whozit and Whatevers. But what if. instead of phones, their social lives were conducted through adorable robots called B-Bots?Honestly, it seems like everything would be…

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Perseverance Cored Two Martian Rocks That May Be Volcanic and Shaped by Water

In a press conference on Friday, NASA revealed more about the Perseverance rover’s first successful collection of Martian rock, which was confirmed Monday. The successful sampling is the fundamental first step in a 10-year-plan to bring Martian rock to Earth for close examination.A surprise from the conference was that, since that first collection, Perseverance actually…

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Wave Goodbye to Houseparty

Screenshot: Lucas Ropek/HousepartyHouseparty, the video chat app that Epic Games bought and integrated with its Fortnite gameplay experience, will be shutting down soon, the company announced Thursday.The platform, which was purchased by Epic in 2019, allows multiple people to interact via video call. Popularity for the platform skyrocketed when covid-19 forced global lockdowns, with some…

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Star Trek: Discovery Doesn’t Have a New Trailer But It Finally Has a Season 4 Premiere Date

This highly relatable “WTF NOW?” facial expression gives us yet another reason to love Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green).Image: Michael Gibson/Paramount+Stardate, November 18: that’s when we’ll finally pick back up with the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery, led by a brand-new captain we’ve gotten to know rather well over the past three seasons: Michael Burnham…

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Marvel’s Midnight Suns Game Looks Like an Avengers Roommate Simulator

The demon invasion can wait, Carol’s gotta scroll through TikTok first.Screenshot: Marvel/2K GamesIf you were excited about last week’s announcement of a tactical RPG video game starring Marvel’s superheroes, good news—you’re going to continue to be excited! 2K Games has revealed the Midnight Suns’ first gameplay trailer, which pits an unlikely assortment of Avengers, X-Men,…

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Netherlands Officials Tell Shell to Stop Its Ads Greenwashing ‘Carbon Neutral’ Fuel

Photo: Adrian Dennis (Getty Images)In the Netherlands, officials ruled that Shell has to halt ads that claim customers can render their fuel purchases “carbon neutral” by paying for carbon offsets. The reasoning is pretty straightforward: Shell has, uh, no proof that their claims were true.The decision isn’t legally binding, but it’s still a good sign.…

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The Young Duke Leto Prepares for Intrigue in Dune: House Atreides

Inset of the cover of Dune: House Atreides #10 by Evan Cagle.Image: Boom Studios/Herbert ProductionsIf you’re slavering in anticipation of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movie—and you should be—hopefully, you’ve reading Boom Studios’ comics adaptation of the prequel, House Atreides, based on the novel by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, to whet your appetite. If so,…

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Some of the New Avatar Projects Will Be CG, You Gotta Deal With It

The next generation of Avatar might look a bit different from what we know, and that’s OK.Screenshot: Paramount+When ViacomCBS announced it had big plans for Avatar: The Last Airbender once more—establishing an entire studio dedicated to future projects that drew back original Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko from Netflix’s own remake plans—we…

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Blood Donor Study Estimates Over 80% of American Adults Now Have Coronavirus Antibodies

Samples being prepared for a blood test.Photo: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP (Getty Images)New research indicates that over 80% of American adults now have antibodies to the coronavirus, earned either through infection or vaccination. The study, based on data collected from blood donors, estimates that over 80% of Americans over the age of 16 had these antibodies as…

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Satellite Photos Reveal Extent of Power Outages Across Hurricane-Stricken New Orleans

A false-color satellite view of New Orleans on August 31, 2021. Image: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Black Marble data courtesy of Ranjay Shrestha/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.Satellite images taken before and after Hurricane Ida swept through Louisiana this week are showcasing the upsetting…

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LIGHTSPEED Presents: ‘Fanspell: Flowers in Spring (RobYung, NSFW)’ by Anya Ow

Illustration: Thana Wong / Adobe Stockio9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Fanspell: Flowers in Spring (RobYung, NSFW)” by Anya Ow. You can read the story below. Enjoy!Fanspell: Flowers in Spring (RobYung, NSFW)I am ashamed of the way…

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China’s Concept for a Martian Helicopter Seems Awfully Familiar

A prototype of China’s Mars cruise drone. Image: CNNSCChina’s National Space Science Center is working on an aerial drone that bears a striking resemblance to NASA’ Ingenuity helicopter, currently on Mars. It’s got four outstretched wiry legs, two rotors stacked atop each other, and a simplified fuselage. It’s China’s take on NASA’s wildly successful aerial drone.A…

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NASA Flight Tests of Futuristic ‘Air Taxi’ Are Finally Underway

Joby’s eVTOL aircraft at the company’s Electric Flight Base, located near Big Sur, California. Image: NASAThe first official tests of Joby Aviation’s all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle have begun. NASA is leading these tests, which it’s doing to foster the development of similarly advanced aircraft. This marks the first inclusion of an eVTOL…

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Cartoon Network’s New ‘Acme Night’ Will Be Packed With DC Heroes, Gremlins, and More

From now on, our troubles will be far away…Image: Warner Bros.Sunday evenings aren’t for sitting around in existential dread of the week to come anymore! Instead, they’re for families, both kids and adults, to come together and watch Warner Bros.-produced content. Specifically, families should come together starting at 6:00 pm ET on September 19, because…

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