With a few smart speakers, you’ve got a way to talk to any room in your house.
🧨 The dronepocalypse starts now: New FAA rules (Part 108) will nix those tedious waivers and unlock drone flights over people, at night and out of sight. Great for commercial use like deliveries or for agriculture. Awful for an air traffic control system still running on floppy disks. Also: D.C. just let drones fly in the capital.
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Dead Sea Scroll fragments redated by AI with a better eye than your average historian. The system, named Enoch after the biblical prophet, was trained on radiocarbon-dated samples and subtle handwriting quirks invisible to humans. Then it read the Dead Sea Scrolls and confidently told researchers they were late by 100 years.
Working late on your PC? Turn on Night light in Windows to reduce eyestrain. Go to Settings > System > Display > Night light. Enable Schedule night light, then choose Sunset to sunrise or Set hours. You can also adjust the Strength slider to control how warm the screen gets.
🚇 Off the rails: I thought this was interesting. NYC dropped big bucks on a computerized train signal system 25 years ago, and it’s already headed for retirement. ICYDK, it was supposed to let trains run faster and closer together. Meanwhile, the 100-year-old clunky mechanical system is still doing its thing, chugging along like your grandma’s toaster that refuses to die.
🤖 AI gone wrong: A Florida man was arrested after facial recognition tech said he matched a suspect trying to lure a 12-year-old at a restaurant. The system gave a 93% confidence score, two witnesses ID’d him from a photo lineup, and that was enough to put him in cuffs. But nope, it was a false positive. Case dropped.
🧪 Tumors, meet your match: Scientists may have found a workaround for cancer’s ghosting tendencies. Instead of waiting for tumors to “respond,” they’re forcing the convo with a generic RNA vaccine. It basically slaps the immune system awake, and in mouse tests, it worked solo or with backup. I hate cancer.
🤖 Grok just keeps Grokking: Elon’s chatbot went rogue, quoting Hitler and calling itself “MechaHitler.” xAI blamed a system prompt. Days later? Boom, Grok 4 launches with a $300/month “SuperGrok Heavy” tier. It allegedly doubled OpenAI’s top model score. “Terrifying rate of progress” sounds less cool when your bot’s quoting Mein Kampf.
🍏 Auto-launch apps on your Mac: Always opening the same app? Do yourself a favor and set it to open on startup. Go to System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions. Under Open at Login, click the (+) button and choose your app. Bonus: To remove one you’re not using, select it and hit the (–) button.
Spies on the road: Washington State’s using motion data from your phone — yep, the same one in your car’s cupholder — to find speeding hot spots. A Michelin-backed system anonymously logs braking and acceleration, then tips off the State Patrol. The upside? Fewer crashes. The downside? Your commute just joined the surveillance state. Not tracked personally, but just enough to ruin your shortcut.
💻 Clean up your new PC: A new Windows 11 computer usually comes loaded with bloatware that eats up system resources. Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps. Scroll through the list, tap the three-dot menu next to anything you don’t want, and click Uninstall.
Mac feeling slow? Something might be hogging resources in the background. Open Activity Monitor to see what’s going on. Check the CPU and Memory tabs, and sort by % CPU or Memory Used. If you spot a big app running, double-click it and hit Quit. FYI: Don’t close system processes.
This makes your house an easy target
Is your security system helping or harming you? If you’re doing these things, think twice.
🦗 Bugs in the system: Insects aren’t paying off. Some of the biggest insect-farming startups have gone bust, and investors are tapping out. The pitch: sustainable protein. The reality: not cheap enough, not scalable yet. But researchers think genetic engineering (without the scary GMO label) could fix it, turning flies into nutrient factories and faster breeders.
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How long DJI’s new Matrice 400 can stay airborne, with gear. It hauls 13 pounds, lands on moving ships, dodges obstacles and spots power lines in thermal mode. With 10 antennas and a backup relay system, it beams footage over 25 miles, through cities, forests or whatever else is in the way, even the guy screaming, “No drones!” into the sky.
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That’s all it takes for your body to freeze under stress and start making smarter decisions. In a wild twist on the panic playbook, Dutch professor Karin Roelofs says freezing under stress is your nervous system’s version of going into “emergency focus mode.” Not stuck, strategizing. Less deer in headlights, more sniper on a mission.
🍏 Clean up your iPad apps: Swipe all the way right to open the App Library. Tap the search bar at the top to see an A–Z list of every app on your device. Long-press any app and select Delete App to clear out the ones you don’t use anymore. FYI: Some system apps can’t be removed.
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Something in deep space is flashing, and scientists have no idea what it is. It’s 14,700 light-years away and sends out bursts of both radio waves and X-rays. For the record, that isn’t supposed to be possible. Theories? Maybe an ancient magnetar or a white dwarf binary system. Or hear me out: Aliens.
Jump to Mac settings fast: Don’t feel like digging through menus? Just right-click the System Settings icon in your Dock to get an alphabetical list of options. Click what you need and go straight there. Bonus: Press Command + Space to open Spotlight, then type the setting you’re after.
🚨 Hackers can disable Windows Defender: A sneaky tool called Defendnot tricks your system by pretending to be another antivirus. Since Windows doesn’t allow two at once, it shuts Defender off automatically. Crazy, right? Just another reason to always use strong antivirus with real-time protection. TotalAV is my go-to!