Science

“We don’t have anything there this year,” Meta told the Financial Times.

The annual UN summit is arguably the biggest climate event of the year, and typically an opportunity for tech companies to grandstand. But Big Tech’s obsession with AI has led to growing greenhouse gas emissions, pushing companies further away from climate goals.

The Starship vehicle successfully reignited a single Raptor engine while in space before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, writes SpaceX.

Unlike the 5th flight test, this one didn’t include a tower catch for the booster, as “automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt,” and it diverted to the Gulf of Mexico.

The launch is happening in Boca Chica, Texas and is scheduled for 5PM ET. SpaceX’s stream for the launch is live now.

That’s the concept behind Hippos Exoskeleton, a startup created by former basketball hopeful Kylin Shaw after he heard “a sickening pop from my knee while landing from a dunk,” according to TechCrunch.

The expanding “knee sleeve” uses predictive AI to detect risky movements and inflates in 30 milliseconds. The idea is to help prevent ACL tears and other injuries in athletes, construction workers, and older adults.

The two companies announced a “strategic partnership” today where Oura Ring and Dexcom CGM users can more easily share their health data between the two platforms. Both companies will also sell and cross promote each other’s products.

Oura’s been diving into metabolic health lately, acquiring a CGM startup called Veri just a few months ago.

To top it all off: Dexcom is also investing $75 million in Oura.

The “Beaver Moon” can be seen across the US tonight. It’s “super” because the full moon will be at its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit.

The President-elect chose his former political opponent and anti-vaccine activist to lead HHS, a department that oversees the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Kennedy has embraced policies widely rejected by the scientific community, like halting the addition of fluoride to drinking water — a mineral that helps prevent tooth decay.

It’s also offering monthly treatment options for erectile dysfunction and eyelash growth. Amazon says Prime members only have to pay for the cost of consultation and the treatment plan, which ranges anywhere from $2 / month to $43 / month.

The goal was a product that could predict a user’s fertility by collecting saliva. Users would’ve then been able to log period symptoms, sexual activity, and other fertility data via a mobile app. CNBC says Amazon has laid off the entire team behind the project. Initially, it was set to launch later this year before technical issues resulted in delays.

Elon Musk’s xAI has a rapidly growing supercomputer that other AI companies are worried about, The Information reports. Hopefully, they also find out how the facility affects the local environment.

Rivian released a short film today in which the company’s CEO RJ Scaringe issues a call to action on climate change, arguing the time is now to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy solutions.

The scale of the challenge means we need to be making these changes now, and we need to begin working toward every increasing renewable content on our grid. We need to replace the roughly one-and-a-half billion combustion powered vehicles on our planet with electric vehicles, but also know that on the path to the end state, we’re going to have solutions that are imperfect, but we need to start.

Trump tapped former New York Representative Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin has a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.

He’ll “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” Trump said.

A digital trail can provide evidence of someone obtaining an illegal abortion, but as Lux Alptraum wrote back in 2022, they’re not usually the initial tipoff:

A full 45 percent of cases were brought to the attention of the police via a healthcare professional like a doctor, nurse, or social worker. Another 26 percent of people were reported by friends or family members. 

In case you were wondering.

Hurricane Rafael cut off power across the island even before it made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Authorities are still working to restore power after weeks of widespread, prolonged blackouts exacerbated by another hurricane that struck Cuba in late October.

Unsurprising. Oura also found that there was a 2.3 percent increase in stressed minutes, a 19.5 percent decrease in restorative time and heart rates were 3.7 percent higher.

My own Oura data shows that I had 4 hours 30 minutes of stress on election day and eight whole hours of stress processing the results yesterday.

Bezos, who killed The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and also owns a space company with billions in government contracts, was among the first major US tech leaders to chime in this morning. He is certainly aware that one of his biggest rivals in aerospace is run by a close confidant of the president-elect.

Utility planning documents show rising costs for customers in some regions of the US as tech companies build out energy-hungry data centers, the Washington Post reports:

“A lot of governors and local political leaders who wanted economic growth and vitality from these data centers are now realizing it can come at a cost of increased consumer bills,” said Neil Chatterjee, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Meta wanted to build a nuclear-powered AI data center in the US — until a rare species of bee was found at the site, according to the Financial Times.

Tech giants have inked a string of nuclear energy deals lately to try to meet growing electricity demand for AI data centers.

Sorry, I had to. Anyway, please look at these pictures of how Nerds Gummy Clusters are made — and keep your eyes peeled for them this Halloween because they are scary good.