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Not a movie set: The other day, Ben Affleck came home to a huge military Hummer parked outside and a visit from police and FBI. They were investigating whether someone at his home or in the area launched a hobby drone that damaged a plane fighting the Pacific Palisades fire last week. By looking at the photos, and keeping in mind Ben survived J.Lo, I’d say he’s officially unshakeable.
They’ll weaponize this: A Chinese company has created a robotic dog that can sprint 100 meters in under 10 seconds. The design is inspired by Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who, in 1665, discovered pendulum clocks mounted on the same beam synchronized their swings through energy transfer. And get this — the doggo has custom shoes modeled after a black panther for maximum grip and stability.
Length of time automaker General Motors is banned from selling customer geolocation and driving behavior data. GM was caught collecting all kinds of driving habits (think hard braking, speed and driving at night) every three seconds and selling it to insurance companies and third-party brokers, all without consent. Shame on them.
🎮 Fix it for me: This is the start of something big. Nvidia’s Project G-Assist adjusts your game settings for you based on a conversation. Ask the AI questions like your current frame rate and how to improve it, and it’ll adjust your GPU, aka graphics card, for better performance.
What would you do for $5 million? Contestants on Amazon’s “Beast Games” are taking on giant beer pong, racing in potato sacks, and playing hide and seek with Navy SEALs. YouTuber MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, spent $15 million building “Beast City” in Toronto, where 493 folks are competing for the grand prize. After five episodes, it’s Amazon’s second-most-popular streaming show ever, with 50 million viewers.
To fund a real-life “Jurassic Park” project. Biotech startup Colossal BioSciences wants to bring back extinct species, including the wooly mammoth, dodo and thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger. I saw the new dinosaur in “Jurassic Park” is a hybrid; I guess that makes it Prius-toric.
Elon Musk’s unmanned Starship prototype went boom after launch, lighting up the Caribbean sky like a meteor shower. The debris diverted at least 20 commercial flights. Imagine being on a plane and seeing that. It wasn’t a total disaster, though. The 233-foot-tall booster made it back to the launchpad in one piece. They’re already planning to try again.
Learning Chinese on Duolingo compared to this time last year. With the TikTok ban looming and so many people running over to another Chinese app, RedNote, they likely need a crash course. RedNote is in Mandarin by default. Duolingo downloads are up 36%, too.
Adults under 35 who say products invade their sleep. Imagine when the tech exists for advertisers to get in on their own, not just relying on what you saw while awake. “Tonight’s rest is sponsored by …”
The Nintendo Switch has sold over 146 million units since its 2017 debut, second only to the Nintendo DS. A new trailer shows the first console morphing into the fancy Nintendo Switch 2. The screen is bigger and the Joy-Cons snap magnetically instead of sliding. There’s no release date yet, so you have time to begin saving.
For the world’s most prolific sperm donor. This year, 32-year-old Kyle Gordy from California will join three others who have fathered 100 kids. No kidding — he was on the reality show “90 Day Fiancé” and runs a website full of fertility advice and products. Look how far we’ve come.
