Science

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

Today there will be a total solar eclipse viewable from “parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain, and a small corner of Portugal,” as well as a partial eclipse across some of the US and most of Canada, Europe, and northwestern Africa.

The FIA has recognized the Hydromax’s Speed Week runs at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats, measuring 400.623 mph and 412.135 mph for an average of 406.320 mph, as the new record for a hydrogen internal combustion-powered vehicle.

The probe’s remaining science instruments will keep working for an extra year or more after NASA powered off certain devices in favor of lower-powered ones. NASA also plans to send the “Big Bang” update to the probe’s twin, Voyager 1, in the coming months.

Do not look directly at the sun during tomorrow’s total solar eclipse, the first in mainland Europe in nearly 30 years. Also, do not eat bleach, no matter the day.

No specs or timeframe accompanied the photos, or even a justification for why you’d want satellite internet in a taxi that targets dense urban environments where cellphone signal is strong. The car certainly doesn’t need it to drive, but, as Electrek notes, it’s a nice recurring revenue stream for SpaceX, and further justification for the two companies to merge and make Richie Rich another $1 trillion richer.

An escape clause in Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package approved last year would eliminate daunting operational targets if SpaceX were to purchase Tesla, as many expect. Under the terms, an acquisition treats those performance goals as met. Depending on the acquisition price SpaceX sets for Tesla, which Musk can heavily influence, a merger could instantly award him hundreds of millions of Tesla shares and consolidate his voting control.

The executive order backs a new childhood vaccine schedule with 11 immunizations instead of 17. As reported by The NYT, “it is unclear whether the order has any legal power,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets immunization schedules based on recommendations from a committee of medical experts.

After health officials linked its lettuce to the nationwide Cyclospora outbreak, Taylor Farms is now recalling over a dozen products containing jalapeños across Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Kroger.

A roughly five-ton upper stage of a discarded Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon on Wednesday after floating in space since its launch last year. The impact, which SpaceX says was unintentional, was too faint for ground telescopes to see, but South Korea’s lunar orbiter has now shared images of the crater it created.

A new study published in the journal Science used genome language models to produce viruses we’ve never seen before in nature. The resulting bacteriophages pose no threat to humans. The research simultaneously raises hope for medical advances, while stoking fear that AI could enable the creation of new diseases and biological weapons.

Srini Gopalan in response to SpaceX saying it plans to “acquire quite a few” of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s customers by turning Starlink dishes into tiny cellular base stations using the limited spectrum it acquired from EchoStar:

The company shared research about how its WeatherNext AI model can predict a cyclone’s track, intensity, and wind structure up to 15 days in advance, giving “forecasters an extra day’s worth of predictive accuracy.”

The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space.

Despite the preferences of some, Moderna announced that after years of work, mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010) has been approved for use in adults aged 50 to 64, with an accelerated approval for adults 65 and up as they wait for the results of a follow-up study.

A lot of staffers subscribe just because we enjoy his work (and when he gets his vacation ruined). But today’s newsletter is about the SpaceX lockup expiring — how it should work vs what we will find out tomorrow about how it will work — and how the noted AI hedge fund Situational Awareness may have tanked the bets of noted AI hedge fund Situational Awareness.

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

One day we will have a talk with the people who don’t understand what science fiction is (writing about politics with plausible deniability). Until then, please enjoy Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” originally published in Collier’s in 1950 and taking place on April 28th, 1985. In The Martian Chronicles, the date is revised to August 4, 2026 and guess what! That’s today.

The original satellite internet company “for rural America” has filed for bankruptcy after running out of cash and hemorrhaging subscribers to SpaceX. The service will continue to operate during proceedings, but will pivot away from consumers to focus on businesses and governments. It follows EchoStar’s Dish filing for chapter 11 protection in June.

Using Antrophic’s Claude to exploit a security flaw that’s existed for decades, researchers successfully added and removed DNA profiles from files, meaning bad actors could theoretically frame an innocent person or erase a suspect. Equipment manufacturer Thermo Fisher has issued a software patch. There’s no evidence the vulnerability — which requires local lab access — had ever been exploited.

This report from The New York Times details how debris from rockets, satellites, and other space hardware falls to Earth each week — sometimes unpredictably — as the global space race heats up:

Per The New York Times:

“Fake news,” is how he responded to a Wall Street Journal report on the possible sale of Tesla’s business in its second-largest market:

The orders will cover 18 Falcon 9 missions that are expected to be finished by the end of next year. SpaceX has already gotten more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026, according to Reuters.

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:

Katalyst says the Link spacecraft it launched on July 3rd to push the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory back up to a higher orbit has been in a “multi-axis spin” over the last 72 hours, resulting in sporadic communications. Having identified the cause, Katalyst is working to recover the mission and believes Link still has “a viable path to rendezvous with Swift.”

“The last thing we need is a loud, water thieving, light polluting, data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter),” Nelson says.