Science

Trump mentioned his dinner with the billionaire Amazon founder and Washington Post owner during his interview with Kristen Welker for Meet the Press today, according to NBC News.

He’s heard from Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post: “We’re having dinner,” he said.

Bezos, who didn’t get along with the President-elect before, recently said he feels “optimistic” about his second term.

The satellite internet company received a Pentagon contract that will give 2,500 Starlink terminals access to Starshield, its secure satellite service for governments, according to Bloomberg. With this contract, Ukraine will have a total of 3,000 terminals connected to Starshield.

Carrboro, NC is suing for damages it expects to incur as climate change leads to more extreme weather. It alleges that Duke Energy has delayed a transition from the fossil fuels to renewable energy as part of a “campaign of deception.”

Hurricane Helene — supercharged by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels — tore a path of destruction through North Carolina earlier this year.

Google DeepMind researchers say their machine learning model “better predicts extreme weather, tropical cyclone tracks and wind power production” in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

“It’s a big deal,” Kerry Emanuel, a professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells the New York Times.

During an interview with Wired, Cook highlighted the Apple Watch’s AFib and sleep apnea detection, while also hinting at the possibility of using AI to alert users to serious illnesses:

I’m not going to announce anything today. But we have research going on. We’re pouring all of ourselves in here, and we work on things that are years in the making. We were working on hearing a long time before we got it dialed in to where we felt comfortable shipping it.

Need something more intense than a burning log to help you relax this season? NASA now has its own festive fireplace featuring an eight hour loop of the burning RS-25 engines used for the launch of the Artemis I mission two years ago. The fireplace can be streamed on NASA Plus, or you can watch it on YouTube.

The FBI is investigating, Reuters reports. Hackers allegedly targeted US nonprofits and activists who have spoken out against ExxonMobil. Lawyers for ExxonMobil wielded hacked documents to fight lawsuits filed against the company, according to Reuters.

A treaty could potentially put a cap on plastic production. Recycling just isn’t enough to stop the flood of plastic pollution building up in landfills, waterways, in marine life, and that’s even found in baby poop.

And since plastics are made from fossil fuels, curbing production would also cut down the pollution causing climate change.

Home Energy Reports will be coming to the Ecobee app next month. The company says the feature should help users better understand how their HVAC system works and, hopefully, save more energy.

It will show detailed reports on your system’s energy use right in the app, help identify potential issues with the system, and compare energy consumption with others in your area for some healthy competition.

We’ve been saying this for a while at The Verge: filtering CO2 out of the air is absurdly expensive and not a realistic alternative to fighting climate change by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nevertheless, Big Tech — including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — has pumped hella money into carbon removal strategies that have yet to prove that they can make a meaningful impact.

Negotiations at the United Nations climate summit ended with a deal that falls well short of what vulnerable nations fought for — $1.3 trillion in climate funding that economists estimate is needed to help less affluent countries adapt to disasters and deploy clean energy.

“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.