theck1 IT/AI news

Reentry of NASA satellite will exceed the agency’s own risk guidelines

Stephen Clark • March 10, 2026 A NASA satellite that spent more than a decade coursing through the Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth is about to fall back into the atmosphere. Most of the spacecraft will burn up during reentry, but a fraction of the material making up the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) satellite will likely

Quantum computing meets the Möbius molecule

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John Timmer • March 11, 2026 Last week, IBM trumpeted its contributions to a rather unusual paper: the production of a molecule with a half-Möbius topology, assisted by an algorithm run in part on a quantum computer. There was, to put it mildly, a lot going on in this paper, and it took a little

Don’t lick that cold metal pole in winter—if you do, don’t panic

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Jennifer Ouellette • March 11, 2026 We all remember that infamous scene in the 1983 classic, A Christmas Story, where a boy licks a cold metal post on the playground and ends up getting his tongue stuck to the surface. It’s practically a childhood rite of passage. A 1996 case study coined the term “tundra

What crackdown? Trump’s EPA enforcement claims don’t pass sniff test.

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Wyatt Myskow and Lisa Sorg, Inside Climate News • March 11, 2026 For over a decade, Hino Motors Ltd. imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data, until testing by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the emissions-fraud scheme. The case would lead the Toyota subsidiary to plead guilty

Verdict: Yes, you should go see Project Hail Mary as soon as possible

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Lee Hutchinson • March 11, 2026 First, in the plainest language, before we get to anything else, Project Hail Mary is a fantastic film. It does right by its source material, and it also easily stands on its own for folks who haven’t read the book. It comes out on March 20, and if you’re

NIH director launches “Scientific Freedom” lectures with non-scientist

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John Timmer • March 11, 2026 On Tuesday, word spread that the National Institutes of Health was launching a series of what it’s calling “Scientific Freedom Lectures,” with the first scheduled for March 20. The “freedom” theme echoes one of the major concerns of the director of the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, who feels he suffered

Nvidia is reportedly planning its own open source OpenClaw competitor

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Kyle Orland • March 11, 2026 Chipmaker Nvidia is preparing to launch its own open source AI agent platform to compete with the likes of OpenClaw, according to a recent Wired report. The magazine cites “people familiar with the company’s plans” in reporting that Nvidia has been pitching the platform, which it is calling NemoClaw,

Anduril, the autonomous weapons maker, doubles the size of its space unit

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Stephen Clark • March 11, 2026 Anduril Industries announced on Wednesday that it is acquiring ExoAnalytic Solutions, a space intelligence firm that operates a vast network of sensors monitoring the veiled movements of satellites thousands of miles above Earth. “For nearly twenty years, ExoAnalytic has delivered important advantage[s] for the nation’s most critical missions,” Anduril

Tembo is a playful drum machine that thinks it’s a checkerboard

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Terrence O’Brien • March 11, 2026 Checkers? Go? | Image: Alon Daniel / Musical Beings Tembo looks like a toy, but one of those bougie wooden toys you get on Crate & Kids, not some cheap plastic garbage. Despite its appearance, it is a fully functional drum machine and sampler. Rather than a bunch of

I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

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Hayden Field • March 11, 2026 Millions of people are on the job hunt right now – and for many people, landing a job in the AI era feels more intimidating than ever. That’s why the onset of AI avatars running your job interview via one-on-one video call, asking you questions, and analyzing how well