Project : ARES electric motorcycle

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It looks interesting, and it must be heavily influenced by two of my favorite designers, Yutaka Igarashi and Daniel Simon.

Especially influenced by Daniel Simon's Lotus bike pic.twitter.com/C2YvMNetg9

— Ioannis K. Erripis (@erripis) August 12, 2026

Some fun highlights from this week's DARPA lift challenge

DARPA:

The DARPA Lift Challenge aims to shatter the heavy-lift bottleneck by seeking novel drone designs capable of carrying payloads more than four times their weight. This would revolutionize how we use drones across all sectors.

As military missions become more complicated, warfighters need more capable drones to use across diverse scenarios. The same applies to infrastructure inspection, package delivery, disaster response, and other civilian applications.

Current multirotor drones, also known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), are simple, affordable, and easy to operate. But their payload-to-weight ratio is low, typically 1:1 or less.

Meet the Teams

This account has posted lots of highlight clips:

I sped this test flight up 3x so you can see how the movement and stability of the weight below the spinning-wing drone https://t.co/iqeD6qMKeG pic.twitter.com/lKpiFponGO

— Hunter Weiss (@Hunter_Weiss) August 9, 2026

Another incredible slow-mo self-destruct on the Chinook style https://t.co/K62O3oXFJ1 pic.twitter.com/JHCFNbmZya

— Hunter Weiss (@Hunter_Weiss) August 8, 2026

I laughed when I watched this one. Amazing that someone made this, and it flies https://t.co/ZAjerpf09C pic.twitter.com/oCJCSjHmyI

— Hunter Weiss (@Hunter_Weiss) August 5, 2026

Washington's Bar Exam was canceled today due to tech issues

Aspiring lawyers in Washington state were unable to complete their scheduled Bar Examination Tuesday after network bandwidth issues prevented test takers from accessing the new exam, the National Conference of Bar Examiners said. https://t.co/6OP6JciEhP

— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) July 28, 2026

The official statement (they're contemplating a make-up months from now (so people will have to put their lives on hold and double pay for hotel rooms etc)), and a Redditor's detailed write-up.

if you're wondering what there is to do in Yakima, Washington, by the way, wonder no more:

there is exactly nothing to do in middle-of-absolutely-nowhere Yakima, Washington except wonder why on God's green earth they scheduled the bar exam here

— Jack (@tracewoodgrains) July 28, 2026

The California Supreme Court might authorize electronic recordings in civil court proceedings (I've never seen "voice writers" before)

LAT:

Proponents argue recordings would solve a long-standing crisis that leaves many proceedings with no verbatim record.

Court reporters say the job can be performed only by a human being

...

[One out of work tv writer] is now in training to become a “voice writer,” a form of note-taking that relies on a device called a stenomask — something like a cross between a podcast mic and a nebulizer — to produce a transcript. Voice writers repeat every word spoken in court along with a sequence of formatting commands to voice recognition software.

...

A change in state law in 2023 allowed voice writers to become licensed as “certified shorthand reporters,” opening a new pipeline

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When the Waymo thinks you look like a child (AI roundup)

@clarahyee I thought they were calling to tell me to stop singing out loud… 😭 @Waymo #waymo #storytime #asianproblems ♬ original sound - Clara

"Fisker went bankrupt and owners built open source car company from the ashes"

Elektrek:

The FOA hired independent tech experts who began reverse-engineering Fisker’s proprietary software patches. Members taught each other how to flash firmware. They organized bulk purchases of replacement parts — negotiating the price of key fobs down from roughly $1,000 each to a fraction of that through coordinated group buys. They hosted free global key fob pairing events, saving each owner $100 to $250.

In Europe, they created what they call the “Flying Doctors” program — a mobile repair network where technically skilled members travel to help other owners keep their vehicles running. 

Remote-controlled stanchions for a movable velvet rope

This is by Alex Fiel and Hannah Lienhard. If you want to build stuff like this and enjoy tinkering and collab'ing, applications are open for Fidget Camp this year!

Apply by May 10th: https://t.co/dYzM0YAmNt

— Danielle Baskin (@djbaskin) May 7, 2026

From the project description:

We built the Stanchions over the course of 3 days - they are powered by the cheapest RC cars you can get on Amazon and are fitted with PVC pipes and 2.5lb weights epoxied on top for stability. The "metal" poles themselves are made from pool noodles and shiny gold paper attached with spray adhesive, and are topped off with decorative ceramic orbs we spray painted gold. The velvet rope was created from red velour and poly-fil, topped off with 5hr Energy bottles and hooks from our local hardware store.

"Gambling syndicates are causing mayhem in horse racing by using algorithms to make huge, last-second bets that crush odds for regular players"

Dan Wolken for Yahoo:

Unlike sports wagering, where a bettor is playing against a bookmaker and locks in their odds at the time of the bet, American horse racing — which is in the spotlight this week for Saturday’s running of the 152nd Kentucky Derby — has long been based on a parimutuel system where the bettors are wagering against each other

...

Thanks both to technology and the special privileges some racetracks have given them, the [Computer-Assisted Wagering syndicates] are able to upload tranches of bets directly into the wagering pool at lightning speeds — far faster than any regular player could do it on a phone app or at a racetrack window.

The ability to do it at the very last moment — sometimes significantly changing the odds for people who already made their bets — has become both the subject of a class-action federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York and a source of frustration for some high-profile voices in the sport who believe it has created too much inequity between the heavily capitalized professionals involved in CAWs and the common fan.

Guess how much Adidas's new marathon record-smashing sneakers cost (and then double your guess); meanwhile the tennis tournament was decimated

Worth noting that four of the top five in today's London Marathon -- including the first two men in history under two hours -- were wearing adidas' new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3.

It weighs under 100g -- about 30% lighter than adidas' previous supershoe.https://t.co/eLvoAyobAh pic.twitter.com/Uzn6hsXny5

— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) April 26, 2026

TWO men broke the 2-hour barrier for the marathon today in London.

Both were wearing a super-light, 3.4-ounce shoe that has yet to be released. Adidas' head of running told me how they made it:https://t.co/yB2jGnHTGE

— Rachel Bachman (@Bachscore) April 26, 2026

A "data center project in Utah expected to generate and consume more power than entire state nears final approval" (AI roundup)

Backers of the massive data center campus say at full buildout it will consume 9GW of electricity, more than double the entire state of Utah’s current energy use. They say they intend to burn fossil fuels on site to make all that electricity. Box Elder County will vote on the proposal Monday.

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— The Salt Lake Tribune (@sltrib.com) April 25, 2026 at 2:00 PM

("We’ve announced that we need every incentive we can get out of that state because we have to raise billions to build this power")

I don't know anything about the warez scene, but this is cool and a good song

Razor 1911s eponymous demo celebrating 40 years of activity on the scene Created by Anat, Dubmood, Goto80 and Flopine. The downloadable version. A bit of info about the project.

Twin brother adventurers are comparing state of the art outdoor gear to 100-year-old heritage kit

Carryology:

One figure is a vision of modern mountaineering: clad in streamlined, synthetic insulation, waterproof membranes, and modern plastic boots. The other looks like he just stepped out of a sepia-toned photograph from 1914: wrapped in heavy wool, gabardine cotton, and cumbersome leather boots treated with dubbin.

...

Gone are the days of lugging heavy machinery up mountains. Today, their biometrics are tracked by ingestible sensor pills that monitor core temperature from the inside out, patches that analyze sweat composition, and smartphone-connected hygrometers taped to their skin to measure moisture buildup under layers.

(The verdict is, if you know how to use the antiquated stuff correctly, you're almost as warm as the cutting edge stuff)

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"A suspected system failure froze Baidu’s robotaxis across Wuhan"

NEW: Dozens of robotaxis by Baidu stopped on the road in Wuhan, China, causing crashes on highways and trapping passengers in the cars—some for more than an hour. One passenger told me it took her 30 minutes to even connect to a customer representative. Here’s a dash cam video of one crash.

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— Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅 (@zeyiyang.bsky.social) March 31, 2026 at 6:33 PM

Wired's write-up

Extremely strange coloring book: "What is a data center? A tale of the honey badger family"

Interesting choice to include so much evil imagery, including a devil hidden on each page (page 15/slide 17, for example).

Drones, drones, drones

This one was posted by CCTV / Douyin. pic.twitter.com/uVDOsVhNtG

— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) March 15, 2026

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft takes off for a mission during Operation Epic Fury, March 9, 2026. (U.S. Air Force photo)

5x Shahed killmarks (?) pic.twitter.com/fluCdiBGpJ

— Alex 🌻 (@alexgarcialonso) March 13, 2026

From Kupyansk to Zap we now have cases of drone-assault units having success. There are different approaches. But drone-enabled mechanized assault is working on making a comeback. https://t.co/p0sSoI8kjQ

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) March 14, 2026

@Jack_Watling has written on this, I believe based on some of the earlier cases https://t.co/sWuqDxPPwj

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) March 14, 2026

“In the spring of 2025, renting a humanoid robot for a corporate event in China cost…10,000 [to] 20,000 yuan per day. By March 2026, JDcom’s rental storefront lists a Unitree humanoid, with on-site engineer included, starting at 1,796 yuan.”@poezhao0605 https://t.co/yotqwvFfWf

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) March 17, 2026

("These numbers are real. They also mask a structural problem. In China’s current rental market, every deployed robot effectively arrives with a human engineer")

This mine put 100 autonomous electric haul trucks to work – here’s how it went

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— Electrek (@electrek.co) March 16, 2026 at 7:07 PM

NEW: First look at the first-of-its-kind aquatic drone system featured in the nighttime spectacular “Disney Cascade of Lights,” debuting at Disney Adventure World on March 29.pic.twitter.com/PG0gDekof7

— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) March 14, 2026

🎆 The little floating “Duck Drones” are positioning themselves for Disney Cascade of Lights ☺️ pic.twitter.com/dpgLeThPux

— DLP Report (@DLPReport) March 14, 2026

"Pokémon Go is giving delivery robots an inch-perfect view of the world"

MIT:

The problem Coco faces is that it cannot rely on GPS, which can be weak in cities because radio signals bounce off buildings and interfere with each other. “We do deliveries in a lot of dense areas with high-rises and underpasses and freeways, and those are the areas where GPS just never really works,”

...

For the last few years, Niantic Spatial has been taking the data collected from players of Pokémon Go and Ingress (Niantic’s previous phone-based AR game, launched in 2013) and building a visual positioning system, technology that tells you where you are based on what you can see. “It turns out that getting Pikachu to realistically run around and getting Coco’s robot to safely and accurately move through the world is actually the same problem,”

This digital pet toy has some cute animations--guess the cost before clicking through

LILGUY V2 - "STARBOY" 🌟

An adorable, wearable digital pet that behaves like a real living creature.

Aluminum / Stainless Steel / Brass / Crystal

Batch 1 pre-order ➡️ https://t.co/Th7H1wFJRH pic.twitter.com/uYrp0PQQmt

— Daniel Kuntz (@dankuntz) March 11, 2026

Each STARBOY ships with a unique set of eyes. You don't know what color you'll get, and you can't alter it. There are over 5000 different looks, each with associated rarity. pic.twitter.com/48rtwqUvhl

— Daniel Kuntz (@dankuntz) March 11, 2026

STARBOY is powered by Lark, our custom animation engine and behavioral system. We're shipping with over 500 animations handcrafted by former Disney animators, running at 60fps on a 400x400 OLED display. pic.twitter.com/k1eqpd28DT

— Daniel Kuntz (@dankuntz) March 11, 2026

Is there a cheap knock-off before the real thing ships?

Meta's Director of Superintelligence Safety and Alignment says she accidentally let an agent (almost?) delete her inbox

Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. pic.twitter.com/XAxyRwPJ5R

— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026

Rookie mistake tbh. Turns out alignment researchers aren’t immune to misalignment. Got overconfident because this workflow had been working on my toy inbox for weeks. Real inboxes hit different.

— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026

I was frantically trying to find one in the moment. It was surprisingly hard to find but I was semi panicking so not at my best 🤣

— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026

I said “Check this inbox too and suggest what you would archive or delete, don’t action until I tell you to.” This has been working well for my toy inbox, but my real inbox was too huge and triggered compaction. During the compaction, it lost my original instruction 🤦‍♀️

— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026

It’s been working well with my non-important email very well so far and gained my trust on email tasks 🤣

— Summer Yue (@summeryue0) February 23, 2026

A write-up

In other AI news:

The "ultra-rich Minnesota enclave named North Oaks is so secretive and exclusive that they have the distinction of being the only community not seen on Google Maps"

@christheproducer21

I got a legal letter from the wealthiest city in Minnesota about a YouTube video I made about them

♬ [Raw recording] Record playback noise 01 (3 minutes) - Icy Light

NYPost:

While not a gated community, developers legally moved every homeowner’s property line to encompass the streets, meaning that North Oaks is effectively devoid of public roads.

...

threatened Google with a lawsuit after discovering that their neighborhood was visible via Street View

...

[A Minnesotan] managed to find a loophole in that the town didn’t own the airspace. He was allowed to fly his aerial recon bot over the snowy El Dorado as long as it remained within his sight line and provided he had approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

They're using a helicopter to search for signals from Guthrie's pacemaker

This is interesting: Bluetooth scanning by helicopter to look for kidnap victim Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker, which is believed to be in BLE advertising mode.

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— John Wiseman (@lemonodor.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 12:08 PM

2/ "Regarding this, there was a couple questions on does the pacemaker continue to advertise - most BLE implantable devices go into a sleep type mode. In this case, we are lucky - it does not." x.com/HackingDave/...

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— John Wiseman (@lemonodor.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 12:11 PM

3/ Here's a person with a similar idea 10 days ago. www.reddit.com/r/PacemakerI...

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— John Wiseman (@lemonodor.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 12:22 PM

TMZ's write-up