NASA topples towers used to test Saturn rockets, space shuttle

NASA topples towers used to test Saturn rockets, space shuttle

fivenewscrypto    janvier 13, 2026   

Two historic NASA test facilities used in the development of the Saturn V and space shuttle launch vehicles have been demolished after towering over the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama since the start of the Space Age.

The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, which was erected in 1957—the same year the first artificial satellite entered Earth orbit—and the Dynamic Test Facility, which has stood since 1964, were brought down by a coordinated series of implosions on Saturday, January 10. Located in Marshall's East Test Area on the US Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, the two structures were no longer in use and, according to NASA, had a backlog of $25 million in needed repairs.

"This work reflects smart stewardship of taxpayer resources," Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, said in a statement. "Clearing outdated infrastructure allows NASA to safely modernize, streamline operations and fully leverage the infrastructure investments signed into law by President Trump to keep Marshall positioned at the forefront of aerospace innovation."

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The most fascinating monitors at CES 2026

The most fascinating monitors at CES 2026

fivenewscrypto    janvier 13, 2026   

CES 2026 took place in Las Vegas last week, and as usual, we're looking at the most interesting monitors from the show. Not every display is a monitor in the strictest sense, but they all provide a display for computers and have a unique twist that make them worth exploring.

Dell’s massive UltraSharp

Dell's biggest UltraSharp has a 21:9 aspect ratio. Credit: Dell

It was a pretty safe bet that Dell would announce new UltraSharp monitors at CES. The displays are a solid recommendation for reliable USB-C monitors, including for Mac users and people needing something polished for professional or creative work. In recent years, UltraSharp monitors have also boasted more modern features, including integrated web cameras and IPS Black tech.

This year, the strategy was clear: Bigger is better.

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That time Will Smith helped discover new species of anaconda

That time Will Smith helped discover new species of anaconda

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

In 2024, scientists announced the discovery of a new species of giant anaconda in South America. A National Geographic camera crew was on hand for the 2022 expedition that documented the new species—and so was actor Will Smith, since they were filming for NatGeo's new documentary series, Pole to Pole with Will Smith. Now we can all share in Smith's Amazon experience, courtesy of the three-minute clip above.

Along with venom expert Bryan Fry, we follow Smith's journey by boat with a team of indigenous Waorani guides, scouring the river banks for anacondas. And they find one: a female green anaconda about 16 to 17 feet long, "pure muscle." The Waorani secure the giant snake—anacondas aren't venomous but they do bite—so that Fry (with Smith's understandably reluctant help) can collect a scale sample for further analysis. Fry says that this will enable him to determine the accumulation of pollutants in the water.

That and other collected samples also enabled scientists to conduct the genetic analysis that resulted in the declaration of a new species: the northern green anaconda (Eunectes akayama, which roughly translates to "the great snake"). It is genetically distinct from the southern green anaconda (Eunectes murinus); the two species likely diverged some 10 million years ago. The northern green anaconda's turf includes Venezuela, Colombia, Suriname, French Guyana, and the northern part of Brazil.

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The oceans just keep getting hotter

The oceans just keep getting hotter

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

Since 2018, a group of researchers from around the world has crunched the numbers on how much heat the world’s oceans are absorbing each year. In 2025, their measurements broke records once again, making this the eighth year in a row that the world’s oceans have absorbed more heat than in the years before.

The study, which was published Friday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science, found that the world’s oceans absorbed an additional 23 zettajoules’ worth of heat in 2025, the most in any year since modern measurements began in the 1960s. That’s significantly higher than the 16 additional zettajoules they absorbed in 2024. The research comes from a team of more than 50 scientists across the United States, Europe, and China.

A joule is a common way to measure energy. A single joule is a relatively small unit of measurement—it’s about enough to power a tiny lightbulb for a second, or slightly heat a gram of water. But a zettajoule is one sextillion joules; numerically, the 23 zettajoules the oceans absorbed this year can be written out as 23,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

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Google: Don’t make “bite-sized” content for LLMs if you care about search rank

Google: Don’t make “bite-sized” content for LLMs if you care about search rank

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a big business. While some SEO practices are useful, much of the day-to-day SEO wisdom you see online amounts to superstition. An increasingly popular approach geared toward LLMs called "content chunking" may fall into that category. In the latest installment of Google's Search Off the Record podcast, John Mueller and Danny Sullivan say that breaking content down into bite-sized chunks for LLMs like Gemini is a bad idea.

You've probably seen websites engaging in content chunking and scratched your head, and for good reason—this content isn't made for you. The idea is that if you split information into smaller paragraphs and sections, it is more likely to be ingested and cited by generative AI bots like Gemini. So you end up with short paragraphs, sometimes with just one or two sentences, and lots of subheds formatted like questions one might ask a chatbot.

According to Sullivan, this is a misconception, and Google doesn't use such signals to improve ranking. "One of the things I keep seeing over and over in some of the advice and guidance and people are trying to figure out what do we do with the LLMs or whatever, is that turn your content into bite-sized chunks, because LLMs like things that are really bite size, right?" said Sullivan. "So... we don't want you to do that."

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Cloudflare defies Italy’s Piracy Shield, won’t block websites on 1.1.1.1 DNS

Cloudflare defies Italy’s Piracy Shield, won’t block websites on 1.1.1.1 DNS

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

Italy fined Cloudflare 14.2 million euros for refusing to block access to pirate sites on its 1.1.1.1 DNS service, the country's communications regulatory agency, AGCOM, announced yesterday. Cloudflare said it will fight the penalty and threatened to remove all of its servers from Italian cities.

AGCOM issued the fine under Italy's controversial Piracy Shield law, saying that Cloudflare was required to disable DNS resolution of domain names and routing of traffic to IP addresses reported by copyright holders. The law provides for fines up to 2 percent of a company's annual turnover, and the agency said it applied a fine equal to 1 percent.

The fine relates to a blocking order issued to Cloudflare in February 2025. Cloudflare argued that installing a filter applying to the roughly 200 billion daily requests to its DNS system would significantly increase latency and negatively affect DNS resolution for sites that aren't subject to the dispute over piracy.

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US Black Hawk helicopter trespasses on private Montana ranch to grab elk antlers

US Black Hawk helicopter trespasses on private Montana ranch to grab elk antlers

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

Collecting fallen (or "shed") elk antlers is a popular pastime in elk-heavy places like Montana, but it's usually a pretty low-tech, on-the-ground affair. That's why last year's story about a US Black Hawk helicopter descending from the skies to harvest shed elk antlers on a ranch was such an odd one.

Was it really possible that US military personnel were using multimillion-dollar government aircraft to land on private property in the Crazy Mountains—yes, that's their actual name—just to grab some antlers valued at a few hundred bucks?

Antler hunt

In May 2025, Montana rancher Linda McMullen received a call from a neighbor. "He said, 'Linda, there’s a green Army helicopter landed on your place, picking up elk antlers,’” McMullen told The New York Times last year. “I said, ‘Are you joking?’ He said, ‘I’m looking at them with binoculars.’”

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