Is Orion’s heat shield really safe? New NASA chief conducts final review on eve of flight.

Is Orion’s heat shield really safe? New NASA chief conducts final review on eve of flight.

fivenewscrypto    janvier 12, 2026   

WASHINGTON, DC—This week, NASA's new administrator, Jared Isaacman, said he has "full confidence" in the space agency's plans to use the existing heat shield to protect the Orion spacecraft during its upcoming lunar mission.

Isaacman made the determination after briefings with senior leaders at the agency and a half-day review of NASA's findings with outside experts.

"We have full confidence in the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield, grounded in rigorous analysis and the work of exceptional engineers who followed the data throughout the process," Isaacman said Thursday.

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These 60,000-year-old poison arrows are oldest yet found

These 60,000-year-old poison arrows are oldest yet found

fivenewscrypto    janvier 11, 2026   

Poisoned arrows or darts have long been used by cultures all over the world for hunting or warfare. For example, there are recipes for poisoning projective weapons, and deploying them in battle, in Greek and Roman historical documents, as well as references in Greek mythology and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Chinese warriors over the ages did the same, as did the Gauls and Scythians, and some Native American populations.

Archaeologists have now found traces of a plant-based poison on several 60,000-year-old quartz Stone Age arrowheads found in South Africa, according to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances. That would make this the oldest direct evidence of using poisons on projectiles—a cognitively complex hunting strategy—and pushes the timeline for using poison arrows back into the Pleistocene.

The poisons commonly used could be derived from plants or animals (frogs, beetles, venomous lizards). Plant-based examples include curare, a muscle relaxant that paralyzes the victim's respiratory system, causing death by asphyxiation. Oleander, milkweeds, or inee (onaye) contain cardiac glucosides. In Southeast Asia, the sap or juice of seeds from the ancar tree is smeared on arrowheads, which causes paralysis, convulsions, and cardiac arrest due to the presence of toxins like strychnine. Several species of aconite are known for their use as arrow poisons in Siberia and northern Japan.

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X’s half-assed attempt to paywall Grok doesn’t block free image editing

X’s half-assed attempt to paywall Grok doesn’t block free image editing

fivenewscrypto    janvier 11, 2026   

Once again, people are taking Grok at its word, treating the chatbot as a company spokesperson without questioning what it says.

On Friday morning, many outlets reported that X had blocked universal access to Grok's image-editing features after the chatbot began prompting some users to pay $8 to use them. The messages are seemingly in response to reporting that people are using Grok to generate thousands of non-consensual sexualized images of women and children each hour.

"Image generation and editing are currently limited to paying subscribers," Grok tells users, dropping a link and urging, "you can subscribe to unlock these features."

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Rocket Report: A new super-heavy launch site in California; 2025 year in review

Rocket Report: A new super-heavy launch site in California; 2025 year in review

fivenewscrypto    janvier 11, 2026   

Welcome to Edition 8.24 of the Rocket Report! We're back from a restorative holiday, and there's a great deal Eric and I look forward to covering in 2026. You can get a taste of what we're expecting this year in this feature. Other storylines are also worth watching this year that didn't make the Top 20. Will SpaceX's Starship begin launching Starlink satellites? Will United Launch Alliance finally get its Vulcan rocket flying at a higher cadence? Will Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket be certified by the US Space Force? I'm looking forward to learning the answers to these questions, and more. As for what has already happened in 2026, it has been a slow start on the world's launch pads, with only a pair of SpaceX missions completed in the first week of the year. Only? Two launches in one week by any company would have been remarkable just a few years ago.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

New launch records set in 2025. The number of orbital launch attempts worldwide last year surpassed the record 2024 flight rate by 25 percent, with SpaceX and China accounting for the bulk of the launch activity, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Including near-orbital flight tests of SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy launch system, the number of orbital launch attempts worldwide reached 329 last year, an annual analysis of global launch and satellite activity by Jonathan’s Space Report shows. Of those 329 attempts, 321 reached orbit or marginal orbits. In addition to five Starship-Super Heavy launches, SpaceX launched 165 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, surpassing its 2024 record of 134 Falcon 9 and two Falcon Heavy flights. No Falcon Heavy rockets flew in 2025. US providers, including Rocket Lab Electron orbital flights from its New Zealand spaceport, added another 30 orbital launches to the 2025 tally, solidifying the US as the world leader in space launch.

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“Ungentrified” Craigslist may be the last real place on the Internet

“Ungentrified” Craigslist may be the last real place on the Internet

fivenewscrypto    janvier 11, 2026   

The writer and comedian Megan Koester got her first writing job, reviewing Internet pornography, from a Craigslist ad she responded to more than 15 years ago. Several years after that, she used the listings website to find the rent-controlled apartment where she still lives today. When she wanted to buy property, she scrolled through Craigslist and found a parcel of land in the Mojave Desert. She built a dwelling on it (never mind that she’d later discover it was unpermitted) and furnished it entirely with finds from Craigslist’s free section, right down to the laminate flooring, which had previously been used by a production company.

“There’s so many elements of my life that are suffused with Craigslist,” says Koester, 42, whose Instagram account is dedicated, at least in part, to cataloging screenshots of what she has dubbed “harrowing images” from the site’s free section; on the day we speak, she’s wearing a cashmere sweater that cost her nothing, besides the faith it took to respond to an ad with no pictures. “I’m ride or die.”

Koester is one of untold numbers of Craigslist aficionados, many of them in their thirties and forties, who not only still use the old-school classifieds site but also consider it an essential, if anachronistic, part of their everyday lives. It’s a place where anonymity is still possible, where money doesn’t have to be exchanged, and where strangers can make meaningful connections—for romantic pursuits, straightforward transactions, and even to cast unusual creative projects, including experimental TV shows like The Rehearsal on HBO and Amazon Freevee’s Jury Duty. Unlike flashier online marketplaces such as DePop and its parent company, Etsy, or Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist doesn’t use algorithms to track users’ moves and predict what they want to see next. It doesn’t offer public profiles, rating systems, or “likes” and “shares” to dole out like social currency; as a result, Craigslist effectively disincentivizes clout-chasing and virality-seeking—behaviors that are often rewarded on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X. It’s a utopian vision of a much earlier, far more earnest Internet.

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General Motors writes down $6 billion as domestic EV sales plans change

General Motors writes down $6 billion as domestic EV sales plans change

fivenewscrypto    janvier 11, 2026   

American automakers who got overenthusiastic about electric vehicles continue to pay the price—literally. Yesterday, General Motors told investors that building and selling fewer EVs will cost the company $6 billion. Still, things could be worse—last month, rival Ford said it would write down $19.5 billion as a result of its failed EV bet.

GM is not actually abandoning its EV portfolio, even as it reduces shifts at some plants and repurposes others—like the one in Orion, Michigan—into assembling combustion-powered pickups and SUVs instead of EVs. The electric crossovers, SUVs, and pickups from Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC will remain on sale, with the rebatteried Chevy Bolt joining their ranks this year.

But GM says it expects to sell many fewer EVs than once planned. For one thing, the US government abolished the clean vehicle tax credit, which cut the price of an American-made EV by up to $7,500. That government has also told automakers it no longer cares if they sell plenty of inefficient vehicles. Add to that the hostility from car dealers by having to sell EVs in the first place, and one can see why GM has decided to retreat, even if we might not sympathize.

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NASA orders “controlled medical evacuation” from the International Space Station

NASA orders “controlled medical evacuation” from the International Space Station

fivenewscrypto    janvier 10, 2026   

NASA officials said Thursday they have decided to bring home four of the seven crew members on the International Space Station after one of them experienced a "medical situation" earlier this week.

The space agency has said little about the incident, and officials have not identified which crew member suffered the medical issue. James "JD" Polk, NASA's chief health and medical officer, told reporters Thursday the crew member is "absolutely stable" but that the agency is "erring on the side of caution" with the decision to return the astronaut to Earth.

The ailing astronaut is part of the Crew-11 mission, which launched to the station August 1 and was slated to come back to Earth around February 20. Instead, the Crew-11 astronauts will depart the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming days and head for reentry and a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

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