It’s taken almost two years but a planned community of homes made with a gigantic 3D printer in Georgetown, Texas is almost complete.
Reuters reports that the homes, which are part of a community called Wolf Ranch, are being built with a large 3D printer called the Vulcan that’s 45 feet wide and weighs more than 4.75 tons. The project is part of a joint venture with the 3D printing construction developer ICON and the home construction company Lennar. It started in November of 2022 and crews are close to completing its goal of building 100 homes with the Vulcan by the end of the summer. Homeowners have already started moving into some of the completed 3D printed homes that range in price from $450,000 to $600,000. More than a quarter of the homes have been sold.
ICON
ICON’s 3D printer uses a mixture of concrete powder, water, sand and other materials to lay out stacks of tube-shaped concrete to construct walls and eventually a whole house. The homes are single-story dwellings with three to four bedrooms that take around three weeks to print. The foundation and metal roofs are made the old-fashioned way with human crews.
Once printed, the walls look like giant stretches of corduroy, but they are designed to be resilient and sustainable even in extreme weather. They are also water resistant and energy efficient. The contemporary ranch-style designs for the houses were provided by the architectural firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, according to an ICON press release. The construction process has also been streamlined over the course of the project. ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins told Reuters that construction started with five different building crews but it’s since been whittled down to just one crew and one robot printer.
The only downside is the thickness of the walls interferes with WiFi signals. Residents have had to use mesh internet routers with broadcast signals located throughout the home instead of just a single router.
ICON isn’t just using its large scale 3D printer to make homes on Earth. NASA is reportedly interested in using the technology to build structures on the moon for its Artemis Moon exploration program scheduled to launch its first crew in September 2025.
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You’ve heard the dramatic weight loss stories. Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, can help people lose 15 percent of their body weight. Tirzepatide, sold under the brand names Mounjaro and Zepbound, may be even more effective at shedding pounds.
Known as GLP-1 agonists, these drugs were originally developed to help control diabetes. But there’s increasing evidence that they have other health benefits, beyond controlling weight. They seem to boost heart health, protect the kidneys, improve sleep apnea, and lower the risk of certain obesity-related cancers. Recent studies have also hinted at their potential to treat addiction and even slow the cognitive decline that comes with dementia. As researchers test these drugs for various conditions, they’re trying to untangle the mysteries behind how exactly they’re working in the body—and they have a few theories.
“Many of us in the medical community are really beginning to think about these drugs as health promotion drugs, not just weight loss drugs or even anti-obesity drugs,” says Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and professor at Yale University School of Medicine.
In March, Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy became the first weight loss medication to also gain approval to help prevent serious heart problems in people with cardiovascular disease. In an international trial of more than 17,600 people with excess weight, weekly injections of Wegovy significantly reduced the risk of a major cardiac event. Researchers followed participants for an average of three years and found that those who took Wegovy were 20 percent less likely to die of a heart attack, stroke, or other cardiovascular cause.
Eli Lilly, which makes tirzepatide, is also looking to expand Zepbound’s uses. The company announced this month that its weight-loss drug improved symptoms in heart failure patients with obesity and led to a 38 percent reduction in hospitalizations.
One in every four deaths each year in the United States is due to heart disease, and obesity is increasingly a factor. Excess weight can cause high blood pressure and cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. Weight gain can also affect how the heart muscle functions, increasing the risk of failure. It’s perhaps no wonder then that a drug that helps people lose weight would also improve heart health. But there are reasons to think there are other factors at play beyond weight loss.
“When we first saw the results, we wondered, is this simply about weight loss?” Krumholz says. “But what we’re seeing is that having more weight loss doesn’t necessarily translate into more benefit.”
In the trial of people with heart disease, Wegovy lowered blood pressure, cholesterol levels, heart rate, and heart inflammation before participants reached their maximum weight loss. What’s more, the drug seemed to reduce major cardiac events regardless of how much weight they lost. The same was true for heart failure patients. This all suggests to Krumholz that the drug is, at least in part, working on the cardiovascular system in some other way. “This is the big question,” he says. “What is the exact mechanism of benefit?”
If you are in China and looking to ride a shared bike in the city, you might find something on the bike that looks a little different: a water-bottle-size hydrogen tank.
At least a dozen cities in China now have some kind of hydrogen-powered shared bikes for their residents. They offer an easier ride than traditional bikes and a safer energy source than lithium batteries. One Chinese company is betting that this will be the next big thing in public transportation, while others are riding on a national trend toward government policies that encourage the development of the hydrogen industry.
Yet the reception has been mixed. Riders have reported unsatisfactory experiences with current hydrogen bikes, and energy experts doubt whether it makes economic sense to replace e-bikes with hydrogen-powered ones. Even though hydrogen could be a great power source for long-distancetransportationin the future, it may not be suitable for urban biking, a completely different task.
While there are companies in other countries that are working on hydrogen-powered bikes—and one French company already has a mature product—China stands out for putting these bikes to use as public transportation. Bike-sharing became hugely popular in the country during the 2010s tech boom. With support from deep-pocketed companies like Alibaba and Meituan, standardized, internet-connected shared bikes have filled urban streets since, sometimes resulting in incredible waste.
Youon, a Chinese company with over 1 million bikes on the streets of over 300 cities, is one of the main players in the bike-sharing industry. Facing fierce domestic competition, the company has chosen to differentiate its brand by investing in hydrogen bikes since 2018, with four models now available to buy or rent.
A hydrogen bike is not very different in concept from an e-bike. The difference is in whether the energy is stored in a lithium-ion battery or a hydrogen tank.
Each of Youon’s hydrogen bikes stores 20 grams of hydrogen in the form of metal powders, which can absorb and release the gas in a tank at low pressures (less than 10 bar). When the rider starts pedaling, the hydrogen is fed to a fuel cell under the seat, where a chemical reaction takes place to produce electricity. At its peak, a hydrogen bike can go as fast as 23 kilometers (14 miles) per hour. One tank of hydrogen lasts 40 to 60 kilometers (25 to 37 miles), and replacing the tank takes a few seconds.
Why hydrogen?
E-bikes have existed in China for a long time. According to the official figures, there are around 350 million in China today, and they are commonly used by everyday commuters and professional delivery workers.
However, many of China’s largest cities have shied away from commissioning e-bikes as part of the public transportation network or even banned them, because lithium batteries pose a fire risk. In 2023, Chinese fire departments received a total of 21,000 reports of e-bikes catching fire, a 17.4% increase from the previous year.
That created a supply vacuum for Youon. It’s positioned itself as a safer alternative thanks to its use of hydrogen. The hydrogen is stored in a low-pressure state, and if there’s any leak, it will dissipate quickly without causing an explosion, the company says on its website.
It’s a strategy that’s worked: These bikes have been more readily accepted by local governments. In 2022, Youon sold 2,000 of its hydrogen bikes to Lingang, a new high-tech district in Shanghai; in 2023, the company sold 500 hydrogen bikes to the Daxing district of Beijing. Today, its hydrogen bikes can be found in over six Chinese cities.
Youon has since doubled down on its investment in hydrogen. The company has launched a product that lets users generate hydrogen at home with solar power and water. It also worked with the local government of Jiangsu, where its headquarters are, to publish a set of industry standards covering safety requirements, hydrogen tanks, and more. “Hydrogen energy is also an essential pathway to achieving carbon neutrality,” said Sun Jisheng, the CEO of Youon, at an industry conference in June.
The problem
However, that’s about where the advantage of hydrogen bikes ends.
David Fishman, a China-based senior manager of the Lantau Group, an energy consultancy, says he struggles to see the advantage. “Maybe the safety angle is a relevant factor for someone who doesn’t like carrying around lithium-ion batteries and storing them in their house,” he says. Other than that, hydrogen bikes are less energy-efficient than battery-powered bikes, and it costs more to produce hydrogen in the first place.
The main advantage of hydrogen as an energy source is that it has much higher energy density, meaning a hydrogen tank with the same weight as a lithium battery would produce more energy and power the vehicles to go farther. However, that advantage only kicks in for trips over 800 kilometers, says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.
That means hydrogen is a more economical choice for long-distance transportation like ships, planes, and trucks. Bikes, however, are almost on the exact opposite end of the transportation spectrum. Few people would bike for long distances, let alone those who are only renting a public bike for a short time. For anything shorter than 800 km, battery-powered vehicles are more energy efficient, says Jacobson. He estimates that a battery-powered bike consumes only 40% of the energy of a hydrogen-powered equivalent and also takes up less space.
On top of that, the company’s hydrogen bikes have failed to impress many of the early adopters.
VIA YOUONBIKESHARE.COM
Gu, a resident of Lingang who only wishes to use his last name for this story, tells MIT Technology Review that he tried the bikes several times and they never felt effort-saving to him. Instead, the bike, along with the hydrogen tank and fuel-cell-powered motors, felt heavy and hard to maneuver. As a user, he has no idea whether the bike was running as expected or if the difficulty he encountered was due to its running out of hydrogen, although the company is supposed to block any bike with low hydrogen reserves from being unlocked.
Another common complaint is the inconvenience of finding and returning the bikes because there are only a limited number in the city and they have to be returned to specific locations for easy retrieval or tank replenishment.
“The bike has to be returned to a designated spot. But even if I put the bike at that very location, there’s GPS drifting, and I’d be charged a very high fee for them to move the bike,” Gu says.
On social media, hydrogen-bike users have complained a lot about similar experiences. Youon has found itself caught up in headlines at least a couple of times recently, with stories where users question whether their bikes are really useful for their daily commutes.
Youon didn’t respond to questions sent by MIT Technology Review.
The future of hydrogen bikes
Despite all these issues, there are at least half a dozen more companies in China working to launch hydrogen-powered shared bikes. These are often startups operating small-scale pilot projects in cities that have sizable hydrogen industries, like Foshan or Xiaoyi.
Many of these cities have even bigger plans—they are vying to become the hub of the hydrogen economy in China, which is increasingly betting on it as the future of clean energy.
This year, for the first time, hydrogen energy was mentioned in an annual official report from Beijing, which summarizes government work. The Chinese government said it vows to “accelerate the development of hydrogen energy … after enforcing the lead in smart, connected new energy vehicles.” The mention injected a boost of confidence into the hydrogen industry in China, which already produces more hydrogen every year than any other country.
Not all of this is good news for the environment. About 80% of hydrogen produced in China actually comes from burning coal or natural gas, and some of the fiercest government support for hydrogen comes from coal-mining cities looking to transition. While the country is moving in the direction of green hydrogen (hydrogen generated with renewable energy and water), the fuel will remain polluting for a long time.
When a technology is still in the early stages, finding the best use case for it is key. There are plenty of companies in China working on developing hydrogen-powered trucks and other long-distance forms of transportation, but considering the size of the bike-sharing market in the country, it’s no surprise that turning their attention to bikes seems like a profitable idea to some.
However, if there’s no way to dramatically improve the performance or economics of hydrogen bikes, it’s hard to imagine the current batch of experiments lasting for long. As companies move from piloting their new products to seeking adoption and profits, they will have some serious questions to answer.
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Check out this hilarious compilation from Finnish table tennis pranksters Pongfinity! Over the past year, they’ve pulled off some of the best and silliest ping pong tricks you’ll ever see! Check it out!
Nothing’s ultra-cheap subbrand CMF is restricting users’ independent access to the $200 Phone 1’s depth sensor. It’s a mere 2 MP lens and one of only two sensors on the phone’s exterior, but some users claimed it gave them Superman-like X-ray vision to see through thin plastic or even some bedsheets.
The CMF Phone 1 has proved popular with the budget-conscious and DIY crowd for the phone’s low price and easily customizable shell. It has a much more constrained look than Nothing’s other products; it features some of the same software featured on Nothing’s recent Phone (2a). It sports a 50 MP primary camera, though two sensors are on the phone’s screw-on chassis. The second is a depth sensor, though it’s not something users can physically access on their own. One YouTuber named Maxwell Lu posted a video purportedly showing how the sensor could see through the rear panel of his TV remote, a beanbag, and some bedsheets.
Nothing’s co-founder and head of marketing, Akis Evangelidis, took to Twitter to confirm the depth sensor’s see-through capabilities. He claimed the depth sensor normally works with the main sensor to create large depth-of-field effects when taking photos in Portrait Mode. Since this sensor doesn’t have an infrared light filter, it could see through some semi-transparent objects. This works best against thin black plastic, though it can see through some other synthetic materials.
Evangelidis said they were updating its phones to remove access to the depth sensor via third-party apps. That was supposed to come in an update sometime this week. Gizmodo reached out to Nothing to confirm if the update has hit users’ phones, and we’ll update this post if we learn more.
Gizmodo could not independently confirm whether this worked as shown. Lu claimed he managed to access the sensor by running a third-party camera app in developer mode. This is very, very similar to a similar controversy with the OnePlus 8 Pro phone back in 2020. That device also had an infrared camera filter feature similar to the CMF Phone 1’s secondary sensor.
Accessing that camera filter through a third-party app enabled it to see through some thin plastic devices, such as TV remotes. However, it wasn’t possible to do X-ray vision to look through people’s clothes unless you held them very close and they were wearing very thin garments made with some truly off-brand materials.
So it’s not like anybody with a CMF Phone 1 was ever capable of using the depth sensor to become the next breed of public creep, but it was an unintended use for the phone. In that same Twitter thread, Evangelidis complained that “people are trying to come as us from every angle” because “they aren’t comfortable with our success.”
CD players are back, baby. As Gen Z absorbs the ‘90s it never experienced through retro nostalgia like Nirvana, Tamagotchi and wired headphones, audiophile brand FiiO is here to capitalize. The company’s new portable CD player, the DM13, builds on the blueprint of icons like the Discman. But it adds modern touches like high-fidelity wireless and a built-in battery, so Gen Zers are spared the pain of lugging around a small arsenal of AA cells to change at the top of every hour.
The FiiO DM13 follows the company’s retro reboots of the vinyl turntable and (for unfathomable reasons) the cassette player. The upcoming CD player has a sleek design with a digital display across its front, making for a much sharper-looking modern aesthetic than the trash we Gen X old farts used when jamming out to timeless musical legends like Candlebox, Right Said Fred and the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
FiiO / Starscream Communications
The DM13 supports 3.5mm single-ended 4.4mm balanced outputs for analog line-out listening. For those who prefer wireless, it supports high-quality aptX HD and is compatible with many Android phones and portable media players. (Apple uses its lower-bitrate AAC codec, so iPhone owners get less impressive wireless audio without an adapter.)
FiiO says the DM13 supports eight hours of playback per charge. It also has a USB output and a dedicated desktop mode that bypasses the battery and uses its main power at home.
The bad news for ‘90s retrophiles is the DM13 isn’t available just yet. After its official unveiling at this weekend’s CanJam event in London, the CD Player will go on sale in September for $179 (£179 in the UK). It begins shipping only in a silver finish, but FiiO says red, blue, titanium and black variants will arrive later in the year.
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A group calling itself “NullBulge” published a 1.1-TB trove of data late last week that it claims is a dump of Disney’s internal Slack archive. The data allegedly includes every message and file from nearly 10,000 channels, including unreleased projects, code, images, login credentials, and links to internal websites and APIs.
The hackers claim they got access to the data from a Disney insider and named the alleged collaborator. A person with that name who lists Disney as their current employer did not return WIRED’s request for comment. Whether the hackers actually had inside help remains unconfirmed; they could also have plausibly used info-stealing malware to compromise an employee’s account. Disney did not confirm the breach or return multiple requests for comment about the legitimacy of the stolen data. A Disney spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company “is investigating this matter.”
The data, which appears to have been first published on Thursday, was posted on BreachForums and later taken down, but it is still live on mirror sites.
Roei Sherman, field CTO at Mitiga Security, says he isn’t surprised that a giant like Disney could have a breach of this scale and significance. “Companies are getting breached all the time, especially data theft from the cloud and software-as-a-service platforms,” he says. “It is just easier for attackers and holds bigger rewards."
Sherman, who reviewed the data in the leak, added that “all of it looks legit—a lot of URLs, conversations of employees, some credentials, and other content.”
The NullBulge site says that it is a “hacktivist group protecting artists’ rights and ensuring fair compensation for their work.” The group claims it hacks only targets that violate one of three “sins.” First: “We do not condone any form of promoting crypto currencies or crypto related products/services.” Second: “We believe AI-generated artwork harms the creative industry and should be discouraged.” And third: “Any theft from Patreons, other supportive artist platforms, or artists in general.”
The group’s “wall of knowledge,” where it lists its data dumps, summarizes the philosophy: “What better way to punish someone than getting them in trouble eh?” Previously, the group targeted the Indian content creator Chief Shifter with a “first shaming.” Then in May, NullBulge posted a “second punch” and teased the Disney breach. “Here is one I never thought I would get this quickly … Disney. Yes, that Disney,” NullBuldge wrote, suggesting that the group may be a single person. “The attack has only just started, but we have some good shit. To show we are serious, here is 2 files from inside.”
In addition to the alleged Slack data, NullBulge posted what appears to be detailed information about the individual whom they claim provided the insider access and data. The leak includes medical records and other personally identifying information, plus the alleged contents of the alleged Disney employee’s 1Password password manager. NullBulge claims to have doxxed the individual in retaliation for cutting off communication and access, although whether the employee actually collaborated with the group in the first place remains unconfirmed.
Security researchers have long warned about corporate Slack accounts as a treasure trove for attackers if compromised. The popular team communication platform is owned by Salesforce and is used by an array of prominent organizations, including IBM, Capital One, Uber, and Disney rival Paramount.
“Disney will probably be targeted a lot more now by opportunistic threat actors,” Sherman warns.
