All posts tagged: crashing

Andrew Scott on Sparring With Brendan Fraser and Crashing The Comeback

Andrew Scott on Sparring With Brendan Fraser and Crashing The Comeback

Published by Daniella Wilson

One of the first film roles Andrew Scott ever played, nearly 30 years ago, was “Soldier on the Beach” in Saving Private Ryan. He appeared in the Steven Spielberg drama’s legendary opening sequence, set during the Normandy Invasion at Omaha Beach on D-Day. “I had one line or something, and Tom Hanks rolled over me, and I was very happy to be there,” Scott recalls with a laugh. “It was an extraordinary thing — it was my first time being on a set of that enormity, and I feel very proud that I got to be a tiny part of that. It’s a sequence that’s gone down in movie history.”  Scott has built an impressive career since, between his Olivier-winning stage work and acclaimed performances across film and TV. But it’s something of a full-circle moment to see him back in a D-Day-set film, only this time as the main attraction: In Pressure (in theaters Friday), Scott portrays James Stagg, a meteorologist in the Royal Air Force called in to assess weather patterns for the …

Turkey Liquidated Almost All Of Its US Treasuries In March To Defend Crashing Lira

Turkey Liquidated Almost All Of Its US Treasuries In March To Defend Crashing Lira

Published by Jenni Sidey

Two months ago, at the end of March, we reported that Turkey was aggressively dumping its gold reserves in a panic scramble to obtain dollar funding, which Erdogan’s regime was using to keep the Turkish lira from crashing, and to also pay for energy imports which had suddenly soared in price as a result of the Iran war. The violent selling by Turkey (and other emerging markets) was behind the brutal plunge in gold prices, which tumbled by more than $1000 from near all-time highs at the start of the war to the low 4000s by the time Turkey had done selling much of its gold.  Then earlier this week, we got another confirmation of Turkey’s wild liquidation spree when the latest central bank data showed that Turkey’s foreign reserves had their biggest monthly decline on record in March, as the Iran war triggered global selloffs in emerging market assets and strained the lira. According to balance-of-payments data, Turkey’s official reserves cratered by $43.4 billion in March. Part of the decline reflected state intervention to offset …

India More Than Doubles Gold, Silver Tariffs To Defend Crashing Rupee

India More Than Doubles Gold, Silver Tariffs To Defend Crashing Rupee

Published by Jenni Sidey

One day after vehemently denying speculation that India plans to raise duties on gold and silver imports following ​Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s urging people to ​avoid buying ​gold for a year ‌due ⁠to the impact of the Iran war, India did in fact raise import tariffs on gold and silver in an attempt to defend its currency, a surprise move as the country races to limit the damage from the Middle East war and to shore up foreign-exchange reserves. The government has more than doubled import taxes on gold and silver to about 15% from 6%, according to two official orders, imposing a 10% basic customs duty alongside a 5% agriculture infrastructure and development levy. The hikes, aiming to dampen demand in the world’s second-largest bullion market, followed a rare weekend appeal from Prime Minister Narendra Modi in which he urged citizens to forgo gold purchases as well as unnecessary foreign travel in order to help hold up the currency. The Indian rupee has plunged more than 6% in 2026 with most of the losses occurring after …

The biggest black holes grow by crashing into each other over and over again

The biggest black holes grow by crashing into each other over and over again

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some of the biggest black holes ever picked up through gravitational waves may not have formed in a single stellar collapse at all. Instead, they seem to be the battered products of repeated smashups inside some of the most crowded stellar environments in the universe. That is the picture emerging from a new analysis led by Cardiff University, which examined 153 confident black hole merger detections from version 4.0 of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational-wave catalog. The team found that the heaviest black holes in the sample do not behave like an extension of the lighter ones. They look like a separate population. “Gravitational-wave astronomy is now doing more than counting black hole mergers,” said lead author Dr. Fabio Antonini of Cardiff University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. “It is starting to reveal how black holes grow, where they grow, and what that tells us about the lives and deaths of massive stars. This is exciting because we can use the information to test our understanding of how stars and clusters evolve in the Universe.” The dividing …

The Horrible Economics of AI Are Starting to Come Crashing Down

The Horrible Economics of AI Are Starting to Come Crashing Down

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech An eyebrow-raising trend has emerged this year: tech leaders rating their employees’ productivity based on the number of AI tokens they use. The trend, ribbingly dubbed “tokenmaxxing,” has sparked discourse for symbolizing the Silicon Valley’s unbridled infatuation with using AI as much as possible — and, quite literally, at all costs. But what’s so far been a free or at least low-cost ride could be coming to a screeching halt. Setbacks plaguing the construction of AI data centers have brought the industry’s biggest chokepoint to the forefront: access to the precious computing power that makes frontier models tick. As costs continue to ramp up, enterprise consumers could soon be left holding the bag, with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic looking to ramp up prices to stem at least some of the bleeding. It’s a notable shift after years of complimentary access to cutting-edge AI, a practice that has long belied the tech’s true costs. “Is the era of …

Allbirds Stock Now Crashing as Reality Sets in About Its Delusional AI Pivot

Allbirds Stock Now Crashing as Reality Sets in About Its Delusional AI Pivot

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Tech bro sneaker company Allbirds made a huge splash yesterday when it announced a baffling pivot to AI infrastructure — news that was met with a mix of incredulity and ridicule. The company’s blindsiding metamorphosis into what it’s calling “NewBird AI” had investors leaping from their office chairs, sending shares surging by over 700 percent on Wednesday. That’s despite Allbirds’ core business being at death’s door. In its final throes, the company sold off its intellectual property and other assets for a measly $39 million mere weeks ago, leaving its once lofty $4 billion market cap five years ago long behind. But don’t break out the champagne quite yet. The rally subsequently came to a “screeching halt,” as Bloomberg put it, with shares sinking a dismal 35 percent on Thursday. In other words, possibly ketamine-crazed Wall Street bros realized the morning after that a struggling shoe company may not be able to prop up a trillion-dollar industry with …

A Panicking Japan Considers Shorting Oil To Prop Up The Crashing Yen

A Panicking Japan Considers Shorting Oil To Prop Up The Crashing Yen

Published by Jenni Sidey

With the yen collapse accelerating, and pushing the USDJPY above 160 for the first time since 2024, markets are on edge expecting a BOJ intervention at any moment as this was the price when the BOJ intervened last time. However, with BOJ interventions having been consistently proven futile with a half life of just weeks if not days, Japan – facing soaring inflation yet desperate not to raise rates as that would crash the stock market – is weighing a controversial (some would say idiotic) new plan to arrest the yen’s slide: stepping into oil futures markets. Reuters was informed by “market sources” that Japan’s government is considering ​intervening in the crude oil futures market as the Middle East crisis drives energy prices up sharply. Under the scheme, Japan would tap its $1.4-trillion foreign exchange ⁠reserves and build short positions in the oil futures market by selling futures contracts to push down prices. By dampening demand for dollars to buy oil, the “brilliant” thinking goes, Tokyo can ease selling pressure on the yen. ​ The oil …

Delivery robots keep crashing into bus shelters

Delivery robots keep crashing into bus shelters

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Food delivery robots are struggling to steer clear of Chicago’s bus stop shelters. Within just 48 hours, two autonomous couriers from different companies veered off course and collided with shelters shattering glass and alarming nearby residents. These pair of dramatic incidents come amidst brewing tension among  community members and lawmakers in Chicago who oppose the robots’ presence. The crashes also come just weeks after one of the manufacturers announced it was integrating a new mapping system trained on “Pokémon Go” data which is designed to improve navigation accuracy. The first crash occurred on Monday March 23 in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. Videos posted on social media show the delivery robot from Serve Robotics driving almost halfway past the bus shelter before suddenly veering toward it. The robot makes contact and smashes through the glass barrier, Kool-Aid Man style, before coming to a stop with crumbled broken glass covering and surrounding the sidewalk. After a few moments of stillness, the …

There’s Something Incredibly Weird About Two Delivery Robots Crashing Through Glass Bus Shelter in Chicago Within a Few Days of Each Other

There’s Something Incredibly Weird About Two Delivery Robots Crashing Through Glass Bus Shelter in Chicago Within a Few Days of Each Other

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Chicagoans are ducking for cover as delivery robots turn into heat-seeking missiles for innocent glass structures. On Tuesday, another one of these lunchboxes on wheels seems to have smashed into a bus shelter and rained shattered glass all over the sidewalk. Bizarrely, it’s the second time in a matter of days that this exact same thing happened in the Windy City. Weird coincidence, or do the machines just have it out for fragile transit infrastructure? Something seems to be afoot, since the offending robots were operated by two different companies. The latest crash, as reported by local outlet Block Club, was perpetrated by a robot from Coco, one of several robotics firms allowed to operate deliveries in certain parts of Chicago. Footage posted online shows the Coco bot idling in the mess it made, with glass shards sprinkled across its top. In a statement to Block Club, Coco insisted that this was a “rare, isolated incident” and that it …