Author: Geek Planet

Brazilian fintech company Méliuz announced Thursday it had allocated 10% of its cash reserves into bitcoin, becoming the first publicly traded firm in the country to adopt a bitcoin treasury strategy. Méliuz invested $4.1 million to acquire 45.72 bitcoins at an average price of $90,926 per coin. The purchase represents roughly 10% of the company’s total cash holdings based on a new policy approved by its board of directors. In a statement, Méliuz said the bitcoin allocation seeks “long-term returns” on the investment as part of its treasury management. The company also created a Bitcoin Strategic Committee to study expanding…

Fresh leaks from Android 17’s Canary build suggest that Google is actively working on how notifications behave for locked apps. According to a new Android Authority report, notifications from apps protected by the operating system’s native app lock feature will still appear, but without the key information. For instance, if someone has locked WhatsApp, and there’s a new message while your phone is sleeping, a new notification from the app should still show up on the device (either on the lock screen or as a bubble at the top of the screen), but the message and the chat shouldn’t be…

OpenAI is betting big on a role designed to stop AI risks before they spiral. The company has posted a new senior role called Head of Preparedness, a position focused on identifying and reducing the most serious dangers that could emerge from advanced AI chatbots. Along with the responsibility comes a headline-grabbing compensation package of $555,000 plus equity. In a public post announcing the opening, Sam Altman called it “a critical role at an important time,” noting that while AI models are now capable of “many great things,” they are also “starting to present some real challenges.” What the Head…

This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. Transhumanism offers a (delusional, in my opinion) hope to blaze a materialistic path to immortality. Transhumanists yearn, for example, to upload their minds to computers, thinking that will do the trick. It won’t. Even if the “mind” could be uploaded, it would merely be software that mimicked a person’s beliefs. The “uploaded” subject would still be dead. Image Credit: AImg – Adobe Stock Now, according to an interesting story in the New York Times, China has apparently jumped onto this longevity train and is devoting much energy and many resources…

Marketers hope that using AI technology will cut down on time spent producing creative assets, allowing them to cut costs — or scale up their operations. In the campaign to cut weeks into hours, however, hidden costs remain.Top talent is scarce; human oversight and meddling eats into newly gained margins; and realizing meaningful economies of scale can mean investing considerable cash and time upfront in order to build a working creative assembly line. Though difficult to assign a dollar value against, each of them represent an underwater rock that might hole an AI-assisted creative team below the waterline. 58% of…

Earlier this year, geneticist-turned-science writer Tina Hesman Saey wrote an article in Science News asserting that Image Credit: Designpics – Adobe Stock Sex is messy. It’s not just about chromosomes. Or reproductive cells. Or any other binary metric. Many genetic, environmental and developmental variations can produce what are thought of as masculine and feminine traits in the same person. And so sex, scientists say, should be viewed in all its complex glory. “Biological sex is not as simple as male or female, February 20, 2025 She is unhappy about a January White House executive order that aimed at “restoring biological…

Today, the Texas Senate has passed SB 21, a bill aimed at creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve for the state, by a vote of 25-5. The bill will now advance to the Texas House for further consideration. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick identified SB 21 as a priority bill for the 2025 legislative session this past January. The bill aims to position Texas as a leader in Bitcoin adoption by establishing a reserve of BTC, which proponents argue will serve as a hedge against economic instability and inflation. Support for the bill was evident during a February 18 hearing held…

As 200MP cameras become increasingly common on high-end Android phones, it is not surprising that Apple would like to experiment with the same in its own devices. That said, it is not an upgrade iPhone buyers will see anytime soon. The long road to a 200MP iPhone According to a recent report from AppleInsider, citing a Morgan Stanley investor note, Apple has now settled on a timeline. The company is said to be planning a 200MP camera for the iPhone 21, which is expected to launch in 2028. The naming itself needs some context. Apple is widely expected to release…

Neuroscientist Dr. Joseph Green likes to describe his field as still growing up. In this week’s GeekPlanet podcast episode, he explained that sciences like physics and chemistry are considered mature because they offer strong mathematical theories that make accurate predictions. But neuroscience isn’t quite there yet. Scientists know a lot about the brain — its parts, how neurons fire, and how brain areas communicate — but they don’t yet have a complete theory of how our thoughts, feelings, and experiences come from brain activity. Green compares the situation to the early days of studying electricity and magnetism: before James Clerk…

As programmatic means of investing in channels spreads further across the media landscape, there remain a few gaps where it’s neither efficient nor even doable. One of those less developed areas is product placement and sponsorship opportunities, which are either unwieldy or downright un-buyable.But Omar Tawakol, CEO of Rembrand, has his eye on a bigger prize — trying to improve advertising within the streaming world. Rembrand uses AI to work with both advertisers and publishers to improve the ad experience — since not everyone can comfortably afford to buy more costly ad-free access to content. Among other things, Rembrand uses…