Author: Geek Planet

Ricardo Salinas, the billionaire owner of Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas, revealed in a recent interview that he has allocated 70% of his investment portfolio to bitcoin and bitcoin-related assets. The prominent bitcoin advocate disclosed that the remaining 30% of his portfolio consists of gold and shares in his own companies. He stated, “I don’t have a single bond, and I don’t have any other stocks except my own.” Salinas, whose net worth is estimated at $4.8 billion, has significantly increased his bitcoin exposure from 10% in 2020. The billionaire has been a vocal supporter of bitcoin, and he plans to…

In the thick of the final quarter of the year, TikTok is on the hunt for new U.S. business for its Shop e-commerce arm.The short-form video platform is offering “limited-time perks” – up to $6,000 in coupons – for new sellers to join the platform and start selling this month, according to an email shared with Digiday. Similar to its Black Friday offerings, TikTok seems to have gamified the process through “missions” to encourage and motivate sellers to sell – and sellers find out what they are once they sign up. As part of the perk, new joiners can enjoy:…

This article is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. In 2020, the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest judicial body, conjured a fundamental right to commit suicide, to assist, and be assisted therein. The ruling called suicide a “self-determined death” — i.e., death on demand — regardless of the reason, and perhaps even, age of the person who wants to die, as the court ruled that the right to suicide “is guaranteed in all stages of a person’s existence.” Youth is a stage of a person’s existence. (Estonia’s highest court recently issued a similar ruling, while requiring competence.) Now, famous German identical…

A new study by Kapwing says that a huge volume of videos circulating on YouTube are brainrot content and ‘AI slop’: a catch-all term for low-quality, AI-generated content designed to farm views rather than offer real value. Kapwing’s researchers tested this by creating a new YouTube account and tracking the first 500 videos recommended by the platform. Out of those, 104 videos, roughly 21%, were classified as AI slop, while 165 videos, about 33%, fell into a broader “brainrot” category. Brainrot includes repetitive, bizarre, or hypnotic clips that are easy to watch but lack substance. Together, the findings suggest that…

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealed in an interview on Tuesday that President Donald Trump plans to announce a bitcoin strategic reserve later this week. Speaking to independent news outlet The Pavlovic Today, Lutnick stated that the President “definitely thinks there’s a bitcoin strategic reserve” and will unveil plans for it during the White House’s inaugural crypto summit on Friday. Lutnick hinted that bitcoin would have a “unique status” compared to other cryptocurrencies under the reserve framework. “Bitcoin is one thing, and then the other currencies, the other crypto tokens, I think, will be treated differently—positively, but differently,” he remarked. The…

On Wednesday, November 19, powerhouses of the education freedom movement took the stage together at COSM 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona, to discuss educating the future technology workforce. Former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the American Center for Transforming Education Keri D. Ingraham, and Love Your School founder and school choice advocate Jenny Clark addressed the COSM 2025 attendees. Sandra Watson, President and CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority, opened the program. Ingraham then introduced former Governor Ducey, highlighting his groundbreaking success in implementing statewide school choice during his tenure. Arizona became the gold standard…

On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, the Williamson County Republican Party held its convention at the Franklin Marriott, located in the heart of Williamson County, Tennessee. At the event, “bona fide” Republicans (those who voted in the last three out of four Republican primaries) voted for the future of their party’s local leadership, with the two sides in the contest — Elevate and the Williamson County Conservatives — each offering a slate of eight candidates. The final results of the vote were committed in (added to) Bitcoin block 886,370 using Simple Proof’s Immutable Proof service, an automated service that employs the…

Starbucks has poached a senior manager from E.l.f. Cosmetics as part of its ongoing quest to re-energize the Starbucks brand through cultural collaborations. Neiv Toledano has joined Starbucks as its senior marketing manager of fashion and beauty. While Starbucks has always had employees who have worked on collaborations, including in the fashion and beauty spaces, this is a first-of-its-kind dedicated role and a signal that Starbucks is placing a bigger premium on these types of partnerships. At E.l.f., Toledano worked on collaborations with buzzy brands like Stanley and Liquid Death. In a LinkedIn post, Toledano said she’ll be “combining my greatest passions to drive…

Researchers have unveiled a new AI video generation technique called TurboDiffusion that can create synthetic videos at near-instant speed. It can generate AI video up to 200 times faster than with existing methods, without sacrificing visual quality. The work is a joint effort between ShengShu Technology, Tsinghua University, and researchers affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. According to its developers, the system is designed to dramatically cut the time it takes to generate video, a process that has traditionally been slow and computationally expensive. TurboDiffusion sets a new speed benchmark When tested on a consumer PC equipped with Nvidia’s…

But here’s one such controversy that is actually fun: At Science News, Elie Dolgin reports on a West Coast wolf who found an unexpected way to break into a crab trap and steal the bait: Haíɫzaqv Guardians had noticed many crab traps dragged onto the beach, their netting mangled and bait missing. The wardens initially thought marine mammals might be to blame. Or maybe bears. Remote cameras not only revealed the real culprit, but also later captured similar, less conclusive glimpses of the same behavior in additional wolves. Whether this qualifies as tool use, however, remains a matter of debate.…