Author: Geek Planet

U.S. President Donald Trump has officially made the United States the largest nation-state holder of Bitcoin by signing an executive order this evening to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The reserve will hold an estimated 200,000 BTC, marking a significant shift in U.S. financial strategy and reinforcing Bitcoin’s role in the global economy. David Sacks, President Trump’s Crypto Czar, provided further clarification on the newly established reserve, stating that the reserve will be funded by Bitcoin already owned by the federal government, specifically assets forfeited in criminal and civil asset forfeiture proceedings. “This means it will not cost taxpayers a…

Before Microsoft shipped the Surface Duo with Android, it was meant to run a custom version of Windows called Andromeda OS, built specifically for dual-screen devices. That plan was quietly scrapped years ago. Now, thanks to a leaked build and some serious developer effort, you can finally see what Microsoft was working on and even try it yourself. For the uninitiated, Andromeda OS was a Windows 10-based platform that looked and felt a lot like Windows Phone, complete with Live Tiles and a Start Menu designed to stretch across two displays. Microsoft originally envisioned it as the software foundation for…

After an exciting World Series, sports fans are hyped about baseball, and with a World Cup coming up this summer, soccer is also a hot topic.But neither holds a candle to basketball or football when it comes to player stardom, according to a new report from Kantar.Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry topped the company’s Sports Monitor Athlete Reputation Tracker, a report meant to help “gauge athlete popularity and marketability” by ranking them based on familiarity, likability, and negative perceptions. Curry tied the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark for No. 3 on the list last year and made the top…

2025 was another challenging year for the retail industry, as tariffs added another crushing blow to an industry that had already been dealing with sky-high inflation and waning VC dollars in recent years. The numbers lay bare how challenging it was for the retail industry: As of October, job cuts across U.S. firms hit a 22-year high, with retail being one of the hardest-hit industries. And of course, there were bankruptcies. U.S. business bankruptcies as a whole reached 6,574 in the third quarter of 2025, the highest since mid-2014. In turn, Modern Retail staff rounded up some of the most…

The Neanderthals now exist as a separate group only in terms of what we can find out about them. We could say the same for a lot of groups. But we are still learning and surmising new things. Did genetic defects contribute to the Neanderthal population decline? One theory, aired recently at New Scientist, is that modern human–Neanderthal hybrids may have suffered from a genetic defect: We know from genetic studies that there was sustained interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals between approximately 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. The Neanderthals went extinct around 41,000 years ago, but some of their…

In a recent New Yorker article, “The Case That A.I. Is Thinking,” James Somers explains his conversion from finding “comfort in the idea that [large language models (LLMs)] had little to do with real intelligence or understanding” to believing that “these models have become increasingly intelligent” and that ChatGPT now “seems to know what it’s talking about.” I am not convinced. An illusion is an illusion Somers’ key argument is: “How convincing does the illusion of understanding have to be before you stop calling it an illusion?” Yes, the confident blather produced by LLMs conveys an illusion of understanding. But…

“From this day on, America will follow the rule that everyone in Bitcoin knows very well — never sell your Bitcoin.” -President Donald Trump, 3/7/25 at inaugural White House Crypto Summit The President of the United States is now reciting popular Bitcoin maxims as they pertain to America’s bitcoin stack. Wild. It’s clear that he’s gotten the message that bitcoin is something altogether different than all other digital assets. He’s proven this not only by what he said at today’s Crypto Summit, but also by signing an executive order (EO) last night that established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) independently…

Christine Webb, an environmental studies prof at New York University, published a book in September, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters: Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology…

AI has already changed how we work, travel, and communicate – but we’re still finding new uses for it every day. Over the past year, I’ve used it to help tweak my fitness goals, and it’s made me realise just how incredibly useful a tool it would have been when I first started out. If you’re jumping into fitness for your New Year’s resolution (whether for the first time or not), I’ve outlined a few key ways that AI can massively help you reach success. From helping you lose weight to improving your cardio or gaining muscle (or all of…

I hate time travel. I mean, I really hate it! From a storytelling standpoint, it’s almost as bad as the Liar Revealed trope, where most of the story is taken up with covering up a deception. So, if I were to write a story with a time machine — and not take the idea too seriously — my first question would be, “How do I break this stupid thing so the reader will care about the plot! Why should anyone care about what’s going to happen if it can all be repeated again? Still, a few time-travel stories have been…