In this week’s newsletter: The melting of the Arctic’s summer sea ice is the most visible upshot of the climate crisis. Refreezing it might be a long shot – but do drastic times call for drastic measures? • Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here...
Cambridge experts recreate 336-year-old garden to commemorate ‘father of natural history’
John Ray, 17th-century botanist who coined words petal and pollen, was a tutor at Cambridge when he created his first garden He coined the terms petal and pollen, helped to lay the foundations of modern biology and is widely regarded as the greatest English naturalist of the 17th century. But...
The first unpatchable iPhone exploit in six years targets chips still running Apple’s latest iOS
Security researchers at Paradigm Shift have published the first iPhone bootROM exploit in years. The process, called usbliter8, targets a hardware-level flaw, which means upgrading to newer hardware is the only real fix. Read Entire Article
Frontier Airlines is leaking your passport and credit card details from a boarding pass
If you've ever flown Frontier Airlines and your boarding pass ended up in a photo, a trash can, or a social media post, your personal data may be accessible to anyone right now. Read Entire Article
Microsoft and Adobe team up and make Photoshop 20% faster on Windows
Thanks to a close collaboration with Adobe, Microsoft engineers have significantly improved performance in certain Photoshop operations. Photoshop is a large, native desktop application written in C++ and compiled with Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler on Windows, which is why Microsoft focused on MSVC in an effort to extract additional performance......
World shares are mixed following signing of US-Iran deal on ending the war
Shares are mostly lower in Europe after benchmarks in Japan and South Korea surged to new records after the U.S. and Iran signed their initial agreement ending the war
Man who died in Texas plane crash was a key figure in seeding Austin’s technology boom
The man who died in this week's crash of a small jet in Texas was a well-known entrepreneur named Joshua Baer who was a successful investor in technology startup companies
With a sledgehammer and a shovel, volunteers raced to save passengers in Texas plane crash
Several motorists who happened across a fiery plane crash on a Texas highway rushed to help — putting their own lives in danger to help those on board escape
Georgia is losing farmland fast. Is a state conservation fund enough to save it?
Georgia’s legislature has allotted $2 million for the first year of the Georgia Farmland Conservation Fund. Farm landowners across the state have applied for a piece of that funding to protect their land from development — for housing, warehouses, data centers, and other uses. Applicants will find out in August...
Inside the government’s push to divert Puerto Rico solar funds to a bankrupt utility
When Congress approved a $1 billion Energy Resilience Fund for Puerto Rico in 2022, the money was desperately needed. Multiple hurricanes had battered the island’s notoriously fragile electric grid, and lawmakers envisioned the money supporting rooftop solar and battery systems that could provide resilient backup power during emergencies. The Biden...