NeurosciNick

Hawaii researchers are giving old fishing nets and recycled plastic a second life by mixing them into asphalt roads. Early tests found these roads didn't release more plastic particles than standard pavement, with tire wear overwhelming any plastic signal from the recycled material. If future studies confirm the roads are durable, the technology could help tackle both marine pollution and overflowing landfills. Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260625014830.htm

Check out this video from Linus Tech Tips: "I Love The Steam Machine More Already - WAN Show June 26, 2026" Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ub_WOWFoo

The United States men’s national soccer team has advanced to the Round of 32 — raising their prize money Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fifa-world-cup-prize-money-what-each-usmnt-player-stands-to-earn-332f8a96?mod=mw_rss_topstories

NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon and bolster a rapidly growing commercial space industry is facing an infrastructure obstacle. Source: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/artemis/nasas-aging-infrastructure-cant-handle-artemis-launches-without-usd1-billion-in-upgrades-watchdog-warns

Just days after a gunman killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk, it became clear that President Donald Trump would use the assassination to fuel a crackdown on free speech. To avenge Kirk's death, the administration vowed to go after so-called "antifa" (otherwise known as antifascist) terrorists. Now that promise is bearing fruit. This week, eight Texas activists were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison - one for attempted murder, but most for supposedly belonging to an insurrectionary "Antifa cell," including one sentenced to 30 years in part for moving a box of zines. These unusually harsh sentences are a major victory for … Read the full story at The Verge. Source: https://www.theverge.com/policy/956404/prairieland-sentencing-zines-trump-antifa

After announcing the release date for the Steam Machine earlier this week, Valve sneakily also confirmed that the latest version of its Linux-based operating system, SteamOS 3.8, would be the first to be available for download for all hardware configurations, letting you turn your existing desktop into your own Steam Machine. SteamOS 3.8 is out now, meaning you can download the official operating system image and try it out for yourself. For now, you will have to be using an AMD graphics card as Valve continues to work on Nvidia support for an official release in 2027. Your first step is creating a bootable device with a USB stick and your downloaded image of SteamOS, which you can do in the following ways: Windows: Use the Rufus utility. Select the SteamOS file and write it to your USB drive (this will format your USB drive). MacOS/ Linux: You can use Balena Etcher to write the SteamOS file to your USB drive. When you boot into SteamOS for the first time, you'll land on a desktop environment. Navigate to the "Re-image Device" option to start the installation, after which your machine will reboot. Note that you will need to disable Secure Boot to install SteamOS, which you'll need to do in the BIOS. You can find where this is located in the documentation for your respective motherboard maker. After those few steps you'll be up and running SteamOS, giving you an identical living-room PC experience to the Steam Machine. Valve notes that discrete AMD GPU support is still technically in beta, so expect updates to come in thick and fast after the next few weeks. But given how much work has been done to prepare for the Steam Machine, never mind the years of development on the Steam Deck, you can probably rely on it being stable enough for daily use. It is, however, always a good idea to keep a backup of your current operating system (on an entirely different drive) in case ... Source: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-releases-steamos-so-anyone-can-make-a-steam-machine-now/

While many enterprises have already begun integrating AI-generated images, visuals, graphics and videos into their production workflows — there is also a growing pool of data and subjective commentary indicating AI imagery ultimately looks non-distinct, monotonous, and too unoriginal to ensure a brand and its assets stand out from the pack. That it's "AI slop," in other words. AI creative tools startup Krea is hoping to change that trend by opening up the weights to its new frontier AI image model Krea 2 as two versions, "Krea 2 Raw" and "Krea 2 Turbo," under a custom license that requires firms with more than 50 seats to pay for Enterprise usage, and mandates all users of any size to implement technical safeguards to prevent the generation of illegal materials, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), child sexual abuse material (CSAM), or defamatory assets. Both models are available for public download on Hugging Face. The company says the models provide more visual variety than typical AI generators, while maintaining high prompt accuracy, fidelity, and quality. Importantly, they also offer enterprises and users the ability to customize the generative outputs much more than typical proprietary or even other open source models. And, for those seeking to generate imagery at high-throughput, Krea 2 Turbo's generation speed is only 2 seconds, making it among the fastest now available across open and proprietary AI image generation models. AI Image Generator API Speed & Licensing Benchmarks (Mid-2026) Model / Generator Developer / Platform Avg. Generation Time Licensing & Commercial Use Key Characteristics FLUX.1 [schnell] (fast) Prodia 0.5 seconds Open Weights (Apache 2.0). Fully permissive for free commercial use. Highly optimized endpoint utilizing step distillation to deliver sub-second generation times, representing the absolute floor for current API latency. Z-Imag... Source: https://venturebeat.com/technology/enterprise-grade-ai-image-generation-in-2-seconds-is-here-krea-2-raw-and-turbo-available-as-open-weights-under-custom-license

Grabbing this used model is the smartest way to save on Sony’s remote player Source: https://www.ign.com/articles/used-playstation-portal-deal-prime-day-2026

Firefly Aerospace launched the Victus Nox mission for the U.S. Space Force on Thursday night (Sept. 14), just 27 hours after receiving the liftoff order. Source: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/rocket-lab-launches-us-space-force-mission-with-less-than-17-hours-notice-a-new-record

‘Mastermind’ Dawie Groenewald given fine of 2m rand or four-year jail term almost 16 years after arrest Two traffickers of rhino horns have been sentenced by a South African court in what police said was the world’s largest such case, partly bringing to an end an almost two-decade legal saga. Dawie Groenewald and Tielman Erasmus had faced more than 1,700 charges ranging from illegally hunting and dehorning rhinos to racketeering and money laundering. Continue reading... Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/18/south-africa-men-sentenced-rhino-horn-trafficking-case