Category Archives: Blog

A six-in-one smart machine, dubbed Hiplant, is a lot more than just a pot for plants.

The emoji gold rush is on.

Scores of people are quietly paying tens of thousands of dollars to buy emoji, lured with the promise that they, and only they, will forever own the emoji in question.

Say hello to the hidden world of Yats, the latest online speculative craze. Built on the belief that the familiar cute icons will supplant traditional online handles, the currently invite-only Yat marketplace offers investors a chance to lock in their emoji of choice now — before it’s too late.

And if CryptoKitties and NFTs are any indication, the early adopters stand to make, or lose, a fortune.

Yats to the 🌕

On an extremely basic level, a Yat is just a string of emoji that, for the right price, can be yours.

“Imagine being known as 🔥🐍 or 🤖👻👑 instead of coffeequeen98 or jake2456@emailxyz.com,” explains the team behind the project. “By owning a Yat – let’s say 🌊🔱🌴 – it’s yours forever. You are the ~only~ one on earth who owns these emojis.”

Despite how absurd that sounds on its face — after all, how can only one person own an emoji? — people are scooping up Yats in droves.

Built by the blockchain protocol company Tari Labs, Yats represent an attempt to unify all your online handles — be they for communication, payments, or whatever else — in one carefully selected combination of emoji. With the goal of moving Yats onto the blockchain (more on that later), Yats offer, at least in theory, a censorship-resistant form of pseudonymous identity for the internet era.

Instead of sending bitcoin or monero to a long cryptocurrency address, the argument goes, you could send it to 🌊💨☁️💦.

Tweet may have been deleted

At present, would-be Yat owners need an invite code to purchase the emoji. Tari Labs prices Yats based on when they were created (referred to as its Generation) and a hidden algorithm dubbed a Rhythm Score. At the time of this writing, all Yats are Generation Zero.

“The price is based on its Rhythm Score (RS), which is a measure of its rarity and uniqueness,” the Yat marketplace explains. “The RS is determined primarily by a Yat’s length. Other factors include the average popularity of the emojis used in the Yat (based on current worldwide usage) and the Yat’s pattern (i.e. repeating emojis or ‘bookend’ emojis).”

Yats with a lower RS, like 🌊🐾🐍😈, cost in the range of $4 to $6. More unique Yats, like 🚀🌕, have, according to Yat’s auction site, sold for six figures. The 🔑 emoji is listed as having sold for $425,000.

While the idea of throwing down $200,000 for a rocket and moon emoji (as one Yat owner supposedly did in an April closed auction) may sound like a joke, the team behind Yats is serious.

Cofounders Riccardo Spagni and Naveen Jain (who is not, it should be noted, the same Naveen Jain who ran the infamous InfoSpace) have a long list of cryptocurrency projects and investments behind them. Spagni is perhaps best known as the former lead maintainer of the privacy coin Monero, and is not the type of fly-by-night operator that has plagued the larger cryptocurrency industry for years.

A current job listing on Yat’s careers page shows the project is backed by numerous venture firms, including Blockchain Capital, which lists Tari Labs on its portfolio page. As a point of reference, Blockchain Capital’s other investments include Coinbase, Ripple, Diem, and Kraken — in other words, serious, if sometimes problematic, players.

And yes, this all has to do with the blockchain. Or, at least a blockchain. The current Alpha release of Yats is centralized, but Spagni has publicly claimed that the end goal is to move Yats onto the blockchain.

In other words, as things currently stand, if Tari Labs abandons Yats for any reason, Yats go with them. If Tari Labs can successfully decentralize Yats, however, then the project has the potential to live on regardless of what happens to the company.

This, according to Spagni, is very much in the works — though he declined to provide a specific timetable.

“No one should be able to be canceled by big tech companies, governments, or anyone else.”

“Yat will eventually live on Tari,” Spagni said via direct message, which is a “default-private digital asset protocol.”

Basically, Yats won’t live on the company’s servers, but be distributed on a blockchain.

We reached out Yat’s listed press contact with a host of questions, but the company did not respond. Spagni explained that the Yat team isn’t yet ready to speak to the press.

This future promise of decentralization via Tari is crucial, however, as it’s a fundamental part of Yat’s “censorship resistant” appeal.

“We believe that it’s critical for people to control their own identities, and that no one should be able to be canceled by big tech companies, governments, or anyone else,” explains Jain in a promotional video. “We believe that Yat is an important part of making this goal a reality.”

And maybe that’s true. But even so, it’s worth asking one key question: Can anyone actually even “own” emoji? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is yes.

Sort of.

Companies like Apple own their own emoji set. On the other end of the spectrum are open-source emoji libraries. Yat has its own list of emoji. More broadly, however, emoji are governed by the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit funded by donations.

We reached out to the Unicode Consortium to ask what, if anything, it thought of Yat’s promise of owning emoji. We received no response.

Yat can only deliver on its grander promises if online service providers integrate with Yat’s API, thus tying those platforms to what is essentially a DNS for emoji. The web browser Opera has, according to Yat, already done this.

“Opera has 380 million users (!!) and now a huge percentage of them can simply enter Yat emojis into the URL bar to visit a Yat Page, or be redirected anywhere a Yat Creator chooses to send them,” explains Yat.

In other words, Yat owners haven’t exactly bought the emoji per se, but rather what is analogous to an emoji domain controlled by Yat. Yat does, however, make clear that a Yat is not limited to being a domain — again, it’s meant to represent an all-encompassing online identity.

That’s not all. There are also plans to permit the minting of Yats as NFTs — which would, at least in theory, turn emoji into non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.

Dropping serious 💰 for ❤️, 🖼️, and 📈

Technical questions aside, the reasons people give for buying up Yats vary as widely as the Yat combinations themselves.

We spoke with six Yat owners over digital chat and email — some of whom asked to remain anonymous or be referred to by their online handles — in order to learn about what Yats they’ve purchased, how much they’ve spent, and why they believe in the project.

The answers to the latter question range from financial speculation, to creative expression, to a true belief in the idea of emoji as a universal online identity (emoji don’t need to be translated, though emoji-based puns might).

“My bet in yats is very speculative,” explained one Yat owner, going by the name loomdart, who told Mashable they’d paid $55,000 for 🦋🐝 and $30,000 for 🐱🎩, “but I am speculating that this new take on identities will take off worldwide.”

Another Yat owner, who described himself over chat as a late forties Canadian man working in the video game industry, explained why Yats appealed to him.

“The idea of a single online identity that ‘just works’ feels a bit like the Holy Grail to me.”

“I’ve always been fascinated with online identities and frustrated with having to recreate my same username and image on so many different sites, in so many different games etc. that the idea of a single online identity that ‘just works’ feels a bit like the Holy Grail to me,” he wrote.

The Canadian said he’d made around 500 different Yats — some of which were intended as gifts for family members — with the most expensive Yat in his collection costing approximately $900. In total, he estimated that he’s spent between $8,000 and $10,000 on Yats.

Another Yat owner, a 37-year-old man from Houston who claimed to own more than 150 Yats, explained what he sees as Yat’s potential.

“I work in B2B marketing and I’ve seen first hand how emoji has gone from a ‘we would never do emoji, it’s just silly’ to ‘let’s do a whole email subject in emoji’ in less than 18 months,” he wrote over direct message. “So I can see a future where CNN uses 📺📺📺 as their URL or Cirque du Soleil using 🎪.”

Some of the Yats the Houston resident says he owns include 🍽️😵💃♻️ (“eat sleep rave repeat”) and 🐍✈️🐍 (“snakes on a plane”).

Another Yat owner, Matthew Callahan, described himself as a “Yatcolyte,” and wrote via email that he has more than 500 Yats — his favorite being ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.

“I plan on reselling many of my Yats in the future, but I would have a hard time selling ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️,” wrote Callahan, a 37-year-old living in New York City. “It’s my online identity, my brand — it’s really special to me.”

Beyond Yat’s ostensible use case, at least one artist, Skye Nicolas, is incorporating Yats into their work.

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“This highly personal approach in intimately sharing my story, echoes the blockchain’s promise of transparency and openness, metaphorically,” Nicolas said of his Yat art series over email.

Perhaps surprisingly, when asked why they’d gotten into purchasing Yats, none of the Yat owners spoke exclusively in terms of pure market speculation. The man from Houston, for example, said he bought around 25 of his 150 or so Yats for “investment potential,” but that the ones he loved the most have much lower Rhythms Scores (i.e., are potentially less valuable).

Some version of this sentiment was echoed by all the Yats owners. Sure, getting rich would be nice, but it’s all about the big picture.

“I believe the true beauty lies in how this is all done on the blockchain, and the end user won’t even be aware of it,” wrote the owner of 🦋🐝 and 🐱🎩. “I view it as kind of like a gateway drug. If yats can pull it off, it’s giving users an uncensorable self-sovereign identity that they see as just some emojis!”

📈 or 📉, it all depends on 👐

Yat’s success depends on adoption.

For Yats to be anything other than a brief online craze that leaves the relatively few early adopters bitter and broke, both average internet users and online services need to see value in the project.

Thankfully for Yat, it has some high-profile advocates.

The rapper Lil Wayne has a Yat in his Twitter profile, for example, as does Wiz Khalifa.

And on July 20, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington tweeted about Yats — suggesting that he was the one who plopped down $200,000 for 🚀🌕. Indeed, that Yat links to Yat’s default landing page, which then points toward Arrington XRP Capital. Yat’s official Twitter account tweeted about the sale, tagging Arrington, back in May.

We reached out to Arrington XRP Capital in an attempt to confirm that Arrington really did spend $200,000 on 🚀🌕, but received no immediate response.

Tweet may have been deleted

As of the time of this writing, the Yat marketplace is still invite only. It won’t remain so for long. Generation Zero ends July 30, and Yat promises that owners will be able to mint their Yats as NFTs by the end of the month.

SEE ALSO: So you spent millions on an NFT. Here’s what you actually bought.

In other words, get ready to hear a lot more about the internet’s Next Big Thing. Just be careful with the FOMO.

The French artist Vincent Leroy debuted a new installation in the Venice canals, complete with 60 magnifying glasses.

Mobileye, an Israeli autonomous vehicle startup acquired by Intel, is putting its self-driving system to the ultimate test: the mean streets of New York City.

At an event this week, Intel announced that its Mobileye self-driving cars were approved to drive through NYC streets. It’s the only autonomous vehicle testing permit-holder in the city. It’s also the first company to have a dedicated testing program in the country’s most populous municipality.

San Francisco and the Bay Area, along with Arizona, have been the usual testing sites for other companies like Waymo, Cruise, and Aurora.

As the video shows, NYC is full of pedestrians (and jaywalkers!), buses, construction zones, aggressive drivers, double-parked cars, bridges, tunnels, delivery vans, and so much more.

The cars still have a safety driver at the helm, but the cameras (and backup radar and light-detecting LiDAR sensors) are guiding the ride. The driver keeps their hands off the wheel throughout the entire 40-minute drive.

The autonomous drive is unedited so you can see what it’s like for a machine to take on NYC at street level.

TikTok wouldn’t be TikTok without its iconic green screen effect.

The feature, which allows users to record themselves superimposed over an image of their choosing, is ripe for dance trends, citing sources, and even tricking parents. Users don’t even need an actual green screen to use it, which certainly makes things easier.

TikTok has so many green screen effect options, the green screen gets its own section in its editing suite.

Here’s how to use them.

Access the basic green screen effect menu

To post any TikTok video, tap the + symbol at the bottom of your screen.

That brings you to TikTok’s extensive recording and editing suite, where you can either record videos in-app or upload your own. To access the green screen feature, tap the square labeled “Effects” in the lower left hand corner.

Pick an effect

There, you can scroll through TikTok’s countless video effects. Scroll to the right, where you’ll see a tab labeled Green Screen. Once that tab is open you can choose one of TikTok’s green screen effects.

To use the most basic effect, tap the first icon on the upper left side of the menu. The app will prompt you to choose an image from your phone’s photo library.

Choose an image from your library

TikTok will automatically superimpose you onto the image you choose. While the app is good at identifying users within an image, the green screen effect does work better when the user is recording against a solid-colored background.

Users can also resize themselves and place themselves anywhere on the green screen background — such as in the office, instead of the bed you may or may not have been working out of for the past year and a half.

Personalize videos with other green screen effects

TikTok’s other green screen features follow the same basic steps: tap the icon you want, choose the image you’re using for a green screen, and then adjust your size and placement. For the green screen video function, for example, follow the same steps and choose a video from your library to record over. To use the green screen sticker function, select an image from your library and place it where you want, and then record your video as usual.

Making use of some green screen features requires a little more user input, like TikTok’s green screen eyes and mouth feature for instance. This mildly terrifying feature allows the user to edit their own eyes, nose, and mouth over static images. People use it to animate objects, give their pets some personality, or even impersonate other people.

To use this feature, select the image you want to use for your green screen. TikTok will identify your eyes, nose, and mouth, which you can resize and place over the image as you want. Here’s a delightfully nightmarish example using my cat.

Duet other creators with the green screen effect

Earlier this year, TikTok released another feature combining two of its most popular video effects: green screen and duets. TikTok users can collaborate with other creators by recording themselves superimposed on another user’s video. Like TikTok’s other duet and stitch functions, this allows creators to react to one another, add on to videos, and immerse themselves in TikTok trends.

To use this function, tap the arrow icon at the bottom left corner the screen on the video you want to duet. Then, tap the “Duet” icon, which appears to the left of the one labeled “Stitch.” Note that not every creator allows duets on their videos, though, which is why the “Duet” and “Stitch” icons may be grayed out.

When you first start the duet, it’ll default to the standard side-by-side duet function. Tap “Layouts” on the right side of your screen, where you can select the kind of duet you want to use.

When you tap “Green Screen,” you can begin recording over the video you want to duet. Like the other green screen functions, you can resize the image of yourself and move it around. Resizing is especially helpful to avoid blocking the original video’s focus, like in this example of TikTok creator hannah.plants showing off her monstera’s roots.

When you’re done recording, tap the checkmark, which will bring you to TikTok’s editing suite. You can record a voice over, control the volume of your video and the original video, and add filters, stickers, and text.

Once you finish editing your video, tap “Next” in the lower right corner of your screen. Add your caption, select your cover frame, and control privacy settings.

Hit “Post” when you’re done! That’s all it takes to make a green screen video on TikTok.

The cast of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever — including Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Jaren Lewison, and Darren Barnet — sat down with Mashable to talk Season 2 of the groundbreaking series.

At one time or another everyone on set of The Office had to break. It was inevitable.

Since Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey started the Office Ladies podcast in October 2019 they shared that cast members broke when filming the “Branch Wars” episode, during “Women’s Appreciation,” during “Money,” and many other hilarious scenes. When chatting about the Season 5 episode, “Framing Toby,” however, Fischer finally revealed the two times she’s laughed the hardest on set.

If you need a little refresher, “Framing Toby” was packed with engaging storylines. Much to Michael’s dismay Toby returned from Costa Rica, the office fought over a dirty microwave, Ryan dumped Kelly, and of course, Jim surprised Pam with news that he purchased his parents’ house for them. (Creepy clown painting and all!)

The creepy, comical clown painting

Speaking of the clown painting that was inexplicably stuck to the wall, let’s talk about the scene in “Framing Toby” that made Fischer laugh the second hardest she’d ever laughed while filming.

“The scene where Jim is trying to take the clown painting off the wall for Pam is one of the hardest I’ve ever laughed on the show. It is the second hardest time,” Fischer told Kinsey. (The first, she said, was when they filmed the plasma TV scene in “Dinner Party.” Absolutely iconic.)

“This is the second. Every time John tried to lift the painting on the wall, I could not stop laughing. I don’t know what it was. Tears, tears, choking on our laughter. We laughed so hard,” she continued. “I looked for it in the bloopers and it’s not there. And I’m so upset it’s not there. It took us like an hour to shoot that tiny moment of him…”

“Trying to take that painting off the wall?” Kinsey asked? 

“Trying to take the painting off the wall,” Fischer confirmed.

“John is also so funny at physical comedy,” Kinsey added. “I laughed out loud when he pulled back that fake wood paneling and it kind of startled him.”

“Yes. So then at the end of the scene in the garage, when we’re hugging, I improvised the line, ‘What about the clown?’ And it made John laugh. And that’s why he’s like burying his head into my neck. And then when he said, ‘Yeah, I can’t do anything about that,’ it made me laugh. And so I’m like smashing my face into his shoulder,” Fischer explained. “You can totally tell we’re breaking. And that’s why. It was because we were still — any time we brought up the clown painting, we lost it.”

Seriously, though. What was up with the clown?

At this point in time you likely still have questions about that clown painting. I know I do. Sadly, Fischer and Kinsey don’t know the whole story, but they were able to share a few additional details.

“In the script, it just says, ‘Jim examines a hideous painting of some clowns putting out a fire. He tries to pull it off with all his might. Nothing. Jim grimaces,'” Fischer said. “[Producer] Randy Cordray told me that that clown painting was provided. It was made original for us by one of [prop master] Phil Shea’s go-to artists… But Randy said that the artist actually provided them with multiple preliminary choices and that Mindy [Kaling], Greg [Daniels], Paul [Feig], and Jen [Celotta] all had to stand and look at multiple clown paintings. And that’s the one they chose.”

“It cracked me up that it was on the wall like that and that he couldn’t remove it because I feel like that’s such a dad move,” Kinsey said. “You know, it’s like that moment where your mom is like, ‘That painting is always tilted, it’s always tilted.’ And then your dad goes and superglues it to the wall because he’s tired of it tilting. It just made me laugh. I want to know the story behind why they bolted it down.”

“Yeah. What is the story there? There’s a story. We don’t know what it is exactly,” Fischer said.

“We don’t know,” Kinsey confirmed.

What Office fans do know is that later on in the series Jim and Pam somehow get the creepy clown painting off the wall. In an amazing Easter egg, the work of art (?) was shown for sale at the warehouse in “Garage Sale,” Episode 19 of Season 7.

Welp, there goes the structural integrity of the Halpert home.

Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for more behind-the-scenes details about Jim’s childhood home and stories from filming “Framing Toby.”

You can stream episodes of The Office on Peacock and follow along with the podcast every week on Earwolf, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher.

A boatload of new movies and TV shows is arriving on Amazon Prime Video this August.

New Amazon original movies include two films fresh from the Cannes Film Festival: Val, a documentary about actor Val Kilmer, and Annette, a surreal musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. Amazon is also releasing a second season of Modern Love, as well as anime blockbuster EVANGELION: 3.01+1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME, the fourth film in the theatrical edition of Evangelion. On top of all that, Amazon Prime is adding movies like Jaws, Borat, and Hook to its library.

Here’s everything coming to Amazon Prime Video in August:

Top Pick: Val

From Batman Forever to Top Gun, Val Kilmer has been in some of the most iconic movies of the last decades. Now, the actor is the subject of a new documentary. Val tells the story of Kilmer’s career using footage that he shot of himself throughout his life, including home movies and auditions. Kilmer’s son Jack narrates the movie with his father’s words, as Val Kilmer is recovering from throat cancer and has a difficult time speaking. The result is an incredibly intimate look into Kilmer’s life and work, all captured through Kilmer’s own lens.

How to watch: Val is streaming on Amazon Prime Video Aug. 6.

Movies:

21 (8/1)

Aliens (8/1)

All About Steve (8/1)

Anaconda (8/1)

Annette (8/20)

Annie (8/1)

Attack the Block (8/1)

Borat (8/1)

Catch Me If You Can (8/1)

Center Stage (8/1)

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (8/1)

Elekta (8/1)

Escape from Alcatraz (8/1)

Evan Almighty (8/16)

EVANGELION: 3.0+1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME (8/13)

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (8/1)

Freedomland (8/1)

Hook (8/1)

In Bruges (8/16)

In Her Shoes (8/1)

Jaws: The Revenge (8/1)

Jaws (8/1)

Jaws 2 (8/1)

Jaws 3 (8/1)

Killer Among Us (8/20)

Knowing (8/1)

La Bamba (8/1)

Machete (8/1)

Made of Honor (8/1)

Max Payne (8/1)

Moneyball (8/1)

Mud (8/1)

My Best Friend’s Wedding (8/1)

Patriot Games (8/1)

Pearl Harbor (8/1)

Pete the Cat Back to School Operetta (8/27)

Predator (8/1)

Predator 2 (8/1)

Seabiscuit (8/1)

Secret Window (8/1)

Sideways (8/1)

Slither (8/1)

Something’s Gotta Give (8/1)

Soul Surfer (8/1)

The Courier (8/27)

The Great Debaters (8/1)

The Insider (8/1)

The Iron Lady (8/1)

The Legend of Zorro (8/1)

The Lincoln Lawyer (8/1)

The Natural (8/1)

The Roommate (8/1)

The Skeleton Twins (8/17)

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (8/1)

Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys (8/1)

Val (8/6)

Water For Elephants (8/1)

You, Me And Dupree (8/1)

TV

Addison: Season 1 (8/1)

Bannan: Season 1 (8/1)

Be Cool, Scooby Doo: Season 1 (8/1)

Chesapeake Shores: Season 1 (8/1)

City Confidential: Season 1 (8/1)

Delicious: Season 1 (8/1)

Dirt Every Day: Season 1 (8/1)

Frankie Drake Mysteries: Season 1 (8/1)

Here We Go Again: Season 1 (8/1)

How the Earth Was Made: Season 1 (8/1)

In Their Own Words: Season 1 (8/1)

Modern Love: Season 2 (8/13)

Sea Raiders: Season 1 (8/1)

S.O.Z. Soldiers or Zombies: Season 1 (8/6)

The Bridge: Season 1 (8/1)

The French Chef with Julia Child: Season 1 (8/1)

The Nordic Murders: Season 1 (8/1)

Winners of the West: Season 1 (8/1)

Free with IMDb TV

100% Wolf: Legend of the Moonstone: Season 1 (8/12)

500 Days of Summer (8/1)

Alpha (8/28)

Alpha and Omega (8/1)

American Pie Presents: Band Camp (8/1)

American Pie Presents: Beta House (8/1)

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (8/1)

American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (8/1)

Apollo 13 (8/1)

Beyond: Seasons 1-2 (8/1)

Code Black: Seasons 1-3 (8/1)

Daredevil (8/1)

Detroit (8/1)

Dominion: Seasons 1-2 (8/1)

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: Seasons 1-6 (8/1)

Eagle Eye (8/1)

Garden State (8/1)

Ghostbusters (1984) (8/1)

Ghostbusters II (8/1)

How to Train Your Dragon (8/1)

La La Land (8/16)

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (8/1)

Long Shot (8/1)

Luke Bryan: My Dirt Road Diary (8/6)

Major Payne (8/1)

Macgyver (2016): Seasons 1-5 (8/1)

No Good Deed (2014) (8/1)

Only the Brave (2017) (8/1)

Perry Mason: Seasons 1-9 (8/1)

Scorpion: Seasons 1-4 (8/1)

Shrek Forever After (8/1)

Spotlight (8/1)

The Green Hornet (8/1)

The Road to El Dorado (8/1)

The Tent Mender (8/6)

The Wolf of Wall Street (8/1)

Waiting to Exhale (8/1)

Walk the Line (8/1)

What’s Love Got to Do with it (8/1)

NASA’s Perseverance rover is getting ready to collects its first rock samples on Mars, which should eventually make their way back to Earth.

Eyeing the floor of an ancient lakebed, Perseverance is traveling to a spot south of where it initially landed in February to begin the 11-day sampling process, NASA announced Wednesday. The rocks targeted are described as pale, flat paver stones, which NASA hopes will give a good baseline idea of what the broader region is like geologically.

Before the actual sampling begins, Perseverance will use scientific instruments in its 7-foot arm to examine the makeup of the rocks. At the moment, NASA is unsure whether the rocks are volcanic or sedimentary. Figuring that out before sampling will give context to the samples collected, Perseverance team members explained during a news briefing Wednesday. These rocks are thought to be some of the most ancient in the area.

Using an abrading tool that looks like a wide drill bit, Perseverance will dig through the surface of a rock, blow the dust away with compressed air, and then take a look at the composition of the rock. After gathering that data, the rover will collect a sample from the same rock at a different spot.

The sample caching system contains a lot of moving parts, so the whole process takes quite a bit longer than, say, astronaut Neil Armstrong digging up the first moon samples in just a few minutes, as NASA pointed out in its announcement.

Once the sample is collected, it’s sealed and stored in the rover until the mission team determines where and when it will deposit the sample on the Martian surface.

Another mission will have to be sent to Mars to collect those samples and launch them back to Earth. Right now, NASA wants that mission to hit Mars in 2026, with samples returning for analysis in 2030.

A map shared by NASA gives an idea of where Perseverance has traveled and where it’s going. The rover started at the Octavia E. Butler Landing Site and has been traveling south toward the Crater Floor Fractured Rough, where it will collect its first sample. Other areas of geological interest that could help uncover the history of Mars include the Raised Ridges to the west, spotted by the Ingenuity helicopter during its ninth flight. The ridges are described as a “prime location to look for signs of ancient life.”

The spot labeled Three Forks marks what was once a river delta at the edge of the Jezero Crater lake. It was going to be the first destination for Perseverance, but the team decided after landing to hit the closer southern points of interest first. After it’s done in the south, Perseverance will head up and over to the Three Forks.

NASA hasn’t laid out a specific timeline, as operating machinery on another planet tends to come with unexpected detours, but things seem to be moving smoothly thus far. The first “witness” sampling tube, used to help scientists tell if Mars samples contain any contaminates from Earth, was successfully prepped and stored Wednesday.

Twitter wants your help spotting trash replies.

The social media giant announced Wednesday that it’s testing a new system for both upvoting and downvoting replies. According to Twitter, the goal is to help it identify what type of content users want to see.

“Some of you on iOS may see different options to up or down vote on replies,” explained Twitter. “We’re testing this to understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.”

Tweet may have been deleted

Notably, Twitter made it clear that this test doesn’t represent a new way to ratio people. For the blissfully unaware, getting ratioed is when a tweet gets far more replies (or quote tweets) than likes or retweets — thus demonstrating that people take issue with it.

“Your downvotes aren’t public,” said the company, “while your upvotes will be shown as likes.”

Twitter first teased the idea of a downvote system in November of 2020, but at the time the company insisted that it frequently explores new features and that often those features never launch for the broader user base.

Apparently, Twitter upvotes are one step closer to launching.

We reached out to Twitter to determine how many users are seeing this test, and if the test is limited to certain countries. We also asked if the company is concerned that a program designed to show people more (and presumably less) ill-defined types of content may fuel conspiracy theories regarding “shadow banning.”

SEE ALSO: Twitter ‘exploring’ adding a dislike button or downvote system

“Votes are not public and do not impact the ranking of replies,” replied a Twitter spokesperson. “In an experiment group the Like button is removed for Upvote, and in this case Upvotes count as Likes.”

When asked whether Twitter intends to eventually expand the test to include Android users, the spokesperson declined to speak to future plans.

“For now, we’re only testing this on iOS.”

Meanwhile, Reddit, which popularized the upvote system, chimed in with some thoughts of its own.

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As did Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who proudly claimed to be first person on the planet to be downvoted.

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It’s a reply which got our upvote.

UPDATE: July 21, 2021, 1:01 p.m. PDT: This story was updated to include additional comment from Twitter with regard to whether or not the downvoting test will be made available to Android users.