This wild week in science and tech

Meet R1: the shrimp-slinging rival of Tesla’s Optimus

Forget Wall Street, Ant Group’s latest flex isn’t financial, it’s R1, a humanoid robot that made its debut by cooking shrimp, reportedly, at IFA 2025 tech show in Berlin. While Tesla’s Optimus dreams of factory work, R1 is already auditioning for Iron Chef.

Picture credits: The Verge

At 1.7 meters tall and 110 kilos, R1 looks like a heavyweight but moves at a “grandma-jogging pace.” Still, with 34 joints and surprisingly nimble arms, it can stir, flip, and serve without burning the kitchen down, which already puts it ahead of most humans.

Artwork by Affan Qasim created using Gemini Pro

But R1 isn’t just about dinner. Ant Group is pitching it as a tour guide, museum helper, and even a healthcare assistant. The first batch is already clocking in at the Shanghai History Museum, and a flashier second-gen model is in the works.

The humanoid robot race just got more exciting. With Ant joining Tesla, Boston Dynamics, and others, we’re inching closer to a future where robots don’t just build our stuff, they cook it, serve it, and maybe judge us for ordering extra shrimp.

Flowing water? In MY asteroid? Preposterous!

Astronomers have believed that water was only liquid in the earliest moments of our solar system. In a vacuum, water’s boiling point is very low, ensuring that even in asteroids, most water would either freeze or evaporate.

The theory that water came to Earth trapped in small amounts within asteroids isn’t new but these examinations from Japan’s aerospace exploration agency are: they show that there could have been liquid water flowing on Ryugu — a near-Earth asteroid — nearly a billion years after it was formed, which could say that within the layers of ice in asteroids, there was running water.

This means there’s a billion-year time period where ice-packed asteroids likely collided with the Earth, spreading much more water much faster than previously imagined.

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On its own, this isn’t that exciting. But this implies that there are other planets out there that could have received much more water than previously thought possible.

We’re still waiting on the confirmation for alien life, but the fact that there’s a lot more water to go around may get your hopes (or fears) up.

Spotify’s latest drop: Audiophile candy most won’t taste

Spotify’s new lossless audio sounds great, but only if you give it the right setup

Artwork by Syed Alihasan Agha created using ChatGPT

Jumping from Spotify’s compressed 96Kbps streams to its standard 320Kbps already feels like swapping a dusty window for clear glass, but stepping up to lossless FLAC is more like polishing that glass until it sparkles, noticeable only if you’re paying close attention.

Photo Credits: The Verge

On delicate acoustic tracks, say, the fingerpicked guitar on José González’s ‘Crosses’ or the soft harmonies in Bon Iver’s ‘Holocene’, the extra detail feels intimate and alive. But crank up bass-heavy EDM or fuzzed-out garage rock through Bluetooth earbuds, and those subtleties vanish in the chaos.

To actually hear the upgrade, you’ll need the app, a wired connection, and a set of solid headphones or speakers. Casual listeners can stick with high-quality streaming, but for audiophiles chasing the tiniest sonic textures, lossless indeed gives Spotify some bragging rights.

The glass coast

Every year, rising sea levels and storms erode our coastlines, taking plants and trees with them, leaving us vulnerable to storms and floods, and leaving less area for replantation. But there might be a solution.

Researcher Sunshine Van Bael and her team, along with Louisiana-based glass recycling company Glass Half Full, grew grasses and trees in a mixture of ground glass and sediment, effectively giving trees and plants more area to grow with less need for actual substrate.

As of 2022, glass waste made up 6% of Pakistan’s total municipal solid waste. While more work is needed, replicating these results with our mangroves would essentially kill two birds with one stone: waste glass will have a purpose, and we will be protected from the worst of the monsoons’ wrath.

The freedom to roast

Mastodon, the open-source alternative to X, has just rolled out support for quote posts. Now this is a big step in the right direction. If you want more traffic than what X already gets, you have to at least have the same features and then some.

In X, if you write out a horrible take you would probably get thoroughly thrashed by quote retweets (re-X’s?), Mastodon doesn’t want that. Here, they’re giving you the option to prevent specific posts from being quoted, block specific users from quoting you, or even turn it off entirely for anyone but your followers (or anyone at all).

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Whether or not you like this change, giving people more control over their own visibility online is a good change. But I have to admit, I enjoy being able to see people get cooked for their terrible takes. And if you secretly agree with someone who gets flamed for something they think, then hey, maybe it’s a learning opportunity for you.