Numlock News: January 30, 2023 • Fish, Whopper, Caesium
By Walt HickeyFish PlaysIn the great spirit of Twitch Plays Pokémon, several channels that involve pseudorandom attempts to play video games have sprung up and thrived, one of which was operated by a YouTuber named Mutekimaru whose tetra fish played a game of Pokémon on a Nintendo Switch based on their movements. This school of fish actually managed to pull off a financial transaction, when a game crash sent the fish to the Nintendo home screen where the fish got up to all kinds of tomfoolery, including changing the name of the account, logging into the Nintendo store twice, downloading a new avatar, setting up a PayPal account, accepting terms and conditions and adding 500 yen ($4) to the Switch account from a livestream, exposing the credit card details. Heather Chen and Junko Ogura, CNN ShippingSpanish police raided a Togo-flagged ship Orion V hauling cattle that had been followed since leaving Colombia, finding $114 million worth of cocaine, or about 4.5 tonnes’ worth, off the coast of the Canary Islands. The cops say that smugglers are increasingly using livestock ships because it’s more difficult to trace the drugs on the vessels. Police arrested 28 members of the crew. CashOil is the main source of foreign exchange funds in Nigeria. One issue is that over the past several years, the reduction in the price of oil as well as the decline in oil production in the country has meant that the income from foreign currency — and by proxy, the amount of funds available for foreign exchange — has gone down. Over last year, Nigeria’s foreign reserves dropped from $40 billion last January to $37 billion in December, and it’s causing issues for companies, especially those that work in tech and owe money to services like AWS. While the rate on a bank naira card might go for 450 naira per dollar, a virtual prepaid dollar card can go for 850 naira per dollar. Olatunji Olaigbe, Rest of World Middle Eastern or North AfricanThe Biden administration proposed a change to the 2030 census that would add a new checkbox for “Middle Eastern or North African” asking about race and ethnicity, as well as a “Hispanic or Latino” category that would add a specific category. Right now, people from those groups must identify as white, or as African-American. People with origins in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa are categorized as white people. The last time the standards were updated were in 1997. Other reforms proposed include ending the word “Negro” and the term “Far East” from the data policy of the federal government, which could improve efficiency by halving the amount of times demographers have to say “yikes” in a given day. Feel The BurnA mining company apologized after it said an extremely radioactive caesium-137 capsule fell off a truck somewhere over an 870-mile drive through Western Australia. The item in question is a capsule measuring 8 millimeters by 6 millimeters, and is made up of caesium-137. It emits a dangerous amount of radiation, it can cause skin burns and cancer on the wrong timespan, and is used in radiation gauges. It also is a perfect size to get lodged in a tire. Rio Tinto, the mining concern transporting the nodule of doom, has apologized for the oversight. Weirdly, the deadly chunk is somehow not even in the top 10 most dangerous things in Australia. Whopper Whopper Whopper WhopperThe most popular song in America right now is also the dumbest song in America right now, a song about a hamburger promulgated by Burger King on national airwaves. It’s spawned a TikTok trend, a Daft Punk remix, and several different versions, with the song “Whopper Whopper” worming into brains across the country. The song was written by a small ad agency scoring a $400 million two-year brand overhaul for Burger King, and has scored a 99 percent in brand recall and 62 percent in likability and engagement. The most remarkable news? There are now over 40 different cuts of the song. You will hear it for years. HacksThe U.S. Department of Justice announced it gained access to the Hive ransomware group in July of 2022, and since then has been able to alert hacked companies of impending attacks and given out 300 encryption keys that averted $130 million in ransom payments. It’s estimated that Hive hauled in $100 million from over 1,500 victims in 80 countries, often jeopardizing operations at hospitals, schools and more. Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today. Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement. 2022 Sunday subscriber editions: 2022 · NIMBY · Undersea Life · Bob vs Bob · Instant Delivery Curse · Monopoly · Twitter · Crypto · Rotoscope · Heat Pumps · The Ruck · Tabletop · Mexican Beer · The Chaos Machine · [CENSORED] · Podcast Industrialization · Fantasy Shows · Law Dork · Chinese Box Office · Box Office Recovery ·Giant Hornets · Graphic Novels · Infotainment · Nuclear Energy · Fast Fashion · Salty · Twitter Friction · Fangirls · Air Quality · Non-Colonial AI · The Reckoning · Hippos · Fixing Baseball · Booze TrialsSunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018You're currently a free subscriber to Numlock News. 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Numlock News: January 27, 2023 • Universal, Big Box, Garbage Fire
Friday, January 27, 2023
By Walt Hickey Have a great weekend! Universal Universal's theme parks have been a major bright spot on the earnings of Comcast, the cable company, responsible for $2.11 billion in revenue in the
Numlock News: January 26, 2023 • Yerba Mate, Belgium, Metrocard
Thursday, January 26, 2023
By Walt Hickey Blockbusted Between Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water and Elvis, this year's crop of Best Picture nominees is the highest-ever grossing class of films, with all 10 nominees
Numlock News: January 25, 2023 • Aquifers, Otters, Justin Bieber
Wednesday, January 25, 2023
By Walt Hickey Oscar nominations are live: You should absolutely subscribe to the Numlock Awards newsletter, the spin-off newsletter where I do the Oscar modeling and analysis. It's really fun.
Numlock News: January 24, 2023 • Puppies, Podcasts, Pickleball
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
By Walt Hickey Road The big ice roads in Alaska — the ones that have television shows — are in service to the oil extraction and mining industries predominantly, but networks of resident-supported ice
Numlock News: January 23, 2023 • Flo Rida, Carp, Reactors
Monday, January 23, 2023
By Walt Hickey Welcome back! Water Avatar: The Way of Water is on a record-breaking tear, hitting $2.024 billion as of this past weekend, $598 million of which came from North America and $1.426
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