Numlock News: March 25, 2022 • Tyrannosaurus Rex, Hacker, Space Helicopter
By Walt HickeyHave a great weekend! Be sure to check out our Numlock Awards Supplement spinoff newsletter to catch up on the Oscar race before Sunday night. T. RexA Tyrannosaurus rex that had gone missing has been located. In October of 2020, an unknown individual bought Stan, a T. rex skeleton, at auction for $31.8 million, an incredibly comprehensive 39-foot specimen hauled out of South Dakota’s Black Hills in the 1990s and forced to go to auction over a dispute over an estate. Since then, we’ve seen neither hide nor scale of Stan, despite lots of people attempting to track down the whereabouts of the dinosaur. Earlier this year, though, an investigation tracked down a U.S. Census record of a 5.6-ton shipment worth $31,847,500 that was exported from New York to the United Arab Emirates last May. After following up on it, Stan has been located: The fossil will be the centerpiece of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, a forthcoming facility. Michael Greshko, National Geographic New CarsThe average price of a new car in the United States was $46,085 in February, up $5,000 from a year ago. The Consumer Price Index has new vehicle prices up 12.4 percent in the past year, and it’s worth looking at where that price increase is coming from. Because yes, inputs and component price increases as well as labor and transportation costs are certainly contributing to that rise in costs, but a substantial portion of that is just markups from the auto dealers, who know that given the supply crunch, they’re really well suited to run up the price on new vehicles. In January, 82 percent of buyers paid more than sticker price for a new car, which is up from 2.8 percent in January of 2021 and 0.3 percent in January of 2020. Indeed, the average transaction price of a car in January of 2022 was $728 above sticker price, whereas in the prior two Januaries the average price was over $2,000 less than sticker price. Space HelicopterNASA’s Ingenuity space helicopter, which is on Mars attached to the Perseverance mission, has completed its 22nd flight, flying for 101.4 seconds, hitting an altitude of 33 feet, scouting out the best route forward for Perseverance. Over the course of the first 21 flights, Ingenuity flew 15,247 feet and had a combined flight time of almost 39 minutes. The helicopter is reportedly in great shape and its operations — initially slated for just five flights — have been extended by the space agency through September. EVsThe U.S. Postal Service announced that it ordered 10,019 new electric delivery trucks as part of its initial $2.98 billion order of 50,000 new vehicles. That’s double the original plan, which was that 10 percent of the vehicles under the contract would be required to be battery electric, or about 5,000 of the initial order. The USPS will order up to 165,000 vehicles for north of $6 billion over the coming decade to replace its aging fleet, and given that the needs of the postal service are particularly conducive to electrified vehicles it’s been an enigma as to why they’ve committed so little of their resources to the variety of vehicle. Riley Beggin, The Detroit News OxxoSince last November, the Oxxo convenience store in Mexico has been pushing ready-to-go app-connected Visa cards to its customers, and already it’s making a huge dent in getting Mexico’s unbanked access to debit tools. As of early March, the company has had 1.6 million sign-ups, which makes the convenience store one of the fastest-growing debit card companies in the country, numbers that put it in league with actual banks and more than many of the fintech companies making a play in Mexico. With 20,000 locations — now turned functionally into bank branches as well — it’s already got the enviable brick-and-mortar footprint that many companies attempting to win the Mexican market can scale up to. SpotifySpotify said that it paid more than $1 million in music royalties to 1,040 different artists of recorded music, which is 126 percent more than the number of artists getting a million dollars a year from Spotify in 2020. Spotify’s $7 billion in total royalty payments last year made it worth 20 percent of the global recorded music revenue that year, itself up from 15 percent in 2020. The company also claimed that 238,000 songs got over a million streams. Interestingly, the number of artists truly making a killing on the platform — more than $5 million last year — is just 130. Lapsus$A 16-year-old from Oxford has been accused of being the leader of a cybercrime gang called Lapsus$, and authorities said the teenager racked up $14 million from hacking. Police said they arrested seven teenagers in relation to the gang. The Lapsus$ organization breached Microsoft and Okta and boasted about it, but after a falling out with business partners the teenager’s identity was revealed by rivals. The organization and the alleged ringleader have been in the sights of researchers for over a year. This past week in the Sunday edition of Numlock, I spoke to Jasmine Estrada, a producer of the new Marvel podcast The History of Marvel Comics: Black Panther. I worked together with Jasmine back at FiveThirtyEight, and I really love the show she’s put together here; she read over 500 comics to catalog pretty much every appearance of the character to tell the story of the history of the company and the evolution of Black Panther. As a big fan of pop culture data journalism, it was extremely up my alley. I dropped the paywall on the post, so do check it out! The podcast can be found at SiriusXM and Apple Podcast for its initial run and then wherever you get podcasts a short time after. Jasmine can be found on Twitter and behind a few of Marvel’s other shows, including Marvel's Pull List. 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. The best way to reach new readers is word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, it’ll create an easy-to-send pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends. 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: Car Dealerships · Black-Footed Ferret · Oil to Clothing · Just Like Us · How To Read This Chart · Pharma waste · Arcade Games · Blood in the Garden · Trading Cards · College Football 2021 Sunday subscriber editions: 2021 · Crime Prediction · Billboard records · Black Friday · Natural Gas · PEDs in Hollywood · Machiavelli for Women · Weather Supercomputers · TKer · Sumo Wrestling · Giant clams · Instagram · Remote Work · Latinos · Vapes ·Smoke · Jeopardy! · Mangoes · BBLs · Summer Box Office · Time Use · Shampoo Bars · Wikipedia · Thriving · Comic Rebound2020 Sunday Edition Archive2019 Sunday Edition Archive2018 Sunday Edition ArchiveYou’re a free subscriber to Numlock News. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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Numlock News: March 24, 2022 • Narluga, Potatoes, Rover
Thursday, March 24, 2022
By Walt Hickey Rovers, driving in the Jezero, oh man, look at those sound waves go The Perseverance rover on Mars has a microphone, which made it the first robot to send back the sounds of another
Numlock News: March 23, 2022 • Monkeys, Xiaomi, Chelsea
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
By Walt Hickey Please excuse any formatting issues reading Numlock in your inbox; it's an issue with the email provider and we're getting that fixed. Cattle From 2015 to 2016, the price that
Numlock News: March 22, 2022 • Salads, Raccoons, Straight-Leg Jeans
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
By Walt Hickey Salads The sad office desk salad's price spiraled out of control over the course of the pandemic, leading many who return to the office to express sticker shock at today's
Numlock News: March 21, 2022 • Nickels, Puppets, Miami
Monday, March 21, 2022
By Walt Hickey Welcome back! Jujutsu Kaisen 0 The Batman hauled in another $36.8 million this weekend to secure the top spot at the box office, but in second place was Jujutsu Kaisen 0 with $17.7
Numlock News: March 18, 2022 • Candy, Elden Ring, Seals
Friday, March 18, 2022
By Walt Hickey Have a great weekend! AI Americans have some qualms about certain kinds of applications of AI: 56 percent said that computer chip implants in the brain to allow humans to process
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