Tag: Silk

Some spiders use their silk to hoist helpless prey so it cannot escape

Common spiders sometimes capture prey much larger than themselves, and they use many strands of silk to lift their prey off the ground and render it helpless Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2266333-some-spiders-use-their-silk-to-hoist-helpless-prey-so-it-cannot-escape/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Trump Considers Clemency For Silk Road ‘Kingpin’ Ross Ulbricht

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world’s most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House…

Some male spiders tie up females before mating to avoid being eaten

Thanatus fabricii spiders forego courtship dances: instead, they attack females and bind them with silk before mating, perhaps because the females would otherwise eat the males Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2259794-some-male-spiders-tie-up-females-before-mating-to-avoid-being-eaten/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Silk Road Bitcoins Worth $1 Billion Change Hands After Seven Years

A billion dollars worth of bitcoins linked to the shuttered darknet market Silk Road has changed hands for the first time in seven years, prompting renewed speculation about the fate of the illicit fortune. The Guardian reports: Almost 70,000 bitcoins stored in the account which, like all bitcoin wallets, is visible to the public, had lain untouched since April 2013. The…

Here are 3 amazing feats of spiders

Halloween time is spider time. Three amazing spider skills you might not have known about. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/three-amazing-feats-of-spiders…

Will China’s AI Surveillance State Go Global?

China already has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place, reports the Atlantic’s deputy editor, and “because a new regulation requires telecom firms to scan the face of anyone who signs up for cellphone services, phones’ data can now be attached to a specific person’s face.” But the article also warns that when it comes to AI-powered surveillance, China “could…

‘If War Breaks Out on Top of the World’

The United States Air Force’s elite “PJ” pararescue units and Alaska National Guard units “are ready to respond if war breaks out on top of the world,” reports a new article in Popular Mechanics: With much of the ice cap melted, the Arctic is teeming with competitive activity because it’s no longer an impenetrable land of glaciers — void of economic…

Artificial spider webs shake to stay clean, just like the real thing

Artificial spider silk made from gel and silicone could be used to create sensitive robotic parts that are able to clean themselves Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2248953-artificial-spider-webs-shake-to-stay-clean-just-like-the-real-thing/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…