The Morning After: More Mario and sold-out Boring flamethrowers


Hey, good morning!

Welcome to February, which we're starting off with lost-in-space satellites, a piano that plays in response to interpretive dance and Samsung getting into bitcoin. Oh, and Nintendo snuck out a bunch of announcements. Let's hit those first.

All Nintendo everything.Switch Online, 'Mario Kart' mobile and a 'Mario' movie

After announcing how great sales of the Switch are going, Nintendo decided to celebrate with a surprise dump of info. First up is its online gaming service for the Switch, which will officially debut in September. Second is Mario Kart Tour, its next mobile game for smartphones following Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, which will arrive by next spring. Last but not least: There's a Mario movie on the way (no, it's not live-action).

Sensors relay movement to AI, which triggers an automatic piano.
Yamaha's AI transformed dance moves into piano notes

Artificial intelligence touches the arts again. Yahama showed a new kind of AI tech that translated the movements of renowned dancer Kaiji Moriyama into musical notes on a piano, which the company calls "a form of expression that fuses body movements and music." Moriyama used it during a Tokyo concert entitled Mai Hi Ten Yu, dancing and "playing" the piano with his body, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Scharoun Ensemble.

Last seen in 2005.
NASA makes contact with satellite lost in space 13 years ago

Proving that things tend to turn up when you least expect them, NASA has just rediscovered a satellite it lost in space more than a decade ago. The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) was launched in 2000 to create the first comprehensive images of atmospheric plasma. It completed its initial mission in 2002 but failed to make contact again on a routine pass by the Earth in 2005.

How to make $10 millionElon Musk sells all 20,000 $500 Boring Company flamethrowers

Even though the website said they were overpriced and "You can definitely buy one for less elsewhere."

Can Amazon Go help the unbanked go digital?
You'd better have a smartphone and checking account if you want to shop there.

If Amazon's new Go supermarket is any indicator, shopping with physical currency won't be an option for much longer. Instead of human cashiers (or even self-checkout stands), the store relies on a range of technology to know who's shopping and what they're buying. Amazon then automatically deducts the cost of your items from your bank account. From a turnstile entrance that identifies shoppers by scanning their smartphones to tracking cameras that know what is pulled from each shelf, Amazon Go bills itself as the shopping experience of the future.

But where does the working poor fit into such a future? Or otherwise underserved and rural communities that may not have access to internet connections, smartphones or even checking accounts?

The company raked in a record $12.97 billion in total revenue last quarter.
We spend less time on Facebook, but it still makes loads of money

The past few weeks haven't been easy for Facebook. After announcing an overhaul to its News Feed earlier this month, one that places emphasis on people's interactions over content from brands, the company has been taking heat for its new approach. Not only because Facebook is leaving publishers who relied on its platform behind, but it also isn't offering the best solution to fix its fake-news problem. Facebook revealed that even though users are indeed spending less time on its site, it is making more money than ever. The company raked in a record revenue total of $12.97 billion last quarter, a 47 percent year-over-year increase.

It stopped to snap a tourist shot at Vera Rubin Ridge.
Curiosity's sweeping Mars panorama shows how far it's come

Stare at this beautiful Mars panorama.

But wait, there's more...

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