Before this week, Bluesky, the up-and-coming decentralized Twitter alternative, did not have a system in place to automatically prevent people from registering usernames that featured the n-word as part of their handle. On Wednesday, the company received multiple reports of someone who had the slur in their username. And while Bluesky eventually dealt with the issue, many are upset by the fact the startup did not seem to apologize for the oversight. Instead, on early Saturday morning, days after the incident occurred, Bluesky appeared to frame the event as a one-off that was swiftly addressed.

“On Wednesday, users reported an account that had a slur as its handle. This handle was in violation of our community guidelines, and it was our mistake that allowed it to be created,” the company said. “40 minutes after it was reported, the account was taken down, and the code that allowed this to occur was patched.”

Bluesky went on to claim it had in recent months “made significant investments” in its Trust and Safety team, and that it would continue to invest in “moderation, feedback, and support systems” that would scale with the platform’s growing user base. Bluesky did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. Days before issuing a statement on the situation, the company, as caught by Hacker News, quietly added the n-word, and nearly four dozen other ethnic and racial slurs, to a list of “reserved” words.

Bluesky's statement, when it did come, appears to have been prompted by a viral LinkedIn post penned by Scott Hirleman, the host of the Data Mesh Radio podcast. Hirleman tagged the company’s executive team, including CEO Jay Graber, and accused Bluesky of failing to address an “incredibly bad anti-blackness problem” on its social network. “If you don’t want to run a social media platform, split the company in twain and go focus on the protocol and fund the platform with another team that cares,” Hirleman added. As of the writing of this article, the post has more than 700 reactions and about 50 comments.

No social media network is free from racists, but the fact that Bluesky didn’t already filter for something so basic as the n-word is surprising when you consider Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is one of the company’s backers. Under Dorsey’s leadership, Twitter was often ineffective with addressing white supremacy and could have frequently done more to protect Black people and other marginalized users.  

After multiple years of delays, it looks like the Cybertruck is finally on its way to consumers. On early Saturday morning, Tesla tweeted out a photo of a Cybertruck that recently rolled off the company’s Giga Texas assembly line in Austin. “First Cybertruck built at Giga Texas!” the automaker said of the image.

As Electrek points out, the vehicle in question is likely a production intent model Tesla designed to identify the most efficient way of making the new vehicle at scale. The fact the company shared a photo of a finished Cybertruck would suggest it’s on track to meet the most recent timeline Elon Musk set for the oft-delayed pickup.

At the start of the year, Musk predicted Cybertruck volume manufacturing would begin in 2024, adding limited production would likely kick off “sometime this summer.” More recently, he told investors Tesla would hold a Cybertruck delivery event in the third quarter of 2023. “[It] takes time to get the manufacturing line going, and this is really a very radical product," Musk said in April. “It's not made in the way that other cars are made." To that point, the Cybertruck’s signature stainless steel frame involves complicated manufacturing techniques that aren’t normally used in the production of other cars. Tesla has also encountered repeated bottlenecks involving its next-generation 4680 battery.

The company's original (and very optimistic) release date for the Cybertruck was 2021. At the time, Tesla said the vehicle would start at $39,900 for the single-motor variant, with the three-motor model coming in at $70,000. The automaker has since said that it has yet to decide on final pricing, and that the cost of the Cybertruck could be based on multiple factors, including supply chain shortages and the state of the economy.

Nothing will make you feel old like the anniversary of a much loved gaming console. Perhaps none more so than the 40th birthday of the Nintendo Entertainment System (or the Famicom as it was known for its 1983 Japanese debut).

Having launched in the very same year that the games industry crashed, Nintendo faced an uphill battle to make what would become the NES a commercial success. But we all know what happens next. Nintendo, through some shrewd decisions, creative talent and maybe just a dash of luck would become a console gaming right up to this very day. But it all starts with an unassuming beige and red box that two years later would become the retro-futuristic gray box that we all know and love.

Here are seven gaming legacies that Nintendo’s first home console gave to the world.

Bringing the D-pad

Kris Naudus for Engadget

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time where game controllers were almost as unique as the console they were connected to. As wild as it might sound, the NES was the first home console that sported the humble D-pad. The cross-style design would become a standard on controllers to this day.

Like all good inventions, it was born out of necessity. Nintendo’s early Game & Watch handhelds needed a control system that was pocket-friendly. A tiny joystick was impractical, plus the company wanted something more reliable than the four directional buttons some systems experimented with. Cue a little bit of design magic and the iconic D-pad as we know it was born.

The design was so effective that it was included on the NES controller along with two input buttons, instantly becoming a winning formula. This format proved so popular that you’ll be hard-pressed to think of a modern console that doesn’t use some form of this layout.

Better third-party games

Today we expect console titles to be of a certain standard, even if that doesn’t always pan out. We can broadly thank Nintendo, and specifically the NES for this. In the early ‘80s, third-party game development was a wild west with few checks and balances — any company could develop and publish games for any system. When the NES came along, it introduced the concept of licensed third-party games thanks to the NES’s 10NES “lockout” chip that prevented just anyone publishing a game for the platform. In turn, this created some form of quality control which would go on to become an industry standard.

It wasn’t all entirely positive (if you weren’t Nintendo that is). The 10NES was the first mass-market use of what we'd now generically call DRM, and it allowed Nintendo to initiate the industry-standard 30 percent licensing fee which, in its evolution, is still a source of contention with developers (and customers). The NES also introduced the idea of “exclusives” which is something else we still see for modern releases (often to the chagrin of gamers).

robtek via Getty Images

That said, Nintendo’s “seal of approval” did a lot to revive the gaming industry after its infamous crash in 1983, and for that we’re eternally thankful. Not to mention, we can’t be sure any amount of Mario would have made the platform what it was without titles like Contra, Mega Man 2 and Dragon Warrior, all made by third-party developers.

Bonus: Nintendo’s “10NES” lock-out chip authentication chip is also the reason why you sometimes had to “blow” into a cartridge, as if the contact between the chip and the console wasn’t perfect it would stop the game from booting. That’s, perhaps, another long-lasting legacy we’re glad to see the back of.

Console game saves

The Legend of Zelda’s legacy speaks for itself, but its debut on the NES came with a feature that changed everything: game saves. This had never been seen on a console in the US before and it changed what was possible for console games across the board, paving the way for bigger, more complex titles. A lot of the NES’ best loved franchises like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy simply wouldn’t have been possible without battery saves, giving the technology an outsized legacy.

While games on disk-based computers had been deploying saves for a couple of years, consoles didn’t have internal storage, so players were stuck with workarounds like codes or passwords. Unlike a proper save, which would include things like current weapons and power-ups, a password would usually (though not always) just start you off at the beginning of the last level you were on. This was practical for things like racing games or platformers, but problematic for things like RPGs and sims.

The technology wasn’t perfect of course. If the battery died or somehow lost contact, you would lose all your saves. But it was a good enough system to last into the 2000’s with some form of on-cartridge saves being used right up until the 3DS. There was, of course, a free, time-honored alternative way to “save” games, usually when you had to go down for dinner: pause and switch off the TV (and maybe hide the controller from any siblings).

The video game mascot

SOPA Images via Getty Images

It’s hard to talk about anything Nintendo without a nod to the world’s most famous plumber. The NES isn’t where Mario had his first outing of course, not by a long shot. It’s not even the first console to have a Mario Bros. game (that was the Atari 2600). But the NES is arguably where the most important gaming franchise for Nintendo - Super Mario - began.

Super Mario Bros. isn’t just important for Nintendo, the side-scrolling platformer would go on to have an outsized influence that would reach far beyond the walls of Kyoto. The unique gameplay with power ups, secret rooms and a colorful world with a full cast of characters came together to create a formula that would set it on a path to become the best-selling game of all time (a title it no longer holds, alas).

There would of course be two sequels on the NES. Super Mario Bros. 2 (the US version at least) was brighter, bigger and added the ability to throw enemies and objects. Super Mario Bros. 3 ramped things up further with even more hidden bonuses and abilities. All three titles received positive reviews and critical acclaim. Most importantly, Super Mario Bros. would solidify the platformer as a key element of console gaming, directly inspiring Nintendo’s main rival, Sega, to create its own iconic mascot franchise.

The concept of mascot platformers has died away to an extent, but Crash Bandicoot helped sell the PlayStation, and we saw fresh attempts at mascots in the form of Ratchet & Clank, Spyro and Banjo Kazooie through the late '90s and '00s. Today, Master Chief is essentially the face of Xbox, and Sony uses the likes of Nathan Drake, Aloy and Joel in much the same way Nintendo used Mario: To sell consoles and merch.

The video game movie adaptation

Walt Disney Studios

There had been games based on popular films since the 1970’s, but we had to wait two decades before we’d see that concept reversed. In 1993, Super Mario Bros. became the first video game movie adaptation and boy did things get off to a bad start.

Starring Bob Hoskins (The Long Good Friday, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) as Mario and John Leguizamo (Moulin Rouge, Spawn) as Luigi, the movie received tepid reviews at best. The movie follows our plumbing heroes as they travel to another dimension (from Brooklyn!) to rescue, well, you know who. Looking back now, the costumes are a little camp, the effects comedic and the plot about as thin as the film it was shot on - but it was an exciting event for Kooper-stomping kids around the globe to have a movie of their own.

To put it in perspective, Hoskins said it was the worst thing he had ever worked on, and he did a run of commercials for British Telecom. A year later we’d be graced with adaptations of Double Dragon and Street Fighter which both have Rotten Tomatoes scores of less than half of Super Mario Bros. (which is already only 29%). Sadly, things don’t get much better from there on out with it taking until 2019 until a game-based movie would earn a “Certified Fresh” score Tomatometer (and that was… Detective Pikachu with 68%).

The light gun

luza studios via Getty Images

You might be surprised to learn that the technology behind the light gun has been around since the 1930s. Nintendo had developed its own version as far back as 1970 for its Laser Clay Shooting System. Old rival Sega had actually beaten Nintendo to the punch with its Periscope game in 1966. But of course, the one that would find its way into juvenile American hands en mass would be the NES Zapper in 1984.

You can’t talk about the Zapper without thinking about Duck Hunt, one of the most iconic titles on the system even if, let’s be real, it wasn’t all that good. But something about that unshootable dog (and the fact it was a pack-in game) has earned it legendary status.

Sega would introduce its own light gun, the much cooler-named Light Phaser, for the Master System two years later. And who could forget the iconic if a little… aggressively designed Super Scope accessory for the SNES? The light gun would live on for a few more generations, notably through Sega’s official accessories for the Saturn and Dreamcast and Namco’s GunCon series for the Playstation and PlayStation 2.

As gamers upgraded their TVs to the fancy new flat kinds we have today, the old-fashioned light guns of the '80s, '90s and '00s stopped working. The Wii and PS3 both used LED sensors to achieve the effect, and there was an official Aim Controller for PSVR, but no one has really figured out a standard way for us to shoot things from the comfort of our couches. (OK, Sinden has figured it out, but until a console supports its camera-based Light Gun system, it's only going to be for real enthusiasts.)

The mega franchise

Nintendo

Did we mention the NES also played games? More than possibly all of the above, the impact of the NES is lived out through the franchises that we still enjoy today. Of course, there’s Mario at the top with over 200 titles featuring the iconic mascot in some form or another. Within that are flagship titles for every console Nintendo has ever made - usually multiple for each.

The NES was the platform that introduced the US to the Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Dragon Quest, Ninja Gaiden and Kirby series. It was also the first console for many existing arcade franchises like Bionic Commando.

Not all of those series continue to this day, but the ones that do are some of the best known (and loved) franchises out there. In May, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began emptying pockets and puzzling the minds of kids and adults alike. And just last month, Final Fantasy XVI found its way into the collection of over 3 million people in under a week.

Of course, despite the age of the original games, there are still modern ways to play them. Nintendo's most current console has over 60 NES games available via Switch Online, and the selection includes most of the titles you'd hope for (including the Super Mario Bros trilogy, Legend of Zelda, Punch Out and many, many more).

Biden administration officials can freely communicate with social media companies — for now. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has put a pause on Judge Terry A. Doughty's order that prohibits most federal officials from talking to companies like Meta about content. According to The New York Times, the three-judge panel has ruled for Doughty's preliminary injunction to be put aside "until further orders of the court."

If you'll recall, the state attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and other top government officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci. They accused the current administration of pressuring social media companies to censor certain topics and remove content. The lawsuit, the Washington Post reports, is based on emails between the administration and social networks, wherein the former questioned the companies' handling of posts on their websites containing conservative claims on the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential elections, as well as anti-vaccine sentiments. 

Doughty, a Trump-appointed judge, said the plaintiffs "produced evidence of a massive effort" by the defendants "to suppress speech based on its content." He also wrote in his decision that if the allegations are true, "the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history." His order prohibits federal agencies that include the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security from asking online platforms to take down content with "protected free speech." They could still, however, communicate with those entities for issues related to criminal activity, national security and election interference by foreign players. 

Conservatives have long believed that mainstream social media platforms are biased against right-wing ideologies. That had led to the launch of social networks associated with conservatives, such as Parler and Donald Trump's Truth Social. The state attorneys argued that federal officials crossed the line by threatening to take antitrust actions against social networks and to limit their Section 230 protections, which allow internet companies to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit. It's worth noting that former President Trump previously signed an executive order that sought to limit federal protections offered by Section 230 after Twitter fact-checked a false tweet he posted.

The Justice Department appealed Doughty's order the day after it was issued, arguing that it was too broad and could limit the government's ability to warn people about false information in times of emergency. Apparently, the administration has already felt its effects after its scheduled meeting with Meta to discuss strategies on how to counter foreign disinformation campaigns was cancelled. This stay will allow federal agencies to continue working with online platforms until the court could look further into the complaint. The appeals court has ordered for the case's oral arguments to be expedited so a final decision could be reached in the near future. 

The Federal Trade Commission has been unsuccessful in its last-ditch effort to pump the brakes on Microsoft completing its $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the agency an emergency stay of a ruling that allowed the deal to proceed in the US.

A temporary restraining order was put in place last month to prevent Microsoft and Activision from closing the acquisition until Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled on the FTC's request for preliminary injunction. When Corley rejected the FTC's injunction request this week, she ruled that the agency had until 11:59PM PT on July 14th to obtain an emergency stay from the appeals court. Otherwise, Microsoft and Activision would be free to close the deal in the US after that time.

Corley determined the FTC didn't prove its arguments that the merger would harm consumers. The FTC on Wednesday filed a notice that it planned to appeal Corley's decision. On Thursday, it asked the district court that ruled on the preliminary injunction in the first place to block the merger pending a decision from the appeals court. Hours later, Corley denied that motion.

Back in December, the FTC sued to block the deal on the grounds that it would harm competition. An administrative hearing is set for early August. The agency sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the companies from closing the merger until the antitrust trial takes place. However, the merger deadline is July 18th.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are evidently confident of closing the deal by their Tuesday deadline. Activision’s stock will be delisted from the Nasdaq-100 index before the stock market opens on Monday, so the companies may finally seal the deal around that time. 

Microsoft and Activision have yet to resolve issues with a UK regulator, which had blocked the deal over cloud gaming concerns. The companies and the Competition and Markets Authority agreed to put their legal battle on hold to try and resolve the regulator's concerns. The CMA said Microsoft and Activision were welcome to restructure the deal but warned that move may trigger a fresh merger investigation.

This story is developing, refresh for updates.

Larry Hryb, better known as “Major Nelson” in Xbox circles, tweeted today that he’s leaving Microsoft. Hryb spent many years as one of the most prominent public faces of the brand as Director of Programming for Xbox Live. He didn’t state his reasons for leaving the company but said he plans to step back and work on his career’s next chapter. The move comes as Microsoft tries to close its $68 billion purchase of Activision. “As I take a moment and think about all we have done together, I want to thank the millions of gamers around the world who have included me as part of their lives,” Hryb said.

Hryb spent over two decades with Microsoft, joining the company as editor-in-chief of MSN Music in 2001. But in 2003, when he joined the Xbox division, he found his identity with the company. His public role was a combination of official employee and super fan. His blog posts, podcasts, interviews, unboxings and other various updates straddled the line between a marketing executive and a trusted “gamer’s gamer,” helping fans feel like they had one of their own on the inside at the gaming behemoth.

Xbox had used him less as a face of the company in recent years, but from at least the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, “Major Nelson” was practically synonymous with the platform. He says he got his gamer handle and public nickname from Larry Hagman’s character in the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie — after his TiVo recommended it.

Hryb hasn’t yet detailed what his next career chapter is. However, he did note that The Official Xbox Podcast, which he hosted, will take a hiatus this summer and return later “in a new format.”

If you have fond memories of chatting with Reddit friends, you might want to check your archives. Reddit has confirmed userreports that it's removing all chats and messages from before 2023. As the social site explained in June, it's moving to a new chat architecture and believes pulling older messages will enable a "smooth and quick transition" to the new architecture. The change took effect June 30th, but many users only noticed days later.

There may be a way to recover some of those messages, Mashablesays. You can request account data from Reddit through an online form, and the archive might include conversations from before 2023. While it won't be as easy to revisit a priceless chat, it won't necessarily be gone forever.

Users still aren't thrilled, however. While Reddit disclosed the cutoff in a changelog, it didn't notify community members directly. That left some to discover the company's plans only after their message logs disappeared, preventing them from backing up their histories on their own terms.

The move also comes as Reddit is facing a broader backlash. Numerous subreddits conducted a days-long blackout to protest new policies that made it impractical for third-party apps like Apollo to remain active. Since then, users and moderators have taken various actions (such as focusing subreddits on John Oliver photos) to fight back.

More recently, Reddit said it would phase out the existing coin system used to recognize exceptional contributors. You can no longer buy new coins, and all awards and coins will go away after September 12th. The existing approach leads to "clutter" and provides content that some don't believe is all that valuable, Reddit says. While there will be a replacement system, it's expected to be simpler and more direct. That may not thrill longtime fans used to Reddit's sometimes very specific awards and medals.

Hayao Miyazaki’s first film in ten years (and supposedly his last) premiered in Japan today — without any lead-up marketing from Studio Ghibli. Soon after, Gkids announced that it had acquired the animated movie’s North American rights. Called Kimitachi wa Do Ikiruka (translated as “How Do You Live”) in Japan, the international release will use the title The Boy and the Heron. Gkids says it will arrive in North America “later this year.”

Little is known about the new movie, but Gkids describes the hand-drawn animated feature as “an original story written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.” Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki produces it with a musical score from Joe Hisaishi. It was previously announced that Miyazaki’s next film would have an IMAX release (as well as Dolby Atmos, Dolby Cinema and DTS:X) in Japan. However, it isn’t clear if it will screen in IMAX in the US.

When the film arrives stateside, don’t expect to see any more promotion than it got in Japan. Gkids says it will follow Studio Ghibli’s “unprecedented decision” to premiere the film in Japan without any marketing images, trailers, synopses ads — or any information — ahead of its surprise premiere today. Suzuki attributes the decision to honoring another era while hoping to spark imagination. “A poster and a title — that’s all we got when we were children. I enjoyed trying to imagine what a movie was about, and I wanted to bring that feeling back,” Suzuki reportedly told Japanese broadcaster NHK via The Japan Times and Deadline.

Gkids has distributed the North American versions of previous Miyazaki films, including The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There and From Up on Poppy Hill (among others). The 15-year-old producer and distributor has 12 Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations in its short history. “Hayao Miyazaki is a living legend in filmmaking, as evidenced by his Academy Award win for Spirited Away and his two Oscar nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises,’” David Jesteadt, president of Gkids, wrote in a press release today. “It’s been ten years since the world has seen a new film from Miyazaki-san, and Gkids is so proud and honored to unveil his latest, highly anticipated masterpiece in North America.”

For almost three decades in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has gone head to head in high-speed motorcycle battles, climbed Dubai's Burj Khalifa, and hung from the side of a plane during takeoff. Oh, and he also died at one point (following an extended free dive into an underwater data bank). But in the latest film, Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt faces his toughest opponent yet: an omnipotent AI that could reshape geopolitics as we know it. After defying the laws of physics, it only makes sense that he has to defeat a god.

As ludicrous as that may sound, it also fits perfectly within the Mission: Impossible series, a universe where Ethan Hunt has been described as the "living manifestation of destiny," and everyone is well aware that the "Impossible Mission Force" sounds like something pulled out of a comic book. At this point, it's a franchise that exists for Tom Cruise and his collaborators — most recently, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie — to go wild with spy gadgets and death-defying stunt sequences. It's made by spy movie geeks, for spy movie geeks.

That's been true of the series from the start. The original TV show centered on grounded spy craft, albeit in a world where people could easily impersonate others with realistic face masks. Brian de Palma's 1996 film was a throwback to paranoid '70s spy thrillers, but it also made room for gadgets like glasses that wirelessly transmitted crystal clear video. And, of course, there's the nail-bitingly tense infiltration of a CIA server room, a scene that infiltrated pop culture for years.

John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2 is far less cerebral, but it also leans heavily into his operatic Hong Kong action style. It's not a great movie, I'll admit, but as a fan of Woo's action films, I can't help but be thrilled by the car chase meet cute, and the balletic finale which morphs from a motorcycle chase into a hand-to-hand fight on a beach.

Paramount Pictures and Skydance

After a slight hiatus, JJ Abrams rebooted the franchise in 2006 with Mission: Impossible 3, a film that built upon the spy shenanigans from his TV series, Alias. Since then, the franchise has been on a constant quest to one-up itself. 2011's Ghost Protocol goes full on Buster Keaton with every set piece (director Brad Bird essentially turns Ethan Hunt into a character from The Incredibles), culminating in the scene where Cruise himself actually scaled the Burj Khalifa.

Arriving amid Daniel Craig's James Bond run (which is filled with movies I either love or absolutely hate), and the end of the original Jason Bourne trilogy, Ghost Protocol felt like a throwback to everything that made the Mission: ImpossibleTV show so addictive. There's a loyal and highly-skilled team, a nefarious villain and tons of gadgets on display. But crucially, things don't always work out as Hunt and crew expect, which makes the franchise more relatable to all of us with failing gadgets. (Every time my iPhone crashes, I can't help but be grateful I'm not climbing the Burj Khalifa with only a single high-tech gecko glove.)

With the arrival of Christopher McQuarrie, who directed 2015's Rogue Nation and its sequels, Mission: Impossible found a groove that differentiated it from most other modern franchises. Almost like action film jazz, McQuarrie and Cruise frequently came up with ideas for set pieces and built movies around them. Scripts were reworked on the fly. Normally this would spell disaster, but McQuarrie ended up thriving in the chaos. Together with stunt coordinator Scott Eastwood, he also managed to push the series into astounding new practical set pieces (see: Ethan Hunt hanging out of a plane in Rogue Nation, or the extended skydiving sequence in Fallout).

Paramount Pictures and Skydance

Dead Reckoning Part 1 builds on McQuarrie's previous entries. This time, Hunt and a new companion (Hayley Atwell's Grace) are chased through Rome's narrow streets while driving a souped-up, tiny Fiat. He base-jumps off of a mountain using a motorcycle. He fights on a real train speeding along at 60MPH. All the while, he's trying to stop the villainous AI, known only as The Entity.

On the face of it, Dead Reckoning shares plenty with Mrs. Davis, the latest show co-created by Damon Lindelof which also features a tough protagonist against an all-powerful AI. The film also dabbles in similar themes: Surely an omnipotent artificial intelligence would also inspire near-religious devotion. In Dead Reckoning, that's embodied by Gabriel, the angelically named sociopath played by Esai Morales.

While the film rarely slows down to explore the true impact of AI, Hunt and his team — Simon Pegg's Benji, Ving Rhames' Luther — instantly grasp the larger implications. Whoever can control the AI could basically control the world — not merely through physical force, but by defining truth and reality itself. An AI could erase a person from surveillance footage, or turn them into someone else entirely. Nothing can be trusted. As we grapple with the impact of ChatGPT and generative AI in real life, it’s hard not to feel like we’re on a similar path. (It's also funny to see in the midst of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which are directly tied to complaints about studios taking advantage of creatives with AI.)

As much as I love other action film franchises – like John Wick’s increasingly elaborate choreography, or the sheer ridiculousness of the Fast and the Furious –Mission: Impossible remains uniquely enjoyable. It’s committed to delivering astonishing practical stunt work. It’s self-aware just enough to poke fun at itself. And a part of me hopes that somehow, a team of geeks can also fight back against the excesses of AI.

Let’s end the week with a bit of good news for our future as a species on this floating ball of dirt. Brimstone, a major player in the industrial decarbonization field, just announced that its decarbonized cement has passed a crucial third-party strength test, bringing the dream of net-zero construction one step closer to reality.

The company’s proprietary portland cement met the American Society for Testing and Materials' (ASTM) C150 standards for building products, indicating that it can do everything traditionally-made portland cement can do with regard to construction projects. This is a big deal, as portland cement is not some niche product, as it comprises 95 percent of all cement produced in the United States. Chances are, if you are in a building made from cement, you’re surrounded by ordinary portland cement (OPC).

Brimstone says the carbon-negative cement is identical in “all respects” to OPC, including performance, safety, and overall chemical composition. The only difference is that it wasn't manufactured using the conventional, carbon-intensive methods. The company also notes that its “strength, workability, durability, and compatibility with steel and other materials” make it an ideal choice to “build structures safely and efficiently.”

There are plenty of other alternative building materials out there, but this is actual portland cement, so adopting Brimstone’s product won’t force “millions of construction workers to get retrained to use a new material,” according to CEO Cody Finke. He also touts that the product will be “equal or lower cost to other options” and will “slash carbon emissions.”

Being as this is the same industry-standard portland cement used for over 150 years, the company won’t have to jump the usual regulatory hurdles when developing a new building material, with the company boasting “the same buildings, bridges and roads being built today can be built tomorrow without carbon.”

How did it manage such a feat? Conventional cement production involves heating limestone to ultra-high temperatures, which releases large quantities of CO2 embedded in the rock. Brimstone went with carbon-free calcium silicate rock, so there’s no CO2 to release. As a matter of fact, the process generates trace magnesium compounds that absorb pre-existing CO2 from the air, making this concrete carbon-negative.

It’s no secret that traditional cement is a major contributor to the world’s climate problem, as cement production accounts for 7.5 percent of global CO2 emissions and 5.5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. All told, the construction and real estate industries account for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, so this step toward net-zero construction could drastically reduce that number.

Of course, this is a brand-new manufacturing process and Brimstone’s cement has yet to be widely adopted by the industry. The company hopes to scale up production so they can sell its portland cement for the same price as conventionally-made materials. Brimstone’s constructing a manufacturing plant in Reno, Nevada and has already started negotiating with construction companies, real estate companies and various corporate partners.