The Morgan XP-1 is an extremely eccentric English electric vehicle

Enlarge / The British car company Morgan is unashamedly throwback in many regards, but it hasn't forgotten about electrification. (credit: Morgan)

The UK's Morgan Motor Company is best known for making new cars that look like old cars. Not only that, but barring a false start with an electric take on the Three Wheeler, the EV3, it's all gas, all the time. Perhaps that won't be the case forever, as it's revealed its latest development vehicle, XP-1: a Super 3 with an electric heart.

Where the production Super 3 has a 1.5 L Ford three-cylinder engine under the hood, XP-1 gets a 33 kWh battery pack hooked up to a 136 hp (100 kW) 251lb-ft (340 Nm) electric motor that sits in the transmission tunnel. It weighs 132 lbs (60 kg) more than the gas car and comes with a lot more torque.

A happy side effect of that weight is a real-world economy of about 4 miles/kWh (15.5 kWh/100 km), giving a non-homologated range of roughly 132 miles/212 km). Oh, and Morgan's thrown in fast charging—up to 50kW—so it can get itself a full charge in less than an hour.

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NASA says SpaceX’s next Starship flight could test refueling tech

Enlarge / A crane is attached to one of several Starship test vehicles at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas. This vehicle, called Ship 28, could launch on the next Starship test flight.

SpaceX and NASA could take a tentative step toward orbital refueling on the next test flight of Starship, but the US space agency says officials haven't made a final decision on when to begin demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer capabilities that are necessary to return astronauts to the Moon.

NASA is keen on demonstrating orbital refueling technology, an advancement that could lead to propellant depots in space to feed rockets heading to distant destinations beyond Earth orbit. In 2020, NASA announced agreements with four companies—Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, and a Florida-based startup named Eta Space—to prove capabilities in the area of refueling and propellant depots using cryogenic propellants.

These cryogenic fluids—liquid hydrogen, methane, and liquid oxygen—must be kept at temperatures of several hundred degrees below zero, or they turn into a gas and boil off. Russian supply freighters regularly refuel the International Space Station with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, room-temperature rocket propellants that can be stored for years in orbit, but rockets using more efficient super-cold propellants have typically needed to complete their missions within hours.

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Man dies on way home from Panera after having three “charged” lemonades

Enlarge / Dispensers for Charged Lemondade, a caffeinated lemonade drink, at Panera Bread, Walnut Creek, California, March 27, 2023. (credit: Getty | Smith Collection/Gado)

A second person has died after drinking Panera's caffeinated "Charged Lemonade" drinks, which contain caffeine levels comparable to strong coffee and are sold in cups as large as 30 fluid ounces that are free to refill.

According to a lawsuit filed by family members Monday, 46-year-old Dennis Brown fell dead on a sidewalk from cardiac arrest while walking home from a Panera in Florida on October 9. Before he left the restaurant, he had ordered a Charged Lemonade and had two refills.

In September, college student Sarah Katz, 21, went into cardiac arrest after drinking a Charged Lemonade from a Panera in Philadelphia. Katz had a heart condition called long QT syndrome type 1 and had avoided energy drinks because of it, according to a lawsuit filed in October by her family.

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Texas sues Pfizer with COVID anti-vax argument that is pure stupid

Enlarge / Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. (credit: Getty | Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Pfizer last week, claiming the pharmaceutical giant "deceived the public" by "unlawfully misrepresenting" the effectiveness of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and sought to silence critics.

The lawsuit also blames Pfizer for not ending the pandemic after the vaccine's release in December 2020. "Contrary to Pfizer’s public statements, however, the pandemic did not end; it got worse" in 2021, the complaint reads.

"We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies," Paxton said in a press release. "The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines."

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Hackers stole ancestry data of 6.9 million users, 23andMe finally confirmed

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

It's now been confirmed that an additional 6.9 million 23andMe users had ancestry data stolen after hackers accessed thousands of accounts by likely reusing previously leaked passwords.

This is a much larger number of accounts than 23andMe previously disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, which estimated that 0.1 percent of users—approximately 14,000, TechCrunch estimated—had accounts accessed by hackers using compromised passwords.

After the cyberattack was reported, Wired estimated that "at least a million data points from 23andMe accounts" that were "exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews" and data points from "hundreds of thousands of users of Chinese descent" seemed to be exposed. But beyond those estimates, for two months, all the public knew was that 23andMe's filing noted that “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry" were also accessed.

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Spotify to lay off 17% of workforce

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | stockcam)

Spotify will axe almost a fifth of its workforce after warning that economic growth had slowed dramatically and it needed to cut costs as the music streaming giant seeks to turn subscriber growth into consistent profitability.

In a memo to staff on Monday, chief executive Daniel Ek said Spotify would cut about 17 percent of its global workforce, about 1,500 people. Spotify employs more than 9,000 people worldwide.

“I recognize this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions,” Ek said. “To be blunt, many smart, talented, and hard-working people will be departing us.”

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The surprisingly robust careers of Star Trek stars who became video game voice actors

Enlarge / Cast members from Star Trek: The Next Generation. (credit: CBS)

It would be hard to overstate the impact that Star Trek has had on geek culture. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when folks who spent years watching the shows pursue careers in game development, they seek out the actors from one of their favorite TV shows to bring their creations to life. From TOS to VOY, many Star Trek actors followed up their star-making screen performances with voiceover work in video games.

Of course, many of the cast members reprised their roles for licensed Star Trek games or reappearances of their Starfleet personas over the years; studios understandably don’t want to recast iconic parts if they can avoid it.

But games have also provided many of these talented actors with a chance to create new characters and explore new genres beyond the ones that made them household names. If they’re not so versatile, working in games at least meant a chance for a paycheck after the series finale aired.

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