October 24, 2022

The Weekly Whatever: All hail the lettuce!

UK news

• Prime Minister Liz Truss fought a lettuce, and the lettuce won. Sadly, American democracy is way more dysfunctional.

Crapto

• Bitcoin's price drop and a difficulty increase has led to many miners losing interest. At one point it takes 85 minutes for a block to be mined, which means 13,000 transactions are held up.

• Users who agreed to a malicious 'smart contract' that drained a total of $21m from their accounts sue Coinbase for failing to protect them.

Schools

• Texas offers parents DNA testing kits to use on their children, so that the bodies can be identified each time there's another mass shooting.

• Trump-supporting Republican candidate for a Community College governing board suspends his campaign after he's caught masturbating in his car while parked in front of a preschool. He claims that he was there to purchase rebar.

Entertainment

• Plans for a movie about a Confederacy-themed superhero turn out to be a massive con.

Business

• Amazon loses at least 69.5% of its employees to resignations every year. At lower pay grades the statistics are even worse: for hourly and warehouse employees, it's somewhere between 100% and 150%.

Technology

• The NTP software that keeps millions of computers' clocks synchronized is old, messy and filled with bugs — and mostly maintained by one 84-year-old man.

Vicious cuteness

• Singapore has way too many otters. Cute, bitey otters.