Ethereum just set The Merge in motion — and the stakes are huge for the planet. The Merge is arguably one of the most anticipated events yet in cryptocurrency history, when the Ethereum blockchain will switch from a disturbingly energy-hungry method of validating transactions to a new strategy that uses a fraction of the electricity as the network gobbled up before.

The transition is supposed to slash Ethereum’s energy consumption by a whopping 99.95 percent. That’s a seriously big deal since, just last week, the cryptocurrency network was estimated to use as much electricity annually as the country of Bangladesh. All that energy, of course, comes with a lot of carbon dioxide pollution that’s exacerbating climate change. Ethereum’s native token, Ether, is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin.

How is nearly all the pollution Ethereum was previously pumping out supposed to virtually disappear? It’s complicated, so let’s break it down as simply as we can.

What is The Merge?

It boils down to a dramatic change in how transactions are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. A blockchain is a record of transactions that’s maintained communally rather than by a single institution like a bank (check out The Verge’s handy blockchain explainer here). “Blocks” of transaction records are added to the chain by many different players, which is why blockchains are often described as “distributed ledgers.”

With so many players — also known as nodes — involved, blockchains need a security system to make sure no one screws with or takes over the ledger. Ethereum’s old version of a security system happens to be intentionally energy-intensive, so the network is switching to a new one through The Merge.

What made Ethereum so polluting in the first place?

Energy inefficiency was built into the network from the start, thanks to that old “security system” Ethereum ran on called proof of work. With proof of work, “miners” validate blocks of new transactions by solving computational puzzles. This is supposed to avert double-spending, and miners earn new tokens in return. To prevent too many new tokens from flooding the market, the puzzle solving gets harder over time — requiring more energy.

The cost of solving those puzzles, in equipment and electricity bills, is meant to make it harder for any one entity to gain too much influence over the ledger. If that happened, it would defeat the purpose of having a decentralized financial system in the first place. Plus, it comes with the risk of a bully coming along and manipulating the ledger for their own gain.

With proof of work, energy consumption and pollution balloon because miners can earn more tokens by adding more powerful computers to their operations. Crypto “mines” are essentially giant data farms filled with hardware running around the clock to solve puzzles. When miners set up shop in a new place, they typically drive up electricity bills for nearby communities. Plus, they leave behind e-waste from the hardware they use to solve those puzzles.

Besides Ethereum, the other major cryptocurrency infamous for problems associated with proof of work is Bitcoin. Bitcoin miners’ search for abundant, affordable energy to power their operations has breathed new life into fossil fuel power plants that were dying away. Those plants then spew more pollution into the air.

Policymakers are grappling with how to manage all those consequences stemming from proof of work. State legislators in New York, which became a hub for crypto mining after China cracked down on it in 2021, passed a moratorium this year on cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof of work. Nationally, Democratic lawmakers have probed crypto mining companies about their energy use and have asked federal regulators to establish new rules for crypto mining in the US.

There’s even a campaign called Change the Code, Not the Climate led by the nonprofits Greenpeace USA and Environmental Working Group that’s pushing the Bitcoin network to follow Ethereum’s move.

Is The Merge going to fix Ethereum’s environmental problems?

The Merge, if all goes well, is expected to shrink Ethereum’s environmental footprint significantly. To leave proof of work behind, Ethereum is transitioning to a new process for validating transactions called proof of stake. This method gets rid of all that pesky puzzle solving altogether — eliminating the need for powerful hardware and massive amounts of electricity to keep the blockchain going.

Instead of using enormous energy costs as a deterrent to bad behavior, proof of stake requires validators to lock up crypto tokens as collateral. That way, the validators have a stake in keeping the ledger accurate. If anyone else on the network finds that someone has added faulty blocks to the chain, the guilty party loses tokens they’ve staked. In Ethereum’s case, you need to stake 32 ETH tokens to get started as a validator. With each token worth around $1,600 today — bad actors risk losing a hefty amount of cash.

Validators will still be rewarded with new tokens for doing the job right. Staking tokens enters them into a new sort of lottery to verify blocks of transactions and receive that reward. An algorithm randomly picks which validators, among those who have staked tokens, to create the next block in the chain. To increase the odds of being the one chosen to add the block, you need more tokens — not more computing power.

As a result, a successful transition to proof of stake is expected to slash Ethereum’s energy use by at least 99 percent. The Ethereum Foundation put the number at roughly 99.95 percent. There’s about a percent of wiggle room based on how much energy is used after The Merge by the computers still needed to store data and verify transactions. Validators will still want to keep computers running 24/7, but they won’t be using up as much juice to solve those pesky puzzles.

Overall, we’re talking about serious energy savings. It’s equivalent to about as much electricity as a quarter of the world’s data centers use annually, according to Alex de Vries, a researcher who runs the website Digiconomist that tracks Bitcoin and Ethereum energy use. de Vries expects that dramatic drop in energy use to slash 30 to 35 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year if The Merge is successful.

How is this all going to go down?

In a nutshell, all the computers that run the blockchain’s software need to update that software to the newest version that uses proof of stake. Of course, that’s easier said than done when you’ve got hundreds of thousands of nodes in the network. But we’ll get back to that later.

To get to this point, researchers developed a new “Beacon Chain” that uses proof of stake that’s been running parallel to Ethereum’s main proof of work blockchain. The old blockchain should ultimately merge with the Beacon Chain, getting rid of proof of work. The Merge will take place in two phases, and the first one just kicked off after years of delays. The Bellatrix upgrade went live today, which will get the Beacon chain ready for the final transition in the next few weeks. In the second phase, the Paris upgrade, crypto mining for Ethereum that uses proof of work, should finally come to a stop.

What could go wrong?

The big worry is that too many miners will mutiny and decide to stick with proof of work. They’ve already invested in setting up their crypto mining farms, and many will likely be hard-pressed to let go of their hardware. There are a couple different ways this mutiny might play out.

If enough of them decide to forego the software update, then they could keep Ethereum’s old proof of work blockchain alive. There’s already a push by some miners to do this. If that blockchain persists, so will the pollution it produces. How much pollution depends again on how many miners mutiny and how much value the tokens on that zombie chain, called a “fork,” retain. They’ll essentially only be able to sustain as much mining as the value of the token allows since they have to be able to pay off their electricity bills and still turn a profit.

Or, the miners might choose to find another, more established proof-of-work blockchain. The Ethereum network has already split in two in the past in response to a hack in 2016, which created two blockchains: Ethereum and Ethereum Classic (both use proof of work). Now it looks like some Ethereum miners are already moving over to Classic in response to The Merge, sticking to their energy-hungry ways.

There are also security risks for Ethereum if there ultimately aren’t enough validators participating on the new proof of stake blockchain. “If you have very, very few validators, then it’s easy to attack the network. So we want to make sure that the participation rate of hundreds of thousands of validators is close to 99 percent,” says Leonardo Bautista Gomez, founder of the blockchain research group Miga Labs, who has also worked with the Ethereum Foundation to help develop the Beacon chain.

To Bautista Gomez, The Merge “shows that even though it may be technically difficult to implement, we make the effort to do this because we are conscious of our environmental responsibilities.”

But even if everything goes smoothly with The Merge, blockchains are still inherently inefficient, says de Vries, who also works as a data scientist for De Nederlandsche Bank. By nature of being a distributed database, data is replicated across many devices, and that uses more energy. Still, de Vries acknowledges that proof of stake is orders of magnitude less wasteful than proof of work.

The Merge is tentatively expected to be done by the end of the month. Then we’ll see how successful the transition was and what new challenges might have arisen.

Amazon is considering partnering with pharmacies in Japan to deliver medications starting in 2023, according to a report from Nikkei.

The plan is for Amazon to build a platform where patients can get information about the drugs they’ve been prescribed and also sign up to get those drugs delivered, Nikkei reported, based on interviews with unnamed sources involved with the project. Amazon would not operate pharmacies itself — just provide the online system.

Amazon Japan declined to comment to Nikkei.

People in Japan will be able to order prescriptions online after online doctor visits for the first time next year. Major pharmacies and other Japanese companies are also working on similar programs that would give patients digital access to information on their medications, Nikkei reported.

Amazon has been involved in the pharmacy business in the US since 2018, when it acquired prescription delivery company PillPack. It launched its own pharmacy, Amazon Pharmacy, in 2020.

The strategy Amazon appears to be taking in Japan — partnering with groups providing meds to patients rather than those that provide care — is similar to how the company seems to be approaching other areas of health. Last month, it announced it was shutting down Amazon Care, the primary care business it first launched in 2019. It had recently announced the purchase of subscription-based primary care company One Medical, which is already a functioning healthcare business. The FTC is investigating the deal.

It might make more sense for Amazon to add its own tech to organizations with proven success in health rather than build health products from scratch, Brendan Keeler, a product manager at health technology company Zus Health and expert on healthcare data systems, told The Verge in August. The reported approach in Japan is in line with that idea. Amazon is already good at delivering things and connecting to customers — that might be all it needs to get a slice of the rapidly growing healthcare market.

Royal Caribbean, the cruise company that also operates Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises, has announced that it’ll be outfitting its fleet of ships with SpaceX’s Starlink internet service (via TechCrunch). The company says the service will make the internet experience while at sea faster and more reliable.

Royal Caribbean seems to be moving full steam ahead with deploying Starlink — it trialed the service on one of its ships over the summer, and will be officially launching it on September 5th, starting with a ship called the Celebrity Beyond. The company expects to have the service fully deployed across its fleet by the first quarter of 2023.

Royal Caribbean’s announcement doesn’t include technical details, like how many Starlink dishes its ships would use, or how much bandwidth would be split between a few thousand passengers. However, the company does promise that people will be able to use streaming services and make video calls.

SpaceX’s boat-focused internet service, Starlink Maritime, is relatively new, having debuted earlier this summer. Currently, it only covers coastal waters in parts of North and South America (including the Caribbean), Europe, and around Australia and New Zealand, but SpaceX says it plans on covering most of the world’s oceans by Q1 2023.

Image: SpaceX

SpaceX has a lot going on with Starlink at the moment. Perhaps the most obvious is its partnership with T-Mobile to beam texts and calls to cell phones, using second-generation satellites that it plans on launching next year. The company is also working with Hawaiian Airlines and charter carrier JSX to provide in-flight Wi-Fi, something that Delta (and likely others) are also looking into. For those of us on land, the company recently launched a version of Starlink for RVs.

Meanwhile, the cruise industry has had a hard time recovering from the pandemic, according to a report from Reuters. Like many other businesses, cruise companies have had staffing issues, with some even having to cancel trips. There’s also the question of whether people will continue to spring for luxuries like cruises, as financial leaders like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warn that efforts to fight inflation will “bring some pain to households and businesses.”

COVID-19 vaccines designed to target the omicron variant have just been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. Both Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna got the FDA’s sign-off for their booster doses of the reformulated shot. This is the first update to COVID-19 vaccines to be authorized in the United States.

The Pfizer / BioNTech booster is available to people 12 and older, and the Moderna shot will be available to people 18 and older. They’ll only be boosters — they can’t be used by people who haven’t already had their first doses.

The new booster shots target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant — which are currently the predominant versions of the virus in circulation.

The original vaccines still protect people against getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19, but with BA.4 and BA.5 everywhere, those vaccines don’t offer as much protection against getting infected or sick. Research shows that omicron-targeted vaccines boost the immune response against that version of the virus, so experts think it might protect better against omicron infection.

Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna have run clinical trials in people with a version of the booster that targets the BA.1 lineage, an earlier form of the omicron variant. They’ve also tested the BA.4 and BA.5-specific shots in animals. The FDA said in June that it wanted to see BA.4 and BA.5-specific shots and that it would review them based on the BA.1 data. Both companies are still running clinical trials of their new boosters.

Both vaccines are built using mRNA — they introduce tiny snippets of the virus’s genetic material for the body to create antibodies against. One of the promised benefits of this type of vaccine was that it’s relatively easy to adjust the genetic sequence, so updating the shots in response to changes in a virus isn’t difficult. It’s still taken a long time for the regulatory process to kick into gear to allow updated vaccines to actually make it to market. But this update takes the COVID-19 vaccines closer to the status quo with the flu shot, which changes each year in response to the circulating strains of the influenza virus.

Moderna announced last week that it’s suing Pfizer and BioNTech for allegedly infringing on its vaccine patents.

Developing…

NASA is moving ahead with plans for a second attempt to launch its next-generation rocket Friday, September 2nd, after an engine issue forced the agency to scrub today’s planned launch.

NASA halted the Artemis I launch attempt at approximately 8:34AM ET Monday, citing the failure of one of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s four engines to reach the appropriate temperate. SLS is a key component of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send humans back to the Moon by 2025.

The next attempt is scheduled for Friday, September 2nd, at approximately 12:48PM ET. Michael Sarafin, Artemis mission manager, said that Friday is “definitely in play” but noted that the agency’s team needs time to comb through the data before making any determinations about the likelihood of a successful launch.

“There’s a non-zero chance we’ll have a launch opportunity on Friday,” Sarafin said during a briefing with reporters. “We’re going to play all nine innings here. We’re not ready to give up yet.”

NASA officials provided some more context on the engine issue that led to today’s launch getting scrubbed. The launch team had trouble getting one of the four RS-25 engines to the proper temperature for liftoff, which led to the decision to delay. Temperatures for the engines need to register at 500 Rankine for a launch to be feasible, Sarafin said.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“Once we got through the propellant loading on the rocket, both on core stage and the upper stage, they started the engine bleed,” Sarafin said. “We talked in our flight readiness review about the engine bleed. We knew that that was a risk heading into this launch campaign, and it would be the first time demonstrating that successfully.”

Sarafin said that the engine needs to be at a “cryogenically cool temperature such that when it starts, it’s not shocked with all the cold fuel that flows through it. So we needed a little extra time to assess that.”

But officials cautioned that today’s delay should not be viewed as an engine malfunction but rather an issue with the bleed system. The launch “never fully got into the engine bleed” during a previous “wet dress rehearsal” of the rocket launch earlier this year, Sarafin acknowledged, adding that officials knew it could be a risk for today’s launch.

Sarafin called the last 48 hours “very dynamic,” including a hydrogen leak that was quickly resolved and several lightning strikes on the towers holding up the SLS rocket. But asked whether the rocket may need to be “pushed back” from its position on the launch pad, officials demurred.

“That’s getting ahead of our data reviews, and we need the team to get rested and come back tomorrow,” Sarafin said. “We’re going to do our best to see where the data leads us and if we can resolve it operationally out at the pad.”

The next few days will be crucial for NASA as it examines all the data that contributed to today’s delay. And in the run-up to the next two launch windows, time will be working against the agency.

The next attempt is scheduled for Friday, September 2nd, at approximately 12:48PM ET. If that launch is successful, the mission will last 39 days, with the Orion crew capsule splashing down in the ocean on October 11th. If it doesn’t launch then, a third launch window will open on Monday, September 5th.

But if NASA determines that the rocket needs to be moved from the launchpad to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center, those dates could be changed. Before each launch, teams must fully test the flight termination system, which is used to destroy the rocket if something goes catastrophically wrong during the launch, and that work can only be done inside the VAB. That testing takes time, so if SLS is forced to come back to the VAB after rolling out in August, chances are it wouldn’t be ready to fly until late October.

Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development, concluded with some advice for those who were hoping to see a rocket launch today, including Vice President Kamala Harris: “Plan a week-long vacation in Florida, and you might see a launch.”

The ashes of Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek, will get sent into deep space on a rocket that memorializes her and several other Star Trek veterans (via Reuters). Nichols’ son, Kyle Johnson, donated her ashes after she died in July at age 89.

Nichols’ ashes will head to space on a rocket fittingly called the Vulcan Centaur, with the memorial spaceflight company, Celestis, running the “Enterprise Flight” mission. There still isn’t a set date for the send-off, and it will likely depend on the United Launch Alliance’s ongoing development of the Vulcan rocket.

During the mission, Nichols will be joined by the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett, who starred as the series’ nurse Christine Chapel. James Doohan, who played the Enterprise’s engineer, Scotty, and the visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull, who’s known for his work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, and more, will also be on board.

When the rocket takes off from Cape Canaveral, it will carry over 200 capsules containing ashes, DNA samples, as well the names, messages, and pictures provided by users from around the globe. Celestis will store the capsules in the rocket’s upper stage, which will get sent between 150 million and 300 million kilometers into space and orbit the Sun.

Nichols was a pioneer in the film industry and became the first Black woman to hold a major role on television. Her legacy extends off-screen too, as she served as an advocate for NASA to encourage the recruitment of astronauts from underrepresented backgrounds. She’s credited with helping get the first Black man, Colonel Guion Bluford, and the first woman, Sally Ride, to space.

NASA delayed the launch of its colossal next-generation Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, as an engine bleed issue forced the agency to scrub its plans.

The launch director halted the Artemis I launch attempt at approximately 8:34AM ET. SLS is a key component of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to send humans back to the Moon by 2025. The massive rocket will carry the Orion crew capsule, which aims to carry its first astronauts in 2024.

“Launch controllers were continuing to evaluate why a bleed test to get the RS-25 engines on the bottom of the core stage to the proper temperature range for liftoff was not successful, and ran out of time in the two-hour launch window,” the agency said in a blog post.

The SLS was set to take off at approximately 8:33AM ET but was scrubbed after NASA determined it could not successfully launch. NASA scientists determined that engine number three could not reach the appropriate temperature range to allow for a launch. The rocket remains in “stable, safe condition,” the agency said.

NASA first reported the engine issue at 6:33AM ET:

While liquid oxygen loading into the interim cryogenic propulsion stage continues and core stage tanks continue to be replenished with propellants, engineers are troubleshooting an issue conditioning one of the RS-25 engines (engine 3) on the bottom of the core stage. Launch controllers condition the engines by increasing pressure on the core stage tanks to bleed some of the cryogenic propellant to the engines to get them to the proper temperature range to start them. Engine 3 is not properly being conditioned through the bleed process, and engineers are troubleshooting.

The next attempt is scheduled for Friday, September 2nd, at approximately 12:48PM ET. If that launch is successful, the mission will last 39 days, with Orion splashing down in the ocean on October 11th. If it doesn’t launch then, a third launch window will open on Monday, September 5th.

Image: NASA

NASA controllers are keeping the rocket in its current state as they continue to gather data about this issue. It’s unclear what that means for the rocket before the agency attempts the next launch.

If all three launch dates prove unsuccessful, NASA will face an undesirable situation. Teams must fully test the flight termination system, which is used to destroy the rocket if something goes catastrophically wrong during the launch, before launch, and that work can only be done inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Once the SLS is rolled out from the VAB, there is a 20-day time limit for the flight termination system before it has to be tested again. That means the rocket has to launch within 20 days of its rollout, or it must be returned to the VAB so that the flight termination system can get checked out again. That testing takes time, so if SLS is forced to come back to the VAB after rolling out in August, chances are it wouldn’t be ready to fly until late October.

When and if NASA is able to successfully launch, the next noteworthy flight is set for 2024, when the agency has said it will send a crew of astronauts around the Moon and back without landing. Then, in 2025, NASA plans to launch the first crewed Moon landings since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. This landing will include the first woman to walk on the Moon.

One of the main goals of this flight is testing Orion’s heat shield, which will have to endure temperatures of 2,800 degrees Celsius as it enters Earth’s atmosphere.

It’s hard to stand out in the world of plant-based meats, but Juicy Marbles is trying to do so by attempting to replicate not just a steak but also one of the higher-end cuts: the filet mignon. When the company reached out to The Verge asking if we wanted to try its steaks, its promises of a tender filet that’s marbled and cooks like a real steak caught my attention, as someone who swore off eating meat for two years (but who still gets a little jealous of the delicious-looking things my wife eats). The price also caught my attention — $40 for a four-pack of four-ounce steaks. For the mathematicians at home, that’s $40 a pound.

Having eaten plenty of plant-based meats, though, I know that marketing materials can be very deceiving and that being expensive doesn’t automatically equate to tasting good. Keeping my hopes in check, I asked them to send me and my co-worker Alex Cranz, a person so committed to beef I think Hank Hill might have been modeled after her, some steaks. The plan was to get both a vegetarian and carnivorous perspective.

Soon enough, the steaks had arrived, swaddled in dry ice. While I was preparing to cook them, I noticed that the raw steak smelled very similar to raw Beyond Burger. That concerned me a little. While I do thoroughly enjoy a good plant-based hamburger, they often have a weird, indescribable taste that starts to seep in if the patty is too thick. (For example, I enjoy the Burger King Impossible Burger but not Red Robin’s, which is significantly heftier.) At the time, I didn’t know that it wouldn’t really end up tasting anything like a hamburger patty, so with some extra trepidation, I set about cooking it.

It’s been a second since I’ve cooked a “real” steak, and my go-to method was always… a little unconventional. For this test, I wanted to try the Juicy Marbles steak in its purest form, so I limited my seasoning to just salt and pepper and cooked it following Gordon Ramsay’s guide for literal children. Basically, I seared it on both sides, basted it in butter, and then rolled it in the pan to cook the edges. The filet definitely browned and crisped up, but I can’t say that it looked shockingly steak-like; to be honest, it kind of reminded me of an extra thick (and a little burnt) McDonald’s hash brown.

I could tell that the texture of the Juicy Marbles filet wasn’t going to be particularly convincing the second I cut into it, and my knife basically slid right through it. Looking at the inside, it was easy to see why. Juicy Marbles’ fake meat fibers are way bigger than in an actual steak. In fact, they’re almost identical to what you’d find in a slow-cooked pot roast.

Photo: Mitchell Clark / The Verge

The taste doesn’t do anything to dispel that impression either. To be clear, to my tongue, it very much tastes like beef. I genuinely might have been fooled that it was an actual chunk of roast if it were in a stew or already shredded on a plate. But it did not taste like steak. My wife, who does eat meat, had pretty much the exact same conclusion. (I didn’t tell her what I had thought of it before she tasted it.) When I asked Alex how her experience had gone, she seemed even less impressed.

Someone I didn’t exactly expect to agree with my conclusion was Vladimir Mićković, Juicy Marbles co-founder. But when I talked to him, he freely admitted that the company had some work to do. “I think the texture is one thing that’s the thing that gets a lot of positive feedback as well as that it’s not exactly like steak,” he said. “That’s the biggest challenge, I think, because if you look at a medium rare steak, it’s got two different textures. The middle stays very jello-like and chewy, while the outside kind of becomes similar to what we have and it gets these fibers that are pronounced. So it’s not quite realistic there.”

As someone who’s eaten maybe one or two cow-based filets mignons in my whole life, I’m not really one to judge how accurate that description of a real steak is. However, it doesn’t quite match up with how renowned food writer J. Kenji López-Alt describes tenderloins (which are where filets mignons come from). In “The Food Lab’s Definitive Guide to Grilled Steak,” he writes that they should have an “almost buttery texture” and that a well-cooked steak “should have a crusty, crunchy, well-browned exterior surrounding a core of perfectly pink, juicy, tender meat.” To me, at least, I wouldn’t describe Juicy Marbles’ thick fibers as being particularly crust-like, nor would I say that a chewy interior is the same as a tender, buttery one.

I’ll also note that the Juicy Marbles steak also completely failed to live up to the texture and behavior of the real thing when I tried to make a Philly cheesesteak with it. Instead of slicing into thin strips, the filet mostly just crumbled into cubes. It didn’t make for a great sandwich.

Photo: Mitchell Clark / The Verge

Mićković says that the company has also gotten feedback about Juicy Marbles’ flavor, with people saying that it doesn’t taste exactly like steak. “I think there were certain people who were kind of offended that we called it filet mignon,” he laughed. “Which I do understand. Because to somebody if that means a lot to them, and they are really used to that thing being a specific experience… I kind of get it.”

To some extent, it seems like getting that kind of feedback was what Juicy Marbles wanted. It’s been selling small batches of steaks on its website, seeing how people react, and setting up internal teams to work on solving the problems people have. Apparently, there’s a team dedicated to making Juicy Marbles’ steak juicier after they got complaints that the steaks turned out dry. “You can fuck it up,” Mićković said. “In the sense that is like meat, you can definitely make a dry-ass piece of Juicy Marbles as well.” (Alex confirmed this to me by saying “lmao I did.”)

In fact, Mićković told me, “What you ate is kind of the old version. Already we have a new one to deploy, which is going to come later this year, which we’re going to get a completely new flavor mix.”

This sort of iterative approach isn’t uncommon in the fake meat industry. Both Impossible and Beyond introduced “2.0” versions of their hamburger patties, and Simulate has done something similar with its chicken nuggets. The differences between versions have sometimes been dramatic — the first time I had a Beyond Burger I could barely finish half of it, but I think the company’s current patties rival Impossible’s.

Having only tasted one iteration of Juicy Marbles, it’s hard to say how fast it’s improving toward being like a real piece of beef. I would say, though, that there’s a bigger gap between the filets and actual steak in terms of texture than there was for my first Beyond Burger, but Juicy Marbles is slightly closer on taste.

Mićković does seem to want to take a page from those companies in other ways as well. He told me that the company wants to start selling its products in restaurants and retail outlets in the next few months to avoid having to use “all that dry ice and fucking packaging” that the steaks currently come in, which happen to be very expensive in addition to being relatively wasteful.

But getting onto store shelves and the company’s goal to drive the price of Juicy Marbles down to be “ridiculously low” are both way easier said than done. The company will have to start operating at scale to make its steaks cheaper and to have enough of them to sell to stores and restaurants, and it’ll be competing for space in the plant-based aisle with established competitors that have spent years on getting their supply chains going. (Personally, I wouldn’t want to have to compete with Kellogg’s, a massive player in the space.)

Even if Juicy Marbles does manage to get its steaks onto store shelves, people will actually have to like them and decide that the price tag is enough to keep buying them. Plus, how often do the companies that are early to market with a product end up on top? (Hint: McDonald’s isn’t partnering with VegeBurger or Boca to launch the McPlant.)

What I’m saying is that making the steak more realistic is just one of the many things Juicy Marbles has to do to succeed. But whether it is the one to really crack the code, I’m glad it, and other companies like Beyond Meat (which recently announced that it’s working on making steaks, too), are pushing to make plant-based steak a thing. While I’m not the type of person who eats a lot of alternative meats, it’d be great to have unground beef as an ingredient in a potato stew. I’d genuinely be interested in the Juicy Marbles steak I tried for the latter if the price were a little lower. As an alternative to the occasional fancy steak dinner, though? I think the Juicy Marbles may need to marinate for a little longer.

By the way, and apologies for the not-so-subtle plug: if you’re interested in fake meats, check out The Verge’s show on Netflix, The Future Of. Episode 6 goes into what cheeseburgers could look like in the next few decades.

Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech over alleged infringement of its mRNA vaccine technology patents, the company announced today.

“We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Moderna chief executive officer Stéphane Bancel in a statement.

Moderna said in 2020 that it would not enforce its patents during the pandemic to allow for an unhindered public health response. It’s still not planning to enforce patents in low- and middle-income countries, the company said in a statement. But it’s coming after Pfizer and BioNTech, which it said it expected to “respect its intellectual property rights.” In the filing, the company said, “Moderna refrained from asserting its patents earlier so as not to distract from efforts to bring the pandemic to an end as quickly as possible.”

The lawsuit shouldn’t have a major effect on vaccine availability — Moderna said that it’s not looking to remove the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, known commercially as Comirnaty, from the market. It’s looking for payment, said Shannon Thyme Klinger, Moderna’s chief legal officer, in the statement: “Moderna expects Pfizer and BioNTech to compensate Moderna for Comirnaty’s ongoing use of Moderna’s patented technologies.”

It’s not asking for damages from vaccines sold to the United States government. But the US is planning to stop paying for COVID-19 vaccines, and they’ll be sold through normal commercial pathways.

Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech both developed COVID-19 vaccines using mRNA. The shots introduce tiny snippets of the coronavirus’ genetic material to the body for it to create antibodies against.

In the legal filing, Moderna alleged that Pfizer / BioNTech copied two elements of its mRNA vaccine. The first is a chemical modification to the mRNA that prevents the body from attacking the vaccine before it can work in the body. mRNA vaccines that don’t include this type of modification, like the COVID-19 vaccine made by German company CureVac, are far less effective.

The second is the bit of the virus that the vaccines train the body to recognize — both companies’ vaccines target the full coronavirus spike protein, which is the part of the virus that lets it penetrate human cells. Moderna said in its legal filing that it has patents over vaccines with a full spike protein based on research on MERS, a different coronavirus.

Pfizer / BioNTech have also been sued for patent infringement by CureVac. Moderna is also facing lawsuits — biotechnology companies Arbutus Biopharma and Genevant Sciences sued over the method for packaging up the mRNA and delivering it to the body. Another biotechnology company, Alnylam, is suing both Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna over a similar technology.

Starlink, Elon Musk’s internet-from-space service provided by SpaceX, is notifying customers with some good news: their monthly subscriptions have been reduced in response to “local market conditions.”

I received one of these notifications for my Starlink RV service that normally costs me €124 each month in the Netherlands. It says, “Effective 8/24/2022, Starlink is reducing your monthly service fee to €105.” Well, ok.

The price cut is welcome at a time when everything else is getting more expensive due to inflation. “The price reduction factors in your local market conditions and is meant to reflect parity in purchasing power across our customers,” reads the announcement.

Others are reporting similar discounts in locations around the world. For example, on Reddit a person in the UK reports a reduction in their monthly fee to £75 (down from £89), Mexico to $1,100 MXN (down from $2,299 MXN), and Germany €80 (down from €100). Users in Chile and Brazil are reporting price cuts of around 50 percent. A spot check on Starlink’s respective service pages in each country supports the above claims.

The situation in the US, where the dollar has been surging against foreign currencies, is less clear. A person in Nevada reports getting a reduction to $85 (was $110) but Starlink’s own pages still show a monthly subscription price of $110 after a one-time $599 purchase of the hardware kit. Several other people claiming to be from the US say that they haven’t received any price reductions.

So far there’s no mention of a reduction in speed or the addition of strict data caps following the discounted subscriptions.

SpaceX and T-Mobile will host a joint event later today where Elon Musk will be on hand to announce plans to “increase connectivity.” It’s unclear if the event has any relation to the new pricing.