Apparently, a four-billion-year-old rock can still make Friday’s news cycle. Also today: an office you wear and a very expensive game of darts.

Let’s ride.

An actual slice of Teghaza 001, with its scale bar intact. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

🧠 THE BIG PICTURE

A four-billion-year-old piece of Mars

A meteorite found in the Sahara in 2022 is giving scientists a rare look at ancient Mars. A NASA-funded study published Thursday puts Teghaza 001 among the oldest Martian rocks ever identified.

Water altered its minerals about 4.1 billion years ago, meaning the rock itself formed even earlier. That preserves evidence of ancient water-rock interactions in a sample scientists can examine here, without waiting for another spacecraft to bring something home.

The clever part is how little material they needed: researchers dated tiny zircon crystals and analyzed a slice smaller than a fingernail. When your specimen is one of roughly 435 known Mars meteorites, destroying less of it is a fairly attractive feature.

They narrowed its possible origin to 13 places in Mars’s southern highlands. No exact return address yet; the geological paperwork is unusually thorough.

🚀 HEADLINES THAT MATTER

GitHub gives coding agents a shared project

GitHub’s Universe announcements put Copilot projects across multiple repositories, with parallel agent sessions that developers can manage together. Its new Fusion system can choose one or more models for tasks such as coding, debugging and using tools.

For builders, the appealing bit is continuity: a cloud session can move between phone, browser, editor and terminal. Fewer lost handoffs would be a useful upgrade to the traditional development tool known as “wait, which tab?”

Your extra monitors now have a cable to your face

Xreal’s AURA glasses opened for orders Wednesday, starting at $1,099 through year-end. They run Android XR, offer a 70-degree field of view, and connect to a portable computing-and-battery puck.

You can arrange app windows or connect a compatible laptop over USB-C for extra virtual screen space. The glasses weigh under 95 grams, but the cable and puck remain part of the deal; this is portable desk hardware, with an unusually personal display stand.

Google’s promotional view of AURA’s virtual workspace. The floating windows are an illustration of the experience.

Starbucks has more customers walking in

Starbucks’ Thursday results showed U.S. comparable sales up 7.7%, including 2.4% more transactions and a 5.2% higher average ticket. Both customer visits and spending contributed, which makes this more encouraging than a price increase wearing a growth costume.

Company revenue still fell 4% to $9.1 billion, largely because its China business moved to a licensed joint venture. The store-level comeback and the accounting change can coexist; one headline number doesn’t tell the whole coffee story.

A T. rex’s afternoon stroll reaches Denver

The first known adult T. rex trackway arrived at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science Thursday, with its plaster jacket going on display today. Four three-toed footprints sit along a roughly 23-foot slab.

The museum’s research estimates the animal was walking around 3.5–4.5 mph, with strides roughly 13 feet long. The discovery was announced in September; this week’s news is the public arrival of some spectacularly oversized evidence that dinosaurs also had places to be.

Netflix puts £501,000 behind a pub boast

Beat Luke Littler Live starts today at noon Pacific, giving amateur players a shot at the world’s No. 1 darts player and a £501,000 prize. Twenty-four contestants compete for 20 places, then take turns facing Littler.

The field includes a bin worker, a Nando’s manager and schoolchildren; the broadcast ends when someone beats him. It’s an admirably legible premise for live TV: one exceptionally good player, a queue of hopefuls, and a boast with a production budget.

Amazon’s cloud growth comes with a large building bill

Amazon’s third-quarter report put AWS revenue at $46 billion, up 39%, with $17.8 billion in operating income. Demand for cloud computing is showing up in actual sales, well beyond the product-demo stage.

Meanwhile, trailing twelve-month free cash flow was negative $42.4 billion as property-and-equipment spending surged, largely for AI infrastructure. That’s a different period and measure from quarterly profit, but together they show the scale: the cash-generating business is financing a very expensive expansion.

⚡ RAPID FIRE

🎙️ Transcription toolbox. Nvidia’s Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe handles recorded audio in 40 languages, with timestamps and speaker labels. Open weights give developers another option for building transcription workflows.

🛠️ One developer doorway. Google’s Connected Apps preview gives developers one place to manage integrations across Search and Gemini. Access is phased; start with the documentation before rearranging your roadmap.

🥩 The grocery list grows. Beyond Steak Filet is reaching Sprouts nationwide, joining retailers including Wegmans and H-E-B. A wider rollout gives curious home cooks another place to experiment.

📺 Before your favorite comedy’s favorite comedy. Netflix’s SCTV documentary arrives today, revisiting the Canadian sketch institution through archival footage and a Toronto cast reunion. Weekend homework, with better jokes.

🎮 The Triforce charges separately. Nintendo’s Zelda anniversary Switch 2 has a black-and-gold dock and green-and-gold controllers. The important small print for gift shoppers: no game is included.

🎨 Miami borrows the masters. PAMM’s Picasso–Klee–Matisse exhibition opened Thursday, bringing nearly 100 works together through February 28. An excellent reason to briefly stop looking at rectangles that refresh.

Vega Island on October 10, published by NASA today. Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin, using USGS Landsat data.

🔥 THE WEIRD BIT

Antarctica has already put its Halloween costume on. NASA’s new Vega Island image shows a skull in profile: exposed rock makes the eye, a moraine supplies the mouth, and Devil’s Bay Glacier forms the jaw.

Nature even handled the naming. The pumpkin-carving committee would like a word.

— Michael

P.S. Which would you rather see in person: the Mars rock or the T. rex footprints? Hit reply with your pick.

🎧 Podcast archive, September 4: Nvidia Buys the AI Community for $13B.