Numlock News: October 15, 2025 • Hamilton, Wolves, Satellites

Oct 15, 2025

We Still Have The Banks, We’re In The Same Spot

Hamilton secured its highest-ever grossing week on Broadway, bringing in $4,042,906 from attendance of 10,752 people. That’s interesting because we aren’t even in the holiday season yet, which tends to be when shows start posting their best numbers as tourists flock to New York; the previous high gross was set the week of Christmas in 2018. Two factors contributed to the new milestone: the first was the return of Leslie Odom Jr. in the role of Aaron Burr and the second was an increase in the average Hamilton ticket price from $348 to $376. Broadway is humming right now, as shows debut ahead of that highly lucrative holiday season and replace those that folded shortly after the Tonys.

Caitlin Huston, The Hollywood Reporter

Cyber Fraud

The United States has charged the chairman of Prince Group, a Cambodian conglomerate, with operating a massive cyber fraud operation, seizing 127,271 bitcoin worth around $15 billion in the process. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged the chairman with wire fraud conspiracy and operating a money laundering scheme, alleging the use of forced labor in Cambodia to scam victims across the world in what’s become known as “pig butchering” schemes. This fraud scheme was credited by one study for causing $75 billion in losses from January 2020 to February 2024.

Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg

Satellite

Researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland were able to receive unencrypted communications involving satellites using simple off-the-shelf equipment. This includes samples of calls and messages sent over the T-Mobile cellular network, data from in-flight WiFi browsing, communications from utilities, and law enforcement communications. The research looked at the 15 percent of geostationary satellites whose signals could be picked up from San Diego, and the paper argues that this is a serious vulnerability for years to come. The most surprising and chilling element was the researcher's ability to accomplish this without anything too sophisticated or any equipment from the cloak-and-dagger crowd; they needed just a $185 satellite dish, a $140 roof mount, a $195 motor and a $230 tuner card to do it.

Andy Greenberg and Matt Burgess, Wired

Neophobia

A massive new study analyzed neophobia — fear of new things — in birds, drawing on the efforts of 129 collaborators from 82 institutions in 24 countries to study the reactions of 1,439 birds across 136 species to novel objects. They found that grebes and flamingos had the highest levels of neophobia, while falcons and pheasants exhibited the least neophobia and would engage with the unknown items readily. Overall, two patterns emerged. First, migratory birds exhibited higher levels of neophobia (the paper argues that a general unease around the unfamiliar might be evolutionary advantageous for birds who encounter so many different environments and possible threats). However, species with narrower diets also had higher neophobia, because if it couldn’t possibly be your familiar food, why on Earth would you bother messing with it?

Anglia Ruskin University

Comics

Sales of comics and graphic novels hit $1.935 billion in 2024, up 73 percent from 2019. Dollar sales in comic book shops were up 13.3 percent. However, sales in conventional book stores actually slowed a bit, thanks to a 17.1 percent drop in unit sales for manga, which has underpinned a lot of the growth in bookstore sales of comics. Despite the dip, manga numbers and digital distribution are still doing an excellent job of propelling Gen Z consumers into comics. Many of the established players have capitalized on this demographic by re-releasing classic arcs of their comics in more readable paperback editions, like DC’s Absolute line.

Brigid Alverson, ICV2

Up The Wolves

Italy has sought to preserve and reintroduce wildlife in forested parts of the country, including Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park. While the last Marsican bear in the Sibyllines was shot in 1870, the species has been reintroduced since, with a population of only around 60 animals. All of the subspecies’ reproductive females live in Molise National Park, and all the males are in the protected forests around it. It hasn’t always been easy going to reintroduce them — Italy is very densely populated — but the efforts have paid off. As of 2021, there are 2,400 wolves in Italy, with about a sixth of them living in a mere 5,180 square kilometer section of the Central Apennines — one-sixtieth of the land area in the country where wolves played a famously crucial part in founding Rome.

Hillary Rosner, bioGraphic

Lead

A Consumer Reports lab analysis of 23 protein powders and ready-to-drink shakes found that within a single serving, 70 percent of them contained at least 120 percent of the level of lead that food safety experts said was safe to consume in a day. Three products also exceeded the threshold of concern for cadmium and inorganic arsenic. Two of the protein powders contained 1,200 to 1,600 percent of the level of concern for lead, which was 0.5 micrograms per day, with another two having 400 percent to 600 percent of that lead level. The FDA does not review, approve or test supplements like protein powders before sold, and regulations don’t require manufacturers to prove the product is safe.

Paris Martineau, Consumer Reports

If you subscribe, you get a Sunday edition! It’s fun, and supporters keep this thing ad-free. This is the best way to support something you like to read:

Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement.

Previous Sunday subscriber editions: Dark Roofs · Geothermal · Stitch · Year of the Ring · Person Do Thing · Fun Factor · Low Culture · Romeo vs. Juliet · Traffic Cam Photobooth · Money in Politics ·