12k Tons of Dumped Orange Peel Grew into a Landscape Nobody Expected (2017)
(sciencealert.com)
A Costa Rican experiment that dumped about 12,000 tonnes of waste orange peel on degraded land was shut down after legal action, but the buried nutrients helped the site regenerate into a dense forest over the next 16 years. Researchers comparing the area with an untreated control found higher soil quality, more tree biomass, and greater tree diversity, including strong carbon-sequestration potential. The study suggests the peel’s effects—possibly combined with reduced invasive grass and soil recovery—offer a cautionary but promising example for future conservation design.
When Small Parquet Files Become a Big Problem (and How I Wrote a Compactor)
(datobra.com)
The article describes how an AWS/Kafka pipeline that wrote Parquet microbatches produced hundreds of tiny Parquet files in S3, increasing object counts, scan overhead, and storage costs. To fix it, the author built a small PyArrow-based “compactor” that reads fragmented Parquet inputs and rewrites them into fewer, better-structured files by tuning row-group and file-size settings, using batching to avoid out-of-memory errors in Kubernetes. The result is that large numbers of small objects can be consolidated into a small set of compressed Parquet outputs.
Moving fast in hardware: lessons from lab to $100M ARR
(blog.zacka.io)
The article argues that teams building physical products can move faster by “simplifying, then adding lightness”—mainly through deleting unnecessary requirements and designing experiments that retire the next biggest unknown. Using examples from ClearMotion’s automotive robotics, NASA’s Apollo and X-planes, SpaceX’s avionics, and others, it shows how subtracting peak/rare-spec demands, treating prototypes as hypothesis-driven tests, and sequencing milestones can shrink the learning loop and accelerate iteration.
Global Physics Photowalk: 2025 winners revealed
(quantamagazine.org)
Quanta reports on the winners of the 2025 Global Physics Photowalk, a competition run by a network of particle-physics labs worldwide. Marco Donghia’s photo of a cryogenic detector setup at INFN’s COLD laboratory won first place, capturing the relationship between researchers and the technology used to study particles like dark matter. Other honored images highlight experiments and infrastructure ranging from neutrino and dark matter detectors to CERN accelerators, with judges and public voting both used to select results.
Claude is having another moment, again
(downdetector.co.uk)
AI
Downdetector reports intermittent issues and user complaints related to Claude AI, indicating another period of service disruption at the time of tracking.
Claude Code is locking people out for hours
(github.com)
AI
A GitHub issue reports that Claude Code cannot log in on Windows, repeatedly failing Google OAuth with a 15-second timeout error and preventing use of the app. The reporter says the problem occurs in version 2.1.92, including after completing the browser sign-in flow and returning to Claude Code. No assignee or further investigation details are provided in the issue text.
Cloudflare targets 2029 for full post-quantum security
(blog.cloudflare.com)
Cloudflare says it is accelerating its post-quantum cryptography program and now targets 2029 for full post-quantum security across its products, including upgrading post-quantum authentication. The post cites recent quantum-related advances and argues that authentication is the most urgent gap because “Q-Day” would make quantum-forged credentials an immediate, catastrophic risk. Cloudflare also highlights the need to prioritize long-lived cryptographic keys, prevent downgrade attacks (e.g., PQ HSTS/certificate transparency), and rotate dependent secrets—work it expects to take years rather than months.
Has electricity decoupled from gas prices in Germany?
(has-electricity-decoupled-yet.strommarktberatung.de)
The article explains how Germany’s electricity prices could become “decoupled” from gas by using renewables to push gas-fired plants off the market margin. It compares actual day-ahead electricity prices with a “gas-implied” electricity price calculated from TTF gas and EU ETS CO₂ costs, and flags decoupling when electricity trades more than 20% below that implied level. It notes limits from volume-weighted pricing and use of calendar-year front-month approximations for gas and CO₂.
You can't cancel a JavaScript promise (except sometimes you can)
(inngest.com)
The article explains why JavaScript promises can’t generally be cancelled mid-flight, discusses the limits of using exceptions for “interrupts,” and contrasts that with generator-style interruption. It then shows a workaround used by the Inngest TypeScript SDK: returning a promise that never resolves so execution halts without throwing or needing .cancel(). The piece ties the technique to control-flow needs in serverless workflows with strict timeouts, where step results are memoized and the workflow is re-invoked to continue from the last completed step.
Trump says a 'whole civilization will die tonight' if Iran deal isn't reached
(pbs.org)
As a U.S. deadline approaches for Iran to agree to a deal involving reopening the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump warned that “a whole civilization will die tonight” and threatened attacks on Iran’s power plants and bridges. The report describes airstrikes hitting bridges, rail-linked targets, and other sites in Iran, alongside Iran’s firings toward Israel and Saudi Arabia, raising warnings from international officials that such strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure could violate laws of war. Diplomats say indirect talks continue while Iran rejects the latest American proposal and tensions escalate across the region.
Kiwi Farms challenges DMCA subpoenas as tools to unmask anonymous speech
(reclaimthenet.org)
Kiwi Farms operator Lolcow LLC has sued Liz Fong-Jones in New York, arguing her DMCA subpoenas are being used to unmask anonymous users rather than address valid copyright infringement. The case centers on Fong-Jones’s claims over a screenshot of a Bluesky post and an edited headshot that forum users posted for discussion. The article highlights that DMCA subpoenas can force identity disclosure without an initial merits review, raising First Amendment and anonymity concerns, with reference to prior court rulings requiring stronger scrutiny.
NanoClaw's Architecture Is a Masterclass in Doing Less
(jonno.nz)
AI
The article dissects NanoClaw’s AI-agent architecture, arguing it succeeds by removing complexity rather than adding abstractions. It highlights a “Phantom Token” credential-proxy pattern that prevents agents from ever seeing real API keys, filesystem-topology-based authorization via container mounts, and a two-cursor scheme to control message delivery and avoid user-visible duplicates. It also describes simple file-based IPC (atomic temp-file renames) and polling loops in place of event-driven systems, with per-group recompilation to avoid plugin layers.
Millions Across Europe Urged to Work from Home
(newsweek.com)
A European energy commissioner urged EU governments to encourage citizens to work from home and reduce driving amid the energy disruption linked to the Iran war. Recommendations also include lowering highway speed limits and promoting public transport, car sharing, and efficient driving. EU energy ministers ended talks without concrete near-term measures, though the European Commission said it plans to propose an EU-level package to improve energy security and independence.
A Fire Sale Has U.S. Office Buildings Going for 90% Off
(wsj.com)
The article reports that some U.S. office buildings are being marketed for steep discounts—up to about 90% off—reflecting ongoing stress in commercial real estate markets and landlords’ efforts to attract buyers or reduce vacancies.
The best tools for sending an email if you go silent
(blog.alcazarsec.com)
The article reviews a small set of tools that can send emails (and sometimes files or messages via other channels) after you stop checking in, distinguishing them from account-recovery features. It recommends Google Inactive Account Manager for Gmail-focused continuity, Alcazar Dead Man’s Switch for configurable check-in alerts, Dead Man’s Switch for a simpler long-running option, LastSignal for self-hosted open-source setups, and advises caution with DeadMansSwitch.email due to thinner documentation. It also clarifies that these tools don’t replace legal estate planning and only address the timing/trigger problem when silence should send a message.
Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net
(jola.dev)
A developer explains why she moved her blog off Cloudflare—citing concerns about dependence on a single provider and the risk of outages—toward bunny.net, a European CDN company. She describes the practical steps to set up bunny.net pull zones, connect a custom hostname with DNS (CNAME), enable SSL, and configure caching via origin cache headers or a “Smart Cache” approach. The post also covers optional settings like SSL enforcement, Origin Shield, serving stale content during origin issues, and an edge rule for redirecting the CDN domain to the real site.
Haunting Photos Show the Aftermath of the Kursk Submarine Disaster in 2000
(rarehistoricalphotos.com)
The article revisits the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster through archival and memorial images, describing how the K-141 sank after explosions during a major naval exercise and how rescue efforts were delayed and criticized. It details the investigation findings, including an alleged failure involving a dummy or faulty torpedo and resulting secondary detonations, while noting that the reactors shut down safely. Photos also capture the later salvage and the continued impact on families and public officials.
10 Enduring Lessons from Adam Smith
(thedailyeconomy.org)
The article marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” by highlighting ten Smith quotations that the author says still apply today. It emphasizes Smith’s skepticism toward social and economic “systems” imposed by planners, arguing that markets coordinate activity through incentives and the division of labor. The piece also stresses competition over collusion, the role of institutions and rule of law in growth, and the limits of human control over complex societies.
AI agents can communicate with each other, and can't be caught
(arxiv.org)
AI
The paper studies whether two AI agents controlled by different parties can coordinate in a way that looks like a normal interaction, producing transcripts a strong observer cannot distinguish from honest behavior. It shows covert “key exchange” and thus covert conversations are possible even without any initially shared secret, as long as messages have enough min-entropy. The authors introduce a new cryptographic primitive—pseudorandom noise-resilient key exchange—to make this work and note limitations of simpler approaches, arguing that transcript auditing alone may not detect such coordination.
No "New Deal" for OpenAI
(minutes.substack.com)
AI
The article argues that OpenAI’s policy brief “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age” is misframed as a “New Deal” effort, saying the original New Deal was built through intense labor conflict and political force rather than cooperative dialogue. It contends that OpenAI’s proposed concessions—like feedback channels, small fellowships, and API credits—avoid committing new money and skip key labor mechanisms such as collective bargaining. Overall, the piece portrays the brief as offering worker participation and safety goals without realistic pathways to deliver them, while raising concerns that benefits could concentrate among large firms.
Record wind and solar saved UK from gas imports worth £1B in March 2026
(carbonbrief.org)
Carbon Brief reports that record wind and near-record solar generation in March 2026 produced 11TWh combined on Great Britain, setting a monthly output record. The higher renewables output reduced the need to import about 21TWh of gas, estimated to be worth roughly £1bn at then-current LNG prices, and also pushed gas-fired generation to the lowest March level on record. The analysis links the effect to fewer times gas set electricity prices, making power prices lower than during earlier high-fuel-price periods.
DeiMOS – A Superoptimizer for the MOS 6502
(aransentin.github.io)
DeiMOS is a “superoptimizer” that searches exhaustively for the smallest/fastest machine-code sequences for the MOS 6502 by generating candidate instruction streams and verifying them against a user-supplied spec across all 8-bit inputs. The article outlines why the 6502 is a practical target (small, well-defined instruction set) and describes several accelerations, including early rejection of crashing/invalid candidates, multithreaded/process-based distributed search, restricted instruction/address generation, checkpointable emulation, and branch pruning based on undefined data and input overwrites using “warp” multi-input emulation. It also discusses additional techniques like “shadow instructions” that exploit the way branches can land in the middle of variable-length instructions.