NASA and IBM Open Source Lunar Mapping Tools
NASA and IBM have released an open-source AI model trained on a large collection of lunar observations to help scientists analyze the Moon at scale. “The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model gives scientists a foundation to explore the Moon at scale, connecting observations across instruments, revealing patterns that are difficult to see in isolation, and providing an open platform the gl … ⌘ Read more

LZ Experiment Sees Surprising Result In Search For Dark Matter
New submitter greytree shares a report from Brown University: LUX-ZEPLIN, an experiment co-led by Brown University faculty and students, observed a particle interaction that could be interpreted as a signal from WIMPs, a dark matter candidate – but researchers need more data to confirm. […] The result does not yet meet the statistical thresho … ⌘ Read more

My long weekend has finally arrived!

To celebrate, I busted out FCEUX (an NES emulator) and killed some ghouls in Castlevania 3, stomped some koopas in Super Mario Bros, and even hit a homerun in Base Wars (one of my personal faves, a baseball game featuring fighting robots).

Image

I’m about to switch to MAME to play some arcade classics in preparation for an outing tomorrow night to an arcade bar (for my son’s birthday).

And I don’t go back to work until Wednesday! Woot!! 🤘

Awful 33°C today. But I had to move, no matter what. So, I went outside. At first, the sun was out a bit. It was brutal. Later it vanished behind the clouds. But the humidity was still through the roof.

I watched the corn harvest I came across. Dusty as hell, but it was great fun observe the machineries work.

Going up my backyard mountain, there weren’t many people around. I was pleasantly surprised. However, the smaller hill below was rather crowded. Many people with picnic mats, enjoying their dinner, painting A3 love letters, claiming all available benches, taking wedding photos, walking their dogs, etc.

The public barbecue site at the summit is still closed due to the ongoing fire hazard. I found it rather funny to see a fire extinguisher ready to go next to it. The bread and cake smell disclosed that the Mountain Baking Boys were active. The large oven right next to the BBQ was still going strong.

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-08-27/

Vulnerability Giving Attackers Full Control of Macs Is Under Active Exploitation
joshuark shares a report from Ars Technica: Dutch officials have warned that a high-severity macOS vulnerability that allows attackers to execute malicious code is under active exploitation. “The NCSC has received a notification indicating that active abuse of this vulnerability has been observed on multiple syste … ⌘ Read more

Scientists Turn Starlink Into a Giant Scanner For Earth’s Upper Atmosphere
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceDaily: Researchers have found a clever new way to map a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere that is notoriously difficult to observe. Using orbital data from roughly 1,200 Starlink satellites, they reconstructed changes in atmospheric density about 500 kilometers above Earth. [… … ⌘ Read more

@david@daiwei.me Next year, apparently, but less spectacular. 🤔

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nice! Oh yes, observing the sun is exhausting, it’s always so hot. And for not using a tripod, these shots are pretty good!

Scientists Create Largest 2D Map of the Universe
After 13 years of observations and data processing, astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever assembled, “offering a sweeping new view of nearly 4 billion celestial objects across roughly three-quarters of the sky,” reports Space.com. From the report: The new map, created by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Su … ⌘ Read more

China-Linked Hackers Used AI To Run First-Ever ‘Autonomous’ Cyberattack On Taiwan
Researchers at Israeli cybersecurity firm Dream say suspected China-linked hackers used an open-source AI-agent system to conduct what may be the first observed end-to-end autonomous cyberattack against a government. According to the Financial Times (paywalled), the attack compromised at least 85 accounts and resulte … ⌘ Read more

Up To 12.8x Improvement Observed For gup_test With New Linux MM Patches
Linux developer Rik van Riel has pulled off some nice Linux kernel optimizations over the years and the Meta engineer has been working on another one around batching of look-ups with Linux’s follow_page_mask() that is used for translating virtual addresses to the corresponding struct page… ⌘ Read more

South Korea Records Its Highest Ever Temperature
South Korea recorded its highest temperature since modern observations began in 1904, with the city of Yangsan reaching 42.5C as temperatures exceeded 40C for a fifth consecutive day. Authorities warned residents to “immediately stop all outdoor activities.” The Guardian reports: More than 20 localities in South Korea were under emergency heatwave alerts on Sunday – a new warn … ⌘ Read more

Oh good 😅

2026/07/19 02:55:52 sync-reaper: observe-only pass — 1152 namespaces, 6 anchored, 1094 undatable, 0 idle candidate(s), 0 reaped

Does this seem right to you so far @david@daiwei.me ? 🤔

2026/07/18 02:55:52 sync-reaper: observe-only pass — 1145 namespaces, 3 anchored, 1089 undatable, 0 idle candidate(s), 0 reaped

So far only 3 users of the Twtxt App have achieved their device settings with a recovery key? 🔑

quick correction on that cleanup timing 🙏 it’s not 28 days. nothing gets deleted for the first 30 days at all (observe-only), and after that only setups unused for ~6 months that also never saved a recovery code. saved a code = safe forever 👍

the correct fix for what you observed is a recovery token to re-sync settings from the sync API

@david@daiwei.me Hahaha, for sure. (But my observation wasn’t meant as a complaint.)

Linux MD RAID5 Seeing Scalability Improvements Up To 17%
Posted to the Linux kernel mailing list this week was a new patch series working on scalability enhancements to the MD RAID5 software RAID code. Up to a 10~17% improvement was observed in some configurations with these RAID5 scalability patches… ⌘ Read more

Astronomers Find Biggest Super-Puff Planets Yet That Are Lighter Than Cotton Candy
Astronomers have discovered two Jupiter-sized exoplanets with densities lower than cotton candy, making them the lightest known worlds of their size. The rare “super-puffs,” located about 1,110 light-years away, are likely composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with follow-up observations by the James Webb … ⌘ Read more

On the Money: The Warehouse, Fieldays, Kieran McAnulty, Simon Bridges, the Funeral business, and more
On the Money (OTM) is our column of general frippery we observed within the worlds of business and government this week.

A few weeks ago, OTM reported on the Northern Club’s AGM, where the club elected a woman,Jacqui Bensemann, the managing director of Argus Fire, as its 78th president. ⌘ Read more

2degrees Shaping Business Study 2026: ‘No one’s waiting for green shoots anymore’
After five years of waiting, an increasing number of New Zealand businesses appear to be giving up on things going back to “normal”.

That’s the headline observation from the latest edition of the 2degrees Shaping Business Study re … ⌘ Read more

On the Money: Rod Drury, Duncan Saville, Paula Oliver, Mike Hosking, a Fieldays preview, and more
On the Money (OTM) is our column of general frippery we observed within the worlds of business and government this week.

Did you think the New Zealand edition of Monopoly was novel enough? Think again. ⌘ Read more

ComCom says grocery competition shows ‘little change’
The Commerce Commission’s third Annual Grocery Report has found that New Zealand’s lack of supermarket competition is yet to improve.

“There has been little observable change in core competition metrics over the year”, ComCom wrote in its executive summary of the report, relea … ⌘ Read more

Observe them get hard ⌘ Read more

Space startup raises funds for laser satellite communications
By Loren Grush

Observable Space raised US$90 million (NZ$151.7m) in its debut funding round as the company seeks to use lasers to help satellites and potentially orbiting datacentres move information to and from Earth. ⌘ Read more

On the Money: Tex Edwards, Karen Silk, Kenyon Clarke, Brad Olsen, Eric Crampton, Don Braid, Anna Breman and more
On the Money (OTM) is our column of general frippery we observed within the worlds of business and government this week.

At Thursday’s Mainfreight result, an injustice of national significance was finally raised. ⌘ Read more

A Probe Took Incredible Pictures of Mars on Its Way to a Far-Off Asteroid
NASA took advantage of the recent close approach of the Psyche probe to Mars to calibrate its observation instruments. ⌘ Read more

On the Money: Grant Baker’s book launch, Ray Smith, Nikhil Ravishankar, a great AI speech, and more
On the Money (OTM) is our column of general frippery we observed within the worlds of business and government this week.

It was not the easiest week to be a departmental chief executive. Minister for the Public Service Nicola Willis signalled 9,000 public-sector jobs might go, and several agencies might be folded into on … ⌘ Read more

Physicists Find Possible Errors In 100-Year-Old Model of the Universe
A trio of preprint papers suggests the universe may not be perfectly uniform on the largest scales, finding tentative 2-to-4-sigma deviations from a core assumption of standard cosmology known as FLRW geometry. Live Science reports: The work combines observations of distant exploding stars and large-scale galaxy surveys to probe whet … ⌘ Read more

VPN, chiffrement, gel des avoirs : la triple offensive discrète contre la liberté d’expression
Pour une bonne partie de la classe politique européenne, la liberté d’expression est devenue le bruit du voisin qui tond sa pelouse un dimanche matin : absolument insupportable. Le réseau X de Musk étant l’amplificateur le plus bruyant, il était inévitable qu’il serve de cible répétée, comme on l’observe avec l’information judiciaire ouverte par le … ⌘ Read more

[$] Restartable sequences, TCMalloc, and Hyrum’s Law
Hyrum’s Law states that any
observable behavior of a system will eventually be depended upon by
somebody. The kernel community is currently contending with a clear
demonstration of that principle. The recent work to address some restartable-sequences\
performance problems in the 6.19 release maintained the documented API
in all respects, but that was not enough; Google’s [TCMalloc](https://google.github.io/tcmalloc/ … ⌘ Read more

Google Studies Prompt Injection Attacks Against AI Agents Browsing the Web
Are AI agents already facing Indirect Prompt Injection attacks? Google’s Threat Intelligence teams searched for known attacks that would target AI systems browsing the web, using Common Crawl’s repository of billions of pages from the public web).

We observed a number of websites that attempt to vandalize the machine of anyone … ⌘ Read more

Global Growth In Solar ‘the Largest Ever Observed For Any Source’
The IEA says 2025 marked a turning point for global energy, with solar posting the largest growth ever seen for any energy source and helping carbon-free power outpace rising demand. The trend led the agency to declare that the world has entered the “Age of Electricity.” Ars Technica reports: The IEA report covers energy use, including the el … ⌘ Read more

Valve Releases Native Steam Link App For Apple’s Vision Pro
Valve has released a native Steam Link beta for Apple Vision Pro, letting users stream their existing Steam games onto a large virtual screen in visionOS. It supports up to 4K resolution and will let you dynamically adjust the curve of the display. The Mac Observer reports: Steam Link does not support VR titles in this beta, and Valve clearly states that t … ⌘ Read more

I confess, I’ve become a lurker. It’s part of a dark trend away from friends
When I was compulsively sharing and being shared with, I was expressing the person I wanted to be. Now, I just silently observe the lives of others. ⌘ Read more

Trivy Supply Chain Attack Spreads, Triggers Self-Spreading CanisterWorm Across 47 npm Packages
“We have removed all malicious artifacts from the affected registries and channels,” Trivy maintainer Itay Shakury posted today, noting that all the latest Trivy releases “now point to a safe version.” But “On March 19, we observed that a threat actor used a compromised credential…”

And … ⌘ Read more

NASA’s Hubble Unexpectedly Catches Comet Breaking Up
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope unexpectedly captured a rare, early-stage breakup of comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) just days after it first began disintegrating. Phys.org reports: “Sometimes the best science happens by accident,” said co-investigator John Noonan, a research professor in the Department of Physics at Auburn University in Alabama. “This comet got observed becaus … ⌘ Read more

Meta Acquires Moltbook, the Social Network For AI Agents
Axios reports that Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral, Reddit-like social network designed for AI agents. Humans are welcome, but only to observe. Axios reports: The deal brings Moltbook’s creators – Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr – into Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), the unit run by former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang. Meta did not disclose Moltbook’s purchas … ⌘ Read more

Resile is an ergonomic, execution resilience and retry library for Go.
Resile is an ergonomic, type-safe execution resilience and retry library for Go. Inspired by Python’s stamina, it features generic execution wrappers, AWS Full Jitter backoff, native Retry-After header support, and zero-dependency observability for distributed systems. 1 points posted by cinar ⌘ Read more

Thousands of CEOs Just Admitted AI Had No Impact On Employment Or Productivity
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the Information Age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected t … ⌘ Read more

Prankster Launches Super Bowl Party For AI Agents
Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: The world’s biggest football game comes to Silicon Valley today — so one bored programmer built a site where AI agents can gather for a Super Bowl party. They’re trash talking, suggesting drinks, and predicting who will win. “Humans are welcome to observe,” explains BotBowlParty.com — but just like at Moltbook, only AI ag … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I don’t have any statistics, just observe what is around me, so it’s very subjective. I know a bunch of kids with names I’ve never heard before. Sometimes, I first thought other kids were making fun of their friends by calling them by made-up nonsense. But no. Without question, I live under a rock. I just looked up some of them that came to mind immediately and they seem to be of Greek, Swedish and Latin origin, etc.

Snadragon X Elite Laptop Performance On Linux Ends 2025 Disappointing
As part of my various end-of-year benchmarking comparison articles for looking at the performance evolution of Linux is a fresh look at the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite laptop experience when using Ubuntu 25.10 with the latest X1E Concept packages, which includes taking the X1 Elite optimized kernel to the latest Linux 6.18 stable series. Unfortunately, there are significant performance regressions observed compared to a few months ago … ⌘ Read more

Pas de voitures volantes mais des trottinettes électriques : on nous a volé notre futur
Le progrès serait-il en panne ? Si l’on s’en tient à certaines observations, on peut le penser. Rappelez-vous, il n’y a pas si longtemps, on nous promettait les étoiles, non pas métaphoriquement, mais littéralement : des voitures volantes, des vacances sur la Lune ou presque. Malheureusement, un rapide coup d’œil à la fenêtre suffit à noter que […] ⌘ Read more

Australia’s social media ban faces challenges and criticism on day one
As Australian teenagers lose access to social media, observers say there are still many unknown questions about the ban, which came into force on 10 December ⌘ Read more

What Happens When an ‘Infinite-Money Machine’ Unravels
Michael Saylor’s software company Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, built a financial model that some observers called an “infinite-money machine” by stockpiling hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and issuing stock and debt to buy more, but that machine appears to be breaking down. The company’s stock peaked above $450 in mid-July and ended November at $177.18, … ⌘ Read more

NASA Rover Makes a Shocking Discovery: Lightning on Mars
An anonymous reader shares a report: It is shocking but not surprising. Lightning crackles on Mars, scientists reported on Wednesday. What they observed, however, were not jagged, high-voltage bolts like those on Earth, arcing thousands of feet from cloud to ground. Rather, the phenomenon was more like the shock you feel when you scuff your feet on the carpet … ⌘ Read more

Singapore Orders Apple, Google To Prevent Government Spoofing on Messaging Platforms
An anonymous reader shares a report: Singapore’s police have ordered Apple and Google to prevent the spoofing of government agencies on their messaging platforms, the home affairs ministry said on Tuesday. The order under the nation’s Online Criminal Harms Act came after the police observed scams on Apple’s … ⌘ Read more

New Mars Orbiter Manuever Challenges Theory: That May Not Be an Underground Lake on Mars
In 2018 researchers claimed evidence of a lake beneath the surface of Mars, detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (or Marsis for short).

But new Mars observations “are not consistent with the presence of liquid water in this location and an alternat … ⌘ Read more

Mouse ‘midwives’ help their pregnant companions give birth
Scientists have observed mice helping each other when they encounter difficulties during birth, prompting a rethink of caregiving among rodents and other animals ⌘ Read more

‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ is Expanding Fast, and That Should Worry Everyone
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Nigel Morris tells you he’s worried about the economy, you listen. As industry observers know, Morris co-founded Capital One and pioneered lending to subprime borrowers, building an empire on understanding exactly how much financial stress the average American can handle. Now, as an early investor … ⌘ Read more