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

China’s EV Market Is Imploding
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Chinese electric car has become a symbol of the country’s seemingly unstoppable rise on the world stage. Many observers point to their growing popularity as evidence that China is winning the race to dominate new technologies. But in China, these electric cars represent something entirely different: the profound threats that Beijing’s meddling in markets poses to both China … ⌘ Read more

Odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the moon may rise to 30 per cent
In February, the James Webb Space Telescope will briefly be able to observe asteroid 2024 YR4, which currently has a 4 per cent chance of hitting the moon in 2032. Depending on what it sees, the odds of collision could drastically increase ⌘ Read more

Show HN: Linnix – eBPF observability that predicts failures before they happen
Comments ⌘ Read more

Totally-eclipsing binary UZ Draconis inspected with TESS
Astronomers from Keele University in the UK have utilized NASA’s planet-hunting TESS telescope to investigate a totally-eclipsing binary known as UZ Draconis. Results of the new observations, published October 31 on the arXiv pre-print server, put more constraints on the properties of this system. ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Livestreams Attempt to Launch Unique “EscaPADE’ Mission to Mars
Blue Origin is livestreaming the launch of its New Glenn rocketreports CNN, “where they will investigate why the barren red planet began to lose its atmosphere billions of years ago.” By observing two Mars locations simultaneously, this mission can measure how Mars responds to space weather in real time — and how the Marti … ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.18-rc5 To Cut Down Performance Regression Observed On IBM POWER CPUs
Merged today ahead of the Linux 6.18-rc5 kernel due out on Sunday is a partial fix for a performance regression observed on IBM POWER hardware… ⌘ Read more

Orange cat observing like he’s Newton ⌘ Read more

Should we build an optical interferometer on the moon?
Earth’s atmosphere is an impediment to astronomical observations. Not only is cloudy weather a problem, but temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere mean that ground-based telescopes require sophisticated adaptive optics systems to see clearly. Radio telescopes aren’t bothered by clouds, but need to be built in ‘radio quiet’ locations to do their job best. ⌘ Read more

Why CNCF TAGs are the core of cloud native innovation (and where to find them at KubeCon Atlanta)
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 is just around the corner in Atlanta. While you’re mapping out your schedule for co-located events like Observability Day and Platform Engineering Day, don’t forget to connect with the groups… ⌘ Read more

Bringing data center observability into the cloud native world
When people talk about cloud-native observability, the conversation usually revolves around applications, containers, and microservices. However, under those layers lies an equally critical foundation: The physical data center. Servers, storage systems, and networks ultimately host every… ⌘ Read more

Quantum computers reveal that the wave function is a real thing
The uncertainty inherent to quantum mechanics has long left physicists wondering whether the observations we make on the quantum level reflect reality - a new test suggests they do ⌘ Read more

Dark matter could color our view of the universe
Dark matter has two central properties: it has mass like regular matter, and unlike regular matter, it reacts weakly or not at all with light. Neutrinos satisfy these two criteria, but neutrinos move through space at nearly the speed of light, making them a form of hot dark matter. The observations we have suggest that dark matter is cold. ⌘ Read more

Connecting distributed Kubernetes with Cilium and SD-WAN: Building an intelligent network fabric
Learn how Kubernetes-native traffic management and SD-WAN integration can deliver consistent security, observability, and performance across distributed clusters. The challenge of distributed Kubernetes networking Modern businesses are rapidly adopting distributed architectures to meet growing demands for… ⌘ Read more

Highlights from CNCF’s first Open Observability Summit
It’s about time open observability had its own industry-wide, vendor-neutral event. This year, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) finally made it happen with the inaugural Open Observability Summit, bringing together contributors, practitioners, and end users for… ⌘ Read more

LFX Insights: A new way to understand open source projects
Open source forms the backbone of modern technology ecosystems. From orchestration and observability to frameworks and developer tools, today’s technology choices depend on projects we may not control but rely on every day. The challenge: not… ⌘ Read more

Distant galaxy A1689-zD1 found to have unusually low dust-to-gas ratio
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers has carried out comprehensive multiwavelength observations of a distant massive galaxy known as A1689-zD1. ⌘ Read more

Something Weird Is Happening to Earth’s Magnetic Field
Passant Rabie,  Science Reporter  -  Gizmodo

Stephan: It isn’t clear to even scientists exactly what this change in Earth’s magnetic field is going to cause, but clearly it will be something dramatic.

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Show HN: ServiceRadar – open-source Network Observability Platform
Comments ⌘ Read more