Earliest long-snouted fossil crocodile from Egypt reveals the African origins of seagoing crocs
In the Egyptian Western Desert, where red sandstones and green shales rise above the arid plains of Kharga Oasis, paleontologists have uncovered a fossil that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of crocodile evolution. ⌘ Read more
White oak genome reveals genetic markers for climate adaptability and pest resistance
White oak (Quercus alba) is important economically, ecologically, and culturally. However, the species currently faces a significant challenge: a low rate of seedling recruitment, the process by which seeds successfully germinate and grow into new trees. ⌘ 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
Why US activists are wearing inflatable frog costumes at protests against Trump
Three frogs, a shark, a unicorn and a Tyrannosaurus rex dance in front of a line of heavily armored police in riot gear. ⌘ Read more
How the Mayans were able to accurately predict solar eclipses for centuries
The Maya Civilization, from Central America, was one of the most advanced ancient civilizations, known for its significant achievements in astronomy and mathematics. This includes accurate calendars and detailed celestial records, but scientists don’t fully understand all the details of their calculations. However, new research is shedding light on how they predicted future eclipses with remarkable accuracy. ⌘ Read more
Hurricane Melissa strengthens as it crawls toward Jamaica
Hurricane Melissa was cutting a deadly path through the Caribbean on Sunday, strengthening into a Category 4 storm as it crawled along a worryingly slow course toward Jamaica and the island of Hispaniola. ⌘ Read more
Japan successfully launches new cargo spacecraft to deliver supplies to International Space Station
Japan’s space agency successfully launched Sunday its most powerful flagship H3 rocket, carrying a newly developed unmanned cargo spacecraft for its first mission to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. ⌘ Read more
4MOST telescope facility captures first light
On October 18, 2025, the 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) facility, installed on the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile, obtained its first light. This milestone is a crucial step in the life of any telescope, marking the moment it is ready to begin its scientific journey. ⌘ Read more
Saturday Citations: Primate skull diversity; exploring matter-antimatter asymmetry; asthma clarified
Howdy, pards! This autumnal week brought a new challenge to last decade’s claim of a strong Yellowstone trophic cascade after the reintroduction of wolves. Evolutionary biologists propose that carrion-eating was a dependable nutritional strategy for early humans that may have influenced evolution. And Chinese researchers report that LLMs and humans represent sentences similarly. ⌘ Read more
New forecasting tool improves accuracy of epidemic peak and hospital demand predictions
During an epidemic, some of the most critical questions for healthcare decision-makers are the hardest ones to answer: When will the epidemic peak, how many people will need treatment at once and how long will that peak level of demand for care last? Timely answers can help hospital administrators, community leaders and clinics decide how to deploy staff and other resources most effectively. Unfortunately, man … ⌘ Read more
‘Destructive’ swans in the crosshairs as California allows hunting
Hunters will soon be allowed to kill mute swans as part of an effort to cull the “destructive, non-native” species statewide, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. ⌘ Read more
Virtual reality can help people understand and care about distant communities
For many of us, climate change feels like a distant threat—damage that will happen in the future somewhere far away to people we know little about. A new Stanford University-led study reveals how virtual reality can close that distance, enabling users to explore faraway places, develop a sense of attachment to those places, and care more about how a warming world is wreaking havoc on people’s lives. ⌘ Read more
A food tax shift could save lives—without a price hike in the average shopping basket
More expensive steak, cheaper tomatoes, but the same total cost for the average basket of groceries at the supermarket. A comprehensive study, led by researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, has analyzed the potential effects of a food tax shift—where VAT is removed from healthy foods and levies are introduced on foods that have a negative impact on the climate. ⌘ Read more
Gene variant that protects against norovirus spread with arrival of agriculture, prehistoric DNA reveals
The arrival of agriculture coincided with a sharp rise in a gene variant that protected against the virus that causes winter vomiting, researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Linköping University report after analyzing DNA from over 4,300 prehistoric individuals and cultivating “mini guts.” ⌘ Read more
1 in 3 US nonprofits that serve communities lost government funding in early 2025
About one-third of U.S. nonprofit service providers experienced a disruption in their government funding in the first half of 2025. ⌘ Read more
Africa’s air links are poor: Can the G20 push for more direct flights to improve tourism and trade?
In Africa, less than one in five continental airline routes are direct. Air connections are decided by factors like trade levels, diplomatic relations, and whether there’s enough demand to make a route financially worthwhile. Because there are so few direct connections in Africa, getting from one country to another often requires travelers to fly to Europe or the Middle East and transit there. This increases … ⌘ Read more
What happened to Apple’s legendary attention to detail?
Article URL: https://blog.johnozbay.com/what-happened-to-apples-attention-to-detail.html
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45685551
Points: 507
# Comments: 311 ⌘ Read more
Bending biogenic crystals naturally without external forces
From creating flexible gadgets to better medicines, the art of bending crystals is reshaping technology and health, and at the University of Houston a crystals expert makes it look almost like a magic trick. ⌘ Read more
Climate change is turning global wildfires into monsters
Predicting bushfires is difficult at the best of times. But as climate change wreaks havoc with our world’s weather systems it’s getting harder and more important to get right. ⌘ Read more
Mursa’s mass grave reveals diverse origins of Roman soldiers
Archaeologists in Croatia have discovered a rare mass grave inside ancient water wells at Mursa (modern-day Osijek), revealing the bodies to be soldiers of diverse backgrounds who may have fought in the Battle of Mursa around 260 CE. The multidisciplinary investigation, published in PLOS ONE, provides new insight into how the Roman Empire recruited armies from ethnically diverse backgrounds. ⌘ Read more
Geochemical research could help identify microbial activity in Earth’s rock record and perhaps in Martian sediments
Because oxygen-bearing sulfate minerals trap and preserve signals from Earth’s atmosphere, scientists closely study how they form. Sulfates are stable over billions of years, so their oxygen isotopes are seen as a time capsule, reflecting atmospheric conditions while they were evolving on early Earth—and possibly on its planetary neighbor Mars. ⌘ Read more
Hunters or collectors? New evidence challenges claim Australia’s First Peoples sent large animals extinct
Tens of thousands of years ago, Australia was still home to enigmatic megafauna—large land animals such as giant marsupial wombats, flightless birds, and short-faced giant kangaroos known as sthenurines. ⌘ Read more
Der ganze Vorgang ist archetypisch für die seit Jahrzehnten völlig ohne Not stattfindende politische Selbstverzwergung Europas.
A comment on heise about the recent AWS outage.
(Too bad there’s no good translation for the great word “Selbstverzwergung”.)
I’m paraphrasing: Europe (and other regions) depend on US IT services, a lot, without an actual need. We saw AWS, Google, and Microsoft build large datacenters and then we thought “welp, shit, nothing we can do about that, guess we’ll just be an AWS customer from now on.” Nobody really went ahead and built German/European alternatives. And now we completely depend on the US for lots of our stuff.
The article even claims that there’s now a shortage of sysadmins in the EU? I’m not so sure. But I’d welcome it, makes my job more secure. 🤣
Hosting services, datacenters, software, everything, it’s all US stuff. Why do we accept this, why not build alternatives …
How plant-fungi friendships may change in the face of warming soil and rising CO₂ levels
Just as the human body contains a multitude of symbiotic microbial companions, most plant species also live alongside microbial friends. Among these companions are mycorrhizal fungi, which help plants gather water and nutrients—particularly nitrogen—from the soil. In exchange, plants provide mycorrhizal fungi with an average of 3% to 13% of the carbon they pull from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and so … ⌘ Read more
Research shows that land can’t buy security for young Kenyans
An anthropologist from The University of Manchester has uncovered the hidden struggles of young men on the edges of Nairobi, who inherit land but lack the means to turn it into the financial security they desperately need. ⌘ Read more
Scientists release new survey of the biggest objects in the universe
Scientists have released a new study on the arXiv preprint server that catalogs the universe by mapping huge clusters of galaxies. ⌘ Read more
Fiji’s coral reefs show remarkable recovery after Category 5 cyclone
A new study led by WCS, University of the South Pacific, and partners has found that coral reefs in Fiji showed remarkable resilience after being battered by Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016. Despite losing more than half of their hard coral cover on average, reefs rebounded within four years, reassembling to nearly their pre-cyclone condition. ⌘ Read more