Historian Jill Lepore Warns of an Emerging ‘Artificial State’
Lepore argues that corporations and algorithms are taking on government functions without democratic consent, a theme of her forthcoming book.
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Developer turns semiconductor study into an LLM-assisted learning game
A personal learning experiment uses generative AI to convert the complicated sequence of chip fabrication into a more interactive, game-like route through the subject.
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Dark Hours creator withdraws project after discovering close predecessor
A developer removed a newly launched astronomy web utility after learning that its name and presentation closely resembled an existing DarkHours.app service.
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Nixpkgs core team says it will disband after a 10-month run
The team said it had completed a series of governance and infrastructure changes before deciding to step aside.
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DeepMind Open-Sources WeatherNext Models for Cyclone Forecasting
Google says its AI system predicted storm tracks, intensity and wind structure with roughly one more day of useful accuracy than previous models.
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New DNS Record Lets Active Domains Signal They Are for Sale
The `_for-sale` convention gives owners a machine-readable sales signal without replacing a working website with a parked page.
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Programmer challenges claim that coding was never the difficult part
An essay argues that reducing software work to deciding what to build discounts the technical judgment and execution that made experienced programmers valuable.
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Danish schools add oral defenses to written work amid AI cheating concerns
High-school students in Denmark will be required to explain submitted assignments aloud under measures intended to help teachers verify authorship and understanding.
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Fastmail adds Amsterdam-based EU data region
Fastmail customers can now choose the European Union as the primary location for their account data, using company-operated servers in Amsterdam.
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Developer repurposes an Android phone as a home server
A personal infrastructure project moves web applications, a remote browser and supporting services from a rented VPS onto a rooted CMF Phone 1.
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Website Operator Says Bots Generated More Than 99% of Page Loads
PatronView’s owner describes a year of blocking search, AI and distributed crawlers on a 1.5 million-page philanthropy database.
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Assembly ‘Hall of Shame’ Searches for the Slowest CPU Instruction
An experimental repository reverses performance tuning by combining unusual operands, microcode paths and hardware contention to maximize instruction latency.
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US agrees $1.2 billion payout as RWE abandons offshore wind projects
German utility RWE will leave planned US offshore wind developments and redirect money toward gas infrastructure after a settlement with the Interior Department.
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New Mexico court orders Meta to fund $567 million child-harm remedy
A judge directed Meta to place $567 million into a fund addressing mental-health harms after a jury found the company knowingly harmed children and concealed knowledge about exploitation risks.
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DeepSeek V4 Flash posts low-cost results on ARC-AGI tests
ARC Prize results show a high-effort reasoning configuration reaching 89.0% on ARC-AGI-1 Semi-Private and 61.4% on ARC-AGI-2 Semi-Private at only a few cents per task.
Read report »![Steve Jobs and Macintosh computer, January 1984, by Bernard Gotfryd. The image on the computer screen is 髪梳ける女 (A Woman Combing Her Hair) [ media ], by Hashiguchi Goyo (d. 1921).…](/media/articles/commons-79f3da51ae94.avif)
Essay asks what AI means for faith in knowledge-work careers
A Noema commentary argues that automation may intensify a crisis of meaning among office workers who already doubt the purpose or value of their jobs.
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Pentagon releases fifth collection of declassified UAP records
The 41-file release includes military sensor footage, historical documents and artist renderings tied to reported sightings across several decades.
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AI permission game finds familiar commands can conceal overlooked threats
An analysis of more than 409,000 player decisions found that people often approved risky agent commands, especially when malicious behavior hid behind ordinary script names.
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Quake marks 30 years with free 19-map MachineGames episode
Dawn of the Machine adds a looping campaign, new enemy and weapon variants, a soundtrack, secrets and another deathmatch map for owners of the updated game.
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Essay argues AI coding speed still depends on human judgment
A software developer compares AI-assisted development to cooking: basic output is easy, but consistent quality requires requirements, testing and technical understanding.
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AMD buys Taalas to pursue model-specific inference chips
The acquisition adds technology that places neural-network weights directly into silicon, with early demonstrations reportedly producing as many as 17,000 tokens per second.
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Botany educator urges beginners to learn plants without fearing jargon
An informal guide encourages would-be botanists to use online references, ask precise questions and treat unfamiliar technical language as a solvable obstacle.
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Mario Kart guide explains multi-objective optimization with Pareto frontiers
An interactive project uses character and vehicle choices in Mario Kart 8 to show why no single build can maximize every desirable statistic.
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Essay argues taste remains central when AI lowers the cost of making software
A developer reflects on creative judgment as the scarce skill left when machines can produce large amounts of competent material, then confronts criticism that the essay itself resembled AI output.
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