Thursday, 01 October
11:00 EDT
What a Pearly King taught me about Cockney rhyming slang and East London history [NPR Topics: News]
In mother-of-pearl suits, the Pearly Kings used to canvass East London for charity. The most famous one, George Major, died in August. A look back on this larger-than-life figure and the Pearly King tradition.
(Image credit: Tony Kershaw)
10:00 EDT
PS5 emulation is suddenly making big strides on PC [Ars Technica - All content]
For a long time, PC gamers could access many PlayStation 5 games only if the publisher invested in a bespoke port (something Sony has recently said it will be scaling back). Now, though, rapid advancements in PS5 emulators and other tools are making recent PlayStation titles increasingly playable on generic PCs.
SharpEmu was the first of these emulators, advancing from a "very early alpha stage" in May to a current state that can "load the eboot.bin of real games, execute native CPU instructions, and partially handle GPU-related functionality." The most recent release boasts 10 tested games that reach a "playable" state, including six that developer CursedIfElse says are "fully playable at 60 fps." That includes simple 2D games like Tetris Forever but also 3D titles like Astro Bot and the PS5 Demon's Souls remaster running at playable frame rates.
"SharpEmu has prioritized hardware accuracy from the very beginning, and we’re finally starting to see that investment pay off," CursedIfElse wrote on social media this week. "It was built completely from scratch, and this is how far we’ve come."
NASA squeezed Treasury, vibe coded, and broke the mold in bid to save Swift [Ars Technica - All content]
An attempt to save NASA's $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from dropping out of orbit fell short, but the behind-the-scenes machinations required just to make a rescue possible deserve recognition, government and commercial space officials said in a recounting of the mission.
The rescue mission was developed by Katalyst Space Technologies, working under a $30 million contract awarded by NASA last September. NASA gave Katalyst nine months to build and launch a satellite to capture Swift flying some 200 miles above the Earth and boost it into a higher orbit.
Katalyst's rescue spacecraft, known as Link, successfully launched July 3 and completed some of its initial checkouts before a malfunction caused it to spin out of control a few weeks later. NASA announced in August that Link would not be able to reach Swift as intended, and the rescue mission was aborted.
We all know that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive meteor strike, 65 million years ago. We know where it struck: off the Yucatan peninsula, forming the Chixculub crater. What I didn’t know was that the impact was so fierce that the site was burning hot for millions of years afterward.
The collision was intense enough to cause deformation far beneath the surface. Subterranean effects reached 35 km (almost 22 miles) down, and included the melting an immense amount of rock. Exposure to seawater made that rock porous. As hot water seeped into the pores, a hydrothermal system formed. The hot water gushing into an isolated region of the freezing depths could have attracted microorganisms and possibly other life forms that were otherwise struggling to survive.
…
Traces of argon found inside a rock are indicative of potassium decay. Since the gas will also escape from molten rock, this provides a measure of when the rock solidified. How much time has passed since that rock melted can be determined from potassium-argon dating, which involves measuring the amount potassium-40 isotope present relative to the argon-40 it decays into. Levels of argon meant the hydrothermal system stayed heated from 66 million years ago, when the asteroid first hit, to 58 million years ago.With 8 million years of heat and nutrients, life had more than enough time to colonize the hydrothermal system in the Chixculub crater. Pickersgill also ran computer simulations of hydrothermal activity in that location. Results suggested that cooling to 90° C (194° F) took between 1.5 and 2.3 million years after the impact at depths of one kilometer. Cooling to below 50° C (122° F) took up to 5 million years, still enough heat for colonies of microbes to thrive. After 6 million years, significantly less hot water was flowing, and by 8 million years, the flow had ceased. These results matched the rock age found by isotope analysis.
The impact had consequences for millions of years — it killed the world and set a pot to simmer for long ages afterwards.
08:00 EDT
One-Minute Daily AI News 10/1/2026 [AI Daily News by Bush Bush]
- The White House signs executive directives establishing a voluntary AI framework with Big Tech leaders to accelerate domestic infrastructure.[1]
- Researchers at UT San Antonio introduce Genesis, a neuromorphic AI chip designed to eliminate catastrophic forgetting during continual learning.[2]
- OpenAI expands its small-business program with new automated workflow and operations tool integrations.[3]
- A Japanese court issues a landmark ruling establishing legal protections for voice actors against unauthorized AI cloning.[4]
Passengers recount chaos on Tel Aviv flight. And, FBI probes employee-data hack [NPR Topics: News]
What we know so far about the tense moments aboard a Tel Aviv-bound flight. And, the FBI investigates a cyberattack involving sensitive employee data.
(Image credit: Erik Marmor)
Picanha, prices and politics: What Brazil's favorite steak says about the election [NPR Topics: News]
President Lula promised Brazilians four years ago they'd be able to afford picanha again. Now, as he seeks another term, the price of the country's favorite cut of beef is telling a different story.
(Image credit: Eraldo Peres)
06:00 EDT
En esta ciudad de Pensilvania, los dos partidos políticos buscan el voto latino [NPR Topics: News]
Los republicanos lograron avances con los latinos en el último ciclo electoral, pero la economía y la frustración por la política migratoria de Donald Trump han corroído ese apoyo.
(Image credit: Lianne Milton for NPR)
COMIC: How the census gives your state power (and what Trump wants to change) [NPR Topics: News]
The census is used to determine how much say your state has in Congress and the Electoral College. President Trump failed to alter it during his first term, but he's trying again ahead of 2030.
Along U.S. Route 1, Maine voters worry about heating oil, gas and Canadian tariffs [NPR Topics: News]
Home to both Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic candidate Troy Jackson, Maine's senate race has put rural Aroostook County in the spotlight.
(Image credit: Luke Garrett / NPR News)
Trade tensions mean fewer Canadians flocking to South Florida [NPR Topics: News]
This South Florida community is typically a refuge for Canadians fleeing cold weather, but trade tensions between the United States and Canada mean fewer are coming.
(Image credit: Al Diaz)
Trump administration reverses stance on integration of people with disabilities [NPR Topics: News]
Disability rights advocates are angered by the latest reversal but are rallying behind proposed legislation and working with states to strengthen protections for community integration.
(Image credit: Erik McGregor)
Studying this super El Niño could save lives. NOAA is scaling back research [NPR Topics: News]
A powerful El Niño is already influencing extreme weather around the planet. During the last strong El Niño, federal agencies ramped up research in the hope of improving weather forecasts. This year, they won't be matching that effort.
(Image credit: Sean Rayford)
Do AI and air traffic control mix? CEO addresses anxiety about new FAA tool [NPR Topics: News]
The FAA's ambitious overhaul of the air traffic control system comes amid rising public anxiety about AI. The CEO of the company that's building the software explains how it works.
(Image credit: Tasos Katopodis)
SNAP's funding model is starting to change. Here's what that means for the program [NPR Topics: News]
States will start to pay a larger share of the bill to run the food assistance program, as federal funding for operational costs shrinks.
(Image credit: Brandon Bell)
Egg prices have tumbled since Trump returned to office. Here's why [NPR Topics: News]
Agriculture experts say high egg prices were the result of severe avian flu outbreaks, but the Trump administration's tariffs and the war with Iran have also put pressure on farmers.
(Image credit: Michael M. Santiago)
05:00 EDT
Morning news brief [NPR Topics: News]
Israel's prime minister says a pilot may have tried to crash a plane traveling to Tel Aviv, Trump visits Oklahoma to campaign for GOP candidates, Pete Hegseth announces new military initiatives.
03:00 EDT
Tennessee governor halts executions after Christa Gail Pike survives lethal injection [NPR Topics: News]
Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death Wednesday for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee halted the remaining execution for the year.
(Image credit: George Walker IV)
00:00 EDT
Wednesday, 30 September
23:00 EDT
20:00 EDT
Swiss glaciers suffer another year of record ice loss [NPR Topics: News]
Switzerland's glaciers are disappearing at a record pace. More than 5% of their ice has vanished this year alone — threatening water supplies, ecosystems and communities across Europe.
(Image credit: Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences)
The climate and hurricane doomers of Carnegie-Mellon move to Miami [Philip Greenspun’s Weblog]
For twenty years, Carnegie-Mellon University has been dishing out fat helpings of climate and hurricane doom.
What’s the most obvious place to set up a new campus for 3,500 students and keep them safe from ever-more-intense hurricanes and relentless sea level rise? How about Miami, Florida?
The press release says that the new campus will be about 6 inches above best-case predicted sea level in Wynwood:
The new campus, to be built in Miami’s dynamic Wynwood neighborhood, is ultimately planned to support more than 3,500 undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. students, nearly 300 faculty, and over 600 staff members, pending appropriate regulatory approvals. The first students are set to enroll in 2028, marking a bold step forward for the university and its ambitions.
Carnegie-Mellon is home to Nobel-winning Climate Doomer Ed Rubin:
Emeritus Professor Ed Rubin was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, when U.S. Vice President Al Gore shared the prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which Rubin was coordinating lead author of the Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. The awardees were recognized for their “efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” Rubin is the first CMU faculty member to share in a Nobel Peace Prize.
Rubin, who helped establish the Engineering and Public Policy program at CMU, is the the most highly cited authority on carbon capture and storage systems and is an internationally recognized expert in energy and environmental technology innovation and climate change mitigation.
“Decarbonization: Climate change is personal now” (cmu.edu 2023):
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says carbon capture deployment is lagging if we want to meet global mitigation targets. With the stakes so high, why is this the case?
“We’re now seeing the linkages between climate change and other phenomena like forest fires, droughts, heat waves, and floods. If your house burns down in a forest fire, that gets your attention. If your house floods because of a hurricane, that gets your attention. When science links those tragedies to climate change induced by human activities, then the realization kicks in, ‘Hey this isn’t something far in the future that doesn’t affect me or my family.’ It’s getting personal now,” says Rubin.
CMU faculty won’t sit out hurricanes in Pittsburgh anymore, in other words, but will voluntarily make hurricanes part of their lived experience.
“Adaptation planning is becoming critical as communities, states and countries begin to address rising sea-levels and other challenges of a changing global climate.”
Formerly a military officer, Perkins is now one of 1,000 volunteers in the United States selected and trained by Former Vice President Al Gore and the non-profit group The Climate Project to spread the message of global warming and the urgent moral responsibility to take action.
After 19 additional years of taxpayer-funded Science, the “urgent moral responsibility” and best adaptation turned out to be moving from Pittsburgh to Miami and grabbing Ken Griffin’s money with both hands.
In 2008, cmu.edu warned us that “the climate crisis isn’t going away”.
Here’s one of CMU’s top professors in this area, Costa Samaras. Right in the middle of coronapanic (July 2020) he reminded everyone to continue to panic regarding sea level rise:
The same CMU professor said that Florida would be cooked by 2030, just two years after the new CMU campus opens.
This links to a NYT article on which the professor is a co-author:
Rising average temperatures make extreme heat more likely, hurricanes and storms more intense and threaten fresh water supplies. Climate impacts have already started to hit.
Where better to move than Miami if you’re afraid of more intense hurricanes and storms? There is so much in this guy’s feed that I can’t resist one more:
Let’s close out this post with a big thank-you to the lockdown Democrats of Chicago, Illinois, New York City, and New York State. Without their tireless efforts to degrade the quality of life in Chicago and NYC, there is no way that Ken Griffin would have brought himself and his $55+ billion to Florida!
Related, the land that CMU said would soon be underwater was worth $1.1 billion:
See also Preparing for the Age of AI with Prof. Uju Anya at Carnegie-Mellon at $93,614 per year and imagine how awesome it would be if Prof. Dr. Uju Anya, Ph.D. were to teach “Speaking Blackness in Brazil” on this new campus.
In case any of the above tweets are memory-holed…
The post The climate and hurricane doomers of Carnegie-Mellon move to Miami appeared first on Philip Greenspun’s Weblog.
Google Unveils Gemini 4 Argon, Retaking Benchmark Lead Over OpenAI and Anthropic [Slashdot]
Google has unveiled Gemini 4 Argon, a new frontier AI model that it says leads or ties rivals on 13 of 18 disclosed benchmarks. The model is initially being released only to trusted cyber defenders and select pre-release testers, with broader availability planned later. VentureBeat reports: Google is not claiming that Gemini 4 Argon wins every benchmark. But across the benchmark table disclosed in the company's embargoed materials, Argon posts the highest score, or ties for the highest score, in more categories than GPT-6 Astra or Claude Opus 5.5. Across the 18 benchmarks Google disclosed, Argon leads outright on 12 and ties for first on one. GPT-6 Astra leads outright on three and ties Argon on one. Claude Opus 5.5 leads outright on two. That makes Argon the leading frontier model by total number of benchmark leads or top scores in Google's comparison set, even though the results show a still-close race in which OpenAI and Anthropic retain advantages in several important technical categories. [...] The result is a more nuanced claim than "best model across the board." Argon appears to have the broadest top-score profile among the three frontier models in Google's disclosed comparison, but GPT-6 Astra remains ahead in several software, science-terminal and computer-use tasks, while Claude Opus 5.5 remains ahead in terminal-agent and post-training workflows. For enterprise buyers, that means model choice is still workload-dependent, even if Argon now gives Google its strongest claim yet to overall frontier leadership by benchmark count. [...] Argon also expands Google's output ceiling. The company says the model supports an industry-leading 1 million output tokens, up from a previous 64,000-token limit. That is a notable distinction for agentic software engineering, audit, migration and legal-review workloads where the value of a model often depends on how long it can sustain a chain of work before handing control back to a human.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
19:00 EDT
Dinosaur-killing impact crater might have been teeming with life [Ars Technica - All content]
About 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid smashed into Earth, kicking up tsunamis and dropping hot debris that annihilated non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. But not everything it left in its wake was destructive. This space rock hit what is now the partially submerged Yucatan Peninsula, and at the bottom of the ocean, the impact generated enough heat to create a hydrothermal system that persisted for 8 million years and may have been a hotbed of life.
When researchers drilled for samples in the impact zone in 2016, they studied the types of rock that had formed as a result of the asteroid strike. This gave more insight into what happened in the immediate and long-term aftermath of this cataclysmic event.
The collision was intense enough to cause deformation far beneath the surface. Subterranean effects reached 35 km (almost 22 miles) down, and included the melting an immense amount of rock. Exposure to seawater made that rock porous. As hot water seeped into the pores, a hydrothermal system formed. The hot water gushing into an isolated region of the freezing depths could have attracted microorganisms and possibly other life forms that were otherwise struggling to survive.
Fifth unvaccinated person dies of measles; CDC still not counting all deaths [Ars Technica - All content]
A fifth, unvaccinated person has died of measles in Pennsylvania, the state's health department announced Wednesday.
The department identified the deceased as a resident of Lancaster County, which is the epicenter of a raging outbreak that began in late April. The updated case count as of Wednesday is 943 across 39 counties, including 119 cases reported in just the last seven days. At least 176 people have been hospitalized.
Lancaster County has reported 381 cases and three of the five deaths in the outbreak. The previous two deaths were both in infants too young to be vaccinated. That includes a newborn boy and a 6-week-old baby girl. So far, no other information has been released about the county's third death announced today.