The New York Times: How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners The New York Times describes an unsecured Chinese police surveillance platform in Zhangjiakou, found openly accessible online by cybersecurity researcher Marc Hofer — who spotted his own photo and passport number in it. The system tracked more than 700 foreign residents of the city, but held nearly 12,000 […]
links: 01.08.2026
Wired: China’s EV Market Is Booming. There’s Just One Problem Wired reports that China’s EV boom is now followed by its first big wave of retired batteries. 400,000 tonnes of battery waste piled up last year and 22 million tonnes are expected by 2040, yet certified recyclers get only about a quarter of it, as unlicensed buyers pay […]
links: 30.07.2026
TechCrunch: Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag TechCrunch reports that Microsoft booked a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic investments for the quarter, while writing down its OpenAI stake by about $600 million over the same period. A single quarter of Anthropic gains nearly matched a full year of OpenAI gains, which […]
links: 30.06.2026
Wired: How Hunter Biden Won the Internet Wired spent months talking to Hunter Biden — the son of a former US president — about his return to public life. For three years he stayed silent and painted in a Malibu garage, but in May, after nearly a decade away, he began posting on X again and gained more […]
links: 28.06.2026
NPR: What you ate in 1776 depended on who you were NPR, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, describes how in 1776 food was a marker of social standing: wealthy upper-class families and the country’s founders emulated European — especially French and English — cuisine and even imported food from there, while the table of the […]
links: 27.06.2026
Le Monde: In the age of AI, Chinese universities overhaul their curricula Le Monde describes how Chinese universities are overhauling their degree programmes to align with artificial intelligence, which has been made the top priority of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) — the government wants to embed the technology in as many sectors of the real economy as […]
links: 26.06.2026
The New York Times: Climate Change Fueling Europe’s Ferocious Heat Wave, Scientists Find A rapid scientific analysis concludes that this June’s scorching heat in Western Europe would not have been possible without human-caused climate change. Even in today’s climate, a heat wave this widespread and intense is still rare for June — with a less than 1% chance […]
links: 24.06.2026
Wired: The ‘Parasite of Parasites’ Has Been Discovered in the Tropical Forests of Borneo In the rainforests of Borneo, Malaysian scientists have identified a new fungal species, Pleurocordyceps cornusynnemata — a parasite that feeds on another parasite. Its victim is the so-called zombie fungus (Ophiocordyceps), which infects ants, hijacks their nervous system and drives them to spread its […]
links: 17.06.2026
NYT: The Cloud Has Sound: The Unrelenting and Unseen Cost of A.I. Data Centers The “heartbeat” of the AI economy is a low-frequency vibration produced by the giant cooling fans and diesel generators of data centers. The US already has more than 3,000 of them; some residents living nearby, whose health and homes are being wrecked by the […]
links: 16.06.2026
WIRED: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth Admits the Company’s AI Reorg Was ‘Atrocious’ Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, in an internal memo to staff, admitted the company did an “atrocious” job rolling out its new artificial-intelligence division — after WIRED revealed widespread discontent inside the roughly 6,500-strong “Applied AI” unit (one worker called it “a gulag”). Bosworth promised more stability, […]