{"id":5122,"date":"2026-07-30T12:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ojars.kapteinis.lv\/?p=5122"},"modified":"2026-07-30T12:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:02:09","slug":"saites-29-07-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ojars.kapteinis.lv\/en\/2026\/07\/30\/links-29-07-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"links: 29.07.2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Axios: Anthropic’s lonely island<\/a><\/p>\n

Axios writes that Anthropic, guided by its company values and principles, has become something of a rare bird. It was the only major AI lab not to sign the Nvidia-led letter against restricting open-weight models, the Pentagon blacklisted it in February, and this summer export controls forced its newest models offline for almost three weeks. Yet it remains the world’s most valuable startup and is preparing to go public.<\/p>\n

Wired: NASA’s New 3D Model Shows the Earth Is a Lumpy Mess<\/a><\/p>\n

Wired writes that NASA has released a new model of Earth’s gravitational field, the so-called geoid, in which the planet looks not smoothly round but lumpy, because mass is distributed unevenly inside it. The bumps in the visualization are exaggerated ten-thousand-fold, but behind them are 15 years of satellite measurements that also help track the melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice and the depletion of groundwater.<\/p>\n

Wired: Boomers Can’t Stop Gifting Their Grandkids AI-Generated Slop Books<\/a><\/p>\n

Wired describes a new boomer gift trend in the US: AI-generated children’s books in which grandchildren, modeled on real photos, are made the main characters. Parents, meanwhile, are not thrilled that their children’s photos end up on AI platforms, while the children themselves are bored by the books, since the story matters more to them than their own name in the title. A researcher adds that AI-written tales lack humor, memorable characters and drama.<\/p>\n

CBC: Shopify CEO endorses idea to give more votes to wealthy Canadians<\/a><\/p>\n

CBC writes that Shopify CEO Tobi L\u00fctke endorsed on X the idea of weighting votes by income tax paid, stripping non-payers of the vote and giving the biggest payers five ballots, as well as taking the vote away from retirees. Critics point out that a wealth qualification existed in Canada’s electoral system a century ago and that the constitution guarantees the vote to every citizen aged 18 or over.<\/p>\n

ABC: Age-check firms want eSafety to dig into how social media giants enforce under-16s ban<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC writes that age-verification technology companies are urging Australia to give the online safety regulator powers to compel documents from social media platforms to test whether they actually enforce the under-16 ban, as early research shows most young people can still log in to at least one platform. The companies warn that platforms may choose to simply pay even the doubled 99-million-Australian-dollar fines if that lets the ban be portrayed as a failure.<\/p>\n

Financial Times: PwC published reports on AI marred by AI hallucinations<\/a><\/p>\n

The Financial Times writes that PwC published reports on AI in which the AI itself fabricated the citations. Footnotes lead to pages that lack the claimed evidence or do not exist at all, one study on air quality in Riyadh turned out to be invented from start to finish, and one link still contains “utm_source=chatgpt.com”. Ironically, these are the very reports PwC uses to sell advice on responsible AI adoption. EY and KPMG have already retracted similar reports.<\/p>\n

Meduza: “As if a giant spider is devouring the land”<\/a><\/p>\n

Meduza reports on an unprecedented kind of war pollution in Ukraine: fiber-optic cables used to control drones blanket frontline forests and fields like a giant spiderweb. While the fiber is intact it can still be collected, but if it crumbles into microparticles, the damage to nature will be irreversible. British researchers estimate Russia alone needed at least six million kilometers of fiber last year to keep fighting.<\/p>\n

DW: Germany: How weather extremes impact local agriculture<\/a><\/p>\n

DW writes about German farmers’ experience amid climate change in Europe. The June heat wave, which cut the value of Europe’s grain harvest by more than two billion euros, left part of the corn crop without cobs. Farms are therefore growing several varieties with different ripening times, experimenting with soybeans and millet, and protecting fruit blossoms from late frosts by spraying them with water so a layer of ice holds in the warmth.<\/p>\n

Le Monde: Germany’s Merz faces unprecedented rebellion within his party<\/a><\/p>\n

Le Monde writes that German chancellor Friedrich Merz is facing an unheard-of rebellion in the CDU. The hastily announced cabinet reshuffle, in which the transport minister was dismissed but his successor changed his mind overnight, is seen in the party as improvisation and disrespect toward its members. The biggest winner of the crisis is thought to be the far-right AfD, which is already the largest opposition party and the most popular party in the three east German states holding elections this September.<\/p>\n

Sveriges Radio: Has Swedish politics become more right-wing?<\/a><\/p>\n

Radio Sweden on how the country’s political landscape has changed: the Social Democrats dominated the 20th century, but that is no longer the case, and the segment asks whether Sweden, viewed abroad as a socialist stronghold<\/em>, has really moved to the right.<\/p>\n

R\u00daV: SA survey suggests 66% of member companies oppose EU membership<\/a><\/p>\n

R\u00daV writes that in a survey of the Confederation of Icelandic Enterprise, 66% of member companies oppose EU membership, six percentage points more than in the previous survey, and only 22% support it; 54% are against adopting the euro. The main reasons cited are sovereignty, natural resources, and interest rates and inflation, with opposition strongest among the largest companies.<\/p>\n

The New York Times: Project Sunrise, a 22-Hour Nonstop Flight, Is Coming. What Will it Be Like?<\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times describes Qantas’ upcoming Sydney\u2013London service, the world’s longest scheduled flight at up to 22 hours. A specially modified Airbus A350 with an extra fuel tank this week flew nonstop from Melbourne to Toulouse in 24 hours and 24 minutes in a test. Flights are due to start in October 2027, routing over the North Pole in winter, with brighter cabin lighting and caffeine- and chili-laced breakfasts to fight fatigue.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera: Why is Uganda experiencing a food crisis?<\/a><\/p>\n

Al Jazeera explains why Uganda is going hungry: in the northeastern Karamoja region, where no rain has fallen since April, at least 19 people have starved to death and 1.5 million are at risk of malnutrition. Experts stress this is not so much a climate crisis as a governance one: money meant for the region has been stolen for years, and while people starve in Karamoja, farmers in the west of the country pour away surplus milk they cannot sell.<\/p>\n

Buenos Aires Times: Behind yerba mate craze, Argentine farmers bemoan Milei’s austerity<\/a><\/p>\n

While mate is becoming a fashionable drink in the US and Europe and Argentina’s exports grew almost 35% last year, the growers themselves are suffering. Milei’s government has scrapped guaranteed prices and subsidies, and prices have fallen. Meanwhile thousands of farm workers from Misiones province are moving to southern Brazil, where the countryside is short of farm hands.<\/p>\n

Meduza: The FSB has charged Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism. He responded by setting his avatar to a photo of himself dressed as a terrorist<\/a><\/p>\n

Meduza sums up the FSB’s charges against Telegram founder Pavel Durov for aiding terrorism: the app allegedly refuses to delete channels Ukrainian intelligence services use for sabotage, and Durov faces up to life in prison. Russia has been blocking Telegram since last summer, and since the start of this year it barely works without a VPN.<\/p>\n

Wired: Tropical Diseases Like Dengue Fever and Chikungunya Are on the Rise in Europe<\/a><\/p>\n

Wired writes that as the climate warms, tropical diseases are taking root in Europe. In the Italian city of Fano, dengue spread locally in 2024 with 199 cases even though none of the patients had traveled to the tropics, and the carrier, the invasive Asian tiger mosquito, is already established across southern Europe and moving north. Researchers warn that as mosquito seasons lengthen, dengue and chikungunya are in Europe to stay.<\/p>\n

Wired: It’s Frighteningly Easy to Jailbreak Some Frontier AI Models<\/a><\/p>\n

Wired describes a test by the nonprofit FAR.AI, which used more than a thousand automatically generated prompt variants to try to get around the safety guardrails of models from four major US AI companies. Musk’s Grok gave in 448 times and Google’s Gemini 249, while the Anthropic and OpenAI models withstood every attempt; the attacks are cheap, too, costing 58 dollars in Grok’s case. The researchers conclude that defense is possible, but relying on voluntary self-regulation is not.<\/p>\n