Tracking when Trump chickens out
An article accusing Trump of consistently backing down and avoiding confrontation.
Front-page articles summarized hourly.
An article accusing Trump of consistently backing down and avoiding confrontation.
IEA’s 2026 Global Energy Review: 2025 energy demand up 1.3%, electricity up ~3%. Solar was the biggest growth contributor, accounting for more than 25% of the increase—the first time a renewable led growth. Renewables and nuclear together supplied about 60% of energy-demand growth; clean power outpaced electricity growth. Oil demand rose 0.7%, aided by EVs; coal use varied by region. Solar added ~600 TWh; battery storage ~110 GW; over 12 GW of new nuclear began construction. Emissions rose ~0.4% globally; China fell, India flat. Electrification and clean power are accelerating; oil demand could weaken with EV growth.
An indie experiment: Lampone. The author builds a 'next-level' camera around a massive Charles Beseler 18" projector lens, a 40x30 cm 'fake sensor', and DIY bellows, diffusion film, and a Fresnel lens to push extreme depth of field and field of view. They detail why large lenses produce more blur, how to fake a bigger sensor, and how to connect disparate parts with frames, rails, and IKEA curtain bellows. The result yields striking, soft backgrounds for a short film, but is huge (120 cm long), heavy, and light-starved (~3 stops). Plans for improvements and future shoots follow.
Brussels launched an EU-wide age-verification app to curb under-18 access to social media. Security researchers quickly found privacy and security flaws in the open-source code: it could store sensitive data on devices and biometric checks could be bypassed, potentially letting someone else prove they’re over 18. Critics say the release is rushed and not technically ready, risking privacy and trust in digital identity wallets. The Commission maintains the app is technically ready and says tests on a demo version informed fixes; the debate mirrors divides among privacy advocates, child-protection groups, tech firms and lawmakers over feasibility and safeguards.
A CMU/NC State study (StarScout) found ~6 million suspected fake GitHub stars across ~18,617 repos from ~301,000 accounts (2019–2024). AI/LLM projects are the largest fake-star category; fake stars sold for as little as $0.03–$0.85 on multiple marketplaces, with some reuse and replacement guarantees. VCs explicitly use star counts as traction signals; seed median around 2,850 stars; automatic scrapers widely used. Our 20-repo analysis shows many stargazers with zero followers or zero repos; fork-to-star and watcher-to-star ratios distinguish fake from organic. Enforcement is partial; calls for weighted metrics rather than raw stars; regulatory risk noted.
The author argues for OpenClaw-free, secure, always-on local AI agents by applying Unix-like process separation and strict sandboxing to avoid DOS-era weaknesses. Focusing on Wirken, a sandboxed agent design, he describes per-action Ed25519 identities, a host-resident policy layer, and hardened containers for high-risk commands. The step-by-step NemoClaw Wirken.AI workflow covers runtime setup, Ollama usage, model preloading, onboarding, Telegram pairing, a local web UI, SSH tunneling, and netns-based policy enforcement. Audits use hash-chained attestations with per-turn approvals. Emphasizes architectural separation and safety over monolithic gateways. Repo: wirken.ai.
A 2023 review of dozens of studies shows gut transit time—the time stool spends in the colon—shapes the gut microbiome and health. Fast transit (“speeders”) harbor different, faster-growing bacteria linked to high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets; slow transit (“slowpokes”) favor bacteria that thrive on protein. Both extremes show lower microbiome diversity. Transit time adds predictive power beyond diet alone and may influence responses to probiotics and treatments. Slow transit has been linked to metabolic and inflammatory disorders and some neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s. Measuring transit via capsules or the Bristol Stool Scale could help tailor diet and therapies to individual gut rhythms.
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Overview header for Stripe Dev Blog post: "Stripe’s payments APIs: The first 10 years" by Michelle Bu (Dec 15, 2020; ~20 min read), with author bio, links to docs and community resources (YouTube, Discord, Meetups), and related articles on Stripe’s payments innovations and Ledger; site footer and social links.
SDF Public Access UNIX System offers free shell accounts since 1987. The page provides SSH access details: MacOS X use ssh://[email protected]; Linux/UNIX use ssh [email protected]; Windows users should use PuTTY; there is also browser-based SSH via WeTTY. New users should substitute their own username for 'menu'. The site is ©1987–2065 SDF Public Access UNIX System, Inc. (501(c)(7)); page generated with ksh, sed and awk.
Fourth post in the Material Programming Project, outlining malleable knitting software for Kniterate. Progress includes learning 2‑bed domestic knitting, developing a Knitout→Kniterate visualiser, and getting many tests on Kniterate working. Discusses a Knitworks ribber workshop (ribbing, plating, racking), and setting up a ribber; experiments with waste-section generation, cast-on and bindoff logic, and issues with carrier directions. Compares knitout vs kniterate editor code, implements a kcode export in the visualiser and plans auto waste-section generation. Notes NAFA/Singapore exhibition with Kniterate work, inspiring jacquard ideas; next steps: jacquard, kcode format, carriage errors.
PlanB-lpm is an independent, MIT-licensed C++17 portable reimplementation of PlanB’s IPv6 LPM using a linearized 9-ary B+-tree with AVX-512 SIMD and a scalar fallback. It provides a header-only core (include/lpm6.hpp), Python bindings, and a dynamic FIB with rebuild-and-swap. The repo includes correctness tests, benchmarks against a Patricia trie, memory and multi-core scaling data, and RIPE RIS real-BGP data reproductions. Build with CMake, run examples, and install Python bindings. Real data shows Patricia can be on par or faster for uniform traces; PlanB excels on non-uniform workloads.
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A common MVP evolution is to start with a service, then add system integration, and finally offer a stand-alone product. Bootstrapping teams test and refine by delivering a service first, then wrapping a system integration around existing tools (e.g., templates, configurations, add-ons) to reduce risk and speed iteration. Lessons include continual customer discovery, explicit checklists, post-project reviews, and the gradual substitution of software for labor as processes stabilize. When enough value is proven, transition to a standalone product with an upgrade path, balancing desirability and feasibility.
How to build a bootable, encrypted backup USB for Pop!_OS: create a GPT USB with an EFI system partition (FAT32) and a root Linux partition; encrypt the root with LUKS, format partitions; mount and rsync your data; update fstab and crypttab to use the correct UUIDs; copy EFI files; chroot into the USB and install systemd-boot, then update initramfs; unmount and test boot.
Sudo for Windows is a Windows-specific implementation of the sudo concept that lets you run elevated commands from an unelevated terminal. The Inbox version works on Windows 11 builds 26045+ and can be enabled in Settings > Developer Features. It is not a fork/port of Unix/Linux sudo; behavior differs. Documentation is at aka.ms/sudo-docs; contributions via CONTRIBUTING.md. The repository includes sudo.ps1 (a PowerShell helper wrapper) in scripts/ to improve the user experience. Team contact info is available on GitHub, with code of conduct and MIT license. Languages include Rust and PowerShell.
Simon Willison upgrades Claude Token Counter to compare token counts across Claude models: Opus 4.7 and 4.6, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5. Opus 4.7 uses a new tokenizer that maps input to more tokens (tests show about 1.46x for the system prompt). Pricing stays $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens, but token inflation implies roughly 40% higher costs. Opus 4.7 also improves image support (up to ~2,576px) with mixed results: a 3.7MB image produced about 3x more tokens; smaller images showed little change. Posted April 20, 2026.
The piece argues that in software, the real problem is not lacking frameworks but failing to listen to people. Designers often replace listening with “engineering-friendly” terms like frameworks. Key pitfalls: conflating listening with following requests; over-relying on methods like JTBD, ODIs, empathy maps; underestimating others’ knowledge; treating “technical” as one thing; assuming similar resources; assuming people stay static; equating what someone says with what they mean; judging people; assuming everyone is the same. Consequences: missed insights, more bugs and tech debt, lost opportunities and money. Encourages better listening to gain competitive advantage; touches on data presentation and UX.
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