AI agent runs amok in Fedora and elsewhere
Agentic AI systems can be used to do a variety of things autonomously on behalf of a human user: open or manage bugs, generate code, submit pull-requests, and (apparently) even complain about rejection. In May, a Fedora developer discovered that an allegedly rogue agent had been pestering the project in a number of ways: reassigning […]
A Written Language for the Cherokee So Efficient It Was Thought to Be Magic
America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark A Smithsonian magazine special report Sequoyah’s syllabary faced suspicion initially, but after a demonstration, his version of “talking leaves” was widely embraced. And then the word spread Andrew Lawler Illustration by Mer Young Summer 2026 Mer Young At first, they laughed. Then they scoffed. Finally, they accused him of […]
What Is It Like to Be a Bat? [pdf] (1974)
Download PDF
Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM
The Raspberry Pi 5 is the newest Raspberry Pi computer, and the Pi Foundation knows you can always make a good thing better! And what could make the Pi 5 better than the 4? How about a faster processor, USB 3.0 ports, and an updated Gigabit Ethernet chip with PoE capability? Good guess – that’s exactly what they did! […]
Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for $10M as data center land
Back in 1999, 87 acres of land in Taylor, Texas, was donated (nominal fee $10) to the city by a farmer, with a condition in the deed that it would be used for community parkland. In 2025, the land was sold for $10M to a data center developer, who has won several legal battles against […]
Policy on the AI Exponential
In one of the side plots to The Lord of the Rings, two of the Hobbits attempt to rouse Treebeard—a wise but ponderous sentient tree—to defend his forest from an army that is cutting it down. The problem is that Treebeard operates at a very different speed than the Hobbits. It takes him a full […]
Why SpaceX 2040 Revenue FCST $4.3T in highly unlikely
Escape Velocity — The SpaceX Growth Frontier ← All essays An essay in scrolls SpaceX’s IPO prepares to defy gravity — physical and financial. Scroll The Offering The Largest IPO Ever. SpaceX priced its debut at a $1.77 trillion valuation, edging Saudi Aramco’s $1.7T for the largest in history. Each block is $25 billion. Aramco was the […]
GeoLibre 1.0
Cloud-native GIS platform GeoLibre is built with Tauri, React, TypeScript, MapLibre GL JS, DuckDB-WASM Spatial, and deck.gl. The same workspace runs across desktop and web environments, adapting responsively to mobile screens, with fast local and cloud-native data work, project files, styling, plugins, and modern geospatial workflows. What GeoLibre does today MapLibre map workspace Pan, zoom, […]
Providers, not insurers, are responsible for excess U.S. health care cost (2024)
In a post last week, I wrote about the progressive anti-monopoly movement’s increasing disconnect from reality. I wrote: [C]onsider the movement’s choice of targets. These include some industries with high profit margins, but also some with very low margins. These include grocery stores, airlines, and health insurers. Grocery stores and health insurers both consistently have […]
How JPL keeps the 13-year-old Curiosity rover doing science
09 Jun 2026 6 min read Evan Ackerman is IEEE Spectrum’s robotics editor. Curiosity has explored Mars for well over a decade thanks to some ingenious tricks by JPL engineers to keep the rover going. JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NASA Thirteen years ago last August, I was camped out in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory press room in Pasadena, Calif., […]