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2026-08-16

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Simon Willison's Weblog Aug 15 Score 0.8750991643518518

CORS Chat

Tool: CORS Chat I built this today ( with GPT-5.6-Sol xhigh ) to help test Qwen 3.8 27B running in LM Studio on both my M5 MacBook Pro and an NVIDIA DGX Spark. It provides a web UI for exercising an OpenAI-Responses-compatible chat endpoint. I've tried it agai

AI aillmsengineeringanalysis
The Verge Aug 16 Score 0.8203796666666667

Polaroid’s tiny instant camera is $72 and includes a free pack of film

Smartphone cameras are convenient, but they lack the charm of analog instant cameras. If you’re trying to relive the nostalgia of waiting for an instant photo to develop, Amazon is selling the second-generation Polaroid Go instant camera with a 16-photo film p

Technology technologygadgetsconsumer
The Verge Aug 15 Score 0.8119412407407408

Matt Groening lets slip that Simpsons: Hit & Run might be making a comeback

At D23, when asked about the potential for a sequel to the cult classic The Simpsons: Hit & Run game, Matt Groening replied, "I think the original game is coming back in some form," before current showrunner Matt Selman added, "or not." The tone in both of

Technology technologygadgetsconsumer
The Verge Aug 15 Score 0.8099630000000001

Have a laugh at AI’s expense by roleplaying as a chatbot

Your AI Slop Bores Me is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two tabs: human and LARP as an AI. On one side you enter a request. On the other, you submit an answer. But the important thing is that there's a human on both sides of the equation. Prompts can r

Technology technologygadgetsconsumer
The Guardian — World Aug 15 Score 0.8081334245370371

Zimbabwe boat accident death toll hits 68 as 22 more bodies recovered

Eighteen children among the people killed after ferry capsized on Lake Kariba Twenty-two more bodies have been recovered after a boat accident in Zimbabwe, taking the death toll to 68, police said on Saturday. The ferry capsized on Tuesday on Lake Kariba , on

Geopolitics geopoliticsworld-newsinvestigative
The Guardian — World Aug 15 Score 0.8056121282407408

Moroccan police arrest more than 100 people as they attempt to enter Ceuta

Border security tightened after social media posts call for another mass crossing into Spain’s north African territory Moroccan police have arrested 111 people as they tried to enter Spain’s north African territory of Ceuta, amid ⁠tightened security on both si

Geopolitics geopoliticsworld-newsinvestigative
The Verge Aug 15 Score 0.8037130000000001

Don't overlook Elektron's budget electronic music instruments

When I'm asked what to buy if you want to get into making electronic music, I often recommend Elektron's budget-minded Model:Samples and Model:Cycles grooveboxes. They don't grab headlines the way Teenage Engineering's gear or the Telepathic Instruments Orchid

Technology technologygadgetsconsumer
NBER New Working Papers Aug 16 Score 0.7875000000000001

Balancing Growth in a Warming World -- by Adrien Bilal, Thibault Ingrand, Diego R. Känzig

This paper develops a theory of balanced growth and optimal climate policy in an integrated assessment framework. Balanced growth is possible despite climate change, but at a slower rate. Two distinct policy regimes emerge because emissions permanently raise c

Economy economyresearchworking-papersnber
NBER New Working Papers Aug 16 Score 0.7875000000000001

A Currency Premium Puzzle -- by Tarek Alexander Hassan, Thomas Mertens, Jingye Wang

We show that quantitative asset pricing models, built to address the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzles, systematically fail when applied to open economies: they cannot generate the large and persistent interest rate differentials we observe between ris

Economy economyresearchworking-papersnber
NBER New Working Papers Aug 16 Score 0.7875000000000001

Winning is Contagious: Social Learning and the Dynamics of Union Support -- by Ellora Derenoncourt, Arindrajit Dube, Suresh Naidu, Heather Sarsons, Niharika Singh

Union growth has historically happened in spurts. We combine union election data from 1961–2025 with a large-scale information experiment involving 9,000 low-wage workers to study the role of social learning in union growth. Observationally, close election win

Economy economyresearchworking-papersnber
The Guardian — World Aug 14 Score 0.7602491652777779

American missionary kidnapped in Niger freed after nine months

Kevin Rideout, who was abducted by unknown assailants in Niamey, said to be in good health and in care of US officials An American missionary who was kidnapped in Niger in October has been released, his organisation has said. Serving in Mission International s

Geopolitics geopoliticsworld-newsinvestigative
Quanta Magazine Aug 12 Score 0.754121661574074

Graduate Student Proves a Quantum Uncertainty Principle for Fractals

The math, which combines chaos, quantum theory, and infinitely complex fractal structures, has been called a “foundational result.” The post Graduate Student Proves a Quantum Uncertainty Principle for Fractals first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Science sciencemathematicsphysicsbiology
Google DeepMind Blog Aug 12 Score 0.7537680666666666

Putting sign language AI into users’ hands

Introducing sign-language-to-text (SL2T), our breakthrough model powering new sign language features for Deaf and hard of hearing users.

AI aideepmindresearch
MIT Technology Review Aug 14 Score 0.7503796023148148

Cloning could be used to save species—or make human “organ sacks”

This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice. That’s right: female animals that a

Technology technologyresearchsociety
InfoQ Aug 16 Score 0.7488520513888889

How PGSimCity Turns PostgreSQL Complexity Into a Virtual City 3D Simulation

Nikolay Samokhvalov has developed PGSimCity, an open-source educational tool that visualises PostgreSQL mechanics as a 3D spatial simulation in the browser. It assists backend developers and site reliability engineers in understanding SQL and the dynamics of k

IT itengineeringarchitecture
NASA News Aug 16 Score 0.7471856537037037

APOD: 2026 August 16 – Milky Way over Yellowstone

APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 16 – Milky… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is fe

Science sciencenasaspace
Schneier on Security Aug 12 Score 0.7469527083333333

Prompt Injections for Defense

This seems to work : Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking

Security securitycryptographypolicy
Econbrowser Aug 15 Score 0.737975012962963

President Trump, Socialist

from Politico today, Douglas Holtz-Eakin: “If the bright-line definition of socialism is owning the means of production, then yeah, [the president is] there,” Truer words were never spoken. Holtz-Eakin is head of American Action Forum, formerly director of the

Economy economymacroeconomicsenergyresearch
Econbrowser Aug 15 Score 0.7298162166666666

Does Slowing AI-Related Imports Mean Slowing Investment?

Maybe: Figure 1: Imports of computers, computer accessories and semiconductors (blue, left log scale), and investment in informationn equipment and software (red, right log scale), both in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, 2026Q2 advance release, and author's cal

Economy economymacroeconomicsenergyresearch
ScienceDaily — Top Science Aug 15 Score 0.724261987037037

A 30-year-old fossil was hiding bones from a mysterious ancient sea monster

Fossils collected in Osaka more than 30 years ago have revealed a surprise hiding in plain sight: four previously unrecognized bones from a giant Cretaceous mosasaur. Among them is the first confirmed premaxilla—the frontmost bone of the upper jaw—ever identif

Science scienceresearchdiscoveries
ScienceDaily — Top Science Aug 15 Score 0.7239675425925926

Common food preservative linked to rising suicide deaths among young people

A widely available food-preservation chemical is emerging as a disturbing factor in rising UK suicide deaths, particularly among younger people and men. Researchers say the scale may be underestimated and are calling for urgent restrictions on access and harmf

Science scienceresearchdiscoveries
ScienceDaily — Top Science Aug 15 Score 0.72276245

A 60-year-old theory about ants, bees and wasps may be wrong

Scientists have long thought an unusual genetic system helped ants, bees, and wasps evolve their extraordinary social colonies. A massive new analysis suggests that genetics alone can’t explain it—and the real secret may lie in other traits unique to these ins

Science scienceresearchdiscoveries
Ahead of AI Aug 15 Score 0.7202241449074074

Building an AI Text Detector From Scratch

An End-to-End Project With Dataset Construction, Model Training, Local Deployment, and RLVR

AI aimachine-learningtutorialsresearch
Eurogamer Aug 15 Score 0.719529237962963

Kingdom Hearts 4's first new world is inspired by Pixar's Coco

Alongside its Kingdom Hearts 4 release window and its Kingdom Hearts anime series announcement, Disney used Friday's D23 Entertainment Showcase to confirm the first new world for Kingdom Hearts 4 : one inspired by Pixar's Coco. Read more

Gaming gamingvideo-gamesnewsreviews
InfoQ Aug 15 Score 0.7183242736111111

Cloudflare Adds Agent Tracing, with Truncation Limits and Uneven Payload Defaults

Cloudflare launched agent tracing, adding spans for agent invocations, model calls, tool runs, and approvals to existing Workers traces. Sessions replay turn by turn, though the docs warn traces are not lossless and payloads may be truncated. Payload recording

IT itengineeringarchitecture
InfoQ Aug 15 Score 0.7111576069444444

Cloudflare Introduces Cache Response Rules for Post-Origin Cache Control

Cloudflare recently introduced Cache Response Rules, a rules engine that operates after an origin server responds but before content is written to Cloudflare's cache. Previously, Cache Rules operated only on request attributes. Cache Response Rules add a respo

IT itengineeringarchitecture
Marginal Revolution Aug 16 Score 0.7107823277777777

Another rationale for sticky prices?

…what can be predicted, Dabis said, is that a recent policy change by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority requiring drivers to verbally quote the $2.25 fare to passengers may make their job even riskier. Eight current Metro employees and t

Economy economyeconomicscommentaryblog
Lobsters Aug 15 Score 0.6930777768518518

Power Relations

Comments

IT itprogrammingsystemscommunity
Nautilus Aug 15 Score 0.6853800398148148

Is This the World’s Oldest Image of a Mind‑altering Plant?

A painted panel deep in a Spanish cave may push the human relationship with mind-altering plants back thousands of years, earlier than anything previously known The post Is This the World’s Oldest Image of a Mind‑altering Plant? appeared first on Nautilus .

Science scienceessaysculturephilosophy
Dark Reading Aug 14 Score 0.6837131513888889

What Boards Need to Know About Tech Risk

Why do so many boards underestimate technology risk until it becomes a crisis?

Security securityenterprisethreats
Microsoft Research Blog Aug 12 Score 0.6820461231481483

MindTopo reveals VLMs' spatial reasoning abilities

A path, a fence, a knot. MindTopo sets a new benchmark for testing how AI understands topological relationships and highlights new opportunities to strengthen spatial reasoning and planning. The post MindTopo reveals VLMs' spatial reasoning abilities appeared

AI aimicrosoftresearch
Dark Reading Aug 14 Score 0.6808617625

Cyera's Oasis Security Buy Is All About AI Agent Control

The $1 billion deal aims to converge data security and identity into a single control plane for agents, with privileged access redefined around business context rather than static roles.

Security securityenterprisethreats
SANS Internet Storm Center Aug 12 Score 0.679301263425926

Linux Kernel Process Accounting, (Wed, Aug 12th)

A couple of days ago, Xavier posted about Atuin to gain more insight into the command history. Atuin does a great job of better organizing what is usually handled by "bash_history"&#xc2&#x3b

Security securitythreatsiocs
New Scientist Aug 14 Score 0.6775564569444444

How bad is the UK drought and how long will it continue?

Almost three-quarters of England is now in drought conditions, resulting in restrictions on water use in many areas and severe wildfires – here's how it's affecting farming, wildlife and trees

Science scienceresearchsociety
New Scientist Aug 14 Score 0.6753791421296296

Monsoon-driven wildfires may have shaped human evolution

A reconstruction of East Africa's environment 1.75 million years ago suggests wildfires spiked during wetter times, which may have influenced human evolution

Science scienceresearchsociety
Risky Bulletin Aug 14 Score 0.6680929208333334

Risky Bulletin: US will let private companies carry out offensive cyber ops

The White House will let private companies carry out offensive cyber ops, an AI hacking campaign breached Taiwan’s government, a macOS bug was exploited over the internet to drop cryptominers, and Kenya orders internet cafes to store logs. Show notes Risky Bul

Security securitynewspodcastintelligence