Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites
TEHRAN: Iranian authorities have launched cloud seeding operations to induce rainfall as the country faces its worst drought in decades, state media reported.“Today, a cloud seeding flight was conducted in the Urmia Lake basin for the first time in the current water year,” which begins in September, the official IRNA news agency said late Saturday.Urmia, […]
Where do the children play?
On the need for a world without us I don’t remember the first time I held a machete, because I’ve never held one. Most members of the BaYaka — a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers found in the Congolese rainforests — probably don’t remember either, but for different reasons. Early memory has its limits. Among the […]
My mum was a 17-year-old free spirit – so she was locked up and put in a coma
Linda Pressly and Esperanza Escribano, Barcelona Marina Freixa always knew there was something dark and unspoken about her family. Her mother had grown up under Spain’s decades-long dictatorship, which ended in 1975, but the details of her childhood were hazy. Then everything changed one Christmas a decade ago – when Marina was about 20. That winter’s evening around […]
Garbage Collection Is Useful
November 14, 2025 A long time ago, I spent a few years working on garbage collection in the J9 Java VM. And even though I’ve since done mostly done higher-level stuff, having a deeper knowledge of GC has continued to come in useful. Yesterday, it was an insight from one of my favourite GC papers, […]
The Internet Is No Longer a Safe Haven
A couple of days ago, the small server hosting this website was temporarily knocked out by scraping bots. This wasn’t the first time, nor is it the first time I’m seriously considering employing more aggressive countermeasures such as Anubis (see for example the June 2025 summary post). But every time something like this happens, a […]
Brimstone: ES2025 JavaScript engine written in Rust
Brimstone is a JavaScript engine written from scratch in Rust, aiming to have full support for the JavaScript language. Brimstone is a work in progress but already supports almost all of the JavaScript language (>97% of the ECMAScript language in test262). Not ready for use in production. Implements the ECMAScript specification. Heavy inspiration is taken […]
Anthropic’s report smells a lot like bullshit
A report was recently published by an AI-research company called Anthropic. They are the ones who notably created Claude, an AI-assistant for coding. Personally, I don’t use it but that is besides the point. Before we start, it’s important to say I don’t have anything against them, or AI in general. I do have some […]
UK’s first small nuclear power station to be built in north Wales
3 days ago ShareSave Gareth Lewis,Wales political editor and Steffan Messenger,Wales environment correspondent ShareSave Getty Images A first-of-its-kind nuclear power station is to be built on Anglesey, bringing up to 3,000 jobs and billions of pounds of investment. The plant at Wylfa, on the Welsh island’s northern coast, will have the UK’s first three small […]
Why I Don’t Need a Steam Machine
For those of you who are living under a rock, Valve announced three new hardware devices joining their Steam Deck line-up: a new controller, a VR headset, and the GameCube—no wait, GabeCube—no wait, Steam Machine. The shiny little cube is undoubtedly Valve’s (second) attempt to break into the console market. This time, it might just […]
Maybe You’re Not Actually Trying
On selective agency in capable people Illustration by Alexander Naughton Two things happened for me over the holidays five years ago: I went to rehab, and I acquired a cyberstalker. These were not entirely independent events. The stalker was someone in India who’d started following me when I was playing poker, who came to believe […]