Falling costs have spurred a surge in grid-scale battery storage proposals across the US, but aging grid infrastructure and equipment shortages are causing massive backlogs. Roughly 750 gigawatts of storage capacity are now waiting for interconnection approval, with median wait times rising from about 1.5 years in 2015 to 5 years in 2025. Utilities like Con Edison and PG&E report project queues swelling by hundreds of percent, citing shortages of transformers, breakers and skilled labor.
Meteoric, a startup founded by two Cambridge engineers, is developing autonomous drone fleets designed to fly into low- and mid-altitude clouds above solar farms and physically alter water droplets to reduce cloud reflectivity. The company says this chemical-free approach could boost energy output from existing solar installations by 10-30%, costing an estimated $30-60 per hour to operate, far cheaper than traditional cloud-seeding aircraft.
When Krakatau erupted on August 27, 1883, obliterating most of three islands between Java and Sumatra, telegraph wires carried real-time reports of destruction across the world for the first time. More than 36,000 people died, mostly from tsunamis triggered by the explosion, while sulfur aerosols lofted into the atmosphere cooled Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures by roughly 0.6°C for years afterward.
With Jane Schoenbrun's new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma drawing theater crowds, critics are revisiting the director's 2021 debut We're All Going to the World's Fair. The film follows Casey, an isolated teenager who takes part in an online horror ritual called the World's Fair Challenge and documents her supposed transformation for an internet audience. Her only real connection forms with JLB, an older stranger who insists she's in danger.
Ed Brady, CEO of the Home Builders Institute, says the rush to build AI data centers is pulling scarce skilled tradespeople away from residential construction. He notes the US already faces a shortage of roughly 300,000 skilled trades workers, and many of those still available are opting for data center jobs instead of homebuilding.
Between late 2016 and August 2026, China brought 27 new nuclear reactors online, while the United States added only two in the same period. MIT nuclear engineering professor Jacopo Buongiorno notes that China has become the global leader in building nuclear power plants, part of a broader strategy to support its shift toward a fully renewable grid.
YouTuber TrashBench cut apart the stock coolers on Nvidia GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 Ti cards and bolted on a dual-tower CPU cooler with extra fans instead. The frankenstein setup dropped GPU temperatures by as much as 32°C, cut power draw by roughly 30W, and boosted overclocked frame rates by about 9% in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
WIRED's Reece Rogers tested iOS 27's rebuilt Shortcuts app, which now includes an Apple Intelligence feature called 'Describe a Short' that lets users create automations by typing plain-language requests instead of manual scripting. Rogers, a longtime Shortcuts skeptic, says the tool successfully generated useful daily automations, including a habit-breaking shortcut that questions him whenever he opens Instagram, though some glitches occurred during beta testing.
A study led by Dr. Ian Hughes at Texas A&M University found that employees who compulsively browse distressing news during work hours tend to dwell on what they've read, and that lingering rumination reduces their engagement with work. The findings, drawn from two studies of workers in the US and UK, show the effect is strongest among people high in neuroticism, a trait tied to anxiety and worry.
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