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My thoughts on renting versus buying

I’ve read numerous articles about renting versus buying and most dive into financial projections while completely missing the bigger picture. In my view, behavioral and emotional factors have a far larger impact on the financial outcomes of renting versus buying than the math. The math can always be made to “work” if you’re willing to adjust what or where you rent or buy. But the real differences aren’t captured in spreadsheets. They come from how people actually make decisions, and how those d

Eye drops could replace glasses or surgery for longsightedness, study says

Doctors have developed special eye drops for people with longsightedness that could replace the need for reading glasses or surgery. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have presbyopia, which is when the eyes find it difficult to focus on objects and text up close. Glasses or surgery can usually resolve the problem but many find wearing spectacles inconvenient and having an operation is not an option for everyone. Now experts say the solution could be as simple as using eye drops twice a

Irrlicht Engine – a cross-platform realtime 3D engine

The Irrlicht Engine supports 5 rendering APIs, which are 4 more than most other 3D engines do: Direct3D 9.0 OpenGL 1.2-4.x The Irrlicht Engine software renderer . . The Burningsvideo Software Renderer A null device. When using the Irrlicht engine, the programmer needs not know, which API the engine is using, it is totally abstracted. He only needs to tell the engine which API the engine should prefer. There are three reasons why the engine not only focuses on one API: Performance . Some gra

Karen Hao on the Empire of AI, AGI evangelists, and the cost of belief

At the center of every empire is an ideology, a belief system that propels the system forward and justifies expansion – even if the cost of that expansion directly defies the ideology’s stated mission. For European colonial powers, it was Christianity and the promise of saving souls while extracting resources. For today’s AI empire, it’s artificial general intelligence to “benefit all humanity.” And OpenAI is its chief evangelist, spreading zeal across the industry in a way that has reframed ho

OpenAI Realizes It Made a Terrible Mistake

OpenAI claims to have figured out what's driving "hallucinations," or AI models' strong tendency to make up answers that are factually incorrect. It's a major problem plaguing the entire industry, greatly undercutting the usefulness of the tech. Worse yet, experts have found that the problem is getting worse as AI models get more capable. As a result, despite incurring astronomical expenses in their deployment, frontier AI models are still prone to making inaccurate claims when faced with a pr

New Nuclear Rocket Concept Could Slash Mars Travel Time in Half

Engineers from Ohio State University are developing a new way to power rocket engines, using liquid uranium for a faster, more efficient form of nuclear propulsion that could deliver round trips to Mars within a single year. NASA and its private partners have their eyes set on the Moon and Mars, aiming to establish a regular human presence on distant celestial bodies. The future of space travel depends on building rocket engines that can propel vehicles farther into space and do it faster. Nucl

Today's NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Sunday, Sept. 14

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

EFF to court: The Supreme Court must rein in secondary copyright liability

If the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse a lower court’s ruling, internet service providers (ISPs) could be forced to terminate people’s internet access based on nothing more than mere accusations of copyright infringement. This would threaten innocent users who rely on broadband for essential aspects of daily life. EFF—along with the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and Re:Create—filed an amicus brief urging the Court to reverse the decision. The Stakes: Turning

High Altitude Living – 8,000 ft and above (2021)

Living at high altitude reduces risk of dying from heart disease: Low oxygen may spur genes to create blood vessels. Summary: Researchers have found that people living at higher altitudes have a lower chance of dying from heart disease and live longer. Jeanne and I live at 8,400 feet (2.560 meters). We were talking about visitors coming (for workshops, friends, etc.) and if you are coming from a low elevation what you need to be aware of. There is a thing called Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). I

Opendoor Board Chair Thinks the Company Should Cut Its Workforce by 85 Percent

If you work for Opendoor, the online real estate platform, you might consider polishing up your resume. The chair of the company’s board recently let it slip that he thinks the firm could stand to lose almost all of its employees. During a recent appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Keith Rabois, a former member of the PayPal Mafia, told a reporter that he felt that the majority of the people at his company were expendable. “There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of

Today's Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Sept. 14, #1548

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Sept. 14, #826

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

Japan sets record of nearly 100k people aged over 100

Japan sets record of nearly 100,000 people aged over 100 1 day ago Share Save Jessica Rawnsley and Stephanie Hogarty Population correspondent Share Save Getty Images People in Japan tend to have healthier diets, lower prevalence of common diseases, and a culture of group exercise The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has risen to a record high of nearly 100,000, its government has announced. Setting a new record for the 55th year in a row, the number of centenarians in Japan was 99,

Tether Taps Trump’s Former Crypto Advisor to Lead US Operations

In an effort to solidify itself as the go-to company in the cryptocurrency space for stablecoins, Tether is tapping Bo Hines, the former Executive Director of Donald Trump’s White House Crypto Council to lead its operations in the United States, including efforts to launch a new stablecoin called USAT that will comply with new, Trump-backed regulations, according to CNBC. Tether is best known for its USDT stablecoin, which is pegged to the US Dollar and has become the most commonly used token f

Chinese EV players take fight to legacy European automakers on their home turf

Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng speaks to reporters at the electric carmaker's stand at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025. Arjun Kharpal | CNBC Germany this week played host to one of the world's biggest auto shows — but in the heartland of Europe's auto industry, it was buzzy Chinese electric car companies looking to outshine some of the region's biggest brands on their home turf. The IAA Mobility conference in Munich was packed full of companies with huge stands showing off thei

Close the loop: analytics that teach your chatbot to fix itself

Many chatbots stall for the same reason. Unanswered questions build up and nothing changes. Teams ship a release and move on. Users try again and give up. The way out is simple. Treat every miss as a signal. Capture it in a standard way. Decide whether it was noise or a real gap. Turn real gaps into small updates in guardrails or knowledge. Run that loop every week. Measure how fast it moves. Results improve without bigger models. Start with lean instrumentation Analytics only works if the tra

Behind Kamathipura's Closed Doors

On the rickshaw, in the evening rush hour. An elderly driver, hands on the steering wheel, khaki shirt, marking his station. His neck hesitantly swivels, as if to say something: they have arrived at their destination. An alien territory in the white-washed city. Coquettish beckonings are lined up on fractured doors as street lamps in the narrow alleys. Collapsing buildings constrict ventilation and light. A landlord’s greed is made manifest: two-storeyed houses buried beneath off-balanced extens

Kefir: Solo-developed full C17/C23 compiler with extensive validation

To whom it may concern, Today I release Kefir — an independent C17/C23 compiler. Solo-built. Extensively validated, for x86_64 & System-V ABI. With SSA-based optimization pipeline, DWARF-5 support and position-independent code generation. What? Implements the C17/C23 standard. Plus certain GNU C extensions. For Linux (glibc & musl), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD. Extensive and transparent validation suite. Compiles and runs well-known open source projects — GNU core- and binutils, Curl, Git, Ngi

Today's NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Sept. 13

Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.

Elon Musk Appears to Now Be Firing the People Behind Grok

After vowing to create a "maximum truth-seeking" AI, Elon Musk appears to now be sacking the people who built it for him. Slack screenshots leaked to Business Insider show that the accounts of at least nine high-level employees with the data annotation team at xAI, Musk's OpenAI competitor, were deactivated over the weekend, in what seems like a major culling at the lab that built the social network's infamous chatbot, Grok. Those people, who weren't named by BI, previously worked on the human

Topics: bi grok musk people xai

I used standard Emacs extension-points to extend org-mode

Recently I read this beginners guide to extend Emacs. The guide is perfect for starting out with elisp and it shows a lot of care in teaching how to interact with Emacs. To me, the most important bit though is this one, from the section aptly named Emacs Wants You to Extend It. I haven’t written plugins for other editors extensively, but I can tell you this: emacs doesn’t just make deep customization available, but it actively encourages you to make an absolute customization messes masterpiece

It’s Getting Ugly: Sam Altman Seeks Texts From Shivon Zilis, Elon Musk’s Employee/Mother of His Child

Last year, Elon Musk sued his rival Sam Altman’s company, tech superstar OpenAI. In his lawsuit, Musk claimed that the company had violated federal racketeering laws because, having once promised to stay a nonprofit research lab, had since converted itself into a for-profit company. Musk, who initially poured tens of millions of dollars into the startup, claims he was deceived. OpenAI and Altman have since countered that Musk also wanted OpenAI to become a for-profit venture. This week, the lega

OpenAI announces new mentorship program for budding tech founders

OpenAI on Friday introduced a new program, dubbed the "OpenAI Grove," for early tech entrepreneurs looking to build with artificial intelligence, and applications are already open. Unlike OpenAI's Pioneer Program, which launched in April, Grove is aimed towards individuals at the very nascent phases of their company development, from the pre-idea to pre-seed stage. For five weeks, participants will receive mentoring from OpenAI technical leaders, early access to new tools and models, and in-pe

Emacs: A Paradigm Shift

Recently I read this beginners guide to extend Emacs. The guide is perfect for starting out with elisp and it shows a lot of care in teaching how to interact with Emacs. To me, the most important bit though is this one, from the section aptly named Emacs Wants You to Extend It. I haven’t written plugins for other editors extensively, but I can tell you this: emacs doesn’t just make deep customization available, but it actively encourages you to make an absolute customization messes masterpiece

North Korea executing more people for watching foreign films and TV, UN finds

North Korea executing more people for watching foreign films and TV, UN finds 12 hours ago Share Save Jean Mackenzie Seoul correspondent Share Save KCNA via EPA Life under Kim Jong Un's rule has become tougher and people are more afraid, the report claims The North Korean government is increasingly implementing the death penalty, including for people caught watching and sharing foreign films and TV dramas, a major UN report has found. The dictatorship, which remains largely cut off from the w

Why the Oracle-OpenAI deal caught Wall Street by surprise

This week, OpenAI and Oracle shocked the markets with a surprise $300 billion, five-year agreement, part of a surge of new business that sent the cloud provider’s stock skyrocketing. But maybe the markets shouldn’t have been taken by surprise. The deal is a reminder that, despite Oracle’s legacy status, the company still plays a major role in AI infrastructure. On the OpenAI side, the agreement was more revealing than the lack of details suggest. For one, the startup’s willingness to pay so muc

Balatro's big 2025 update won't be coming out this year after all

Fans will have to wait a little bit longer for the hotly-anticipated Balatro 1.1 update. Developer LocalThunk just announced it will not be coming out in 2025, despite previously promising a release this year. Instead, it'll come out "when it's done." It's worth remembering that Balatro was created by a single person, and the same goes for this update. The lone developer also made the original balance patch and the well-regarded mobile port. He says he's "well and truly burned out." LocalThunk

Instagram fixed an issue that caused posting multiple Stories to tank your reach

Instagram fixed a bug that caused the reach of some users' Stories to shrink when they posted more than one Story a day, Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared on Friday. The fix addresses a common complaint shared by creators in the last year that they were disincentivized to use Stories because of how regularly using the feature impacted the number of people who actually saw their posts. "People were complaining about getting less reach with their Stories if they posted lots of Stories in the sam

California bill lets renters escape exclusive deals between ISPs and landlords

California's legislature this week approved a bill to let renters opt out of bulk-billing arrangements that force them to pay for Internet service from a specific provider. The bill says that by January 1, a landlord must "allow the tenant to opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." If a lan

Encyclopedia Britannica Wants Perplexity to Stop Using Its Logos When AI Makes Stuff Up

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines the verb plagiarize as "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source." And that's exactly what its parent company, Encyclopedia Britannica, is alleging the AI company Perplexity did with its AI answers engine, according to a complaint filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. AI companies like Perplexity are no strangers to copyright infringeme