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XMLUI

In the mid-1990s you could create useful software without being an ace coder. You had Visual Basic, you had a rich ecosystem of components, you could wire them together to create apps, standing on the shoulders of the coders who built those components. If you’re younger than 45 you may not know what that was like, nor realize web components have never worked the same way. The project we’re announcing today, XMLUI, brings the VB model to the modern web and its React-based component ecosystem. XML

Titan’s Methane Lakes Could Form Bubble-Like Structures Essential to Life, Scientists Say

On December 25, 2004, the Huygens probe separated from the Cassini spacecraft and landed on Titan’s sandy surface. The probe survived for 72 hours on Saturn’s largest moon, revealing a world that is chemically complex and more Earth-like than expected. For years, scientists have been intrigued by Titan as an alien world that might have the right conditions to host life, albeit in a very different form than on Earth. New research by NASA reveals that molecular precursors to life could form in Tit

I Tried This $40 Smartwatch: It Was Meh, but Not a Complete Waste of Time

I wasn't expecting much when I first strapped the WITHit Giga Smartwatch onto my wrist, and at least it delivered on that. This $40 smartwatch does the basics: shows notifications, counts your steps, tracks your heart rate (sort of) and lets you take calls from your wrist. But the execution of all these features is where it all starts to fall apart, and I found myself getting exactly what I paid for. After spending a week testing it, I came away with this: If you just want a basic smartwatch th

Southwestern drought likely to continue through 2100, research finds

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. The drought in the Southwestern US is likely to last for the rest of the 21st century and potentially beyond as global warming shifts the distribution of heat in the Pacific Ocean, according to a study published last week led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. Using sediment cores collected in

The Hunt for a Fundamental Theory of Quantum Gravity

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Two blind spots torture physicists: the birth of the universe and the center of a black hole. The former may feel like a moment in time and the latter a point in space, but in both cases the normally interwoven threads of space and time seem to stop short. These mysterious points are known as singularities. Singularities are predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. According to this theory, clumps of matter o

Why I'm Betting Against AI Agents in 2025 (Despite Building Them)

Everyone says 2025 is the year of AI agents. The headlines are everywhere: "Autonomous AI will transform work," "Agents are the next frontier," "The future is agentic." Meanwhile, I've spent the last year building many different agent systems that actually work in production. And that's exactly why I'm betting against the current hype. I'm not some AI skeptic writing from the sidelines. Over the past year, I've built more than a dozen production agent systems across the entire software developm

The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality

It’s as if the smell of burnt plastic from a dollar store has permeated the world. Things are worse: chipboard furniture, T-shirts unrecognizable after a second wash, packaged foods with more preservatives than ingredients. Airplane seats turned into backrests. Automatic restroom lights that turn off at a whim. But also newspaper articles shamelessly written with ChatGPT and its algorithmic prose. Nothing is made to be loved. Only to be bought. In a study titled The Concept and Measurement of P

Astronomers Detect Entirely New Type of Plasma Wave Above Jupiter’s North Pole

Since entering Jupiter’s orbit in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been hard at work unveiling the many mysteries of our solar system’s largest planet. And its latest discovery may be one of the most intriguing yet: an entirely new type of plasma wave near Jupiter’s poles. In a paper published Wednesday in Physical Review Letters, astronomers describe an unusual pattern of plasma waves in Jupiter’s magnetosphere—a magnetic “bubble” shielding the planet from external radiation. Jupiter’s excepti

Do Contact Lenses Expire? Everything Eye Doctors Want You to Know About Replacing Your Contacts

If you wear contact lenses, you probably don't think much about them. But they're a relatively new invention -- in fact, the first disposable contact lens wasn't introduced until 1982. "We think of contact lenses as being so normal, but 100 years ago, nobody walked around with little pieces of plastic over their eyes," says ophthalmologist Dr. Robert Kinast, the vice chair of ophthalmology at Legacy Devers Eye Institute and co-founder of GentleDrop. "Contact lenses are foreign bodies and should

Get Ready for These New Emoji, Which Are Coming Out This Fall

The Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit devoted to developing, maintaining and promoting software standards and data, and it also releases new emoji once a year. And on July 17, also known as World Emoji Day, Unicode announced that the newest emoji will debut this September as part of Unicode 17.0. Here are the new emoji you can expect to see later this year. Trombone Treasure chest Distorted face Hairy creature (Sasquatch) Fight cloud Apple core Orca Ballet dancers Landslide "These new

Topics: 17 emoji face new unicode

The tech that the US Post Office gave us

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. When you crack open your mailbox, it’s almost as if your letters just appear. Long before the days of speedy, overnight mail deliveries, postal service workers meticulously sorted through letters by hand and transported mail on horseback. For more than 250 years, the US Postal Service has worked behind the scenes to build a faster delivery network,

Piano Keys

Piano Keys If you've ever looked closely at a piano keyboard you may have noticed that the widths of the white keys are not all the same at the back ends (where they pass between the black keys). Of course, if you think about it for a minute, it's clear they couldn't possibly all be the same width, assuming the black keys are all identical (with non-zero width) and the white keys all have equal widths at the front ends, because the only simultaneous solution of 3W=3w+2b and 4W=4w+3b is with b=0

Make Your Own Backup System – Part 1: Strategy Before Scripts

Backup: Beyond the Simple Copy For as long as I can remember, backup is something that has been underestimated by far too many people. Between flawed techniques, "Schrödinger's backups" (i.e., never tested, thus both valid and invalid at the same time), and conceptual errors about what they are and how they work (RAID is not a backup!), too much data has been lost due to deficiencies in this area. Nowadays, backup is often an afterthought. Many rely entirely on "the cloud" without ever asking

Best Squat Racks of 2025

Choose a squat rack that fits your needs: "Focus your time and energy researching those racks that fit perfectly into your space and for the height of the people who will be using the rack," said Steve Stonehouse, VP of education and programming at Body Fit Training. You'll also want to check the quality of the machine. "There is a different quality and standard for commercial racks as opposed to personal racks," he explains. When deciding on the quality of the rack, something to consider is the

Warframe's The Old Peace Expansion Revealed: A Perilous Trip to Tau Unfolds Soon

Warframe's last few updates have been a narrative tour de force through time and space, weaving together disparate threads from the far-flung past of the year 1999 and the fairytale void-dimension of Duviri. Core to these expansions is the conflict with the Eldritch threat known only as the Indifference. As it comes closer to piercing the veil of our reality and escaping the void, it's up to the Tenno to navigate lost memories -- rediscovering forgotten allies, a peace that was doomed to fail a

Bizarre "Infinity Galaxy" Could Hold the Secrets of Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers using data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a spectacular cosmic object they're calling the "Infinity Galaxy." The site of an epic head-on collision between two galaxies, it could harbor the secrets to how the heaviest black holes in the universe, the supermassive black holes found at the hearts of galaxies, are born and reach their unbelievable masses — masses extreme enough to organize trillions of stars around them. "Everything is unusual about this ga

Corning avoids EU antitrust fine by ending exclusive deals with phone manufacturers

Corning, the US-based glass manufacturer behind Gorilla Glass, has vowed to end its exclusive deals and other practices that the European Commission deemed to be anti-competitive in order to avoid getting fined. If you'll recall, the commission announced that it was investigating Corning last year, accusing it of squashing competition with its exclusive supply agreements, thereby driving up prices and stifling innovation. Now, the commission has accepted the commitments Corning offered and made

Zig Interface Revisited

Achieving polymorphism via dynamic dispatch in Zig Unlike many languages that offer interface or virtual constructs, Zig has no built-in notion of interfaces. This reflects Zig’s commitment to simplicity and performance. That doesn’t mean polymorphism is off the table. In fact Zig has the tools to build interface-like behavior, making dynamic dispatch possible. Polymorphism in Zig: The Options Let’s backtrack a bit. There are ways to achieve polymorphism in Zig, depending on the use case: Ge

A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022)

Why your website should be under 14kB in size Why your website should be under 14kB in size Having a smaller website makes it load faster — that's not surprising. What is surprising is that a 14kB page can load much faster than a 15kB page — maybe 612ms faster — while the difference between a 15kB and a 16kB page is trivial. This is because of the TCP slow start algorithm. This article will cover what that is, how it works, and why you should care. But first we'll quickly go over some of the

Archaeologists Discover Tomb of Maya King Who Founded a 460-Year Dynasty

A team led by University of Houston archaeologists Arlen Chase and Diane Chase—a married couple about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary—has discovered the fourth-century CE tomb of an ancient Maya ruler. Talk about a power couple. The Maya ruler in question was Te K’ab Chaak, the first ruler of Caracol, an important Maya city that ruled the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula from 560 through 680 CE before it was abandoned by the 10th century. Caracol is now the largest Maya archae

Topics: ab caracol ce chaak maya

Brain Scans Reveal Why Waking Up Is Sometimes Such a Difficult Experience

Want to wake up feeling great? The secret might not be so simple as a multi-step nighttime routine, early bedtime, or a no-device rule. A new study suggests that how we fall asleep and how we wake up the next day may not be so similar as we once thought. Neuroscientists tracked 20 people’s brain activity as they woke up from sleep—sometimes naturally, sometimes by setting off an alarm—recording more than 1,000 awakenings in total. They found a pattern of neural activity signaled waking, but tha

Origami Space Planes Could Solve a Major Problem in Orbit

Building a spacecraft could one day be as simple as folding a piece of paper into a plane and letting aerodynamics do the rest. A team of researchers from the University of Tokyo simulated the release of a paper airplane from the International Space Station (ISS) to see if would survive atmospheric reentry. In a paper published in Acta Astronautica, the researchers demonstrated how origami may be the solution to low Earth orbit’s growing trash problem. Rather than relying solely on metals to co

This Is the Only Window AC That Keeps My Two-Story Home Cool All Summer Long

CNET's key takeaways The Windmill AC normally costs $349 for 6,000 BTUs, but you can often find it on sale on Windmill's website Amazon Home Depot Not only is the Windmill AC the easiest unit I've ever installed, it's the only AC unit I've tried that effectively kept my older and not well-insulated home cool during a heat wave. Bonus: It's actually stylish. Although, I still would have paid for an ugly one that works. Its normal price is higher than some other window AC units, but I've paid

RFK Jr. wants to change program that stopped vaccine makers from leaving US market

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system. Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic. In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effe

How to Delete All of Your Social Media Accounts: Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, and More

Here’s an evergreen take: There has never been a better time to get off social media. Social services have evolved even further into becoming sticky traps for doomscrolling and AI-generated slop, and are hitherto unprecedented frontiers for rage bait. Bummed out about all the misinformation and being part of a profit machine that funds one increasingly unhinged billionaire or another? Well, there’s a way out. Unfortunately, social media companies don’t always make it very easy to rescind their

Robot Vacuum Tips to Help You Keep a Tidy Home (2025)

In the past few years, no other gadget—headphones, electric bicycle, literally anything at all—has improved as dramatically as the humble robot vacuum. The hardware and software have improved beyond all imagining. There are self-emptying bins, multilevel mapping abilities, and all sorts of bells and whistles, like an automated robot arm! Prices on the entry-level models have dropped significantly, to the point where robot vacuums are now an accessible household tool instead of a statement of bou

The tech that the US Post Office gave us

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. When you crack open your mailbox, it’s almost as if your letters just appear. Long before the days of speedy, overnight mail deliveries, postal service workers meticulously sorted through letters by hand and transported mail on horseback. For more than 250 years, the US Postal Service has worked behind the scenes to build a faster delivery network,

For privacy and security, think twice before granting AI access to your personal data

AI is being forced on us in pretty much every facet of life, from phones and apps to search engines and even drive-throughs, for some reason. The fact that we’re now getting web browsers with baked-in AI assistants and chatbots shows that the way some people are using the internet to seek out and consume information today is very different from even a few years ago. But AI tools are more and more asking for gross levels of access to your personal data under the guise of needing it to work. This

Microsoft Office is using an artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool

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Meta says it won’t sign Europe AI agreement, calling it an overreach

Meta Platforms declined to sign the European Union's artificial intelligence code of practice because it is an overreach that will "stunt" companies, according to global affairs chief Joel Kaplan. "Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI," Kaplan wrote in a post Friday on LinkedIn. "This code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act." Last week, the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, pub