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In a blog post tied to Oxide's OxCon meetup and a nostalgic Sun-themed t-shirt, Oxide CTO Bryan Cantrill argued Sun Microsystems ultimately lost interest in the basic mechanics of running a business. He recounts a 2005 episode where a fast-growing startup running OpenSolaris tried to buy Sun hardware but couldn't get Sun's sales team to respond properly, unlike its smooth experience buying from Dell.
Solar panel prices have plunged from roughly $5-6 per watt 26 years ago to about 12 cents per watt today, according to Ember co-founder Dave Jones cited in a Financial Times report. The report attributes this steep decline almost entirely to a massive expansion in Chinese solar manufacturing, which has made panels affordable for both wealthy and developing nations.
New research examining stellar activity finds that outbursts resembling the Sun's coronal mass ejections and flares are uncommon among similar stars. Researchers compared magnetic and rotational characteristics across many stars to explain why the Sun's behavior may be more of an exception than the norm.
Chinese filmmakers are increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Kimi and DeepSeek to draft screenplays and generate footage, with one studio producing a 90-minute AI-assisted film for roughly $500,000 versus the millions typical productions cost. Director Lu Beike, known for the series 'Three-Body,' says AI-generated scenes still fall short of live performances, sometimes forcing crews to make real actors look less realistic so they blend with AI-generated environments.
Researchers at Ege University modeled how the young Sun's evolution would change if it had absorbed a super-Earth-sized planet, and found the scenario helps resolve mismatches between standard solar models and real observations, including the Sun's depleted lithium and internal sound-speed profile. The team also found such a planet could pass through the Sun's outer layers while losing little mass, implying a lasting internal chemical signature.
A team of researchers, publishing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, used stellar modeling software to suggest the young Sun may have engulfed a rocky planet several times Earth's mass. They argue this ingested super-Earth could explain persistent mismatches between standard solar models and actual observations of the Sun's interior, including its unusually low lithium levels.
A retrospective on OpenBSD's history blog describes SMD (Storage Module Device) disks, a storage interface standardized in 1982 and revised in 1987, which powered high-capacity systems throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The piece details how Sun Microsystems used SMD disks paired with Xylogics controllers in its early high-end servers and workstations, noting the drives' massive size, weight, and power draw compared to later interfaces like ESDI and SCSI.
Archaeologists working outside Prague have uncovered a circular structure believed to be a Stone Age ritual site dating back roughly 6,500 years. Researchers say the layout suggests its builders possessed astronomical knowledge used to track the sun and moon, making it older than Stonehenge by about a thousand years.
Archaeologists led by Petr Krištuf of the University of West Bohemia have studied a circular earthwork near Chleby in the Czech Republic, roughly 230 meters wide with a deep ditch and twelve entrances. Analysis of the entrance positions shows they align with key solar and lunar events, including the summer and winter solstices and the moon's 18-year cycle, mirroring the astronomical design later seen at Stonehenge but built over a thousand years earlier. Bull skulls and horns found near the ditch entrances point to ritual activity at the site.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched Sunday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, about eight months earlier than planned. The spacecraft separated successfully and is now heading toward the Sun-Earth L2 point, roughly 1 million miles away, where it will settle into a stable orbit alongside Earth over the next three months.
NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday at 7:26 a.m. ET from Kennedy Space Center, using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The telescope, arriving roughly eight months early and under budget, will travel to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point about 1 million miles away after final inspections and fueling with 290 gallons of hydrazine.
YouTuber Sydney Watson suggested without evidence that Connecticut Sun center Brittney Griner might be a man playing in the WNBA, despite Griner being cisgender. The claim surfaces amid a broader right-wing campaign against trans athletes in women's sports, fueled by figures like former swimmer Riley Gaines and WNBA player Sophie Cunningham, who has publicly opposed trans women competing in the league.