Researchers analyzing Britain's tallest standing stone alignment, the Devil's Arrows, have determined that its massive stones originated from a quarry site 18 kilometers away and were moved there by human effort rather than glacial action. The findings, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, show Neolithic communities transported multiple 25-ton stones across the Yorkshire landscape to build the monument.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-14
A review of roughly twenty properly sampled visual preference surveys conducted since the 1990s, mostly in Britain but also in the US and Canada, finds that ordinary people consistently favor traditional building styles over modernist designs when shown side-by-side comparisons. The research follows decades of commentary from architects and critics alike, including figures like John Summerson and Wolf von Eckardt, who acknowledged modernism's unpopularity even as it became the dominant global style.
worksinprogress.news
· 2026-09-14
An educational site's Digital Electronics & Computer Architecture course uses the PDP-8 minicomputer to teach how transistors, logic gates, and registers combine to form a working CPU. Alongside the course, the site is running a giveaway for a PiDP-8 replica from obsolescence.dev, with entries earned through social shares and course purchases through September 20.
pikuma.com
· 2026-09-10
An essayist contends that software projects, despite being fundamentally simple systems of forms, databases and workflows, tend to make otherwise rational people behave erratically. The piece attributes this to the unique combination of speed, cost, complexity and near-limitless ability to change direction that software allows, unlike physical construction where changes have visible, immediate costs.
graybeard.ing
· 2026-09-10
George Lucas's long-delayed Museum of Narrative Art has opened after being shopped to three different cities over 16 years and costing roughly $1 billion to build. Early reviews of the museum, which houses Lucas's personal collection of illustration and film art, are decidedly mixed.
entertainment.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-08
Tirias Research founder Jim McGregor argues that AI is not one workload but millions of varied ones, meaning data centers can no longer treat memory and storage as secondary hardware. He says inference and agentic AI demand purpose-built systems capable of continuous, real-time data ingestion, caching, and movement rather than legacy infrastructure designed for training workloads.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-04
At IFA 2026, NVIDIA unveiled Personal AI Router (PAIR), a free, open-source beta tool that detects idle PCs on a home network and routes AI subagent tasks to them instead of overloading a single GPU. This lets multi-step AI agent jobs, like sorting an inbox, run faster by spreading the workload across multiple machines while the main PC stays free for gaming or work.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-03
Software engineer Rodrigo Rosenfeld Rosas observes that teams increasingly avoid rewriting or restructuring messy codebases now that AI agents handle day-to-day coding tasks. He argues this isn't about the quality of agent-generated code, but about engineers losing the reflex to recognize when a system has become unmanageable and needs structural intervention.
rosenfeld.page
· 2026-09-02
Forward-deployed engineering, where vendor engineers embed with customers to wire AI products into real operating environments, has become a core sales and delivery model in enterprise AI. The piece argues the real test of this approach is whether repeated engagements shrink into pure services work or actually feed back into a more capable, reusable product over time.
venturebeat.com
· 2026-09-02
Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said businesses worldwide are sitting on roughly $1 trillion worth of outdated cybersecurity systems that can't keep pace with AI-driven attacks. He made the comments after the company posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings and a strong forecast, citing rising demand from firms racing to modernize their defenses.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-01
An Entrepreneur analysis of hundreds of software engagements finds that many teams design for massive future scale before they have real usage data to justify it, leading to wasted complexity and slower execution. It cites Standish Group CHAOS data showing software project success rates rose only from 29% in 2015 to 31% in 2020, underscoring how common these missteps remain.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-09-01
John Ternus, Apple's 25-year veteran and head of hardware since 2021, officially takes over as CEO from Tim Cook on Tuesday, making him only the second chief executive since Steve Jobs. Cook, 65, will remain with the company as executive chairman, engaging with global policymakers, while the 51-year-old Ternus inherits full responsibility for software, devices, finance and legal operations. The handoff comes as Apple faces pressure to prove its AI strategy and navigate rising memory component costs.
cnbc.com
· 2026-09-01
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