GoKawiil
Tech News
Researchers estimate more than 50,000 people died from heat-related causes in European urban areas during the summer of 2026, which saw five consecutive heat waves push temperatures to record highs across the continent. The researchers say a significant share of these deaths can be directly linked to climate change.
Two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals publicly described undersea fiber-optic cables running through the Strait of Hormuz as potential targets in future conflict. General Hossein Mohebbi said seven major cables carrying global internet and commercial data pass beneath the strait, while General Yadollah Javani indicated Iran could strike the cables if its infrastructure is attacked.
A Nature editorial argues that Europe and other regions need to formulate a coordinated response to changes in US science strategy. The piece does not detail specific US policy actions but frames the issue as an urgent strategic gap for global research funding and collaboration.
CCIA Europe, a lobby group whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta, released a commissioned study estimating the EU's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act could cost 115 billion euros ($128 billion) over ten years, far above the European Commission's own projections. Most of that figure stems from a scenario in which sovereignty rules are applied to a quarter of cloud workloads across essential private-sector industries, with code rewriting cited as the largest cost driver.
The Netherlands' Tax and Customs Administration has cancelled its planned rollout of Microsoft 365 on the public cloud after about 5,000 employees had already migrated. The government paused the project in July following a June recommendation from the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment, and State Secretary Eelco Eerenberg has now outlined a replacement plan moving mail and calendar functions on-premises in 2027, followed by European open-source tools for storage and collaboration in 2027-2028.
Eurodoc, a Brussels-based federation of early-career researchers, published the first comparative overview of first-year PhD income across 26 European countries for 2024-25. The report found large disparities in pay structures, with some doctoral candidates on taxed salaries and others on tax-exempt scholarships, and highlighted Scandinavian and Benelux nations as offering comparatively higher remuneration.
At Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds told Dirk Hohndel that he enjoys using AI as a programming tool, particularly for tasks he is less skilled at himself. He cautioned that AI should be used carefully for serious kernel work, noting he mainly acts as a maintainer rather than writing core code. Torvalds also said AI can help new developers rediscover the enjoyment of programming and has become useful for finding and fixing bugs in the Linux kernel.
Public opposition to data center construction, initially concentrated in the US, is now affecting projects across Europe and parts of Asia. STL Partners research cited by CNBC estimates roughly $42 billion in European data center investment has already faced delays or cancellations, compared with about $77 billion in the US. The European Data Center Monitor counted more than 70 rejected or restricted projects between January and April 2025, exceeding all of 2024.
Ford's chief executive said Chinese automakers have effectively captured the European electric vehicle market and urged US policymakers to proceed carefully before allowing Chinese cars into the American market. He called for Washington to take time to weigh the decision rather than act quickly.
New climate research finds that greenhouse gas emissions released after the 2015 Paris Agreement have intensified the severity of heatwaves across Europe. The findings attribute part of the recent extreme heat events to continued fossil fuel output following the accord's adoption.
A university president outlines six principles meant to help institutions resist political pressure on research funding, peer review and academic autonomy, citing examples from the United States and Hungary. The piece traces how funding cuts, shifting grant priorities and legal campaigns against institutions like Central European University have already eroded independent scholarship in some countries.
A researcher at Slovenia's InnoRenew Centre of Excellence describes winning a nearly €2 million European Research Council grant to develop self-repairing, UV-protective fungal-biofilm coatings for buildings. The five-year award, secured after a lengthy application and resubmission process, immediately reshaped the scope of her research group's work and her own daily responsibilities, shifting her focus from hands-on experiments toward managing people and projects.