Local authorities in Milpitas, California have ordered operators of the 342-acre Newby Island landfill to deploy drones and install monitors to track chemicals causing persistent bad smells, and to automate collection of landfill gases. Residents, including engineer Chia-Ling Kong who has campaigned against the odours, say smells have lasted hours daily despite recent improvements. The landfill's operators say they are committed to safe operation and protecting air quality.
bbc.co.uk
· 2026-10-15
MIT researchers placed an AI agent in a virtual island environment with no assigned tasks and observed it over time. Without explicit goals, the agent began inventing games, constructing temple-like structures, drawing mandalas, and exploring its surroundings in playful ways.
gizmodo.com
· 2026-10-15
Rocket Lab said Wednesday its Neutron rocket won't launch until 2027, blaming a manufacturing defect found in the carbon composite propellant tank domes of the first stage. CEO Peter Beck said engineers discovered voids, or air pockets, between layers of carbon fiber in the domes, forcing a pause in production to investigate. The delay confirms what industry observers had already suspected after Rocket Lab's August update left little room for a 2026 launch.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-10-15
Constellation announced it will spend more than $4.3 billion to boost output at 11 of its nuclear reactors through a process called a power uprate, which involves upgrading equipment like turbines, pumps and transformers to handle more steam from enriched fuel. The company says the added capacity will generate enough electricity to power roughly 700,000 US homes.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-10-15
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park contains an 8-mile fissure known as the Great Crack, located in Kilauea's southwest rift zone, which measures up to 50 feet wide and 66 feet deep. A writer attempting to hike to the site found that multiple park employees and rangers had never visited it themselves, with no official trail leading there and little documentation available.
sfgate.com
· 2026-10-14
Police say three people were seen climbing into a Manhattan manhole on Sunday, the latest in a string of at least eight similar incidents in New York City and on Long Island since May. Authorities describe the activity as both dangerous and illegal, though the motive behind it remains unclear.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-10-13
Robke's, an Italian restaurant in Northport, Long Island run by the Selvaggio family for 48 years, operates without delivery, reservations, or credit cards. Owner Louis Selvaggio says the restaurant keeps these restrictive policies because demand remains high, while his daughter Mia credits Instagram Reels, including videos of the restaurant's signature pork chop martini dish, with boosting its popularity. The restaurant was featured in Entrepreneur's America's Favorite Mom & Pop Shops list, profiled by editor Jason Feifer.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-10-13
Intel announced at OCP 2026 that its previously code-named Crescent Island chip will ship as the GPU D-Series, disclosing a theoretical peak of 1.3 PFLOPS FP8 performance and 1.5 TB/s memory bandwidth. The air-cooled PCIe card runs at 350W TDP with up to 480GB of LPDDR5X memory, built on Intel's new Xe3P architecture, and can scale to eight GPUs per server.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-10-12
A feature visit to Avery Island, Louisiana, shows how Tabasco peppers are grown, harvested, and turned into mash within hours of picking to preserve freshness before fermenting into the famous sauce. The company still sources seeds from Avery Island but now grows many peppers in Africa and South America to guard against crop failure. Fresh peppers can carry up to 50,000 Scoville units, far hotter than the bottled sauce.
weareravenous.com
· 2026-10-11
Apple's Dynamic Island, introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro to house Face ID sensors alongside the camera, displays Live Activities for timers, navigation, music, sports scores and supported third-party apps. Users can check and enable Live Activities per app under Settings > Apps, and ensure they appear on the Lock Screen via Settings > Face ID & Passcode.
engadget.com
· 2026-10-11
Developer @itspdfu uncovered code showing a new 'Proximity Control' feature coming to Apple's co-developed smart home accessories made with LG. Tapping or holding an iPhone near a device like a thermostat, camera, or doorbell will trigger a notification in the Dynamic Island with an 'Open Controls' button or camera viewer, using an NFC tag and Bluetooth Low Energy advert to identify the device.
9to5mac.com
· 2026-10-09
A leaker known as 'pdfu,' who has previously shared accurate Apple and LG smart-home leaks, posted new details suggesting an NFC-based 'Proximity Control' feature for upcoming LG Apple Home accessories. The feature reportedly shows device controls in the iPhone's Dynamic Island when the phone is held near a compatible device, using the Matter protocol but tailored to Apple Home. This follows an earlier leak describing a 'tap to setup without power' pairing feature from the same source.
theverge.com
· 2026-10-09
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