Derring brew
Iran is escalating its attacks on Gulf countries, and the strikes are “increasingly precise and lethal, and able to avoid interception.” / Semafor
Visualizing the scale of the war shows the extent of the countries attacked so far would cover much of the United States or Europe. / The New York Times [$]
As the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, clinics and aid groups across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa are unable to access adequate medical supplies. / NPR
Stunning images of the moon from Artemis 2's lunar flyby. / NASA
Data center hardware companies are trying to exempt themselves from a Colorado right-to-repair law by arguing their products are critical infrastructure. / 404 Media
AI demands are why there’s now a RAM crisis—or more pertinently, why the sub-$500 computer may be extinct by 2028. / The Atlantic [$]
Except: To address funding cuts, OpenAI is canceling some major projects, sending the price of RAM back to normal levels. / Yahoo! Finance
“Reading is also allowing oneself to be persistently confused by something you don’t understand rather than asking Claude to explain it to you.” / The Biblioracle Recommends
As an antidote to AI and online translation tools, a Cornell German professor gives her students a typewriter-only assignment once a semester. / AP
See also: The families who are combatting screen time by bringing back landlines. / The Wall Street Journal [$]
What the New York Times left out of its profile of the two-person startup that built a $1.8 billion sales pipeline using AI is that its success was fueled by slop and fake testimonials. / Futurism
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“The first attempt at the drink was, by all accounts, terrible.” A brief history of instant coffee. / Works in Progress
Why it’s best to avoid naming streets after people: “We can never know when a human hero will disappoint us.” / Human Transit
Cambodia has unveiled a statue of Magawa, a mine-sniffing rat that died in 2022 of old age, and who cleared more than 1.5 million square feet of land during his career. / BBC News
Why do The Backrooms scratch a certain itch? An argument for a new genre, the Institutional Gothic, centering on workplace dread. / The MIT Press Reader
A Jaws superfan has opened what may be the world’s first full-scale replica of the iconic Orca shark-fishing vessel. “No one really knew what I was doing.” / NorthWalesLive, BBC News
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