All posts tagged: proof

This May Be Iran’s First Misstep – And Proof Leverage Isn’t Total

Published by Jenni Sidey

Brent and WTI futures extended declines on Tuesday morning as momentum continued toward an end to the US-Iran conflict. The latest signs of de-escalation include a U.S. waiver allowing some crude and fuel sales from Iran, while Tehran said $12 billion in frozen funds had been released as part of ongoing talks with U.S. negotiators. Both sides have signaled progress so far this week, further eroding the war premium in crude markets as traders begin to price in the flood of Iranian barrels hitting global markets, normalization of the Hormuz chokepoint, and a broader easing of geopolitical risk across the Persian Gulf. Strait of Hormuz, this morning. • 04:03 UTC: a cluster of commercial vessels holding convoy formation ahead of transit.• 06:45 UTC: the same vessels underway and crossing south of Larak. pic.twitter.com/F1Yj9e0l7Q — Windward (@WindwardAI) June 23, 2026 Brent fell to $77 a barrel after sliding 3.3% on Monday, while WTI traded around $73 a barrel. On the Hormuz front, ship traffic continued to normalize as an increasing number of tankers and cargo ships …

A proof of concept forgives a fragile data path. Operational AI does not.

Published by skeptic

Presented by F5 When enterprises move AI workloads from pilot to production, data delivery often becomes the factor that determines whether those systems can scale reliably. Point-to-point architectures connecting storage directly to compute hold up under demonstration conditions, but they often break down under sustained, concurrent production traffic. The result is stalled inference pipelines, delayed RAG systems, underutilized GPUs, and SLA violations, all of which carry direct business consequences. “Organizations successfully operationalize AI when their infrastructure is built to handle real-world failures, not just controlled conditions,” says Hunter Smit, senior manager of product marketing at F5. Production traffic exposes architectural weaknesses In a pilot, a stalled transfer is an inconvenience, while in production, that same stall is an outage someone now owns. The underlying architecture is often identical in both cases: when a client is wired directly to storage, the system becomes increasingly fragile under sustained, concurrent production traffic because that direct connection has no answer when a node fails or traffic spikes. From there, retries and timeouts cascade, and the entire pipeline backs up …

Manufacturer bloatware is finally becoming optional — and this app is proof it never needed to exist

Published by skeptic

Whether you’re buying a new mouse, keyboard, headphones, or an entire computer, it comes with a specific kind of frustration. You unbox your latest purchase, plug it in, and before you can use a single feature, you get a prompt to download a 200 MB app — that is, if the manufacturer didn’t already install it on your computer. It doesn’t stop at simply downloading the app either. You’re also required to create an account and agree to a privacy policy as complicated as your mortgage contract. All for buying a simple mouse with a few extra programmable buttons. For years, we’ve been led to believe that manufacturer bloat is necessary. This app is proof that it’s not. Related This open-source app nukes Windows bloat and the performance boost is significant Give your Windows installation the sparkle it deserves. Nobody asked for another device ecosystem How manufacturers turned simple peripherals into software platforms It’s never just one app, either. A typical setup in 2026 might have Logitech Options+ or G Hub for a mouse, Corsair …

To reconstruct an ancient ecosystem, the proof is in the squirrel poop

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. A treasure trove of prehistoric squirrel poop is painting a picture of a lost world. Some of the oldest DNA ever discovered and sequenced lies deep inside these ancient rodent droppings. That fossilized poop (or coprolite) is full of 700,000-year-old environmental DNA from numerous plants, insects, microbes, and large mammals that once lived in Canada’s Yukon, many of which are long gone. A study published today in the journal Nature Communications describes the findings. Researchers analyzed permafrost samples collected from ground squirrel burrows that span several glacial periods and can remain frozen and sealed for thousands of years. Image: Government of Yukon. A rodent time capsule Arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) are still alive today. They are widely found within Beringia, a region …

Why you need to future proof your brain in middle age and how to start

Published by skeptic

To chart how our brains change over the course of our lives, neuroscientists have focused largely on beginnings and endings: the rapid development and pruning of neural connections in childhood and adolescence, and the degeneration associated with old age. “We kind of skipped over middle age,” says Sebastian Dohm-Hansen, a bioinformatician at University College Cork in Ireland. There are good reasons for that, not least that changes in brain structure and function are easier to spot with neuroimaging when they are at their most extreme. In the case of cognitive decline and dementia, “a lot of what we care about presents most dramatically after the age of 60”, says Dohm-Hansen. But over the past few years, researchers have started to look more closely at the middle-aged brain, identifying a series of subtle but significant changes between the ages of 40 and 65 that mark it out as a vital time to identify problems that won’t manifest until later in life. “Think of midlife as the top of an inverted U-curve,” says Ahmad Hariri, a professor of neuroscience at Duke University …

Met Music Director Says New ‘Frida y Diego’ Show Is Proof Timothée Chalamet Was Wrong About Opera

Published by Sam Flores

Our conversation was briefly interrupted when a Met staffer opened the boardroom door, saw us, and swiftly closed it as Nézet-Séguin whipped around to investigate the breach. “Oh, that was Timothée Chalamet,” I wisecracked. “He was just coming in to say he’s sorry about everything.” “Oh my God, what a fantasy,” Nézet-Séguin said of the opera-eulogizing star with a laugh, before he debunked Chalamet’s claim that “no one cares about [opera] anymore.” The situation is the opposite, he said, with an audience that’s growing and diversifying, not shrinking. “I see a different kind of audience, an audience that, of course, is different through the way they look, but also the way they dress and the way they come…There’s something incredible that now the average age is in the 40s of the operagoer, as it was in the 60s not so long ago.” The Met Opera’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, said the audience is “growing and diversifying, not shrinking.” Marty Sohl/Met Opera His words might as well apply to conductors—at least, a conductor like him. Nézet-Séguin, …

King Charles is the happiest monarch around – here’s the photo proof

Published by Daniella Wilson

Keep calm and smile on. While there are some who may perceive royals as stiff and reserved, King Charles III isn’t one to hide his emotions. His Majesty is known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, and is often seen breaking into a smile or laugh during engagements. Since ascending the throne in 2022, Charles has proven to be one of the happiest monarchs around. Continue scrolling for cheerful photos of the King and his infectious smile, sure to brighten your day! © Getty Images A smile and a shake from the King as he met patients and staff members at the Sir Robert Ogden Macmillan Cancer Centre in 2026. © Getty Images The monarch let out a laugh while sitting on the throne in the Senate Chamber for the State Opening of Parliament during a visit to Ottawa in May 2025. © Getty Images The monarch was caught laughing as he inspected the honor guard during the Ceremony of the Keys at Lancaster Castle in 2025. © POOL/AFP via Getty Images We …

Trump — With Zero Proof — Promises 'Good And Proper' Deal With Iran

Published by Sam Flores

The Kevin Hart Roast Was Proof that Celebrity Roasts are Cooked

Published by Jenni Sidey

This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday. The concept of mocking public figures dates back to ancient times, but the modern, structured celebrity roast originated as a way for entertainers to pay tribute to one another through insults. The Friars Club started roasting notable members of its showbiz fraternity in 1950 and kept it up for over 60 years; in 1973, Dean Martin started doing Friars-style roast segments on his weekly TV variety show, which led to a series of boozy specials that ran for ten years. The 21st-century roast was born in 2003, when roastmaster Jeff Garlin led a raunchy tribute to Denis Leary that became the most-watched show in Comedy Central history. The network began to produce many more roasts, of everyone from Joan Rivers to Larry the Cable Guy, then got out of the game in 2019, after an installment (hosted by future podcast millionaire …

The Hantavirus Cruise Ship Is More Proof That People Just Cruises Are Germy, Destructive, Cesspools

Published by Sam Flores

Rest easy, Deuxmoi fans. We’re not here to put Tom, Suri, or the youngest Beckham son on blast. And we’re certainly not talking about Penélope or Celia. (Frankly, we could be talking about Ted. But that’s another column.) Our topic instead is the devil’s vacation—those chthonic voyages aboard behemoths weighted with viral load and alleged human rights abuses, yet somehow still buoyant enough to float. For weeks, internet rubberneckers have been gripped by the sorry tale of the MV Hondius, an Atlantic pleasure cruise mysteriously struck by hantavirus—a rodent-borne disease that has no vaccine or cure. (You may be familiar with the ailment from its role in the death of Gene Hackman’s wife, Betsy Arakawa.) Though the travelers on that doomed ocean liner have finally been evacuated, there’s already another nautical horror story in the news. Just days ago, the CDC announced that over 100 passengers and more than a dozen crew members on a different ship, the Caribbean Princess, have been infected by norovirus—a less fatal but more disgusting illness. Epidemics such as these …

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All posts tagged: proof

This May Be Iran’s First Misstep – And Proof Leverage Isn’t Total

A proof of concept forgives a fragile data path. Operational AI does not.

Manufacturer bloatware is finally becoming optional — and this app is proof it never needed to exist

To reconstruct an ancient ecosystem, the proof is in the squirrel poop

Why you need to future proof your brain in middle age and how to start

Met Music Director Says New ‘Frida y Diego’ Show Is Proof Timothée Chalamet Was Wrong About Opera

King Charles is the happiest monarch around – here’s the photo proof

Trump — With Zero Proof — Promises 'Good And Proper' Deal With Iran

The Kevin Hart Roast Was Proof that Celebrity Roasts are Cooked

The Hantavirus Cruise Ship Is More Proof That People Just Cruises Are Germy, Destructive, Cesspools