Why a ‘bad gardener’ spent four years restoring a meadow: Author Paula Whyman’s dream of a modest ecological project took a wild turn on a Virginia mountain.
Trump to build mass detention camp for deportees at Guantánamo Bay: The president said he will issue an executive order to construct a detention camp with room for 30,000 migrants on the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
Trump’s immigration crackdown reaches New York City and shows its limits: In a display of force aimed at quickly increasing arrests and generating publicity, the administration targeted the nation’s largest city, where sanctuary policies limit official cooperation with ICE.
Gabbard faces close vote in Senate intelligence committee hearing: With Democrats opposed and some Republican votes wavering, the committee could employ unusual maneuvers to advance Trump’s controversial pick for director of national intelligence.
Trump’s Panama Canal ambitions gain traction in GOP-led Senate: Republicans hoping to thwart Beijing’s influence in Latin America urge the Panamanian government to cut ties with Chinese entities. - "Hutchison Port Holdings, a Chinese company, has had a lease since 1997 to operate container facilities at ports on each end of the canal but has no control over the operation of the waterway, which is administered by the independent Panama Canal Authority. Fees, set and regularly reviewed by the authority, are based on size and weight of vessels and are openly published and cannot discriminate. Tolls have increased across the board in recent years as a severe drought in the region lowered water levels, causing passage delays."
Amazon to close Quebec warehouses and lay off 1,700 workers: The online retail giant said the move was not linked to recent unionization efforts by workers in the Canadian province.
Why cold weather is no longer an EV battery killer: Heat pumps keep electric vehicles warm with much less energy, allowing their batteries to last longer in cold winter weather.
Tesla Gear Gets Hacked Multiple Times in Pwn2Own Contests: The first team to successfully hack the electric vehicle maker's charger won $50,000 for their ingenuity.
DeepSeek’s Popular AI App Is Explicitly Sending US Data to China: Amid ongoing fears over TikTok, Chinese generative AI platform DeepSeek says it’s sending heaps of US user data straight to its home country, potentially setting the stage for greater scrutiny. - "Meanwhile, several DeepSeek users have already pointed out that the platform does not provide answers for questions about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and it answers some questions in ways that sound like propaganda."
A free, powerful Chinese AI model just dropped — but don’t ask it about Tiananmen Square: Those who train the AI models get to decide what the truth is.
The trillion-dollar mystery surrounding DeepSeek’s Nvidia GPUs: There’s a cloud of suspicion hanging over the type and number of Nvidia GPUs DeepSeek used to train its R1 models. [ed. note: China claims it accomplished DeepSeek AI with lower-quality chips, but they're lying]
Target’s DEI cuts have Black entrepreneurs saying ‘clear the shelves’: Owners of brands that the big-box retailer championed before it rolled back DEI efforts say a boycott would harm their brands, and encouraged customers to support them.
The resistance will not be rushed: Resting up to join a peaceful, nonviolent, colorful and multigenerational opposition.
What federal workers should know about Trump administration’s ‘deferred resignation’ offer: Here’s what we know about the deferred resignation program offered to federal employees by the Trump administration. - "'The President has no authority to make that offer. There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work,' Kaine said. 'If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.'"
Resign? Stick it out? Federal workers mull Trump buyout offer.: Thousands of federal workers feel caught in limbo after White House offer to buy out employees if they agree by Feb. 6.
The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like It: You might assume that tech-savvy people are the most open to using AI, but research suggests it's actually those who are least familiar with it. - "Our studies show this lower literacy-higher receptivity link is strongest for using AI tools in areas people associate with human traits, like providing emotional support or counseling. When it comes to tasks that don’t evoke the same sense of humanlike qualities—such as analyzing test results—the pattern flips. People with higher AI literacy are more receptive to these uses because they focus on AI’s efficiency, rather than any 'magical' qualities."
It's not a crime if we do it with an app - "Big Potato controls 97% of the frozen potato market, and any sector that large and concentrated is going to be pretty cozy. The execs at these companies all meet at industry associations, lobbying bodies, and as they job-hop between companies in the cartel. But they don't have to rely on personal connections to rig the price of potatoes: they do it through a third-party data-broker called Potatotrac. Each cartel member sends all their commercially sensitive data – supply costs, pricing, sales figures – to Potatotrac, and then Potatotrac uses that data to give 'advice' to the cartel members about 'optimal pricing.'"
The Trump-Colombia Crisis That Trump Deliberately Created and Then “Fixed,” Explained in One Paragraph: Media just fell for the oldest trick in the old brigand Trump's career-criminal playbook: the rope-a-dope. The fact that it did so confirms that it has learned nothing about how to deal with the man. - "So, for instance, it costs three times as much money to deport someone via a military flight than a civilian charter flight, which is why Democratic presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama—who in fact both deported more people than Trump did in his supposed tough-on-immigration first term—used civilian rather than military flights."
Coping With Endorphins
How to Weather the Storm
Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots: "Nepenthes generates random links that always point back to itself - the crawler downloads those new links. Nepenthes happily just returns more and more lists of links pointing back to itself."
