iRobot, the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company that brought the Roomba vacuum cleaner into American homes over its 35-year history, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday and will be acquired by Picea, its Chinese contract manufacturer that also produces competing household devices.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board placed blame for the company's demise on the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan, which opposed Amazon's $1.7 billion bid to acquire iRobot. That deal collapsed in January 2024 amid regulatory pressure from both the FTC and European antitrust authorities. Senator Elizabeth Warren and other progressives had urged Khan to block the acquisition, arguing in a September 2022 letter that Amazon is "'almost universally recognized' as the leader in warehouse and fulfillment robotics space" and that the deal "would open up a new market to Amazon's abuses."

After the deal fell through, iRobot cut 31% of its workforce and moved "non-core engineering functions to lower-cost regions." The company had shifted production to Vietnam to reduce its exposure to China but was hit by tariffs under Trump's Liberation Day trade measures -- initially 46%, later reduced to 20%. iRobot said the trade uncertainty made it difficult to operate.

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More carbon dioxide in the environment is making food more calorific but less nutritious -- and also potentially more toxic, a study has found. From a report: Sterre ter Haar, a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and other researchers at the institution created a method to compare multiple studies on plants' responses to increased CO2 levels. The results, she said, were a shock: although crop yields increase, they become less nutrient-dense. While zinc levels in particular drop, lead levels increase.

"Seeing how dramatic some of the nutritional changes were, and how this differed across plants, was a big surprise," she told the Guardian. "We aren't seeing a simple dilution effect but rather a complete shift in the composition of our foods... This also raises the question of whether we should adjust our diets in some way, or how we grow or produce our food."

While scientists have been looking at the effects of more CO2 in the atmosphere on plants for a decade, their work has been difficult to compare. The new research established a baseline measurement derived from the observation that the gas appears to have a linear effect on growth, meaning that if the CO2 level doubles, so does the effect on nutrients. This made it possible to compare almost 60,000 measurements across 32 nutrients and 43 crops, including rice, potatoes, tomatoes and wheat.

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The Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest society of computing professionals, announced that all publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will become freely available to everyone starting January 2026. Authors will retain full copyright to their published work under the new arrangement, and ACM has committed to defending those works against copyright and integrity-related violations.

The transition follows what ACM described as extensive dialogue with authors, Special Interest Group leaders, editorial boards, libraries, and research institutions globally. Students, educators, and researchers at institutions of all sizes -- from well-resourced universities to emerging research communities -- will gain unrestricted access to the full catalog of ACM-published work. The Digital Library houses decades of computing research across journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and books.

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In een Europese top die velen nog lang zal bijblijven besloten de lidstaten de bevroren Russische tegoeden niet aan te boren voor steun aan Oekraïne, maar zelf een lening uit te geven. Dat is pijnlijk voor onder meer bondskanselier Merz, maar winst voor de Belgische premier Bart De Wever.

Behalve het verbieden van gezichtsbedekkende kleding, moet schade makkelijker kunnen worden verhaald op betogers. Het voornemen staat haaks op een advies van het WODC.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Vlaardingen (bekend van de loodgietersoorlog) heeft een nieuwe oorlog. DE KAPPERSOORLOG. Jij hebt een bloempotkapsel geknipt bij Lulbert! Nietes! KNAL! "Stenen door de ruiten, verf tegen de gevels: kappers in Vlaardingen hebben al maanden last van een mysterieuze reeks vernielingen." Nu heeft Vlaardingen HEEL VEEL kappers (zoals heel veel steden en dorpen heel veel kappers hebben) en de kappers die het AD spreekt heten Amir, Beyaz, Omar, Karim en Yussuf. Nou moe. En knippen dat ze doen! Knippen! En wassen, dat doen ze ook. Haren, en geld. "De vernielingen zijn slecht voor het imago van alle kappers, zegt Yussuf, die vorige week Golden Hands Barberhouse opende." Kijk en zo verpest een klein clubje kappers het weer voor de rest.

As the dust settles on a stunning Formula 1 season, Lawrence Barretto looks back at the campaign and selects his overall winners and losers of 2025...