Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue posted a now-viral account on X describing how an OpenClaw agent she had tasked with sorting through her overstuffed email inbox went rogue, deleting messages in what she called a "speed run" while ignoring her repeated commands from her phone to stop.
"I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb," Yue wrote, sharing screenshots of the ignored stop prompts as proof. Yue said she had previously tested the agent on a smaller "toy" inbox where it performed well enough to earn her trust, so she let it loose on the real thing. She believes the larger volume of data triggered compaction -- a process where the context window grows too large and the agent begins summarizing and compressing its running instructions, potentially dropping ones the user considers critical.
The agent may have reverted to its earlier toy-inbox behavior and skipped her last prompt telling it not to act. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent designed to run as a personal assistant on local hardware.
The amount of power being sought by new datacentre projects in Great Britain would exceed the national current peak electricity consumption, according to an industry watchdog. From a report: Ofgem said about 140 proposed datacentre schemes, driven by use of artificial intelligence, could require 50 gigawatts of electricity -- 5GW more than the country's current peak demand.
The figure was revealed in an Ofgem consultation on demand for new connections to the power grid. It pointed to a "surge in demand" for connection applications between November 2024 and June last year, with a significant number coming from datacentres. This has exceeded even the most ambitious forecasts.
Meanwhile, new renewable energy projects are not being connected to the grid at the pace they are being built to help meet the government's clean energy targets by the end of the decade. Ofgem said the work required to connect surging numbers of datacentres could mean delays for other projects that are "critical for decarbonisation and economic growth." Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI tools such as chatbots and image generators, playing a vital role in training and operating products such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
Bij een avond van de stichting Protect Ukraine in poppodium Paradiso konden Nederlanders even voelen hoe het is om doelwit te zijn van Russische agressie. Ook werd er gewaarschuwd: voor Nederland blijft steun voor Oekraïne van levensbelang.
Firefighters search for 39 people missing in debris after river burst and houses were swept away
Three firefighters pulled a man’s body from the mud amid the rubble of houses swept away in a landslide in south-eastern Brazil, where 30 people died and 39 were still missing on Tuesday after torrential rains.
A river in the state of Minas Gerais burst its banks and streets became raging currents of brown water after an overnight downpour in a region that has seen record rain this month.
Zohran Mamdani calls for ‘respect’ of New York police as hundreds of thousands in US still face power outages
New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, called for “respect” of local police officers in the wake of Monday’s blizzard after a viral video showed some getting pelted by snowballs in Washington Square Park while responding to a large snowball fight.
In the video, a crowd of people boo and jeer at two officers, and some throw snowballs in their faces. At one point, the officers push at least two people to the ground in response to the snowballs.
Dubbed the “vine that ate the South,” the infamous kudzu plant has a reputation. The fast-multiplying, invasive arrowroot was brought to North America in the 19th century and promoted to ease erosion, although the hot, muggy climate of the Southern U.S. proved too accommodating. For decades, kudzu has spread at a rapid speed, swallowing up roadsides, infrastructure, and really anything in its path. Its seemingly insatiable growth has vaulted the perennial plant to mythic status in Southern ecology, conservation, and culture.
As a child in Birmingham, Joyce Lin was accustomed to the vine, although as an adult, she’s found that it’s difficult to disentangle kudzu’s reputation and tangible influence. “It is loathed for shading out the native flora, but its impact is often overstated,” she says. “While it visibly thrives along roadsides where there is a lot of sun, kudzu is unable to penetrate deeply into forests.”
This complicated legacy inspired a body of work that melds vernacular furniture with the plant. Kudzu Series comprises four sculptures that wouldn’t be out of place on an abandoned Southern farm. A found metal floorlamp cracks in two, wrapping the leafy plant around a bulb like a lopsided shade. The vines also climb up a wooden ladder, their sinuous roots mimicking the steps of the lower rungs.
Lin is interested in the relationship between reality and fantasy, particularly as she transforms synthetic materials into uncanny knotted bark and concentric growth rings in the shape of a chair. Kudzu Series is no different. While she foraged the thick vines from areas near her home in Houston, the artificial leaves emerged from a laborious process.
Citing the techniques of Michael Anderson, who made models for Yale’s Peabody Museum before retiring, Lin made plaster and silicone press molds. “My method uses wires sandwiched between dyed shop towels and tissue paper soaked in five-minute epoxy. I painstakingly painted in the veins and details on each leaf. Imperfections of the casts ultimately turned into brown spots and bug holes,” she says. Creating seamless transitions from wood to vine with epoxy clay and utilizing inner armatures adds to the surreal qualities of the works, as the plant appears to sprout directly from the industrial material. Torching, vinegar, and steel wool weathered areas that were too pristine.
Perched on a few leaves are a handful of kudzu bugs, rotund insects that arrived in the U.S. in the aughts and have decimated the vines. “The chair has approximately 332 leaves and one bug, the table has 101 leaves and three bugs, the floor lamp has 162 leaves and two bugs, and the ladder has 117 leaves and one bug, which in total took me a little over a year to make,” the artist says.
Detail of “Kudzu Chair” (2025). Photo by Logan Jackson
For Lin, this body of work is a sort of metaphor for persistence and resilience. She adds:
It arrived as an outsider, yet it has become an icon of the South, appearing in art, music, and literature. It outcompetes species, yet its flexibility and resilience make it uniquely suited to survive a changing climate. Its roots are edible, its vines are weavable, its fibers can be used to make cloth and paper, and it has been used in East Asian medicine for centuries.
Lin is currently teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design and will spend the summer in Philadelphia for the Windgate Arts Residency Program. Follow her work on Instagram.
Detail of “Kudzu Floor Lamp” (2025)“Kudzu Ladder” (2025), wood, kudzu vine, cloth, epoxy, wire, and paint. Photo by Logan JacksonDetail of “Kudzu Ladder” (2025). Photo by Logan JacksonDetail of “Kudzu Floor Lamp” (2025)Detail of “Kudzu Side Table” (2025)
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