F1.com's feature series will offer fascinating insight into the individuals within an F1 driver's inner circle working to fuel their success.
In this series of features Formula 1.com is delving into the inner circle to gain a greater understanding of those who work closely with the stars of F1. This week, Robbie Anderson of Hintsa Performance explains the role of the sports psychologist.
James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed planetary nebula NGC 2392 with its MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) instrument, revealing the presence of dust and its varying structures within this tumultuous environment. Nicknamed the Lion Nebula due to its appearance, this collection of gas and dust is created and sculpted by the remains of a dying star, which is in the center and resembles the button nose of the lion.
While some dust is being destroyed by the bubble of ionized gas that forms the lion’s face, most of the gas is being ejected and migrating away from the star due to its radiation. In this image, cyan highlights the lion’s mane, which is the interior of a dust shell that is being illuminated by the central star. Within the mane, toward its edges, are purple clumps that look like they have cometary tails. These fluffy structures are also dust, which have managed to survive so far and protect the structures behind them.
Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/lion-nebula-roars-to-life-...
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI).
Image description: Planetary nebula NGC 2392, also called the Lion Nebula, against the black background of space. The nebula is in the center, circular in shape, and looks like a male lion’s head. In the very center is a small, bluish-white circle with eight-point diffraction spikes, a white dwarf star. Surrounding the star are light purple-red cavernous bubbles and shell-like rings. The bubbles and shells collectively form an oval with two small, wide arcs near the top, reminiscent of a lion’s face and its ears. What appears to be extended outward from the lion’s face is a thick ring of cyan material. The width of the ring is consistent throughout and resembles a mane. The area closest to the lion’s face looks cloudy, while the edges of the mane look like there are purple clumps of dust with comet-like tails and strands. In the background are distant galaxies and stars. Some galaxies appear as small purple points of light and others with visible blue spiral structures. A couple of the stars have diffraction spikes.
James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:
It's the circle of life…
Webb's look at the Lion Nebula, actually the remains of a dying lower-mass star, is in both the mid and near-infrared. Though massive stars undergo supernova explosions at the end of their lives, lower-mass stars like this one shed their outer layers, which turn into the shells of dust and gas you see here. At the center remains the hot stellar core, known as a white dwarf.
In the Lion Nebula’s case, its white dwarf is “cooking” everything from the inside and producing a bubble of ionized gas as it does. The gas bubble, which forms the lion’s face, is expanding over time and destroying dust that is in its path. Understanding why the swept-up gas has a complex structure of rings and shells, a common feature in nebula of this kind, is an ongoing endeavor.
Hubble observed this object in visible light in 2000, and now Webb is adding an infrared view to the greater picture.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/4fQ2aj3
Image credit: Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI).
Image description: Webb’s Near Infrared Camera and Mid Infrared Instrument combined image of planetary nebula NGC 2392, the Lion Nebula, against the black background of space. The nebula is at center, circular in shape, and looks like a male lion’s head. In the center is a small, pinkish-white circle with eight-point diffraction spikes, a white dwarf star. Surrounding the star are purple-pink cavernous bubbles and shell-like rings. The bubbles and shells collectively form an oval with two small, wide arcs near the top, reminiscent of a lion’s face and its ears. What appears to be extended outward from the lion’s face is a thick ring of purple-blue material. The width of the ring is consistent throughout and resembles a mane. The area closest to the lion’s face looks cloudy, while the edges of the mane look like there are clumps of dust with comet-like tails. In the background are distant galaxies and stars. Some galaxies are yellow and orange points of light and others have spiral structures. Some stars have diffraction spikes.
Anti-datacenter sentiment appears to be hardening in the US and UK, with more American jurisdictions blocking new builds and protesters marching against a planned facility in London's historic Brick Lane. A burst of new projects on both sides of the Atlantic has brought concerns about electricity bills, water supplies, and massive warehouse-like structures looming over nearby homes. More than 200 datacenter bans and moratoriums took effect in the US over the past 30 days, bringing the number of active restrictions nationwide to more than 550, according to The Information. New York became the first state to enact a moratorium last month, citing growing worries over the impact on utility rates and public health of the server farms, but its ban specifically targets large hyperscale facilities capable of consuming at least 50 MW. More recently, Texas governor Greg Abbott paused approvals for datacenter projects seeking access to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid until state regulators have audited their connection requests. The trend was already visible earlier this year, when figures showed that data hall capacity under construction in primary US markets had declined during the second half of 2025 as community opposition increasingly disrupted planning approvals. A recent Gallup survey found the majority of Americans are now opposed to datacenters being built in their area, many so strongly opposed that they would sooner see a nuclear power plant built nearby. President Trump appears to be in two minds over the increasing antipathy towards giant server farms. Last month, he expanded his Ratepayer Protection Pledge, whereby companies agree to protect American consumers from any price hikes due to the extra energy and grid infrastructure needed. However, he also spoke out about the Texas decision, saying it would be a mistake to push back on datacenters, as "taxes are going to go way down because this is a tremendous source of income." That argument sits awkwardly alongside a report earlier this year that found datacenter tax breaks cost Texas at least $1 billion a year in forgone revenue, with other states also unable to show that their subsidies paid off. Like the Trump administration, the UK government sees building new datacenters as a vital part of its ambitions to grow the AI industry. Last year, it unveiled its AI Opportunities Action Plan, which includes setting up "AI Growth Zones" with streamlined planning processes to boost the building of more facilities. But last weekend, protesters marched along Brick Lane, just east of the City of London, over a wider redevelopment of sites on and around the former Truman Brewery. One element would replace derelict buildings on Grey Eagle Street with a 5,200 sq m (56,000 sq ft) datacenter designed for 5.2 MW of IT capacity. Tower Hamlets council failed to determine the applications within the required period, prompting the developers to appeal. Despite opposition from local campaigners, the government allowed all four appeals following a public inquiry. The decision found that the proposals broadly accorded with existing development plans, while acknowledging some conflicts with local planning policies and limited harm to heritage assets. It also took account of the National Planning Policy Framework, which directs local authorities to identify suitable sites for datacenters. That policy has already helped overturn at least one council's decision to refuse planning permission for a server farm at a site near Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire. More recently, there have been protests against a massive facility planned for the Devon countryside, near the town of Great Torrington, while a meeting held by Google with residents close to its newly built facility at Waltham Cross north of London revealed the level of anger and mistrust felt by many local people. Elsewhere, protesters in Amsterdam threw acid at a datacenter under construction there, while opposition to a proposed project in Indianapolis saw gunshots fired at the home of a councilor who backed the plans. The datacenter industry is well aware it has an image problem. An entire session was devoted to discussing what to do about it at the Datacloud Global Congress event in Europe last year. ®
​​De Speld Sport Quote van het weekend.
​​​
&
Mark Zuckerberg, whose superyacht apparently spent the weekend ignoring or missing the distress signal from a boat that ran out of fuel near Alaska, has posted a deranged, 6,500 word essay detailing his vision for AI superintelligence, a future that is “for everyone” but which sounds less social than ever.
Zuckerberg posts these types of essays every so often for purposes that serve his own company, and this one, called “The Future Is For Everyone,” is designed to defend against general backlash to AI but also to Meta’s own practices. Zuckerberg lays out the potential use case for Meta glasses (whose huge marketing campaign cannot get people to stop calling them “pervert glasses”), AI agents, open weights AI development, and why data centers are not bad for communities, actually. Like most Silicon Valley “utopian” essays, to believe that any of this is going to go how Zuckerberg suggests it will requires one to have been recently concussed or to willfully ignore how this technology is being used today and believe that thousands of years of human nature will suddenly shift.
For example, Zuckerberg writes “Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more. It will free up time for the things you enjoy, and help you accomplish more than you could otherwise. It will have strong privacy and security options so you can trust it to handle all of your personal content knowing that no one else can access your information, similar to how encryption works on WhatsApp. You’ll be able to interact with your agent through any device, including your glasses to keep you present in the moment with the people you care about.”
Zuckerberg does not grapple with, or even gesture at, the idea that some people may not want to have an AI agent working on their “hobbies.” He does not consider that, even if everyone were to have an AI agent, perhaps not everyone would use these AI agents for good. In the few months that AI agents have become popular among the early adopter set, we have seen “benevolent” AI agents endlessly spam humans and the internet with drivel. And those are just the kind-of-annoying ones. We have seen AI agents hack companies, and over the weekend an Australian man went viral because his AI agent that he asked to sign him up for gym classes did so by hacking the gym’s reservation system and canceling other people’s reservations.
Like many AI weirdos, Zuckerberg explains how AI has already changed his life by allowing him to automate many of the joyful tasks of parenting by outsourcing them to an agent: “My agent flags interesting information and helps me prototype ideas. It helps keep me healthy by monitoring my sleep and then watching as I train and giving feedback. My daughter loves to bake so my agent plans personalized recipes for us to make together each weekend, orders the ingredients, and then offers suggestions as we’re baking,” he writes. “My 8 year old daughter can already code her ideas and produce videos in an evening that would have either taken me months or been impossible previously. Now we’re designing a robot together.”
Zuckerberg’s essay goes on and on and on like this. He imagines a future where everyone can do everything and wants to do everything. In Zuckerberg’s future, everyone will have a business run by their AI agent. Everyone will be inventing things and doing basic research on the nature of the universe and physical elements, for some reason. Zuckerberg writes that Meta employees, with the help of AI, are “generating novel crystal structures that are ideal for augmented reality glasses,” then writes “everyone will soon have invention superpowers,” and that “everyone […] will be able to contribute to scientific progress.”
In this future that, again, is for “everyone,” Zuckerberg explains that AI tools will be free, but that, actually, using it will be a tiered system that is exactly the same as it is now: “For everyone to be part of the future, everyone must have the ability to use superintelligence to improve their lives and shape the world. We will offer free versions that will be accessible to billions of people. For those who want to pay to use more compute, there will be a dynamic auction mechanism that will guarantee that everyone gets the lowest price possible for the intelligence and compute they’re using while also ensuring the capacity is used for whatever people collectively find most valuable.”
Zuckerberg’s essay is full of platitudes and sentences that mean nothing, “thought experiments” that are not developed or explored in any way, discussions of “freedom,” etc. Here are some sentences:
- “Humanity is not a monoculture. People’s diverse values represent different tradeoffs they would make on important issues. There is no technological solution that can align with everyone’s opposing interests and values at once.”
- “As a thought experiment, imagine only one person had a superintelligent lawyer. They would have an unfair advantage in court — even if they were wrong on the merits. That would lead to a worse society. But now imagine everyone has a superintelligent lawyer. In this case, justice would be carried out much more fairly and efficiently than it is today when there is often an imbalance in skills and resources in litigation.”
- “People have an infinite demand for new experiences and have always found new problems to tackle.”
- “While the number of questions a person can ask in a day is limited, the number of valuable things superintelligence can invent to help achieve your goals is unlimited.”
- “If people can use AI to invent incredibly valuable new things, then it will make more sense to allocate it towards that rather than automating existing jobs. The more superintelligence serves as a tool of invention, the more likely that individual capability outpaces automation and the future is better for people.”
- “In a free society, people will have tools that can be used for good or harm, but law enforcement and military have more weapons and intelligence-gathering.”
There is an entire section on data centers. In Zuckerberg’s future they are powered by power infrastructure Meta owns (which is not the case currently) and create lots of high-paying, long-lasting jobs (not the case currently).
There is an entire section on “preventing government tyranny” by giving everyone superintelligence: “To maintain freedom, we must ensure that superintelligence primarily empowers individuals. The ideal in liberal democracy is that people naturally hold all rights and only agree to restrict some freedoms to protect the common good. Similarly, individuals should have access to personal superintelligence and should only be subject to restrictions when truly required.”
Zuckerberg does not address the backlash to his company, his data centers, his social media platforms, or his surveillance glasses. He does not discuss the slopification of the internet, gestures at job loss only through the lens that superintelligence will somehow fix it once AI agents start businesses for everyone or “invent incredibly valuable new things,” and describes a future in which bad actors essentially do not exist or are easily dispatched with.
It’s the future Zuckerberg wants. It’s not the future “everyone” wants.
Three years ago environmental regulators discovered garbage burning deep inside California's Chiquita Canyon Landfill, reports the Los Angeles Times. [Alternate URL here.] "Few imagined the calamity that would follow.
"Somehow the landfill's pollution control system introduced oxygen below, causing decades-old waste to rapidly decompose, generating intense heat and eventually widespread smoldering, federal and state environmental agencies say."
The broiling temperatures released toxic gases and hazardous liquid waste that bubbled up to the surface. Residents living in the nearby communities of Val Verde and Castaic have phoned in thousands of complaints about stench and lived with nausea, dizziness and trouble breathing. The underground fire has tripled in size since first confirmed in 2023. Recently a towering mound of landfill garbage perched on the hillside has warped and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage and chemical-filled liquid, or leachate, according to the California water board...
At first, local officials described the problem in Los Angeles County at Chiquita Canyon landfill as a rare, even unprecedented disaster. But since then, California regulators have learned that at least two other landfills are wrestling with high temperatures and similar conditions. Scorching temperatures have overtaken at least 30 acres of El Sobrante landfill near Corona in Riverside County. Excessive heat and emissions have also been detected at Avenal landfill in the San Joaquin Valley.
The discoveries raise an unsettling question: How many landfills are dealing with these disasters? Are they a broader problem in California...? Chiquita Canyon closed at the end of the 2024 and stopped accepting new garbage. But the fire is expected to last for years as it continues to consume decades-old trash.
"Underground landfill fires are complex, nearly impossible to extinguish once they break out," according to the article. "As regulators search for a solution, residents find themselves struggling with the wait."
Some residents have worn gas masks — or sold their homes.
"Somehow the landfill's pollution control system introduced oxygen below, causing decades-old waste to rapidly decompose, generating intense heat and eventually widespread smoldering, federal and state environmental agencies say."
The broiling temperatures released toxic gases and hazardous liquid waste that bubbled up to the surface. Residents living in the nearby communities of Val Verde and Castaic have phoned in thousands of complaints about stench and lived with nausea, dizziness and trouble breathing. The underground fire has tripled in size since first confirmed in 2023. Recently a towering mound of landfill garbage perched on the hillside has warped and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage and chemical-filled liquid, or leachate, according to the California water board...
At first, local officials described the problem in Los Angeles County at Chiquita Canyon landfill as a rare, even unprecedented disaster. But since then, California regulators have learned that at least two other landfills are wrestling with high temperatures and similar conditions. Scorching temperatures have overtaken at least 30 acres of El Sobrante landfill near Corona in Riverside County. Excessive heat and emissions have also been detected at Avenal landfill in the San Joaquin Valley.
The discoveries raise an unsettling question: How many landfills are dealing with these disasters? Are they a broader problem in California...? Chiquita Canyon closed at the end of the 2024 and stopped accepting new garbage. But the fire is expected to last for years as it continues to consume decades-old trash.
"Underground landfill fires are complex, nearly impossible to extinguish once they break out," according to the article. "As regulators search for a solution, residents find themselves struggling with the wait."
Some residents have worn gas masks — or sold their homes.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ATHENE (ANP/AFP) - De natuurbrand die maandagochtend in de buurt van Athene uitbrak, is onder controle gebracht. Volgens de brandweer is er geen actief vuurfront meer. Wel blijven hulpdiensten uit voorzorg in het gebied vanwege de hoge temperaturen en harde wind.
De brand ontstond in de buurt van Kouvaras, iets ten zuidoosten van de Griekse hoofdstad. Door windstoten met snelheden van meer dan 70 kilometer per uur konden de vlammen zich snel uitbreiden. Bijna tweehonderd brandweerlieden werden ingezet, ondersteund door veertig blusvoertuigen, twee blusvliegtuigen en vier helikopters.
Meerdere gebieden werden geëvacueerd en een opslagplaats van een veehouderij brandde af. Voor zover bekend raakte niemand gewond.
Het is de tweede grote brand bij Athene deze zomer. Tien dagen geleden verwoestte een brand ruim 11.000 hectare, en vielen er twee doden bij een botsing van twee blushelikopters. In grote delen van Griekenland geldt maandag een zeer hoog risico op natuurbranden.