Short Takes – 7-4-25

NOTE: SpaceNews.com has apparently gone to a paid-subscription-only service, so I will probably not be commenting on their articles in these posts for the foreseeable future. As an author I can sympathize with the need to financially support the collection of this news, but I only have a limited amount of budget for subscriptions.

Websites hosting major US climate reports taken down. APNews.com article. Pull quote: “Harvard climate scientist John Holdren, who was President Obama’s science advisor and whose office directed the assessments, said after the 2014 edition he visited governors, mayors and other local officials who told him how useful the 841-page report was. It helped them decide whether to raise roads, build seawalls and even move hospital generators from basements to roofs, he said.”

Trump Officials Want to Prosecute Over the ICEBlock App. Lawyers Say That’s Unconstitutional. Wired.com article. Pull quote: “According to the Apple listing for ICEBlock, the app does not store any data on its users. Since it does not collect user data, Aaron doesn’t know how many people have used the app in Los Angeles, for example, or even where past sightings have been posted. Individual users can only see what’s been reported within a 5-mile radius and the sightings auto-delete after four hours.”

Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean, with key climate implications. ICM.CSIC.es article. Pull quote: “According to the research team, the consequences of this reversal are already becoming visible. The upwelling of deep, warm, CO₂-rich waters is believed to be driving the accelerated melting of sea ice in the Southern Ocean. In the long term, this process could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries—potentially with catastrophic consequences for the global climate.”

A new ‘eye’ may radically change how robots see. Sciencenews.org article. Pull quote: “The system, known as LENS, consists of a sensor, a chip and a super-tiny AI model to learn and remember location. Key to the system is the chip and sensor combo, called Speck, a commercially available product from the company SynSense. Speck’s visual sensor operates “more like the human eye” and is more efficient than a camera, says study coauthor Adam Hines, a bioroboticist at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.”