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Simon Galbraith says Rupert Lowe’s party can ‘spark a British renaissance’ if it gets into power

• UK politics live – latest updates

The hard-right Restore Britain party has got its first major donation of £500,000 from an IT entrepreneur in a sign it may continue to pose a threat to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Rupert Lowe, an MP who left Reform UK before starting his own party, announced on Tuesday that the British businessman Simon Galbraith had contributed two donations of £250,000 this year.

For a brief moment last week, it appeared that an ICE officer, who allegedly shot a man during the early 2026 occupation of Minneapolis and then lied about it, might actually face legal consequences for his actions.

Christian Castro, the now-suspended ICE officer in question, was confined to a Texas jail and potentially faced two sets of criminal charges. Minnesota prosecutors charged him with four felony counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime, and sought his extradition from Texas, where he ordinarily lives, to Minnesota. Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, were reportedly planning to charge Castro with a criminal violation of a federal civil rights law.

Castro’s case was on track to become an encouraging example of how the American system can bring rogue law enforcement officers to account — a federal officer facing clear consequences for allegedly breaking the law in the unpopular and violent wave of ICE raids in Minnesota.

But all of that now appears to be in limbo. According to the New York Times, the federal charges, which had to be approved by officials in Washington, DC, “fell apart in the final hours for reasons that remain unclear.” Castro, meanwhile, may never return to Minnesota — and may even flee to Mexico — thanks to a federal court decision permitting Texas’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to effectively sit on Minnesota’s request to extradite Castro until after a state law required Castro’s release.

It’s the latest chapter in an ongoing saga where Trump administration officials, federal courts eager to shield federal law enforcement officers from justice, and now Texas state officials all work together to ensure that ICE and other law enforcement personnel involved in Trump’s violent crackdown in Minnesota face no legal consequences for their actions. 

If Castro gets off scot-free, he will owe his freedom to an unusual combination of federal and state officials who appear to have taken extraordinary measures to shield Castro from accountability. But while his case is unusually dramatic, it is hardly unique. An array of MAGA sympathizers and movement conservatives in state governments, the federal judiciary, and the Trump administration have all pushed to place ICE and similar agencies above the law.

What is the legal fight over Castro about?

Castro allegedly fired his gun through the door of Julio Sosa-Celis’s Minneapolis home in January, striking him in the leg. Although the Trump administration initially claimed that Sosa-Celis and his roommate attacked ICE officers with a broom and shovel, that allegation fell apart after prosecutors viewed video of the incident. Castro was suspended from his job at ICE without pay.

In May, a Minnesota prosecutor filed charges against Castro, and Castro was later arrested in Texas pursuant to an arrest warrant arising out of those charges.

That arrest should have guaranteed that Castro would be returned to Minnesota for trial. The Constitution provides that “a Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz formally sought Castro’s extradition on June 2.

Rather than comply with this request, however, Abbott took two actions that may prevent Castro from ever being tried for his alleged crimes. Abbott initiated an investigation, claiming, on dubious legal grounds, that he may not be able to extradite Castro because Castro does not meet the legal definition of a “fugitive.” Abbott also sent his lawyers to federal court to argue that the court could not order Texas to comply with the Constitution’s mandatory extradition provision.

Meanwhile, a deadline loomed over Minnesota’s request. Though Castro was incarcerated in a Texas jail, Texas law only permitted the jail to hold Castro for 90 days, at least without an order from Abbott saying that Castro must be extradited. During his incarceration, Castro also made several phone calls to his romantic partner in Mexico, and they discussed Castro’s desire to move to that country. 

So Minnesota quite reasonably feared that, if the 90 days were allowed to expire, Castro would flee the country.

Nevertheless, last Wednesday a Trump-appointed Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. backed Abbott’s play. His opinion in Walz v. Abbott rests on an extraordinarily credulous interpretation of Abbott’s treatment of Castro.

Briefly, Rodriguez’s opinion claims that it is too soon for a court to order Abbott to extradite Castro because Abbott has not yet formally “denied the request for a rendition warrant.” Instead, Rodriguez notes that Abbott asked Texas’s secretary of state to investigate whether Castro should be surrendered to Minnesota, and suggests that Minnesota must wait for that “investigation” to play out.

Oddly, Rodriguez’s opinion also includes a footnote indicating that he believes Abbott’s supposed investigation is baseless. The premise of that investigation is that Castro may not count as a “fugitive” because he moved to Texas after ICE directed him to do so. But, as Rodriguez notes, the Supreme Court defined who counts as a fugitive more than a century ago, and the Court’s definition does not exclude people who move because of a job, federal or otherwise.

So, to summarize Rodriguez’s decision, he ruled that Texas may delay complying with Minnesota’s extradition request, based on an investigation into a legal question that the Supreme Court has already resolved, and that it may delay compliance until state law requires Texas to release Castro. Castro was released on Thursday.

Thanks to this decision, it is now unclear whether Castro will ever face charges. Even if he remains in Texas, and even if Abbott eventually decides to comply with the extradition request, Texas authorities will now have to find Castro again and rearrest him. And Castro may flee to Mexico. While Minnesota can formally request Castro’s extradition from Mexico, that process could take years.

And, in case there is any doubt, there’s now strong evidence that Abbott’s “investigation” was a sham, and that Abbott was always motivated by hostility toward Minnesota’s attempt to prosecute Castro. One day after Rodriguez issued his decision, Abbott posted on X mocking Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, which said that Ellison and his legal team “are such bad lawyers.”

The post also labeled Minnesota a “sanctuary state” and threatened to bus immigrants from Texas to Minnesota.

Even if Abbott had complied with the Constitution, Minnesota prosecutors faced an uphill battle in their case against Castro

Even if Castro had been delivered to Minnesota authorities without incident, or even if he is arrested in Minnesota at some point in the future, it’s far from clear whether state prosecutors may bring charges against a federal law enforcement officer who allegedly violated Minnesota’s criminal law while carrying out his official duties. And the biggest obstacle standing against such a prosecution is a fairly sensible Supreme Court decision that long predates modern political fights over immigration enforcement.

The Court’s decision in In re Neagle (1890) arose from a wild incident where a former chief justice of the state of California attempted to kill a sitting Supreme Court justice. David Terry, the former state justice, married a woman who claimed that she was entitled to a share of a US senator’s fortune. After Justice Stephen Field ruled against Terry’s wife, Terry threatened Field’s life, and so Field was assigned a deputy US Marshal named David Neagle as his bodyguard.

Some time after Field’s decision against Terry’s wife, the justice was traveling by train in California, and he was attacked by Terry. Neagle shot and killed Terry. And California attempted to charge Neagle, the federal bodyguard, with murder. 

The Supreme Court tossed out this prosecution, and that decision has long been read to limit state governments’ power to prosecute federal officers who commit a state law crime while engaged in their official duties.

That said, the Court’s more recent decision in Martin v. United States (2025) suggests that Neagle may not be a total bar to state prosecutions of ICE officers. Martin read Neagle fairly narrowly, to say that federal officials are protected from state prosecutions only when their actions “were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”

So that suggests that, if Castro is tried for violating Minnesota law, the question of whether he is immune from prosecution is likely to turn on whether courts determine that his alleged decision to fire a shot through Sosa-Celis’s door (and, potentially, to lie about Sosa-Celis’s actions) was a “necessary and proper” way for Castro to carry out his responsibilities as an immigration enforcement officer.

It’s hard to predict, however, how the courts would rule on this question. The Martin decision is fairly new, and the rule Martin seems to apply to federal officers charged with state crimes is vague. 

Federal law also provides that Castro’s trial, should it happen, must occur in federal court — although this federal court may still hear a state-law prosecution. And that means that any decision allowing Castro’s prosecution to move forward would appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which is one of the most conservative appeals courts in the federal system.

Of course, if Minnesota lost in the Eighth Circuit, it could potentially bring the question of whether Castro may be charged with violating a Minnesota criminal law to the Supreme Court. But, while the Martin decision suggests that Minnesota may have a chance of prevailing before the justices, several of the Court’s other precedents indicate that this Court is unlikely to rule against a federal law enforcement officer.

The slow death of Bivens

Separately from the legal question of whether someone like Castro can be charged with a crime, there is also the question of whether the victim could sue. It used to be the case that people who are victimized by federal law enforcement officers could sue those officers directly, but the current Supreme Court has virtually shut down these suits. The Court’s treatment of this question is a window into their expansive view of immunity for federal law enforcement.

More than five decades ago, the Supreme Court established in Bivens v. Six Unknown Names Agents (1971) that federal officers who violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” may be sued and potentially ordered to compensate their victim.

But the Court’s current majority is extremely hostile to Bivens, and has walked right up to the edge of overruling it. In Hernández v. Mesa (2020), the Court’s Republican majority held that a Border Patrol agent who allegedly fatally shot a Mexican teenager in the face was immune from a lawsuit brought by the teenager’s family. More recently, in Egbert v. Boule (2022), the Court declared that federal law enforcement officers are immune from suit if there is “any rational reason (even one)” to justify giving them immunity.

In November, the Court will hear the Nielsen v. Watanabe that could potentially overrule what little remains of Bivens.

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority, in other words, has spent the last several years immunizing federal law enforcement officers like Castro from civil lawsuits. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it will also immunize Castro from criminal charges brought under state law, should his case somehow wind up before the justices, but it isn’t a hopeful sign for Minnesota prosecutors.

And that’s, of course, assuming that Minnesota law enforcement somehow manages to take custody of Castro. Abbott’s gamesmanship, and Rodriguez’s decision to bless that gamesmanship, may ultimately mean that Castro is never apprehended by Minnesota officials.

30 августа в 22:01 МСК один из наших диалоговых воркфлоу упал на ноде Chat Logic. В журнале исполнения 928811 осталось короткое сообщение:

Exclusive: Two congressmembers respond to revelations of government snooping on journalists, non-profits and unions

Two congressional Democrats asked a government watchdog Tuesday to investigate the Trump administration’s use of an obscure law to secretly collect records on journalists, non-profits and unions without judicial oversight.

The request from the senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington seen by the Guardian comes amid mounting scrutiny over the way the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently used its power to issue administrative summonses related to customs matters to make extraordinary unilateral demands for information. They sent their request to the government accountability office (GAO), the nonpartisan congressional watchdog.

Идея этой статьи пришла мне в голову, когда алгоритмы Ютуба подкинули мне видео со схожим названием, где автор рассказывал о своём 2-летнем пути в геймдев после 40 лет. Меня просто поразило – насколько у нас оказались схожие стартовые точки. Но вот двухлетний итог работы у меня и автора этого видео оказался почти диаметрально разным. Вот об этом, а также подвести итог моих двух лет разработки игры с полного нуля в 42 года я и хочу рассказать в своей новой статье.

Вот видеоверсия данной статья на YouTube, RuTube, VK Видео, т.к. полотно текста получилось довольно большое (отчетная статья, всё же), а многим будет более комфортно не читать, а смотреть.

Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly finds warmth and humor in Rachael Gunn’s ordeal, but never fully reckons with what her notoriety meant for breaking

Early in Netflix’s new documentary, Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly, Australian B-girl Rachael Gunn, recounts a session she had with her sports psychologist prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“Right before the Olympics, I went to my therapist, panicked,” she says. Her therapist asked her what was the worst thing that could happen. And she said, “The whole world could laugh at me.” Her therapist responded: “Do you think that’s reasonable?” Cue Gunn’s hysterical laughter.

После того как мой пет-проект случайно «выстрелил» на Reddit, я решил что пора поделится и своей кроссплатформенной библиотекой на C++20 для мониторинга железа.

Рассказываю историю создания hardware_monitor_cpp: как избавиться от лишних зависимостей, получить адекватную статистику swap-файла под Windows и macOS, упаковать все в удобное C++ API, а заодно получить готовую консольную утилиту с визуализацией графиков прямо в терминале.

The pace of change in software engineering is only accelerating, especially since January of this year. This is all to do with the industry-wide adoption of LLMs, AI tooling, and AI infrastructure. At The Pragmatic Engineer, we always want to capture as much of what’s going on as possible at startups, Big Tech, and other businesses, in order to share with subscribers. That’s why we’re launching an essay competition with a chance to win up to $10,000, this week!

Send us up to 10,000 words on how you see things at your startup or tech company, or at a business you’re connected with. The best entries will be published in the Pragmatic Engineer and win prizes of $2,500, plus one grand prize of $10,000 for the best essay we read.

The Pragmatic Engineer reports many developments in tech in our deepdives, including how building software is changing at Anthropic, why Ramp built its own in-house coding agent, how Uber uses AI for development, how Codex is built and what it could mean for the future of software engineering, and much more. Almost every company we talk with currently says that processes which worked fine for years are suddenly pretty outdated.

This pace of change makes it hard to cover the full breadth and diversity of tech in one deepdive per week – especially right now, when engineers are building and using new and better tools in every part of the software development lifecycle. 

So, we’re launching a writing challenge to encourage software builders to share how things on the ground are changing. We’ll share these cutting-edge reports with readers in future editions of the Pragmatic Engineer.

So, tell us what’s new, different, better, and worse in your part of the tech industry since AI entered your workflow! 

What we’re looking for

• An essay written for software engineers: 3,000 – 10,000 words on one of these topics:
  • How software engineering is changing at your company, institution, or open source project
  • The engineering culture at your company, institution, or Open source project in 2026
  • How you build software in your company, institution, or open source project
  • Software engineers turning into AI engineers at your company, institution, or open source project. Basically, how the work is changing
• First-hand details: Winning essays will include the authors’ personal observations and opinions.
• Include details about the team and company: Including details about the team and company in the spotlight is important and enriches the essay by painting a more complete picture for readers; what engineering practices are changing, what’s still the same, what about tooling, and processes? Is there any “traditional wisdom” that no longer holds true – or is still true today? It’s not necessary for writers to work at a company/team being written about.
• Software engineers and “builders” only: We want to hear from folks who build software; meaning that you have built from scratch, pushed to prod, or been paged when your service (or someone else’s) caused an outage. Basically, if you do this currently, or did it in the past, then your essay is eligible for entry. You don’t have to be a builder right now if you’re still close to those who build software.
• Individual work. This competition is specifically for individuals, so articles written collectively by teams are not eligible. Of course, outside of this competition, The Pragmatic Engineer always welcomes articles from teams that want to share interesting developments!
• No AI writing allowed. Writing is thinking, and we are interested in your own thoughts and observations, not a sharp, one-sentence observation turned into three paragraphs of blob text by an LLM. Using AI as a research tool is allowed if you’re confident about the accuracy of its output, but all the words must be written by a person.
• Submitted essays must not be available to read elsewhere before 20 October. The essay has to be purpose-written for this competition and cannot have been published online or in print prior to 20 October 2026 in order to be eligible. After this date, a submitted essay can be published on any company blog, personal blog, or other medium.

Prizes

The competition has the following prizes:

• Grand prize: $10,000 and publication in The Pragmatic Engineer (following editing), and a Pragmatic Engineer surprise package. For winning entries, we reserve the right to make edits for legal, editorial, style, grammar, and punctuation reasons.
• Runner-up prize(s): $2,500 + sharing an excerpt in The Pragmatic Engineer + a The Pragmatic Engineer surprise package. Focus of the runner up category includes viewpoints from:
  • Bootstrapped (non-VC-funded) companies
  • More “traditional” companies that not digital-first, or which even predate digitalization
  • AI-native startups founded in 2023 or later which have been using AI tools since day one
  • Academia, government institutions, and open source projects

For quality deepdives: We plan to publish a roundup of essays in the future on topics which contain interesting learnings, and that clearly show great effort on the part of authors. These pieces will receive a The Pragmatic Engineer surprise package.

Timeline

• Midnight, 4 October, PST: deadline for all submissions.
• 20 October: decision on the prizes.
• 3 November: expected publication of the Grand Prize winner

FAQ

Why is AI writing banned from this contest? I want to use AI to write my essay like I do for writing code! 

It’s a rule that you cannot include writing in your essay which was generated by AI. As everyone who reads this newsletter likely knows; there is no shortage of ways to detect AI-written text these days! The Pragmatic Newsletter is fully written by humans, and the same applies here. The reason for this hardline stance is that we believe in the value of human thought and experience, as told by people with first-hand knowledge. It’s also about the audience: The “audience” for AI-written code is usually a machine, whereas the writing in Pragmatic Engineer is for humans, by humans. AI produces a statistical average in its output which creates uniform, dull text that’s an inferior reading experience to human writing – at least today it is.

Can I publish my essay online after writing it?

In order to be eligible for consideration and prizes, an essay cannot be available to read anywhere online or in print before or after it is submitted to this contest. After 20 October 2026, no publication restrictions apply.

Can my essay be changed after I send it?

For spelling, punctuation, grammar, legal, and editorial reasons, the Pragmatic Engineer reserves the right to edit or amend all writing published on this platform.

Seventy beaches across New South Wales are part of the $34m dawn-to-dusk drone monitoring program, which one expert has called ‘the best technology we have at the moment’

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

“Hey Taha, what’s the visibility like?” shouts a man with a towel slung over his shoulder.

“Uh, nice,” says Surf Life Saving New South Wales drone operator Taha Kafil-Hussain.

Seventy beaches across New South Wales are part of the $34m dawn-to-dusk drone monitoring program, which one expert has called ‘the best technology we have at the moment’

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

“Hey Taha, what’s the visibility like?” shouts a man with a towel slung over his shoulder.

“Uh, nice,” says Surf Life Saving New South Wales drone operator Taha Kafil-Hussain.

Canadian PM is set to retaliate against tariffs levied by Donald Trump and criticized US officials over insults

• US politics live – latest updates

Mark Carney has rebuked Donald Trump’s administration and urged officials in Washington to “start being serious” amid escalating trade tensions between the US and Canada.

Days before Canada is due to retaliate against Trump’s sweeping tariffs with its own duties on US goods, the Canadian prime minister criticized US officials for insulting his country. “It is beneath their office,” he said.

Пять раундов дообучения детектора промпт-инъекций, четыре неудачи и только один успешный релиз. Разбираем, как собирать и размечать корпус на реальном корпоративном трафике, почему рост точности может обернуться потерей атак и какие гейты помогают не выкатить регресс в прод. Внутри — реальные метрики, причины откатов и практический процесс релиза модели.

Buddy Stephens, who was featured on Last Chance U, publicly criticized his school and league hierarchy

A college football coach who rose to prominence in a Netflix documentary series about student athletes trying to make the big time on their final opportunity has been fired after publicly calling officials “idiots” for changing the structure of the league in which his team competed.

Buddy Stephens, the coach in question, starred in the first two seasons of the gritty reality show Last Chance U that chronicled the struggles endured by football players at East Mississippi Community College (EMCC) as they juggled academics, challenging home lives and their full-contact sport in their efforts to reach the NFL.

<< До этого: Прибытие IBM PC, часть 1

Появление IBM PC стало самым важным событием в истории персональных компьютеров со времён Altair. Его влияние распространялось не сразу, а постепенно, словно медленно накатывающая волна. Первым она захлестнула корпоративный рынок, где имя IBM значило особенно много.

Некоторые компании сумели оседлать эту волну, и она вынесла их на невиданную прежде высоту. Так, Tecmar, производившая платы расширения для научных компьютеров, выросла до 400 сотрудников и достигла выручки в $100 миллионов благодаря тому, что её основатель Мартин Альперт одним из первых сделал ставку на IBM PC.

Других эта волна заставила изменить курс, подчинив силе, которой невозможно было сопротивляться. Eagle Computer, уже состоявшийся производитель компьютеров из Кремниевой долины, быстро понял, куда движется рынок, и одним из первых начал выпускать полностью IBM‑совместимый компьютер, Eagle PC. А некоторые компании, как мы увидим далее, эта волна просто смела.[1]

Проследить её путь до самого конца, когда она окончательно сошла на нет уже в 1990-е годы, означало бы далеко выйти за рамки этой истории. Поэтому здесь мы ограничимся первыми несколькими годами и посмотрим, как примерно до 1983 года IBM PC менял мир персональных компьютеров. Тему IBM‑совместимых клонов мы также намеренно оставим в стороне: их история относится уже к следующей главе.