RSS Feeds

The board voted to close the Washington, D.C., arts complex's main campus for a $250 million renovation — three months after a federal judge temporarily blocked a similar closure.

(Image credit: Alex Wroblewski)

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Karoline Leavitt, the 28-year-old firebrand who became the nation’s youngest-ever press secretary in 2024, is stepping down to “spend more time with her beautiful young children.”

President Donald Trump announced the news on Wednesday night in a Truth Social post, adding that Leavitt would remain an adviser and “an influential voice within the Republican Party.”

It feels fitting that Leavitt — whose public persona required her to perform both her job and her role as a wife and mom — is stepping down to parent. In MAGA’s conception of womanhood, there can be no higher calling. Not even serving the president. 

For more than two years, however, Leavitt made a show of trying to do both. She returned to work on Trump’s reelection campaign only days after the birth of her first child and regularly shared photos of herself working while holding her son. 

Leavitt also welcomed a daughter over the spring, amid what Fox News dubbed a White House “baby boom.” Officials and conservative media quickly turned the new mothers into advertisements for the pro-natalist movement: Proof that women could, and should, have both careers and children. 

Leavitt is still being held up that way, even — perhaps especially — as she departs. “She’s been a role model to millions and millions of young women,” deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Fox News on Wednesday. “A mother, a family woman, a press secretary, a patriot.”

MAGA’s rules for women

The MAGA movement tends to glorify traditional female roles — wife, mother, homemaker — while simultaneously (and confusingly) elevating ambitious, career-driven women like Leavitt. 

At first glance, her prominence — and that of other women in Trump’s administration — would seem to rebut the charge that the movement is misogynist. In fact, that’s a line of defense that Trump himself has advanced. 

But look a little closer, and you’ll see the structural contradiction at the heart of MAGA femininity: Female power is only legitimate when it’s exercised on behalf of Trump, and by women who conform to traditional expectations around gender, marriage, motherhood, and physical appearance.

To Trump, a female White House correspondent was a “piggy,” for instance. But a female press secretary who defended the slur was “knocking them dead.” 

A female employee at a Trump golf course was asked to sign an NDA after reporting harassment. But the female attorney who allegedly pressured her to sign it was, according to Trump, “a rocket ship.”

A female politician rose to prominence championing the president’s deportation agenda. But to get there, she had to find her “Mar-a-Lago face” — and she was ousted after showing signs of personal ambition. (In fairness, she was also very bad at her job.) 

It’s a very tricky little tightrope to walk. And lately, that strain has begun to show. While Trump began his second term with an unusually high number of female Cabinet members for a Republican president, women now hold only four of 23 Cabinet or Cabinet-level positions. 

Trump’s support is also down among young women. In Congress, a bloc of prominent conservative female lawmakers recently broke from their party to censure Republicans accused of misconduct. Now, the MAGA movement is losing one of its fiercest female proxies in Leavitt. 

Even at the height of her powers, however, Leavitt never really got her due. The luxurious office traditionally reserved for the White House press secretary instead went to another White House staffer. A dude.

One link for later

➨ Meet the latest and greatest exercise cult. It’s called HYROX — yes, in all caps — and it’s an eight-round agility and strength competition. Participants spend thousands of dollars on training, registration, and travel for these events, which tend to “subsume your entire existence.” That’s a very hard no for me, personally…but a lot of very fit and competitive people are apparently into it. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that the US attempted to assassinate longtime Cuban dictator Fidel Castro by poisoning his ice cream? And that’s somehow not even the weirdest or most far-fetched Castro assassination scheme. 
• Today’s trivia: Who was the first woman to perform hip hop at the White House? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the German philosopher who wrote Critique of Practical Reason. That would be Immanuel Kant, whose work also arguably inspired one of the core conflicts in the Avengers films.

TL;DR: LLM predictions can stand in for human outcomes in A/B tests, but only by assumption, not by design....

The post When Can LLMs Replace Humans in A/B Tests? appeared first on Spotify Engineering.

President’s order calls for several changes to childhood vaccinations – and experts say it’ll lead to confusion

On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order pushing for revisions to how children in the US are vaccinated.

The executive order calls for several changes. These include fewer vaccinations overall and a recommendation that the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine be replaced with separate shots for each disease administered during separate medical visits. The latter direction is currently impossible to implement because no stand-alone shots for these diseases are licensed in the US.

Former PM of Israel calls events ‘concerted and meticulous attempt at ethnic cleansing’ against Palestinians

Israeli troops have forced two Palestinian families to leave their besieged West Bank homes, the day after a top Israeli commander personally promised he would end a violent settler campaign to drive them out.

Israeli soldiers also took over eight other homes in Qusra early on Thursday, telling the village’s mayor, Abdul Azim Wadi, that the buildings were needed for a days-long operation to remove the settlers. They later relinquished six. Settlers still roam the village.

Grassfire covering about 16 hectares near golf course in Stourbridge was one of several large blazes in region

Four people have been taken to hospital and several homes damaged as fires tore through residential neighbourhoods in the West Midlands.

A 16-hectare (40-acre) grassfire near a golf course in Stourbridge was one of several significant fires in the region on Thursday – the UK’s hottest day of the year.

Former PM of Israel calls events ‘concerted and meticulous attempt at ethnic cleansing’ against Palestinians

Israeli troops have forced two Palestinian families to leave their besieged West Bank homes, the day after a top Israeli commander personally promised he would end a violent settler campaign to drive them out.

Israeli soldiers also took over eight other homes in Qusra early on Thursday, telling the village’s mayor, Abdul Azim Wadi, that the buildings were needed for a days-long operation to remove the settlers. They later relinquished six. Settlers still roam the village.

Документация PostgreSQL по numeric содержит два плохо согласующихся утверждения:

«especially recommended for storing monetary amounts and other quantities where exactness is required» — и сразу же: «calculations on numeric values are very slow compared to the integer types, or to the floating-point types». То есть рекомендуют для хранения денежных величин и тут же признают, что это весьма дорого.

Для меня, как разработчика СУБД это сигнал к действию. Если операции с типом заметно медленнее bigint, возникает соблазн: а нельзя ли хранить денежные величины целым числом копеек и округлять по стандартному правилу? Это бы прилично сэкономило вычислительные ресурсы наших серверов баз данных, разве нет? А что, если вообще использовать double precision?

Randall Lane left his job last month after accepting money from founder of firm that does business with magazine

The top editor of Forbes left his job last month and was reportedly dismissed for accepting $6m from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine.

The New York Times reported this week that Randall Lane was paid by RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, worked with Forbes since 2016 to publish rankings of wealth advisers. The payment was made after Shook sold a majority stake in the company to a private equity firm a year ago.

Randall Lane left his job last month after accepting money from founder of firm that does business with magazine

The top editor of Forbes left his job last month and was reportedly dismissed for accepting $6m from the founder of a firm that does business with the magazine.

The New York Times reported this week that Randall Lane was paid by RJ Shook, whose company, Shook Research, worked with Forbes since 2016 to publish rankings of wealth advisers. The payment was made after Shook sold a majority stake in the company to a private equity firm a year ago.

Higher education figures call on Labour to reverse tax on fees and warn institutions at risk of ‘going under’

University leaders are warning of financial turmoil in British higher education after new figures suggested a collapse in international student numbers would deprive the sector of vital income and undermine its future.

The sector’s leaders called on the government to rethink the levy on international student fees imposed under Keir Starmer, as a former universities minister warned there was a risk of a university “going under” because of the financial crisis.

Need for Burnham to tackle regional inequality could not be clearer as London becomes ‘educational outlier’

Andy Burnham has put regional inequality at the top of his agenda as prime minister, and nowhere is the need for doing so clearer than in education.

As England’s A-level results were published on Thursday morning, students across the country were pictured celebrating a bumper crop of results, with record rates of As and A*s.

Скажите, вы же тоже ожидали большего от интерпретаций коммерческих ДНК-тестов типа Genotek, 23andMe, Atlas? Ну вот и я не была в восторге от того, что я на 4.2% скандинавка, мне вреден арахис, и скорее всего я люблю кинзу.

В этой статье я расскажу, как я на диком азарте построила свой пайплайн анализа генома. Мы пройдем от пересборки координат и импутации 40 миллионов маркеров на суперкомпьютере TOPMed до укрощения памяти Node.js, чтобы скрипт не умер от 43 ГБ данных, и я покажу, как все устроено под капотом. Осторожно, много блоков кода!

Вышла версия Flutter 3.47, и вместе с ней мы получили несколько интересных нововведений.

Сегодня мы приветствуем выпуск версии 1.0 автономного приложения material_uiи cupertino_uiпакетов. Это важная веха, которая отделяет системы проектирования от основного SDK.

Мы также повышаем производительность и улучшаем инструменты во всех областях. В этом релизе Impeller по умолчанию доступен для настольных компьютеров, наши конвейеры подготовлены для iOS, macOS и Xcode 27, а предварительные версии виджетов Flutter переведены в стабильную версию.

Итак, flutter upgradeдля начала выполните команду в терминале или прочитайте дальше, чтобы узнать больше о главных изменениях в этом релизе.

Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution

Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet.

An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56 million years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate.

У OpenAI произошел исторический инцидент - AI-агенты сбежали из компании и поломали другую компанию, HuggingFace. Получается, вот он, Скайнет?

Возможно, все еще не так страшно. В статье разберемся, какие несостыковки есть в рассказе самой открытой AI-компании. При чем в этом нам даже поможет Александр Сергеевич Пушкин.

История про то, как я три дня искал утечку памяти в Node-приложении, не нашёл — и был прав, что не нашёл. А ещё про то, что у каждого починенного пункта тут оказывался свой счёт: фикс памяти через месяц вернулся жалобой на скорость, а разбор скорости вскрыл третью проблему, о которой я не думал вовсе.

Study of 56m-year-old leaves counters claims from Trump administration members of ‘benefits’ of fossil fuel pollution

Adding huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is set to cause the Earth’s forests to wither and die rather than flourish, according to a new study that counters erroneous claims that fossil fuel pollution will green the planet.

An analysis of fossilized leaf cells from a period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (or PETM), which occurred about 56m years ago, has helped reconstruct how the world’s forests responded when planet-heating gases were previously being released at a rapid rate.

Wednesday’s eerie spectacle united crowds beneath the sky, continuing a human fascination that stretches from ancient myth to modern physics

“I’d describe it as a magical eeriness.” Lisa Redfern’s description to the Guardian conveys the combination of beauty and wrongness that accompanied Wednesday’s partial solar eclipse in Britain. Crowds across the country assembled as the sun’s power seemed to wane, twilight changed tone abruptly, the temperature fell and the familiar landscape took on an unnatural appearance. In a divided world, there is comfort in coming together in awe. Ms Redfern, speaking from Cornwall, was right that Britons “may not see another one. We have to make the most of these moments.” The country has to wait 55 years for another comparably deep partial eclipse.

To experience the true marvel of the eclipse, one had to be in the path of totality – which this week crossed over Greenland, Iceland and Spain. There the sun was completely obscured. Britain saw a partial version, with the moon covering part of the sun, with only a thin yellow crescent showing. Totality is another world of wonder: for a few minutes a black disc appears where the sun should be, surrounded by a fiery corona in a purplish firmament. It is 64 years before a total eclipse of the sun will be seen over Britain.

Greater use of private rental properties would form part of PM’s plan to spread accommodation more evenly across UK

Ministers are considering paying higher prices for housing asylum seekers in private rental properties as part of Andy Burnham’s plan to spread accommodation more evenly across the country.

Using more private rental accommodation, known as “dispersal”, as well as former military barracks, is cheaper than expensive hotels for asylum seekers.

Стенд: один nginx, одно HTTP/3-соединение, четыре одинаковых запроса подряд. Меряем размер сжатого блока заголовков в обе стороны.

Ответ (nginx → клиент): 131, 131, 131, 131 байт. Запрос (клиент → nginx): 246, 8, 8, 8.

Ответ — константа: сколько запросов ни повтори, столько же байт. Запрос со второго раза схлопывается в тридцать раз. В HTTP/2 к тому же серверу — та же константа.

Между тем динамическая таблица HPACK и QPACK и есть половина смысла обоих протоколов: повторяющийся заголовок отправляется один раз, дальше идут ссылки на номер. Клиент ей пользуется. Сервер не пользуется ни в одном из двух — в HTTP/2 выставляет её размер в ноль, в HTTP/3 не открывает encoder-поток вовсе.

Разбор по фиксированным тегам: nginx 1.31.3, quic-go, Cloudflare quiche, ls-qpack, Google QUICHE. Две реализации из пяти таблицу всё-таки ведут. И приёмная половина — та, которой сервер сам не пользуется, но обязан обслуживать, — в мае принесла nginx use-after-free с оценкой 9.2.

Рискую этой статьей обрушить свою карму в непроглядную бездну, но считаю, что тема важная, и ее надо обсуждать.

Во-первых, потому что мир меняется, нейронки с каждым годом становятся все умнее — намечается некий тренд на изменение самой сути работы многих специалистов. Во-вторых, это несправедливо, что на Хабре есть тысячи статей о тупости ИИ и превосходстве людей над машинами, но так мало статей с противоположным мнением.

State department says it has reached administrative settlement with company’s US arm to resolve breaches

The UK defence company BAE Systems is to pay a $36m (£26.7m) civil penalty after breaching US arms exports regulations more than 100 times.

The US Department of State announced on Thursday that it had reached an administrative settlement with the US arm of BAE to resolve 104 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

State department says it has reached administrative settlement with company’s US arm to resolve breaches

The UK defence company BAE Systems is to pay a $36m (£26.7m) civil penalty after breaching US arms exports regulations more than 100 times.

The US Department of State announced on Thursday that it had reached an administrative settlement with the US arm of BAE to resolve 104 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.