“As summers grow hotter, we’ll need new solutions for agriculture and the people who keep this industry going. Now, a study finds that the practice of coupling solar panels with farmland, known as agrivoltaics, isn’t only cooling for crops, but for people, too — decreasing heat by several degrees for both. Many agrivoltaics studies have investigated the pros and cons of these hybrid landscapes in specific, real-world field scenarios. This study took a different approach, using a computer model to simulate the unique microclimates that develop beneath solar panels.” | | Snap’s new AR glasses project a full computer onto the world in front of you — a 51-degree field of view running through a see-through waveguide, so you’re looking at a floating 115-inch screen and the room it’s floating in at the same time. Live translation appears mid-conversation. Directions hover over the actual street. A chessboard materializes on your actual table. It sounds like concept art. It’s shipping to real humans this fall, and the early details are worth a closer look. [Ad] | | “The Restroom Archive is an online repository of toilets, bathrooms and other publicly accessible venues for spending a penny or two. It currently has 94 restrooms archived from 35 cities, representing the work of 166 archivists. ‘Everyone uses restrooms, yet as spaces, they are considered taboo, rarely discussed, acknowledged, or considered,’ writes the site’s creator, designer Jake Welch. ‘There is perhaps no space in society which better captures the creativity and impertinence of humans when they know that nobody else is watching.’ Best of all, the archive features 3D LiDAR scans of each location, published under a Creative Commons license, and provides instructions for creating similar representations using apps such as Polycam.” | | “In November of last year, scientists warned of a ‘severe’ solar storm, the strongest in over two decades, colliding with the Earth. Solar storms are the result of a surge in solar activity, with the Sun unleashing a barrage of charged particles that can trigger spectacular auroras — and wreak havoc with communications satellites and radio signals — when they reach the Earth’s magnetosphere.” | | ChatPlayground puts GPT-4o, Gemini, DeepSeek, Llama, and two dozen other models in a single window, so you can run one prompt and compare answers instead of tab-hopping between five different chatbots and their five different monthly bills. The Unlimited plan adds unlimited messages, image and PDF chat, AI image generation, and saved history, all for a one-time $79 payment instead of the $619 list price, with lifetime access on unlimited devices. [Ad] | | “The phrase ‘hidden supervolcano’ sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Supervolcanoes are notoriously conspicuous, what with their enormous size and penchant for spewing massive amounts of lava, ash, and rock into the sky. This one, however, has quietly been buried off the east coast of England for millennia. Its discovery … answers a question that has puzzled geologists for decades.” | |
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