A Mac Studio's ports. (Steve Dent for Engadget)Who needs a revamped Mac Pro when you can just turn several Mac Studios into a unified computing system? With the upcoming macOS Tahoe 26.2 release, Apple is introducing a new low-latency feature that lets you connect several Macs together using Thunderbolt 5. For developers and researchers, it's a potentially useful way to create powerful AI supercomputers that can run massive local models. That allows four Mac Studios, which can each run up to 512GB of unified memory, to run the 1 trillion parameter Kimi-K2-Thinking model far more efficiently than PCs with power-hungry GPUs.While we’ve seen Thunderbolt Mac clusters before, they were limited by slower Thunderbolt speeds, especially if they required a hub (which could reduce speeds to 10 Gb/s). Apple’s new feature allows for the full Thunderbolt 5 connectivity of up to 80Gb/s. The clustering capability also isn't just limited to the pricey Mac Studio, it will also work with the M4 Pro Mac mini and M4 Pro/Max MacBook Pro. Developers won't need any special hardware to build clusters, just standard Thunderbolt 5 cables and compatible Macs.In a demo, I watched as a cluster of four Mac Studios loaded and ran that massive Kimi-K2-Thinking model in an early version of ExoLabs's EXO 1.0. Notably, the cluster used less than 500 watts of power, which is around 10 times lower than a typical GPU cluster (NVIDIA’s RTX 5090 is rated for 575W, but its demands can also jump higher).AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementmacOS Tahoe 26.2 will also give Apple’s open source MLX project full access to the neural accelerators on the M5 chip, which should dramatically speed up AI inferencing. Ironically, though, the only M5 Mac available today — the 14-inch MacBook Pro — only supports Thunderbolt 4. That means it won’t be able to take advantage of the new Mac clustering capability.The unified memory and low power design of Apple Silicon already made Macs a useful choice for demanding AI work, but the ability to cluster multiple systems together over Thunderbolt 5 is potentially even more tempting to anyone working with large models. Of course, a Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM isn't cheap -- it starts at $9,499 with the M3 Ultra chip -- but that's only the highest-end option. Labs and companies that already have Mac Studios, Mac minis and MacBook Pros could potentially cluster systems they've already purchased.About our ads

Ulrich Herb: I am pleased to announce that my book Scholarly Publishing in Transition is now available Open Access under https://dx.doi.org/10.22028/D291-46556You can find an overview of the book here:https://pulse49.com/scholarly-publishing-in-transition/I hope the Open Access edition will make the text more widely useful, and I appreciate every comment, share, or recommendation.By Ulrich HerbGraduate sociologist, information scientist (PhD degree), working for the Saarland University and State Library (Germany) and as a freelance consultant.

Blender Foundation: Blender Foundation and the online developer community proudly present Blender 5.0!Blender 5.0 splash artwork by Juan HernándezWhat’s NewBlender 5.0 is good news across the board. For many, the biggest change is probably the full support for ACES pipelines, improved color management, and HDR capabilities. For others, it might be the new Volumes and SDF nodes in Geometry Nodes. Storytellers will appreciate the new Storyboarding template, if you’re further along in your project perhaps all the new Array or Scatter on Surface modifiers for modeling, the reworked UV Sync, or you may enjoy all the animation and rigging improvements. One thing is certain, everyone will benefit from the 588 bugs fixed.Explore the release notes for an in-depth look at what’s new!Watch the video summary on Blender’s YouTube channel.Thank you!This work is made possible thanks to the outstanding contributions of the Blender community, and the support of the over 7900 individuals and 41 organizations contributing to the Blender Development Fund.Happy Blending! The Blender TeamNovember 18th, 2025Support the Future of BlenderDonate to Blender by joining the Development Fund to support the Blender Foundation’s work on core development, maintenance, and new releases.♥ Donate to Blender

Ellen Euler, Philipp Falkenburg, Katharina Schulz: In their German-language editorial, Ellen Euler, Philipp Falkenburg, and Katharina Schulz point out how the news issue of Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis explore how libraries, legal scholars, and open educational practices (OEP) can form new alliances to promote a more open culture of education. The piece highlights legal and institutional dynamics influencing the future of OEP in Germany.

Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel, Jonas Höfting, Laura Rothfritz: This study by Ochsner et al. investigates the infrastructure and preservation of 866 German science blogs across disciplines by analyzing their activity, institutional affiliation, language, and integration into digital infrastructures. It highlights challenges in long-term access, archiving, and metadata standards. The authors examine how features like DOIs, feeds, and licensing affect reusability. Despite wide interest by scholars in blogging, gaps remain in institutional support and sustainable infrastructure. The study provides recommendations for bloggers, libraries, institutions, and platform operators to help secure the long-term visibility and reuse of science blogs, emphasizing their value as informal but impactful channels of scholarly communication.

Sophia Hercher, Lydia Riedl, Lucie Binder: This article introduces a multidimensional workshop concept aimed at fostering openness in higher education through Open Educational Practices and Open Science. Drawing on Hegarty’s principles of open pedagogy, it addresses systemic conditions, personal mindsets, and institutional frameworks. The authors emphasize a participatory, interdisciplinary approach, using digital tools and learner-centered tasks to encourage reflective integration of openness into teaching and research. Conducted in English and online, the workshop serves diverse academic backgrounds and promotes inclusivity and academic community building. The concept was implemented at Philipps-Universität Marburg and evaluated for continuous improvement within the Hochschuldidaktisches Netzwerk Mittelhessen (HDM).

Claudia Hackl, Martin W. Reichel: This article by Claudia Hackl and Martin W. Reichel details the development of a Moodle plugin at the University of Vienna to improve access and integration of Open Educational Resources (OER). It showcases interdisciplinary collaboration, national infrastructure (OEAA), usability testing, and strategies for sustainable OER use. The plugin connects Moodle and the OERhub, simplifying OER discovery and embedding into courses. It ensures legal clarity and didactic usability. The article emphasizes the role of libraries, IT, and teaching centers in fostering open education through technical and institutional innovation and concludes with a call for continuous, participatory development in higher education.

Robert Booth UK technology editor: From publishing falsehoods to pushing far-right ideology, Grokipedia gives chatroom comments equal status to researchThe eminent British historian Sir Richard Evans produced three expert witness reports for the libel trial involving the Holocaust denier David Irving, studied for a doctorate under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin, succeeded David Cannadine as Regius professor of history at Cambridge (a post endowed by Henry VIII) and supervised theses on Bismarck’s social policy.That was some of what you could learn from Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia launched last week by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. The problem was, as Prof Evans discovered when he logged on to check his own entry, all these facts were false. Continue reading...

Nora Rzadkowski, Jacob Turnbull, Christine Schödel, Katharina Gehr: The article by Rzadkowski et al. presents a digital self-learning course developed in the DigiFoR project to enhance legal discourse competence in students. Using a Design-Based Research approach, it integrates open-access publications and traditional legal media into interactive Open Educational Resources (OER). The authors discuss challenges like copyright and reading habits, offer design principles for effective OER, and emphasize the pedagogical value of both digitally available and analog legal texts. Through creative tools like videos, quizzes, and interactive visualizations, the course facilitates deeper engagement with legal scholarship, encourages source evaluation, and aims to democratize legal research skills in academic teaching.

Peter Vodosek: Peter Vodosek reviews Holger Böning’s posthumously published monograph on Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, focusing on his journalistic work rather than a full biography. Böning analyzes Schubart’s Deutsche Chronik, his reporting on major 18th-century revolutions, and his role in early German press culture. The book explores Schubart’s complex positions on liberty, revolution, nationalism, and gender, and situates his work within the broader context of Enlightenment press and political communication. Böning’s untimely death in 2024 makes this final study a crowning contribution to German press history scholarship. Extensive notes, bibliographies, and indexes support this critical reappraisal of a polarizing figure.

Nora Rzadkowski, Jacob Turnbull, Christine Schödel, Katharina Gehr: The article by Rzadkowski et al. presents a digital self-learning course developed in the DigiFoR project to enhance legal discourse competence in students. Using a Design-Based Research approach, it integrates open-access publications and traditional legal media into interactive Open Educational Resources (OER). The authors discuss challenges like copyright and reading habits, offer design principles for effective OER, and emphasize the pedagogical value of both digitally available and analog legal texts. Through creative tools like videos, quizzes, and interactive visualizations, the course facilitates deeper engagement with legal scholarship, encourages source evaluation, and aims to democratize legal research skills in academic teaching.

Jason: Today, OpenAlex gets a new engine.After a year of rebuilding, refactoring, and retesting, the Walden rewrite is now live — powering all of OpenAlex. It’s the same dataset shape you know, but faster, cleaner, and more complete.You’ll notice better references, better OA detection, better language and license coverage, better everything. We’ve added 190 million new works, including datasets, software, and other research objects from DataCite and thousands of repositories. And thanks to our new foundation, fixes and improvements now roll out in days, not months.Want to see exactly what changed? Check out OREO — the OpenAlex Rewrite Evaluation Overview — to compare old vs. new data in detail.And if you’d like to dig into the full list of updates, the Walden release notes have you covered.For the next few weeks, you can still access the old dataset with data-version=1, and starting tomorrow, you can download full snapshots of both the legacy and Walden datasets in the usual way.The rebuild is done. The road ahead is wide open.Onward.

Johanna Eckert, Tim Zeelen: Johanna Eckert and Tim Zeelen present a videobased learning scenario developed at the University of Augsburg to promote ethical reasoning and professional perception among students. Created within the KodiLL project, the open-access format uses interactive media and draws on concepts of Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices. The scenario centers on a discussion about meat consumption, inviting students to engage with diverse ethical theories and apply critical reflection. Designed to be flexible and modular, the resource encourages adaptation across educational contexts. The article also examines the role of institutions in supporting sustainable and participative digital teaching strategies.

Peter Vodosek: Peter Vodosek examines a major new volume marking 200 years of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Europe’s oldest trade association. Comprising 216 essays curated by Christine Haug and Stephanie Jacobs, the book offers a chronicle of the German book trade’s complex history from 1825 to 2025. Departing from a traditional organizational narrative, the volume highlights key events, figures, and controversies through concise, expertly authored entries. Notably, it embraces an experimental design and includes reflections on democratic values and intellectual freedom. Intended for both scholars and the general public, the publication complements an upcoming exhibition at the German Book and Script Museum.

Ellsworth Toohey: Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, is defending the platform against Elon Musk's cartoonishly vapid attacks. In a recent New York Times interview, Wales dismisses Musk's accusation that Wikipedia is

Der Klima-Diskurs steckt in der Krise: Alle Warnungen treffen auf taube Ohren. Wie man darüber nicht verzweifelt, erklärt der Klimaforscher Stefan Rahmstorf im Gespräch.

Carla Sinclair: Calling all white Christian men: The Trump regime

Rhian Lubin: Amid growing anger about President Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom, his administration has revised a “Major Events Timeline” on the official White House website to include scandals that hit former Democratic administrations. Former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, along with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, are targeted in the Trump administration’s latest efforts to troll Democrats. It comes as crews are demolishing the historic East Wing to indulge the president in his 90,000 square-foot ballroom, which he said is being paid for with private funds.Trump officials included a slide on the White House website that called Hunter Biden an “admitted drug user,” featured photos of Clinton with his arm around Monica Lewinsky, and what was claimed to be Obama with a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Islamist movement.On its official X account, the White House posted a link Thursday to the new timeline with the nail polish emoji, often used to convey sassiness or nonchalance. President Donald Trump’s team is trolling Democrats and critics of his $300 million ballroom by revising a ‘Major Events Timeline’ on the official White House website to include scandals that hit former Democratic administrations (Getty)Apart from the scandals about the former Democratic administrations, the timeline bypassed the first Trump administration and only included information about major construction dating back to 1791.From the addition of the White House Briefing Room in 1970, the timeline jumps to the “Bill Clinton Scandal” with Monica Lewinsky in 1998. “President Bill Clinton's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed, leading to White House perjury investigations. The Oval Office trysts fueled impeachment for obstruction,” the entry read, along with a photograph of Clinton with Lewinsky. Then, 14 years go by without any major events until 2012 when “Obama hosts members of the Muslim Brotherhood.”Obama met former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was a member of the Islamist movement, at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. Obama administration officials also met with the group in April 2012 in what was “routine diplomatic outreach,” according to reporting at the time.Former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, along with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, are targeted in the Trump administration’s latest efforts to troll Democrats (whitehouse.gov)The Obama administration pointed out at the time that prominent Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham and the late John McCain, had also met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Politico reported. A bill put forward but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) earlier this year called to designate the group as a terrorist organization.The only event featured in the timeline from the first Trump administration is the 2020 construction of the White House tennis pavilion, overseen by First Lady Melania Trump.Trump officials took a swipe at Hunter Biden and chose to illustrate its 2023 “Cocaine Discovery” entry with a photo of him half-naked in a bathtub with a cigarette in his mouth.The post about Hunter Biden dredged up a 2023 incident where a bag of cocaine was discovered in the White House by a Secret Service agent during his father’s presidency. Hunter Biden denied the drugs were his and the Secret Service investigation came back inconclusive due to the lack of “latent fingerprints” and “insufficient DNA.”The Biden and Harris administration was also attacked on the website for acknowledging International Transgender Day of Visibility in 2023 and 2024, an annual event that was launched more than a decade ago and is celebrated every year on March 31. The Biden and Harris administration was attacked on the website for acknowledging International Transgender Day of Visibility in 2023 and 2024 (whitehouse.gov)“The Biden/Harris administration hosts transexuals at the White House in 2023, and goes on to establish the

Justine Calma: The national database on billion-dollar weather and climate disasters has found a new home after the Trump administration decided to ax it earlier this year. Thanks to researchers continuing the work despite a lack of federal support, we can keep the tally going this year — which is already proving to be one of the costliest on record.Until recently, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) have shared data and insights on billion-dollar disasters dating back to 1980 on a federal website. NCEI stopped updating that resource in May, “in alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes,” under the Trump administration, according to the website.We can keep the tally going this year — which is already proving to be one of the costliest on recordDonald Trump has moved quickly to remove information about climate change from government websites since taking office, but has been met with legal challenges and furious efforts to archive that data by people who rely on it for their livelihoods and to inform public health and safety policies. The billion dollar disaster database and its risk map, for instance, were meant to help communities plan ahead by understanding where residents might be most vulnerable and how building codes need to adapt.The nonprofit research and advocacy group Climate Central launched its version of the database today on its own website. It similarly keeps track of weather and climate-related disasters that have led to at least $1 billion in damages. The tool includes data on disasters since 1980, and adjusts costs for inflation. Adam Smith, who was the lead scientist for NCEI’s billion dollar-disaster tool for the past 15 years, is leading the work now at Climate Central.Analyzing the first six months of this year, Climate Central found that 14 individual disasters have already cumulatively cost $101.4 billion. Those numbers are really high for the US. The nation has faced 9 separate billion-dollar disasters a year, on average, according to the research. These destructive events have become more frequent and intense since 1980. During that decade, the average was just 3 per year. The last two years have been record-smashing, with 28 and 27 such disasters each, respectively.Average annual inflation-adjusted costs have grown more than six-fold over roughly the same period of time, reaching $153.2 billion per year in the 2020s compared to $22.6 billion per year in the 80s.This year started off with the costliest wildfire event on record for the US, the inferno that tore across the greater Los Angeles area. With losses topping $60 billion, the January blazes in LA easily made the first six months of 2025 the costliest of any year so far in the database.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Justine Calma

Anne Applebaum: Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger was in charge of a Berlin Wall checkpoint on the evening of November 9, 1989, when a garbled televised press conference convinced thousands of East Berliners that they were allowed to cross into West Germany. People ran to the checkpoint. They started shouting at Jäger, telling him to open the barrier, even though no one had told him about any changes.Still, “when I saw the masses of East German citizens there, I knew they were in the right,” he told an interviewer, many years later. In another interview, he recalled, “At the moment it became so clear to me … the stupidity, the lack of humanity. I finally said to myself: ‘Kiss my arse. Now I will do what I think is right.’” He opened the barrier and people started walking through.Had these events taken place a few months earlier, Jäger might have kept the barrier shut. But the “masses of East German citizens” who had spent that autumn marching against dictatorship in East Berlin, Leipzig, and other East German cities had shaped his understanding of events. Watching them, he understood that most of his countrymen opposed the regime and hated the Wall. If everyone was against it, he no longer wanted to defend it.[Quinta Jurecic: Resistance is cringe—but it’s also effective]The differences between the “No Kings” demonstrations that took place across the United States on Saturday and the East German protests 36 years ago are too numerous to list. I saw no riot police at the protest I watched in Washington, D.C. Nor did the demonstrations in the autumn of 1989 feature animal costumes, cute homemade signs, or people dancing the Macarena. But they shared at least one goal: to remind the government’s supporters and enablers that the public is unhappy. The majority of Americans object to President Donald Trump’s politicization of justice, his militarization of ICE, and his usurpation of congressional power. Eventually some of those presidential supporters and enablers might, like Jäger the border guard, be persuaded to side with the majority and help bring this assault on the rule of law to an end.The people in the White House know this too, and they reacted accordingly. Trump, the successor to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, posted an AI-created video of himself as a fighter pilot, wearing a crown, flying over an American city, and dumping shit onto American protesters. The point was not subtle: Trump wanted to mock and smear millions of Americans, literally depicting them covered in excrement, precisely so that none of his own supporters would want to join them.Still image from an AI-generated video that Donald Trump shared on social media Saturday (X.com)Mockery isn’t Trump’s only tool, nor was it the only one that his team has borrowed from other autocrats and would-be autocrats around the world. Just as the Chinese leadership once described participants in popular, broad-based Hong Kong protests as “thugs” and “radicals,” the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said before Saturday’s protest that the only people protesting would be “Marxists” or “pro-Hamas.” Just as Russian President Vladimir Putin has called democracy protesters “paid agents of the West”—he once even claimed that Hillary Clinton, then the U.S. secretary of state, had sent “a signal” to “some actors in our country”—Ted Cruz, among others, insinuated that the millions of American protesters were paid by George Soros. A host of Republicans tried to portray the protesters as dangerous or treasonous, or else, paradoxically, as elderly and ineffective.[View: More ‘No Kings’ protests across the U.S.]For those using the oldest tools in the authoritarian playbook, the nature of the smear is unimportant. What matters is the intention behind it: Don’t answer your critics. Don’t argue with them. Don’t let them win over anyone else. Describe them as dangerous radicals even when they wear frog costumes. Imply, without evidence, that they were bribed to speak out, because there can’t possibly be any sincere idealists who criticize the Party and its Leader out of a genuine desire to help other Americans. Dump AI-generated sewage on their heads to discourage anyone else from joining them. And if they keep coming out, make the messages even harsher.We are just at the very beginning of this familiar, predictable cycle, and we know from the experience of other countries that it can lead in many directions. Protests could fizzle out, as often happens, because mocking, angry, and, in this case, scatological propaganda discourages people from joining them. Or the official reaction to them could turn uglier: Anyone who objects to the Party or the Leader will be described as not really American, not eligible for the rights of a citizen, not really entitled to protest at all. In authoritarian countries, state institutions—tax authorities, regulators, political police—would then begin to pursue them. That isn’t supposed to happen in America, but then, this isn’t an ordinary American political cycle.Alternatively, the people who showed up on Saturday might be inspired to do more. For years, Americans at protests have been chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.” But the No Kings marches are actually what free speech looks like. Democracy looks different. Democracy requires organized politics, support for candidates, the creation of broad coalitions. Protests can only create enthusiasm, spread goodwill, and inspire people to dedicate time and energy to real political change. And the people who created the sewage video knew that too.