Public notes from activescott
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a stable Core Web Vital metric. It's an important, user-centric metric for measuring visual stability because it helps quantify how often users experience unexpected layout shifts. A low CLS helps ensure that the page is delightful.
The peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 74 articles on studies on the links between IQ points and fluoride. Authors of the JAMA article determined that there is a high risk of scientific bias in 52 of those studies and a low risk of bias in 22. Forty-five of the articles originated from China.
The links between fluoride and loss of intelligence show up when the fluoride levels in water are above 1.5 milligrams per liter, the JAMA review found.
“There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L,” the JAMA review said.
“That’s much higher than what we use for public water fluoridation,” said Washington state health officer Kwan-Gett.
The CDC says the recommended level for fluoride in a public water system is 0.7 milligrams per liter. Dorow pointed to the centuries-old concept that the dose of a substance often dictates whether or not it is poisonous, not the substance itself.
“There are no negative impacts at normal levels,” Kwan-Gett said.
To some "free speech" means you're free to say only what they want you to say.
The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers “censorship” of Americans’ speech.
First Amendment experts criticized the memo’s guidance as itself a potential violation of free speech rights.
“People who study misinformation and work on content-moderation teams aren’t engaged in ‘censorship’— they’re engaged in activities that the First Amendment was designed to protect. This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in a statement.
Even as the administration has targeted those it claims are engaged in censoring Americans, it has also tightened its own scrutiny of visa applicants’ online speech.
On Wednesday, the State Department announced it would require H-1B visa applicants and their dependents to set their social media profiles to “public” so they can be reviewed by U.S. officials.
A comprehensive email domain validation library. Supports DNS, MX, SPF, SMTP, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, TLSRPT and MTA-STS.
MX record validation SMTP server connection testing DKIM record lookup DMARC policy validation MTA-STS support (RFC 8461) IPv4/IPv6 support Local IP blocking DNS failover resolvers Punycode/IDN support TypeScript support
The governor's proposed 9.9% tax on income over $1 million (revenues starting 2029) is the most contentious part of the plan.
In March 2024, the Washington State Legislature adopted Initiative 2111 to prohibit state and local personal income taxes. The measure passed with support from all Republicans and a majority of Democrats in both chambers. A 9.9% tax on personal earnings conflicts with this law. The administration hasn't explained how this complies with I-2111's prohibition.
This would be Washington's 12th income tax attempt since 1932—voters rejected it 11 times. By asking approval for a millionaire-only tax, the administration establishes a graduated framework that would only need legislative modification afterward, not further voter approval.
We strongly oppose an income tax but appreciate Gov. Ferguson's promise to let voters decide. He proposes a constitutional amendment limiting it to income over $1 million, yet his proposal ignores existing constitutional limits. If adopted, this income tax will certainly expand in the future.
The budget shifts $569 million in Climate Commitment Act (CCA) revenue to fund the Working Families Tax Credit. The CCA's original allocation was meant for carbon reduction and infrastructure projects but will now go toward direct cash assistance for lower-income households.
Cool
DeepWiki provides up-to-date documentation you can talk to, for every repo in the world. Think Deep Research for GitHub.
OAuth2-Proxy is a flexible, open-source tool that can act as either a standalone reverse proxy or a middleware component integrated into existing reverse proxy or load balancer setups. It provides a simple and secure way to protect your web applications with OAuth2 / OIDC authentication. As a reverse proxy, it intercepts requests to your application and redirects users to an OAuth2 provider for authentication. As a middleware, it can be seamlessly integrated into your existing infrastructure to handle authentication for multiple applications.
OAuth2-Proxy supports a lot of OAuth2 as well as OIDC providers. Either through a generic OIDC client or a specific implementation for Google, Microsoft Entra ID, GitHub, login.gov and others. Through specialised provider implementations oauth2-proxy can extract more details about the user like preferred usernames and groups. Those details can then be forwarded as HTTP headers to your upstream applications.
Translate inputs to provider's endpoints (/chat/completions, /responses, /embeddings, /images, /audio, /batches, and more) Consistent output - same response format regardless of which provider you use Retry/fallback logic across multiple deployments (e.g. Azure/OpenAI) - Router Track spend & set budgets per project LiteLLM Proxy Server
SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from up to 244 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor for online anonymity.
Get started with SearXNG by using one of the instances listed at searx.space. If you don’t trust anyone, you can set up your own, see Installation.
on his first day in office he created two taskforces aimed at creating new development: one will review city-owned land to see if it is suitable for construction, another aims to “identify and remove bureaucratic and permitting barriers” which slow down the building of homes.
A highlight, and a thumb in the eye to those who said Mamdani would be thwarted by the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, came when that pair released a plan on Thursday to provide free childcare for two-year-olds in New York City.
Elsewhere, Mamdani has been conducting small but meaningful fixes. Thousands of people cycle across the Williamsburg Bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn every day, yet for years cyclists have been forced to negotiate a skatepark-esque dip at the Manhattan exit.
Pleas to fix the ramp have gone unheard for years, but on Tuesday Mamdani simply popped up at the Manhattan side of the bridge, with a spade and a crew of department of transport workers, and had the aggressive dip smoothed into a nice, gentle incline.
One year since New York City began charging drivers a $9 toll, state officials say the controversial program cut traffic by 11% and raised some $550 million.
The revenue lets the Metropolitan Transportation Authority proceed with $15 billion in construction projects that were at risk under a previous budget gap. Their plans include extending the Second Avenue Subway, buying new railcars, and upgrading signals on the A, C, and F lines to reduce delays for commuters in Brooklyn and Queens.
The toll faced opposition from suburban drivers, Republicans, New Jersians, and the federal government, who all argued that it would hurt the economy by making it too hard to freely enter the city.
But the MTA released data showing that businesses in the congestion zone are thriving. A December 2025 report from the NYC Economic Development Corporation showed that Broadway ticket sales rose by 23%, and the city saw its best year for office leasing since 2002. Empty storefronts in the area dropped, too, and sales tax in New York City rose by more than 6% through November. That local spending grew three times faster than in neighboring Westchester County and six times faster than in Nassau County.
And those who drive still drive into the congestion zone arrive at their destination sooner. Speeds at the Holland Tunnel up by 51% during the morning rush. Queensboro Bridge speeds increased by 29%, and Williamsburg Bridge traffic also moved 28% faster, CBDTP found.
And the neighborhood is also quieter, with traffic noise complaints in the zone falling by 23%. Crime within the transit system also appears to have dropped 5.5% compared to the previous year.
MTA also said the subways and trains throughout the city, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley are more punctual than they’ve been in almost a decade.
President Donald Trump and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have tried to stop the program by revoking its pilot status and withholding federal transit grants, arguing that the model punishes car drivers. During a congressional hearing in July, Duffy argued that rising subway violence made public transit a dangerous alternative.
Work at Internal Drive Speed: Edit 8K video, run AI models, and access files with up to 6302MB/s real-world performance that matches your Mac Studio's internal SSD1
The Tool Search Tool lets Claude dynamically discover tools instead of loading all definitions upfront. You provide all your tool definitions to the API, but mark tools with defer_loading: true to make them discoverable on-demand. Deferred tools aren't loaded into Claude's context initially. Claude only sees the Tool Search Tool itself plus any tools with defer_loading: false (your most critical, frequently-used tools).
With Programmatic Tool Calling:
Instead of each tool result returning to Claude, Claude writes a Python script that orchestrates the entire workflow. The script runs in the Code Execution tool (a sandboxed environment), pausing when it needs results from your tools. When you return tool results via the API, they're processed by the script rather than consumed by the model. The script continues executing, and Claude only sees the final output.
Vendors have taken a variety of approaches to the self-driving problem. Tesla's approach is to allow their "full self-driving" (FSD) system to be used in all ODDs as a Level 2 (hands/on, eyes/on) ADAS.[3] Waymo picked specific ODDs (city streets in Phoenix and San Francisco) for their Level 5 robotaxi service.[4] Mercedes Benz offers Level 3 service in Las Vegas in highway traffic jams at speeds up to 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).[5] Mobileye's SuperVision system offers hands-off/eyes-on driving on all road types at speeds up to 130 km/h (81 mph).[6] GM's hands-free Super Cruise operates on specific roads in specific conditions, stopping or returning control to the driver when ODD changes. In 2024 the company announced plans to expand road coverage from 400,000 miles to 750,000 miles (1,210,000 km).[7] Ford's BlueCruise hands-off system operates on 130,000 miles (210,000 km) of US divided highways.[8]
In 2017, Waymo reported 63 disengagements over 352,545 mi (567,366 km) of testing, an average distance of 5,596 mi (9,006 km) between disengagements, the highest (best) among companies reporting such figures. Waymo also logged more autonomous miles than other companies. Their 2017 rate of 0.18 disengagements per 1,000 mi (1,600 km) was an improvement over the 0.2 disengagements per 1,000 mi (1,600 km) in 2016, and 0.8 in 2015. In March 2017, Uber reported an average of 0.67 mi (1.08 km) per disengagement. In the final three months of 2017, Cruise (owned by GM) averaged 5,224 mi (8,407 km) per disengagement over 62,689 mi (100,888 km).[155]
BYD, a company Elon Musk once dismissed by laughing at their products during a 2011 Bloomberg interview, has overtaken Tesla to be the world’s top EV seller. BYD said on Thursday that sales of its battery-powered cars rose nearly 28% to 2.26 million units in 2025. Vehicle deliveries at Tesla dropped 8% year on year to 1.64 million vehicles delivered in 2025.
The market watcher estimates memory prices surged 40%-50% in the final quarter of 2025, and expects similar gains in the first quarter of 2026, followed by a roughly 20% rise in the second quarter.