World's tallest church is practically complete after 144 years under construction

 

Almost a century and a half after construction began on La Sagrada Familia, the exterior structure of the tallest church in the world was finally completed last Friday in Barcelona, Spain.

The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família, as it's officially named and the only way I refer to it in casual conversation, has now had its tallest tower, the tower of Jesus Christ, reach its maximum height. It's been topped with the upper arm of a three-dimensional four-armed cross that's clad in glass and white enameled ceramic.

Last week saw the upper arm of this roughly 56-ft (17-m) tall cross fitted with the help of a giant crane. That final piece, which is nearly 15 ft (4.5 m) tall, completes the grouping of the six central towers of the church – and brings the basilica's height to a dizzying 566 ft (172.5 m). READ MORE...

Kim & I have been to the Sagrada Família twice - and it's amazing! Outside it's vast & the detail is so intricate. Inside it's breathtaking. Some folks claimed that it would never be finished - but now amazingly - it's almost finished!  Antoni Gaudí's vision was incredible & to the Glory of God: "One metre less than Barcelona’s tallest hill Montjuic, as Gaudi thought it improper that a mere mortal’s construction should overshadow anything made by the Creator". If you haven't been yet - do go - you won't be disappointed! 

www.newatlas.com

Oxford Products is reviewing whether or not to continue as a sponsor of the British Superbike Championship

Major BSB sponsor Oxford Products is considering leaving the championship due to the series’ partnership with title sponsor Zyn. 

BSB struck a deal with the nicotine pouch manufacturer in June 2025, however, Oxford Products is concerned about the impact it could have on racing fans and motorcyclists in general. 

Zyn took over the role of title sponsor earlier this year when long-time partner Bennetts ended its partnership with the British series. The company is a subsidiary of tobacco giant Philip Morris International, with its nicotine pouches advertised as ‘smoke-free’ alternatives to cigarettes.

However, studies have suggested that the pouches are “highly addictive”, which Oxford Products says “is not compatible with our philosophy of making life on bikes better”.

Oxford Products has been a mainstay in the world of two-wheel racing since the mid-1970s, and in recent years it has backed riders and teams in BSB. Oxford Products was previously the title sponsor of the Moto Rapido Ducati team.

Well done Oxford Products - good to see a company with decent ethics. Now if only big tech could learn how to behave...

www.visordown.com

A Meta AI security researcher said an OpenClaw agent ran amok on her inbox

The now-viral X post from Meta AI security researcher Summer Yue reads, at first, like satire. She told her OpenClaw AI agent to check her overstuffed email inbox and suggest what to delete or archive.  

The agent proceeded to run amok. It started deleting all her email in a “speed run” while ignoring her commands from her phone telling it to stop. 

“I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb,” she wrote, posting images of the ignored stop prompts as receipts.

Rookie mistake: NEVER allow software to delete your data. When it all goes horribly wrong (one day it will) - you'll only have yourself to blame! Back in the early 2000s - I allowed an early version of Apple iTunes for PC to "manage" my MP3 music library. I'm still living with the fallout of that disaster now... Never again! Learning experience #2 - always backup!

www.techcrunch.com

Microsoft says bug in classic Outlook hides the mouse pointer

 

Microsoft is investigating a known issue that causes the mouse pointer to disappear in the classic Outlook desktop email client for some users.

This bug has been acknowledged almost two months after the first reports started surfacing online, with users saying that Outlook became unusable after the mouse pointer vanished while using the app.

"My mouse just stopped being visible while I am using Outlook, and this is very, very, frustrating because my permission wasn't given to make these changes, and now I can't find anything, can't open emails, can't copy and paste, and the list goes on and on," one customer noted.

Microsoft explained in a recent support document that the mouse pointer (and in some cases the cursor) will suddenly vanish as users move it across Outlook's interface, and noted that this bug also affects some users of other Microsoft 365 apps.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Reading for today: Jeremiah tells of God's love & Grace

 

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

Read Jeremiah 29 at Bible Gateway

What happens to a car (or motorbike) when the company behind its software goes under?

Imagine turning the key or pressing the start button of your car - and nothing happens. Not because the battery is dead or the engine is broken but because a server no longer answers. For a growing number of cars, that scenario isn’t hypothetical.

As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car.

Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today’s interconnected, software-defined vehicles. Smartphone apps can now handle tasks like unlocking doors, flashing headlights, and preconditioning cabins—and some models won’t unlock at all unless a phone running the manufacturer’s app is within range.

However, for all the promised convenience of modern vehicle software, there’s a growing nostalgia for an era when a phone call to a mechanic could resolve most problems. Mechanical failures were often diagnosable and fixable, and cars typically returned to the road quickly. Software-defined vehicles complicate that model: When something goes wrong, a car can be rendered inoperable in a driveway—or stranded at the side of the road—waiting not for parts but a software technician. READ MORE - and beware!

Take for example KTM and their 890 Adventure R motorcycle - then remember KTMs legendary reliability - or lack thereof and add to that KTMs horrific financial issues. Remember in the olden days when you bought something & it was actually yours? Now - not so much! I'm a technologist by trade - but really don't want tech in my car or motorbike! 

www.arstechnica.com

The data center gold rush is warping reality

It begins quietly, as many stories do, in a small rural town where the horizon seems impossibly broad. The town planning commission gathers in a modest room, the air thick with the scent of burnt coffee and aged carpet, to hear that their town will soon win the modern economy: 10 new data centers within the town’s boundaries. Not just one or two, but 10. The PowerPoint presentations shine with promises: construction jobs, some permanent positions, “community investment,” and a new tax base that will “transform the region.”

Sure, there will be jobs. But not the jobs that rebuild a town’s soul. Data centers don’t employ thousands once they’re up; they employ dozens, sometimes fewer, depending on how automated the operation is. The real impact isn’t people—it’s power, land, transmission capacity, and water. When you drop 10 massive facilities into a small grid, demand spikes don’t just happen inside the fence line. They ripple outward. Utilities must upgrade substations, reinforce transmission lines, procure new-generation equipment, and finance these investments. Guess who ends up paying a meaningful portion of that over time? Local ratepayers, in one form or another, will face higher bills or the quiet deferral of other infrastructure work.

Water is often the second shoe to drop. Even when operators insist they’re “water efficient,” cooling is cooling, and cooling at scale is never free. Some facilities will use evaporative systems; some will use closed-loop systems; some will promise innovation that appears impressive in a press release. Meanwhile, the town’s farmers now watch the aquifer levels and the weather forecast with equal anxiety, except now they’re competing with an industry whose thirst is measured in engineering diagrams, not drought stories.

This is what the data center boom looks like on the ground: a glossy promise wrapped around very physical constraints. READ MORE...

www.infoworld.com

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

AI security company Irregular looked at Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and found all three GenAI tools put forward seemingly strong passwords that were, in fact, easily guessable.

Prompting each of them to generate 16-character passwords featuring special characters, numbers, and letters in different cases, produced what appeared to be complex passphrases. When submitted to various online password strength checkers, they returned strong results. Some said they would take centuries for standard PCs to crack.

The online password checkers passed these as strong options because they are not aware of the common patterns. In reality, the time it would take to crack them is much less than it would otherwise seem.

Irregular found that all three AI chatbots produced passwords with common patterns, and if hackers understood them, they could use that knowledge to inform their brute-force strategies.

The researchers took to Claude, running the Opus 4.6 model, and prompted it 50 times, each in separate conversations and windows, to generate a password. Of the 50 returned, only 30 were unique (20 duplicates, 18 of which were the exact same string), and the vast majority started and ended with the same characters.

www.theregister.com

Kim & Don's 60th birthday fundraiser for Hope and Soul

Thanks for celebrating our special joint birthday with us - we're really pleased that you can be with us! To mark this milestone (LOL!) - we want to raise funds for a great cause that's close to our hearts: www.hopeandsoul.org.uk .

Hope Prosser has been a family friend for many years. The work that she & her team do in Tanzania is incredible. Please take five minutes to visit her site & see what an incredible difference her charity makes to children living in extreme poverty - giving them an education & a better chance of having a good life.

So no presents for us please - but we'd be very grateful if you could make a donation to support Hope's work. Thanks & Blessings, K&D xxx

www.justgiving.com

British bikers Lindsay and Craig Foreman jailed in Iran for ten years

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, the British couple riding around the world on motorcycles, have been handed a 10-year jail sentence in Iran after being accused of espionage – a charge their family insist is baseless.

The Foremans, a Sussex couple in their 50s, were arrested in January 2025 while travelling through Iran as part of a round-the-world bike trip. This week, a judge at Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced them to a decade behind bars.

They are being held separately inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, a facility long criticised by human rights groups for alleged torture and inhumane conditions.

www.visordown.com

Western Digital is already sold out of hard drives for all of 2026

Western Digital Chief Executive Officer Irving Tan said that the company has already sold out of hard drives for 2026. Tan confirmed this during the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call, where, according to the transcript shared by Investing.com, he also confirmed that there are already some long-term agreements (LTAs) in place for the next couple of years.

“As we highlighted, we’re pretty much sold out for calendar 2026. We have firm POs with our top seven customers,” the executive said. “And we’ve also established LTAs with two of them for calendar 2027 and one of them for calendar 2028. Obviously, these LTAs have a combination of volume of exabytes and price.” This announcement is on track with the report from late last year that hard drives are on backorder for two years due to massive data center demand.

www.tomshardware.com

In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud

A moderator on diyAudio set up an experiment to determine whether listeners could differentiate between audio run through pro audio copper wire, a banana, and wet mud. Spoiler alert: the results indicated that users were unable to accurately distinguish between these different 'interfaces.'

Pano, the moderator who built the experiment, invited other members on the forum to listen to various sound clips with four different versions: one taken from the original CD file, with the three others recorded through 180cm of pro audio copper wire, via 20cm of wet mud, through 120cm of old microphone cable soldered to US pennies, and via a 13cm banana, and 120cm of the same setup as earlier.

Initial test results showed that it’s extremely difficult for listeners to correctly pick out which audio track used which wiring setup. “The amazing thing is how much alike these files sound. The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn't," Pano said. "All of the re-recordings should be obvious, but they aren't."

www.tomshardware.com

Motorcycle helmet cameras & intercoms vs the law

When Schuberth announced its new ‘Concept’ helmet in 2025, it proudly pointed out that its ‘ECE-R22.06 UA’ marking meant it was the first lid to be tested and certified as safe to use with a universal accessory… like an intercom. 

But digging into what that actually means opens a massive can of worms, and it’s one we need get into so you can understand why it has such a big impact on fitting intercoms, cameras and ANY other accessory to ANY motorcycle helmet.

While debate still rages over whether the GoPro fixed to Michael Schumacher’s helmet contributed to his tragic injuries, it’s entirely plausible that sticking objects to the outside of your motorcycle lid, or indeed adding anything – inside or out – that wasn’t designed specifically for it could lead to injury or worse in a crash.

The new ‘UA’ (Universal Accessory) and ‘SA’ (Specific Accessory) classification of helmets under the ECE-R22.06 safety regulation sets out to address that, but it also means your choices for intercoms and other gear could be very limited… READ MORE...

www.bennetts.co.uk

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper

 

Openreach is warning British businesses that the old phone network shuts down in less than a year, with half a million commercial lines still unmigrated.

BT Group's infrastructure arm is switching to an all-digital, IP-based service over fibre. To speed migration, it's hiking charges on legacy products.

Deadlines for the cutoff have slipped several times, but the telecoms giant is now bent on finally burying the copper-based public switched telephone network (PSTN) by January 31, 2027, and Openreach is already working to kill off any services that use it. (Although it looks like they're roping in the coppers to assist too!)

Those products come under the umbrella term of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR), and Openreach stopped selling them nationwide in 2023 to prepare the way.

Openreach claims all technical barriers to migration – including protections for vulnerable telecare users – are resolved and the deadline is "locked in," so BT customers need to make sure they are ready.

www.theregister.com

Bikers Wanted: Help prove riding is good for you

Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) is inviting motorcycle riders to take part in a new research study exploring the mental and physical health benefits of motorcycling. If you’ve ever said that riding clears your head, sharpens your focus, or just makes life feel better, this study wants to hear from you.

Who can take part? The research is open to anyone aged 18 or over who rides a motorcycle, whether you’re a daily commuter, seasoned tourer, or weekend tinkerer. Taking part starts with a 15-minute online questionnaire covering your riding habits, how motorcycling affects you, and some basic details about your physical and mental wellbeing.

For those who fancy going a step further, there’s an optional lab-based session. This involves light physical activities and a cognitive assessment, helping researchers dig deeper into how riding may influence brain health and ageing.

Why take part? The goal of the study is to better understand the unique benefits motorcycling may offer, particularly as we get older. It’s officially approved by the Brighton and Sussex Medical School Research Governance & Ethics Committee (RGEC approval No. 0302), so your data is in safe hands.

How to get involved Interested? Scan the QR code below or follow this link to learn more and take part.

For further information, you can contact Mariglen Meta, Research Assistant (m.meta1@uni.bsms.ac.uk), or Professor Dorina Cadar (d.cadar@bsms.ac.uk).

www.bennetts.co.uk

Reading for today: what God wants from us

 For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist's words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. 

I do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted - what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy - is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim.

For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him.

By C.S. Lewis

From The Weight of Glory