[DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gXz8D7h3) I Made This [My Eagle plugin just got its biggest update so far](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/f7VrSKFi) [My Eagle plugin just got its biggest update so far](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/f7VrSKFi) [— I've been told I need to self-promote more, so… I built this, and it just got its biggest update yet. Designers, photographers, and researchers are processing over 10 million items a month with it — adding tags, writing descriptions, renaming files. Want it to identify lighting conditions and camera angles? Add a rule. Need it to extract brand logos and categorise by company? Write that instruction. The new update adds quite a lot, including: - AI-powered preset generator — describe your tagging needs in plain language and it builds the preset for you - Preset folders with drag-and-drop reordering for sidebar organisation - Claude Code CLI and Codex CLI support (experimental) — use local CLI tools instead of API calls - Localisation for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/f7VrSKFi) [Sixteen AI agents built a C compiler from scratch using $20,000 of Opus 4.6](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/pWAxiufN) [Sixteen AI agents built a C compiler from scratch using $20,000 of Opus 4.6](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/pWAxiufN) Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini set 16 instances of Claude Opus 4.6 loose on a shared codebase, each running in its own Docker container, with one goal: build a C compiler from scratch. Over two weeks and roughly $20,000 in API fees, the agents independently claimed tasks, wrote code, pushed commits, and resolved merge conflicts — all without a central orchestrator directing traffic. The result: a 100,000-line Rust-based compiler that can build a bootable Linux kernel across x86, ARM, and RISC-V architectures. [Ring backs out of its Flock Safety deal after their tone-deaf Super Bowl ad](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/HhkV42da) [Ring backs out of its Flock Safety deal after their tone-deaf Super Bowl ad](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/HhkV42da) Ring has pulled the plug on its partnership with Flock Safety, the surveillance tech company that works directly with law enforcement. The backlash was swift — privacy advocates and Ring's own community pushed back hard once the integration was announced, and a tone-deaf Super Bowl ad didn't help matters. Flock Safety builds automated licence plate readers and other tracking tools used by police departments across the US. That Amazon (Ring's parent company) walked this back suggests the pressure was genuinely uncomfortable, not just noisy. [The UK just broke open the app store gates. Sort of.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RLM6jWVC) [The UK just broke open the app store gates. Sort of.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RLM6jWVC) The CMA has formally labelled Apple and Google's grip on the UK app store market an "effective duopoly" — and both companies have now agreed to make changes. The key commitments: no preferential treatment for their own apps, more transparency in how third-party apps get approved, and restrictions on how they use data gathered from other developers. The CMA says it'll monitor implementation closely and can enforce further measures if the commitments aren't met, and they're framing it as the first step, not the last. This Week I Learnt [America votes on Tuesdays because of horses and church](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/NsRAGju6) [America votes on Tuesdays because of horses and church](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/NsRAGju6) [— America votes on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That's not a rough guideline — it's federal law, dating back to 1845. Before that, states picked their own election days, which created all sorts of problems (like results leaking across state lines before other states had even voted). So Congress standardised it. But why Tuesday specifically? The constraints were entirely practical, and entirely of their time. November worked because the harvest was done but winter hadn't yet made roads impassable. Sunday was ruled out (church). Monday was ruled out too, because for many rural voters, reaching the nearest polling place meant a full day's travel by horse. That pushed the earliest viable day to Tuesday. Wednesday was already a common market day for farmers, so that was off the table as well. It's a neat little case study in how constraints shape decisions. Every day of the week had a concrete reason for exclusion, and Tuesday was basically what was left. The law originally applied only to presidential elections, then later expanded to cover congressional races too. There's been periodic talk of moving elections to weekends or making Election Day a federal holiday, but none of it has stuck. A scheduling decision shaped by crops, religion, and horse travel.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/NsRAGju6) Which decade of your life has been the best so far? Childhood (0–9) Teens (10–19) Twenties (20–29) Thirties (30–39) Forties (40–49) Fifties (50–59) Sixties or beyond (60+) Hasn't happened yet Last Week's Poll Results for: What do you want to see more of in the newsletter? AI news 4% History/weird facts 62% Creative tools & design 31% Science/engineering deep-cuts 3% [When you think America peaked says more about your age than your politics](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/faUfcUa6) [When you think America peaked says more about your age than your politics](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/faUfcUa6) [— When did America peak? The answer has almost nothing to do with politics, race, or gender, but almost everything to do with how old you are. The core finding: Americans don't feel nostalgia for a specific era. They feel nostalgia for a specific age. Your "golden decade" is whichever one you were about 11, your parents still had all the answers, and you'd never heard of microplastics or war crimes tribunals. The pattern holds with striking consistency across the data. There's a neat life cycle to it, too. Closest communities? Ages 4–7. Most moral society, happiest families? Ages 8–11. Best economy and best TV? Early teens. Best music and fashion? Late teens, peaking around 17. Political and racial divides do show up — White respondents and Republicans were roughly twice as likely as Black respondents and Democrats to pick the 1950s as the most moral decade. But those gaps are dwarfed by the generational effect.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/faUfcUa6) [Computer memory prices have 5×'d in six months](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JfNcCQKF) [Computer memory prices have 5×'d in six months](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JfNcCQKF) 64GB of DDR5 RAM has gone from the low $200s to over $1,000 in about six months. Nearly all DRAM (the memory in your PC, phone, console, server, basically everything) is made by just three companies: SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron. Together they control over 90% of the market. For years that concentration didn't matter much because supply was steady and price swings were gradual enough to plan around. Two things broke that equilibrium: the phasing-out of the old version (DDR4), and AI spending. Micron made things worse by announcing it's exiting the consumer memory market entirely, killing its Crucial-branded RAM and SSDs. So now Samsung and SK Hynix are essentially the only major suppliers feeding consumer DRAM at scale. Less competition, stronger demand elsewhere, constrained supply. [Pilotless helicopter makes UK debut over Cornwall](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/y5rzoMUo) [Pilotless helicopter makes UK debut over Cornwall](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/y5rzoMUo) Leonardo's Proteus just became the UK's first uncrewed helicopter to fly. Two test flights in Cornwall were successful. The goal is to develop autonomous rotorcraft that can work alongside piloted aircraft in hybrid formations. Still early proof-of-concept stuff, but the use cases are obvious: resupply missions, reconnaissance, the dull-dangerous-dirty tasks that don't need a human in the cockpit. [Wind turbines without the tower: just strap blades to a blimp and send it up](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/63dsK75g) [Wind turbines without the tower: just strap blades to a blimp and send it up](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/63dsK75g) A 20,000-cubic-metre blimp, floating 2,000 metres above the ground, generating electricity from high-altitude winds. No towers. No substantial ground infrastructure. Just an airship with integrated turbine blades, pulling power straight out of the sky. The S2000 SAWES (stratospheric airborne wind energy system), built by Beijing-based Linyi Yunchuan Energy Technology, completed a test flight last month in Yibin, southwest China. The pitch is compelling: winds at altitude are stronger and more consistent than at ground level, but conventional turbines can't reach them without increasingly enormous (and expensive) towers. Strap the generation equipment to a blimp and you sidestep most of that infrastructure problem. [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [Prudential (Guaranty) Building](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [— Built 1896 in Buffalo, New York](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/CsKDpgaX) [Dispensing droplets 50 million times smaller than a raindrop](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/tssce9HG) [Dispensing droplets 50 million times smaller than a raindrop](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/tssce9HG) [— Being able to place volumes this tiny, without even touching the surface, is what makes precision biotech, diagnostics, and micro-electronics possible. At this scale surface tension, evaporation, and even air currents become dominant forces. Two fundamentals become critical at this scale: accuracy (how close you are to the target value) and precision (how repeatable each droplet is). Get either wrong and the whole system falls apart. The GIF shows digital picoliter dispensing at 1000 Hz (1000 times per second) forming 0.1, 0.5, 5, 10, and 100 nanolitres.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/tssce9HG) [Isometric NYC](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ofimx38q) [Isometric NYC](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ofimx38q) [— New York's architecture rendered in clean isometric illustrations with help from AI. The site transforms familiar landmarks and streetscapes into stylised, angular compositions that strip away the chaos and let you actually see the geometry of the city. It's the kind of project that makes you notice details — setbacks, water towers, fire escapes — you'd normally walk straight past. It reminds me of SimCity 4. Worth a browse even if you've never set foot in Manhattan.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ofimx38q) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/APjBVcPc) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/4oobmD5R) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RwEDbeg9)