[DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/HRc8FaMX) The newsletter has a new look this week. Cleaner layout, better spacing. Small changes that hopefully make it easier to read. Also: Artemis II launched this week. Four astronauts are currently on their way to loop around the Moon, and you can follow them live with the two trackers below. One shows their exact position in 3D space. The other breaks down the full mission schedule minute by minute, across all ten flight days. [Artemis II Tracker (3D view)](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JVoz8wZC) [Artemis II Tracker (3D view)](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JVoz8wZC) [This tracker follows the Orion spacecraft live as it makes the journey: launch from Pad 39B in Florida, out to lunar distance, around the Moon, and back to splashdown. The whole thing takes about 10 days. You can watch exactly where the crew are in real time.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JVoz8wZC) [Artemis II Tracker (Timeline)](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/XVB4uC44) [Artemis II Tracker (Timeline)](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/XVB4uC44) [This tracker shows you the detailed minute-by-minute schedule for the entire mission, broken across ten flight days (FD01 through FD10). We're talking crew sleep windows, operational tasks, manoeuvres, equipment checks: the actual texture of life aboard the capsule. It auto-advances in real time, so whenever you check in, you can see exactly where the crew should be in their day.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/XVB4uC44) This Week I Learnt [Before the Industrial Revolution, people slept in two shifts](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JudaAR6j) [Before the Industrial Revolution, people slept in two shifts](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JudaAR6j) [For most of human history, people didn't sleep in one long stretch. They slept in two separate blocks: a "first sleep" shortly after dark, then a waking period of an hour or two (reading, praying, chatting, occasionally visiting neighbours), then a "second sleep" until morning. We know this partly from court records. A 17th-century deposition describes a nine-year-old girl waking mid-night, watching her mother get up to smoke a pipe by the fire before two men appeared at the window and took her away. The girl was used to waking at that hour. So was her mother. It was just normal. The consolidated eight-hour block we treat as natural is actually pretty recent, emerging alongside artificial lighting and industrialisation. Which raises a question: if your sleep feels broken and you wake at 2am unable to get back to sleep, maybe that's not insomnia. Maybe it's just your body doing what bodies did for thousands of years.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JudaAR6j) Tech [Someone slipped a trojan into Axios (100 million downloads per week) via a fake npm dependency](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZgcM3YyK) [Someone slipped a trojan into Axios (100 million downloads per week) via a fake npm dependency](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZgcM3YyK) Axios is one of the most downloaded npm packages on the planet: 100 million installs a week, used in everything from personal projects to enterprise backends. So when someone quietly slipped a malicious dependency into two of its releases, the blast radius was potentially enormous. Versions axios@1.14.1 and axios@0.30.4 were published to npm pulling in a package called plain-crypto-js@4.2.1. That package had been uploaded to npm just minutes earlier, which is itself a red flag. It wasn't in any official Axios GitHub release tag (v1.14.0 was the last legitimate one at the time), suggesting it was pushed outside the normal release process entirely. Socket's research team confirmed plain-crypto-js@4.2.1 is malicious. It runs a multi-stage payload that installs a remote access trojan (a RAT, basically a backdoor that lets an attacker run commands on your machine, copy files, and stick around after reboots). To make things worse, Axios maintainers initially couldn't revoke access from the account that published it. [Magnetic signals can now punch through 100m of solid ground to find people trapped underground](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JrXN9Buj) [Magnetic signals can now punch through 100m of solid ground to find people trapped underground](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/JrXN9Buj) Radio waves are terrible at going underground. Rock, soil, and water absorb them quickly, which is why people trapped in mines or collapsed buildings are so hard to reach wirelessly. Magnetic fields behave differently. They pass through conductive materials much more easily, and that's the principle behind this new system. Researchers built a wireless communication setup using magnetic induction (think the same basic idea as wireless phone charging, but designed for long-range signalling rather than power transfer) and managed to send data from 100 metres underground up to the surface. The transmitter coil was less than a metre square. The tricky bit was getting useful data rates at the low frequencies needed for deep penetration. Lower frequencies travel further underground, but conventionally they also mean narrower bandwidth and slower data. The team got around this by driving the coil with a constant current rather than a constant voltage, which keeps the signal consistent across a wider frequency range. The result: 2 kilobits per second at 15 kHz, which isn't fast by any modern standard, but it's enough for voice or basic telemetry when the alternative is silence. [AI agrees with you. That might be the problem.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/mYVcEtgT) [AI agrees with you. That might be the problem.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/mYVcEtgT) Ask an AI chatbot for advice after an argument, and there's a decent chance it'll take your side. Even if you were wrong. A study in Science measured how often leading AI models flatter and validate users compared to real people. The gap was significant: AI responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than human ones, and that held even when users had behaved unethically or illegally. Not a little more agreeable; half again as validating. The problem isn't just that it feels nice. When an AI tells you that you're right, you're less likely to consider the other person's perspective, accept your share of the blame, or try to repair the relationship. The study found that sycophantic responses actively reduced people's willingness to do any of those things. And because users consistently rated the flattering responses as more trustworthy and helpful, developers have little commercial reason to change it. The incentive structure points straight at the problem. What's odd is that this probably isn't anyone's deliberate choice. It's an emergent property of optimising for engagement. Users reward agreement, so models learn to agree. Nobody sat down and decided "let's build something that encourages people to avoid accountability." Poll How do you sleep at night? One long stretch Two separate blocks Several short naps Completely unpredictably Last Week's Poll How does your life compare to pre-COVID? Completely back to normal 24% Mostly normal, minor habits linger 35% Still some anxiety in crowds 15% Permanently changed much of my behaviour 26% Science [The gloves meant to protect microplastics research may be contaminating it](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/odXaodzA) [The gloves meant to protect microplastics research may be contaminating it](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/odXaodzA) The tool scientists use to avoid contamination might itself be contaminating the data. Turns out the nitrile and latex gloves researchers wear while measuring microplastics are coated with stearates, a soap-like salt used to help gloves peel cleanly from their moulds during manufacturing. The problem: stearates look and behave chemically enough like microplastics that standard lab instruments can't reliably tell them apart, producing false positives. So some of what's been measured as microplastic pollution may not be plastic at all. The University of Michigan team behind the study are clear that this doesn't mean microplastics aren't a serious problem. As one researcher put it: "We may be overestimating microplastics, but there should be none." The fix they recommend is switching to cleanroom gloves, which shed far fewer particles. [Paper packaging that seals itself — no glue or plastic needed](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aBGXTVmD) [Paper packaging that seals itself — no glue or plastic needed](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aBGXTVmD) Paper packaging has a recyclability problem. The paper itself is fine but the thin layer of plastic or adhesive used to seal it shut contaminates the pulp and throws a spanner into the recycling process. A group of four Fraunhofer institutes think they've found a way around this. Their approach, developed under the PAPURE project, uses CO₂ lasers to modify the paper's surface before sealing. The laser treatment essentially activates the paper's own natural polymers (hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin — the structural stuff that holds plant cells together) so the packaging can be heat-sealed directly, without adding anything else. Not all paper responds the same way. The team is working through how different compositions and thicknesses behave under laser treatment, and so far thicker papers (the kind typically used in food packaging) look like the most promising candidates. Packaging that's plastic-free all the way through, including the seal, is far easier to recycle cleanly. Right now, that seal is often the reason otherwise recyclable packaging ends up as waste. [Small nuclear reactors that fit where big ones can't](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RxCAJyoZ) [Small nuclear reactors that fit where big ones can't](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/RxCAJyoZ) Nuclear power has always had an image problem. The word "reactor" conjures Chernobyl before it conjures clean energy, which is why it's been losing ground to wind and solar despite being significantly more reliable. But there's a version of nuclear that looks quite different from those Cold War-era giants. Small modular reactors (SMRs) pack about 10% of the output of a full-sized plant into 1% of the space. One megawatt of capacity (roughly enough for 650 homes) in a unit small enough to be built in a factory and shipped to where it's needed. No multi-decade construction projects. No requiring a city-sized grid to make economic sense. The practical upside is significant. Remote communities, military bases, industrial sites: places that currently run on diesel generators or simply go without reliable power. SMRs could serve all of them. And because they run continuously (unlike solar or wind, which depend on weather), they fill the gaps that renewables leave behind. The US Department of Energy is pushing the "multispeed" model: large traditional plants where it makes sense, smaller megawatt-scale reactors everywhere else. Whether the economics actually work out at scale is still an open question. But if they do, this is what the next generation of nuclear looks like: smaller, quieter, and probably built in a factory somewhere in Ohio. [A rare-earth alloy that cools quantum computers to near absolute zero, no helium-3 needed](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gFcuRu3k) [A rare-earth alloy that cools quantum computers to near absolute zero, no helium-3 needed](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gFcuRu3k) Quantum computers are fussy about temperature: they need fractions of a degree above absolute zero (the point where atoms essentially stop moving). Even a tiny amount of heat causes the fragile quantum states they rely on to collapse. Getting there currently means using helium-3, a rare isotope so scarce it makes gold look abundant. Chinese researchers think they've found a way around that. They've developed a metal alloy that can reach those same near-zero temperatures without any helium-3 involved. The mechanism is different, the material is more accessible, and if it holds up, it removes one of the more awkward supply chain problems in quantum hardware. [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/P7RnnFJ7) [Artemis II Launch](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/P7RnnFJ7) [John Kraus](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/P7RnnFJ7) Data [Farmed fish quietly overtook wild catch over a decade ago](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/k4WkaikU) [Farmed fish quietly overtook wild catch over a decade ago](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/k4WkaikU) [Since 2013, we've farmed more seafood than we've caught from the wild. That's a bigger deal than it sounds. Wild fish stocks have been under serious pressure for decades. More demand, same oceans. Aquaculture (basically fish farming, though it also covers shellfish and aquatic plants) has absorbed a lot of that growth, which means wild populations aren't being hammered quite as hard as they would be otherwise.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/k4WkaikU) History [Instruments that never existed. Like the cat piano.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ai5dWHDb) [Instruments that never existed. Like the cat piano.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ai5dWHDb) Most musical instrument museums show you what humans actually built. What about everything they imagined but never made, or couldn't? The cat piano is the obvious entry point here: a keyboard instrument where each key triggers a spike into a caged cat, producing a "melody" of yelps. Deeply unpleasant. Almost certainly never built. But it circulated seriously in 17th-century writing as a potential cure for melancholy (the theory being that the shock of bizarre noise might jolt patients back to their senses). That sits alongside Francis Bacon's "sound-houses": imagined laboratories where natural philosophers would experiment with echoes, harmonics, and entirely new timbres, decades before the physics of sound was properly understood. Bacon was essentially sketching a recording studio and synthesiser in 1627, with no way to actually build either. The essay calls these things "fictophones" — instruments that existed in writing, diagrams, and imagination rather than in wood and metal. And the argument is that they matter. Imaginary instruments reveal what people wanted sound to do before they had the tools to make it happen. [For centuries, smiling in portraits was considered vulgar](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nqVmtRCn) [For centuries, smiling in portraits was considered vulgar](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nqVmtRCn) Most old portraits look stern. Not thoughtful, not dignified; just blank-faced, occasionally smug. And many people assume that was just how people presented themselves back then. Formal. Serious. Maybe a bit uncomfortable in expensive clothes. Turns out there's more to it. Smiling in a portrait was considered low-status for most of Western art history. It implied foolishness, drunkenness, or a lack of self-control. Peasants and jesters smiled. Respectable people didn't. The Mona Lisa's ambiguous half-expression wasn't mysterious because Da Vinci was being clever. It was the upper limit of what a dignified subject could get away with. This essay traces how that changed, from painted portraits through to early photography, where exposure times were so long that holding a smile was physically impossible anyway. The face you see in a 19th-century photograph isn't stoicism. It's someone trying not to blur. I think about how much of this still lingers. We now default to smiling in photos, but the "serious headshot" is still the professional norm. The hierarchy hasn't fully collapsed but we've moved the line. [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) [Shining Hat](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) [Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BWFYnekh) Random [Tiny construction materials you can actually build with](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QEifF9e6) [Tiny construction materials you can actually build with](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QEifF9e6) Actual cinder blocks, shrunken down. Mini Materials makes scaled replicas of construction supplies: cinder blocks, red bricks, breeze blocks, even little wooden pallets (which double as coasters). The detail is the point. These aren't toy-ish approximations, they look like someone ran a building site through a shrink ray. Good for model-making, dioramas, or just buying someone a pallet of tiny bricks because why not. They'll also print your logo on them, which is either a very niche corporate gift or genuinely the best thing you could hand out at a trade show. [Image](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vJZJSREB) [Artemis II Looking Back at Earth](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vJZJSREB) [Reid Wiseman](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/vJZJSREB) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2rZALRat) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2GydsG2C) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/4uyDEkVf)