AI company Anthropic bans “sustained and needless” cruelty to its AI, a Singapore server rack runs on 16 million living human brain cells, and espresso gets brewed with ultrasound. Plus rusting anchor chains that use up oxygen, and the Victorian elite's habits. [DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/NDv7W5em) Tech [A hand holds a smartphone displaying the Claude name and coral starburst logo on a dark screen.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/yzs3LWc5) [Anthropic bans users from being 'cruel' to its AI](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/yzs3LWc5) Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has updated its usage policy to ban "sustained and needless" cruelty towards its AI. It says this will apply only in “extreme cases”, not ordinary frustration or testing. What counts as cruel is unclear, and critics argue it encourages people to treat software as if it were human. [A nauseated passenger in a car is surrounded by icons for vision, hearing, movement, quiet electric driving, regenerative braking, and speed.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gvhUudW3) [Why electric cars might be making some passengers feel sick](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/gvhUudW3) Dr Nicholas Hac is a neurologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. He says about two of his dizziness patients a month mention feeling sick in electric cars. Motion sickness happens when your eyes, inner ear, and body disagree about whether you're moving. Experts suggest electric vehicles (EVs) may add to that mismatch in a few ways. There's no engine noise or vibration to signal that the car is accelerating. Regenerative braking (the motor slows the car when you lift off the accelerator) can feel like a rocking jolt. EVs can also speed up and slow down faster than petrol cars. But the research is thin, and one academic calls it “pretty sketchy”. The suggested fixes are simple: look out of the front window, and sit in the front seat if you can. [A collage combines a microscope and lab equipment with a DNA strand and hands typing on a laptop.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/tqFW7kuj) [When can we say AI made a scientific discovery?](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/tqFW7kuj) Anthropic runs a biology lab where Claude agents study problems and human scientists run the experiments. Anthropic says 950 agents, working for 21 hours, spotted a repeating DNA pattern around a known enzyme that hadn't been catalogued before. Anthropic compared it to the start of CRISPR (the gene-editing technology). However, biologists weren't convinced. Lucas Harrington, a biologist, wrote that finding an odd cluster of genes is the easy part. The hard part is working out what it does. Then Mario Rodríguez Mestre, at the University of Copenhagen, said his team had already found the pattern. Anthropic denies it learned from his chats with Claude. The author says narrowing 200,000 candidates down is real work. But the article argues that asking “did the AI make a discovery?” reduces the answer to breakthrough or bust. This Week I Learnt [Infographic shows rusting anchor chains consuming oxygen in a closed ship’s chain locker, leaving low oxygen and rising carbon dioxide that can incapacitate a crew member.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xZRhLR3w) [Rusting anchor chains can use up the oxygen in a sealed chain locker, enough to knock out a crew member within breaths](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xZRhLR3w) [Rusting happens when iron combines with oxygen, using up oxygen from the surrounding air. So a damp steel anchor chain, stored in a closed compartment called a chain locker, slowly pulls oxygen out of the air it's sitting in.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xZRhLR3w) [A sealed space only holds so much air. As the chain corrodes, the oxygen ends up locked into the rust, and nothing replaces it. Opening the hatch typically isn't enough to ventilate the locker. The air at the bottom of the locker can be too low in oxygen to breathe, even though it looks perfectly normal. There is often no warning. The urge to gasp comes mostly from carbon dioxide building up, not from oxygen running short.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xZRhLR3w) Poll Does the year have a shape or layout in your mind? A straight line A grid or calendar A circle or loop Dates occupy loose positions No spatial shape at all Last Week's Poll When someone sends you a long voice note, what do you do? Listen immediately 19% Save it for later 26% Read the transcript 30% Avoid opening it 25% Science [A gloved technician adjusts a white biological computing unit mounted inside a black server rack.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nJEjMrnb) [Singapore has a prototype server rack computing with 16 million living human brain cells](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nJEjMrnb) Singapore's DayOne Data Centers and Australian biotech company Cortical Labs switched on a prototype server rack in August. It's at the National University of Singapore and computes with 16 million living human brain cells across 20 CL1 computers. It draws up to 1,000 watts. Cortical Labs say the cells last up to six months before they need replacing. [A researcher in a lab coat operates a modified espresso machine connected to electronic equipment and cables.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TcP8xrvJ) [Researchers made espresso with ultrasound instead of hot water, and tasters couldn't reliably tell it apart](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/TcP8xrvJ) Engineers and food scientists at UNSW Sydney have built an “ultrasonic espresso” machine that brews with cold water. Sound waves above human hearing make tiny bubbles collapse against the coffee grounds, shaking out flavour in under three minutes. In a blind test with about 100 coffee drinkers, people couldn't reliably tell it from traditional espresso. [A copper-colored retinal chip with a honeycomb electrode pattern is held by tweezers above glasses fitted with a camera module.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/PkBGapUJ) [An eye implant for age-related vision loss wins EU approval](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/PkBGapUJ) Science Corp, founded by Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak, won EU approval in July to sell PRIMA. The implant is for central vision loss from age-related macular degeneration. Glasses beam infrared light at a chip under the retina, which turns it into electrical signals. In a 38-patient trial, 84% regained the ability to read. [Bottles and boxed wines line curved shelves in a minimalist white wine shop in Porto.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [A bright, modern wine shop in Porto, seen through a black metal doorway, with shelves lined with bottles.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [A minimalist white wine shop in Porto, with bottles displayed on wall shelves and a bottle and tasting glasses on a barrel table.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [Circular white wine shop with three curved shelves filled with bottles, a counter, pendant lights, and a blurred person walking.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [Wine bottles line the bright interior shelves behind two large gridded windows in a dark burgundy storefront.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [Portugal Vineyards Store](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) [Porto, Portugal](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/2pYcpiHv) Data [Maps show 1–6-hour travel ranges from London, Berlin, Madrid, Kiev, Paris, and Rome, with colored contours expanding outward.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) [How far can you travel from European capital cities?](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) [Thomas Kent's PhD thesis, finished at the University of Bristol in 2015, is mainly about airliners saving fuel by flying in formation. One section near the end models how far you can get across Europe from six cities by road and air. These are door-to-door times, including driving and airport waits, not just time in the air.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) [The maps are isochrones, which estimate the area reachable from a starting point within a set time. For each starting city, Kent took 500 routes and marked the last point each one reached within each time limit. He then drew the smallest shape enclosing those points, like a rubber band stretched round pins. Each band adds one hour of journey time, up to six.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) [The shapes reveal quirks. Where few routes headed in a direction, the borders come out as long straight lines. London, Madrid, and Kiev sit in a corner of Europe. Their journeys mostly head towards the centre, so the bands look like cones. Bands that grow evenly suggest traffic flows easily. Uneven growth can point to a bottleneck. London's first few bands are held back because the model requires a flight to cross the sea.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) [These are 2015 results from a model, so things may have changed since. The model doesn't use actual flight schedules.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cqLdr8Hi) History [Victorian gentlemen lounge around a dining table, with one slumped asleep and another smoking a cigar.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Why were Victorian elites so effective?](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Samuel Hughes's essay in Works in Progress contrasts Victorian habits with modern advice for successful people. Books about successful people today stress 5 am starts, cold baths, daily gym sessions, little alcohol, and punishing working hours. The Victorian elite got up late, drank a lot, and spent a large share of their waking hours feasting, dancing, and playing sport.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [By their own standards, though, they did very well. For much of the 19th century Britain was the richest country on Earth. Its navy dominated the oceans, and its small army won a long run of wars while watching over a huge empire. The author concedes that this came at least partly at the cost of the hundreds of millions of people Britain ruled. He also admits the question can't be tested, since nobody can rerun Victorian Britain as an experiment.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Elite boys were sent to boarding school at seven or eight. About 30% of 19th-century cabinet ministers and 40% of prime ministers were Old Etonians (former pupils of Eton College). Latin and Greek took at least half of teaching time, and sometimes 80%. Thomas Arnold was headmaster of Rugby School. He said he would rather his son believed the sun went round the Earth than put physical science first.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Classroom time was modest. At Rugby, three days a week had about 5 hours of lessons, three had about 2, and Sunday had none. Many schools filled the afternoons with organised sport, at least 10 hours a week and sometimes 20. Arnold ranked religious and moral principles first, gentlemanly conduct second, and intellectual ability third. Winston Churchill later said that in 12 years of school nobody succeeded in making him write a Latin verse.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Hughes suggests team sport, childhoods among peers, and the friendships that followed may have helped the elite work together and build connections. He speculates that boarding even explains why the British elite lacked the regional loyalties of, say, Catalonia in Spain or the American South. The less flattering explanation is that they were feckless heirs, enjoying wealth the Industrial Revolution had already created.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Sf98Lbbt) [Nikola Tesla stands between a metal tower and a glass-sided contraption with a monkey inside, beneath the words “DID THEY WORK?”](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/jhGa2Hrb) [Nikola Tesla's inventions, from a 1898 radio-controlled boat to a death ray that may never have worked](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/jhGa2Hrb) A video by Lost in Time explores the inventions of Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), a Serbian-American inventor. In 1898 he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat. Some onlookers were convinced a trained monkey inside was reading his hand signals. His alternating current (AC) system arrived at the right time. Thomas Edison's direct current (DC) system worked, but would have needed a huge number of power stations to cover America. Edison's side ran a nasty publicity campaign linking AC to death. But AC won out after it was used at the Niagara Falls power plant, and it still powers most homes. Two ideas never got that far. In 1934 Tesla announced “teleforce”, a beam weapon he said could “end all wars”. He left too little documentation to tell if it could have worked. Businessman J. P. Morgan stopped funding Wardenclyffe Tower, Tesla's test for wireless power, when Tesla's wider plans emerged. Tesla wanted to transmit power, going beyond the wireless communication system he'd promised. Random [A lavish buffet of assorted dishes fills a restaurant, with empty white-tablecloth tables and a cityscape mural behind it.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [How the Swedish smorgasbord became the American all-you-can-eat buffet, and what Ozempic means for it](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [The American all-you-can-eat buffet descended from the Swedish smörgåsbord. Thea Applebaum Licht's essay in Cabinet explores that history. It also asks whether Ozempic, a diabetes drug made by the Danish company Novo Nordisk and used for weight loss, will finish the buffet off.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [In Scandinavia, the smörgåsbord (“butter board”) was a modest affair. It began centuries ago as a late medieval starter of bread, butter, cheese, and spirits, eaten standing up before a meal. Swedish steamships and hotels in the US served it the same way, to tide travellers over without spoiling their dinner.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [Many Americans saw it as a meal in itself. Swedish-run restaurants went along with that, charging different prices for the spread as a starter, a lunch, or a dinner. A 1949 cookbook by Anna Olsson Coombs even made up a history of Viking gluttony to explain it. Self-service came from elsewhere: New York's Exchange Buffet, which opened in 1885 for busy Wall Street workers, and a Chicago “cafeteria” in 1893.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [Las Vegas gave the buffet its modern shape. The El Rancho Vegas hotel opened its Chuck Wagon buffet in 1946, and by the 1950s it ran 24 hours a day for a dollar. The old etiquette (herring first, then change your plate) turned into strategy: skip the rice and bread, and go for the expensive items first. Folklorist Elizabeth Adams describes a plate at the Rio casino holding sushi, pizza, prime rib, asparagus, and a taco topped with a rib.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [Buffets are often said to be dying, and Licht says the Ozempic version of that claim is not yet true. Restaurants are drafting “Ozempic menus” for diners on the drug. She sees the same hope behind buffets, Ozempic menus, sharing plates, and tasting menus: finding a way around feeling full. The same guilt and pull between pleasure and self-restraint come with it.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/cKcLHfm8) [Pixel-art blue figure with outstretched pale arms and green head stands on a platform beneath a large pale number 5.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xUzpmBCe) [Why the Lemmings video game series fizzled out after its huge 1991 success](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/xUzpmBCe) This article argues that Lemmings, the 1991 puzzle game from Scottish studio DMA Design, went from worldwide hit to half-remembered fad. Its publisher, Psygnosis, put it on 24 platforms, and it outsold everything else the company released by roughly tenfold. The 1993 sequel, Lemmings 2: The Tribes, gave players 60 abilities instead of eight and dropped the gentle tutorial levels. The article says that suited veterans but not newcomers. It sold solidly, but the cheaper original probably outsold it. Then Sony bought Psygnosis, and the makers of Sesame Street began talking to them about a Lemmings TV show. That meant giving personalities to creatures that were identical blobs, each 10 pixels square. DMA made them bigger, which made their deaths grislier. They also made lemmings walk into crates to gain skills, a fiddly change. The resulting game, World of Lemmings, was meant to start a four-game run. But Psygnosis released it alone and abandoned the other nine tribes. Design [Relief map of East Asia highlights the Kuril Islands north of Japan, with a label noting they are administered by Russia and claimed by Japan.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nuaDuB9R) [Japan protests over a UN-backed map showing disputed islands as Russian](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nuaDuB9R) [In September, the UN General Assembly adopted the Equal Earth map, which redraws the world so countries keep their true relative size. Africa looks larger, and Europe and North America look smaller than on the traditional Mercator map. Japan was among the 164 members that backed it. Its government spokesperson, Minoru Kihara, has since said the map contradicts Japan's position. It shows the Kuril Islands in the same colour as Russia. Japan, which calls them the Northern Territories, lodged a protest with the map site's operator through diplomatic channels.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nuaDuB9R) [The Soviet Union seized the islands in 1945 and expelled the Japanese population. In August, Vladimir Putin visited them for the first time, and Japan's prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, called the trip “absolutely unacceptable”.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nuaDuB9R) [Ukraine was one of six countries that abstained in the vote. It objected to occupied Crimea being coloured differently from the rest of Ukraine.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/nuaDuB9R) [A hand presses a small white, fluid-filled dome set in a circular mount on a green touch surface.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/dXgLy7U8) [University of Bath researchers built soft cushions that press back when you squeeze them](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/dXgLy7U8) In 2025, the University of Bath's Department of Computer Science presented a research prototype called HydroHaptics. It lets soft objects, like a cushion or a backpack strap, respond to a squeeze or a press. A small motor is linked to a sealed, liquid-filled chamber. The liquid carries vibrations, clicks, or changing resistance evenly across the surface, so the object stays soft instead of turning rigid. In demos, a cushion controlled smart home devices, and a flexible joystick changed its feel during games. A backpack tapped the wearer's shoulders to give navigation cues. A mouse with a silicone dome let users sculpt 3D shapes. The dome's stiffness changed as the shape evolved. At the time, the team said the motor needed to get smaller and lighter. Lead researcher Professor Jason Alexander said a product could appear within a couple of years if enough resources were available. [“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/SwPuE3sG) [Stanisław Jerzy Lec](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/SwPuE3sG) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/fcr4PG7N) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/q9TrvFP8) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/i38zjBgg)