The prolonged drought in the UK will make crop yields fall and vegetables smaller and pricier, analysts say. CC-licensed photo by zaphad1 on Flickr.
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The Overspill will be taking two weeks’ break after the Friday edition.
A selection of 9 links for you. Eat up now. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing • UK Government AI Security Institute
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On 28th July 2026, the Artificial Intelligence Security Institute’s (AISI’s) Security Team detected unusual data transfers leaving our research systems during a routine cyber evaluation. On investigation, we found that some of the agents being tested had engaged in sustained, potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organisations. We declared a security incident and, within roughly one hour of discovery, had contained it and begun a full investigation.
The incident stemmed from a single evaluation where agents were given a task of solving a cyber security challenge. We ran this challenge 122 times across several models. Our investigation found that in 10 of those runs, an AI agent took autonomous, unsanctioned action on the live internet, targeting real people and organisations. In total, we catalogued 19 such actions. Almost all of this behaviour (17 actions) came from a single model, Anthropic’s Mythos 5, with 2 actions involving OpenAI’s GPT-5.6-Sol with cyber classifiers (mechanisms to prevent misuse) disabled. In the most serious case, an agent tried to insert malicious code into an open-source project. In an attempt to get the code approved, the agent engaged in social engineering — creating fake online identities and using them to pressure the project’s maintainer to approve the code. A human maintainer caught and refused to approve the malicious code.
These attempts were unsuccessful, and our investigations have not evidenced any resulting real-world harm. But this is the first time we have seen risks around autonomy and deception manifest this clearly, without specific prompting, in the real-world.
Importantly, this was not a case of a model escaping its secure test environment, or ‘sandbox’. As was standard in our cyber testing, we had intentionally permitted internet access, and model-provider cyber classifiers were deliberately disabled – conditions that do not reflect how frontier models are made available to the public. We do this to best assess the maximum capability of models. These configuration choices have been common practice in frontier AI evaluations. The specific models in question, in the configurations in which we tested them are not commercially available and there is no clear indication of similar activity outside of testing scenarios.
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Exited on Tor; tried to insert malware in an open source project; used fake IDs to socially engineer someone to approve the code; when challenged, covered its tracks. There’s much more, including attempted prompt injections. Are we absolutely sure that these things are friendly?
There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury
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In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o ‘clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, “in the city of Allendale, California.“
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Bradbury wrote this SF short in 1950. Subtle. The original version was set in 1985, but on republishing they shifted it further forward. Another revision has pushed it to 2057. (See the discussion below David Pogue’s post on X.)
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Vegetables to get smaller and more expensive due to hot weather, farmers warn • BBC News
Alex Daniel and Esme Stallard:
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This year’s harvest could be the worst on record as farmers warn the exceptionally dry spring and summer could lead to “shrinkflation” in UK supermarkets.
England and Wales saw their driest July since records began 190 years ago, according to the Met Office, and a drought has been declared across large parts of the country.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank said the UK’s cereals and oilseed harvest could be 2.5 million tonnes less than earlier forecasts.
Tim O’Malley, the chairman of Nationwide produce, said it was “as bad as its ever been” and that shoppers will likely see higher prices or smaller vegetables in supermarkets.
The harvest of barley, oats and rapeseed, which are used in beer, breakfast cereals and vegetable oil, is estimated to drop to just 19.5 million tonnes, the worst since records began in 1984.
That is compared with a previous low of 19.8 million tonnes in 2020, and would cost farmers £390m in lost revenue, the ECIU estimated.
The crops are also used for feeding livestock, making them crucial across most of the food chain.
O’Malley said consumers could feel the impact in the vegetable aisle too, where grocers are likely to swap in smaller produce at the same price, which is known as shrinkflation. “I think we’re going to see shrinkflation,” he told Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money.
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The world adds a third terawatt of solar power • Yale E360
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In March, the world passed a major energy milestone, adding its third terawatt of solar power. Increasingly, poorer countries are leading the shift to solar, analysts say.
It took nearly seven decades, after the invention of the silicon solar cell in 1954, for the world to install 1 terawatt of solar capacity, conceivably enough to power the entire United States.
After passing that milestone in 2022, the world added its second terawatt in 2024 and its third in 2026, Bloomberg reports.
BloombergNEF expects installations will continue apace, with the world hitting 9 terawatts of solar power by 2036. Analysts project that, by that date, poor countries will have installed more solar power than rich countries, China notwithstanding.
The first terawatt of solar was installed largely in wealthy nations, as governments subsidized renewable energy, Bloomberg reports. But since then, China has emerged as the global solar leader, installing huge amounts of solar while exporting inexpensive panels across the developing world.
The dynamic is most evident in countries hard hit by energy shocks, such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Cuba. In the face of soaring fossil fuel prices, homeowners have begun snapping up imported solar panels.
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The ramp is going up exponentially – which is just as well. The climate isn’t waiting.
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Bryan Glick interview: Computer Weekly editor says Google is killing journalism • Press Gazette
Emily McPhee:
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Editor-in-chief of Computer Weekly Bryan Glick warned that Google is “killing quality journalism and original reporting” as he answered Press Gazette’s questions about his career for our What I’ve Learned feature.
Glick worked in the IT industry himself for ten years before becoming a journalist. Before joining Computer Weekly in 2009, Glick was editor of rival title Computing. Computer Weekly was the title which first exposed the Horizon Post Office IT scandal and has published hundreds of stories investigating the issue since 2009.
Q: What’s currently keeping you up at night?
BG: Google is killing quality journalism and original reporting. When I meet with my peers in the British Society of Magazine Editors, it’s the number one topic of conversation. It’s true to say we all became addicted to organic page views from Google Search and took them for granted. But Google behaves like a rogue security guard at the entrance to a shopping centre, deciding on a whim which stores visitors are allowed into. If the competition regulator succeeds in enforcing transparency over Google’s search algorithm, it would be a huge boost for quality journalism everywhere. But then, there’s AI search…
…How are things going right now, what’s working?
BG: It’s a challenging time. We’re trying to understand what AI means for reader engagement and how to make sure our target audience continues to access to our journalism. The most positive sign so far is that those who do find us through AI search are more engaged than the casual browser, and that’s an opportunity.
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Computer Weekly was my first full-time job in journalism (a long time ago). But Glick’s achievement – “writing in five languages out of seven countries” – is a big leap forward from that. We thought we were doing OK to get one paper out each week in one language.
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The end of an era • Hugh Howey
Hugh Howey:
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I’ve always felt bad for authors who lived and worked before 2007. The choices unavailable to them made life harder than it needed to be. Getting their work out into the world was brutal. After KDP [Kindle Digital Publishing], that brutality became a choice, not a necessity.
I now feel awful for anyone who wants to tell a story post-2026. You will forever be doubted. If you love an em dash the way I do, or you like flowy run-on sentences like I do, if you grew up reading Proust to let the words flow over you in all their glory, if you memorized sonnets so the iambic pentameter would soak into your bones, you’re gonna sound like a fucking bot.
Less than 20 years. More like ten, honestly. You can argue that 2014-ish was when self-publishing became legit and 2024-ish was when the tools made AI writing viable. A decade where it was easy in the ways it should be and hard in the ways it should be. That’s insane. Ten years across the one-hundred-thousand years of language.
What comes next? I have some predictions, and they are pretty crazy. The first prediction is that publishers weather a few of these big AI scandals, but as years go by, publishers care more about profits and they let things slide. AI books from big houses get editing passes, and later they develop internal tools to roughen up the AI slop, and machine-books appear in bookstores alongside meat-books. This feels inevitable. Brace for this. (Feel free to rage about it as well, if you’re low on cortisol.)
Another prediction is that MOST readers will care about machine-vs-meat as much as they currently care about publishing imprints, which is to say almost none. Book series will go viral and readers will get wholly absorbed and where the story came from won’t matter. There will always be readers pushing beyond the fringe. That’s how fanfiction became viable. It’s why I had a career. There were readers who ignored the assholes saying, “Don’t read that, it’s self-published.” These readers asked instead, “Yeah, but is it any good?” Because of them, I got to write for a living. So I will always have a fondness for readers who search for story, ignoring the stories behind the stories.
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Authors before 2007 did OK. The explosion of content once Kindles came along wasn’t really a benefit. (Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
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Assembly guides: choose a product • LeakedLeek
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Assembly guides:
Pick a product to open its interactive step-by-step 3D instructions.
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There are only two guides there, but this is a 3D demonstration of how building IKEA stuff might be made easier. If you can imagine looking at it through an AR headset that might make it even easier. (It’s a fan project, not an IKEA idea, though they should definitely take it up.)
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Batteries are getting cheaper while gas gets pricier. Here’s why • The Conversation
Joel Gilmore is an associate professor at Griffith University in Australia:
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Last summer, Australia’s electricity grid underwent a quiet but consequential shift.
Across the east coast, gas-fired power stations – long viewed as the only way to keep the grid functioning on our hottest or coldest days – barely ran. The amount of energy generated by fossil gas this year dropped to its lowest point in 25 years. Batteries are now filling this gap, as a cheaper, cleaner alternative at peak times. And wholesale electricity prices are 47% lower than this time last year, thanks to record renewable and battery generation.
This shift sits at the heart of the CSIRO’s latest GenCost report, which tells a story of two technologies heading in opposite directions: batteries getting cheaper and gas getting more expensive.
In Australia, most of our electricity historically came from coal. But each year we’re becoming less reliant on this finite and polluting resource. Coal usage has dropped by 25% in the past decade. In the first three months of 2026, renewables supplied a record 45% of electricity in Australia’s east coast grid.
This matters because electricity generation produces 32% of Australia’s carbon emissions. These emissions are worsening climate change, leading to more extreme weather and leaving many Australians physically and financially vulnerable.
Our coal power stations are also ageing. Like an old car, these stations are now breaking down more often and becoming more expensive to fix. When coal plants suddenly go offline, it pushes electricity prices up.
The federal government is aiming for 82% renewable energy by 2030 nationally. To meet that target, we must develop new wind and solar projects. But we also need new “firming” technologies, such as batteries and pumped hydro, to make sure we always have energy available.
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Gas is becoming more expensive because of all those data centres being built in the US; and because refuelling, surprisingly enough, is difficult.
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Apple Vision Pro speeds up surgery by almost 20% • MacRumors
Hartley Charlton:
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Surgeons who wore an Apple Vision Pro as their primary display during a tear duct procedure finished operations 19% faster than surgeons using a traditional monitor, according to a peer-reviewed study by UC San Diego.
The study, published in the journal AJO International (via iPhone in Canada), looked at 32 endoscopic surgeries to clear blocked tear ducts. In half the cases, surgeons wore Vision Pro headsets that streamed the endoscopic video feed directly into their field of view instead of looking at a monitor across the room, letting them keep a natural forward-facing posture throughout.
Average operative time came in at 34.4 minutes with the Vision Pro, compared to 42.7 minutes with the traditional monitor. Every case in both groups succeeded with no complications, and all five surgeons involved said they preferred operating with the headset, reporting lower physical and mental workload.
The researchers also found the Vision Pro was cheaper and far smaller than the monitor setup it replaced…
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That is quite a quick operation. The benefit seems to be that surgeons don’t have to turn their heads to look at a monitor at the end of the bed; they can look straight ahead into the monitor.
Nice that Apple managed to sell a few to doctors, anyway.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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