Enlarge / Math for English Majors talks about numbers as nouns, verbs as calculations, and algebra as grammar. (credit: Ben Orlin)

Galileo once famously described the universe as a great book "written in mathematical language and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures." Unfortunately, it's a language that many people outside of math and science simply do not speak, largely because they are flummoxed and/or intimidated by the sheer density of all that strange symbolic notation.

Math teacher extraordinaire Ben Orlin is here to help with his latest book: Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language . And just like Orlin's previous outings, it's filled with the author's trademark bad drawings. Bonus: Orlin created a fun personality quiz, which you can take here to find out your mathematical style.

Orlin's first book, Math with Bad Drawings , after his blog of the same name, was published in 2018. It included such highlights as placing a discussion of the correlation coefficient and " Anscombe's Quartet " into the world of Harry Potter and arguing that building the Death Star in the shape of a sphere may not have been the Galactic Empire's wisest move. We declared it "a great, entertaining read for neophytes and math fans alike, because Orlin excels at finding novel ways to connect the math to real-world problems—or in the case of the Death Star, to problems in fictional worlds."

Enlarge / Artist's conception of what used to be possible, before BattlEye ruined things.

Last week, Rockstar added BattlEye support to Grand Theft Auto V , offering some much-needed anti-cheat protection for the game's highly successful GTA Online multiplayer mode. That anti-cheat support wasn't welcome news for Steam Deck players, though, who now get confronted with an error when trying to log in to GTA Online .

According to Valve, though, Rockstar could solve this minor technical issue with a single email.

In both a Steam Community update and a Rockstar Support FAQ , the developer notes that "Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online . You will be able to play GTAV Story Mode but unable to play GTA Online ." As such, GTA V 's Steam page now lists the game as "Unsupported" for Steam Deck users, because "the game's anti-cheat is not configured to support Steam Deck."

Enlarge (credit: J Studios via Getty Images )

If you haven't noticed by now , Big Tech companies have been making plans to invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver generative AI products like ChatGPT (and beyond) to hundreds of millions of people around the world. That push involves building more AI-accelerating chips , more data centers, and even new nuclear plants to power those data centers, in some cases.

Along those lines, Microsoft, BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), and MGX announced a massive new AI investment partnership on Tuesday called the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP). The partnership initially aims to raise $30 billion in private equity capital, which could later turn into $100 billion in total investment when including debt financing .

The group will invest in data centers and supporting power infrastructure for AI development. "The capital spending needed for AI infrastructure and the new energy to power it goes beyond what any single company or government can finance," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

Elon Musk's X temporarily became accessible again in Brazil despite government orders requiring Internet service providers to block the social network. X's revival was enabled by the company switching to a different network provider, namely Cloudflare, but Cloudflare reportedly made changes that allow ISPs to resume their blocking of X.

"When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team," X's Global Government Affairs account said last night . "To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users. While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again shortly, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil."

X's statement that restoration of service in Brazil was "inadvertent" surprised Abrint, a trade group for Brazilian ISPs. The BBC quoted Abrint official Basílio Rodriguez Pérez as saying, "everything that happened during the day led us to believe that it was on purpose."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Most living organisms easily surpass machines when it comes to navigating real-world environments and adaptability to changing conditions. One way to bridge that gap is building biohybrid robots that merge synthetic machinery with biological components like animal muscles , bacteria, or plants.

But living muscles are very hard to keep alive in a machine, bacteria have a very short lifespan, and plants tend to react to things a bit slowly, like Ents in The Lord of the Rings . So, a team of scientists at Cornell University went down a different path and built biohybrid robots controlled by fungi, specifically, oyster mushrooms.

Understanding mushrooms’ signals

Robots controlled by fungi, despite giving strong Last of Us vibes, are a good idea on paper. Fungi are very easy to sustain and can live pretty much everywhere, including extreme environments like the Arctic, or even amid nuclear contamination. They're also cheap to culture in large quantities and excel at reacting to environmental cues like exposure to light.

Enlarge / Instead of giving the ID.4 complicated door handles that recess into the side of the car, VW has designed these to be flush yet always accessible. (credit: Volkswagen)

Volkswagen has a bit of a headache on its hands with the ID.4 crossover. There's a problem with the electric vehicle's flush-set door handles, which VW says don't meet its waterproofing specs. Consequently, moisture can get into the door controller's circuit board, possibly allowing the door to open while the EV is in motion.

As a result, VW has issued a recall for almost 100,000 ID.4s, as well as suspending production of the popular crossover at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and issuing a stop-sale to VW dealers. The stop-sale applies to preowned ID.4s as well as vehicles on lots yet to find their first owner.

The recall applies to all US ID.4s—99,064 in total, from the initial model-year 2021 cars built in Germany to the latest 2024 models made in the USA . VW first started hearing complaints in February 2024. By June, together with its suppliers, it had determined the problem was due to inadequate protection against water entering and then corroding the door handle electronics.

(credit: USGS )

Droughts in the coming decades could be longer than projected by current climate models, a new study published Wednesday in Nature warns.

The international team of scientists examined potential biases that could skew climate models used to make drought projections under Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change midrange and high emissions scenarios. The researchers corrected for the bias by calibrating those models with observations of the longest annual dry spells between 1998 and 2018.

By the end of this century, they found that the average longest periods of drought could be 10 days longer than previously projected. Trouble spots included North America, Southern Africa, and Madagascar, where the newly calibrated models showed that the increase in the longest annual dry spell could be about twice what the older models predicted.

Enlarge / BMW is moving to cylindrical cells for its sixth-generation EV powertrain, which debuts in the Neue Klasse. And now it has a recycling partner. (credit: BMW)

Battery recycling company Redwood Materials gained a new automaker partner today. It has agreed to a deal with BMW of North America to recycle lithium-ion battery packs from BMW's electrified vehicles and will eventually use recycled material from Redwood in battery packs for BMWs built in North America as the automaker works toward a closed-loop supply chain.

"Our partnership with BMW of North America ensures responsible end-of-life battery management that will improve the environmental footprint of lithium-ion batteries, help decrease cost and, in turn, increase access and adoption of electric vehicles," said Cal Lankton, chief commercial officer at Redwood Materials.

Redwood was founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel in 2017, and in recent years, the startup has signed partnerships with Ford, Volvo , Volkswagen , and more recently General Motors . These companies route end-of-life battery packs (and, in the case of GM, battery manufacturing scraps) to Redwood, where the nickel, cobalt, copper, lithium, and other minerals are recycled in a hydrometallurgy facility.

Enlarge / Artist's conception of Pocketpair lawyers establishing a defensive position against Nintendo's coming legal onslaught. (credit: Pocketpair)

Nintendo and The Pokemon Company announced they have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair, the makers of the heavily Pokémon-inspired Palworld . The Tokyo District Court lawsuit seeks an injunction and damages "on the grounds that Palworld infringes multiple patent rights" according to the announcement.

"Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years," the company writes.

The many surface similarities between Pokémon and Palworld are readily apparent, even though Pocketpair's game adds many new features over Nintendo's (such as, uh, guns). But making legal hay over even heavy common ground between games can be an uphill battle . That's because copyright law (at least in the US) generally doesn't apply to a game's mere design elements , and only extends to "expressive elements" such as art, character design, and music.