FlashFeed

Full text

“Books make me so mad.” That’s what my friend, who used to work part-time as a mover, told me when he learned that my husband and I found a new place to live and I had a lot of books that I needed to pack up.

A few weeks ago the apartment we’d been renting for the past nine years flooded. The floors and ceilings were damaged but the books, thank goodness, were all safe. By the time you read this we will have downsized, moving to a new place where no weird mold is growing (a plus!) but that is also a little bit smaller. Which means that I’ve had to confront my book collection, which has grown exponentially over the years with stacks piled on the floor in very particular orders and bookshelves that are crammed.

In pruning my books I learned some important lessons about editing for the advanced collector, the kind who derives joy from too many kinds of books to use the Kondo Method effectively.

*

1. It’s time to stop trying to impress some imaginary book critic who might one day look at my shelves.

There are certain books on my shelves by authors who I feel like I should read, but that I will never actually get around to reading. Some of them were purchased back when I was single and looking to impress whoever I thought might show up at my doorstep and clock that I’d read Gogol and Gass. I’m not that person anymore, thank goodness. And if I do ever decide to read The Tunnel , I can get a copy from the library.

2. I do not have to be a completist.

It’s great that there’s a new collection of Eve Babitz’s letters and other ephemera is out now, but that doesn’t mean it has to go right next to Sex and Rage . I’ll stick with the classics. I also don’t need every single work Zadie Smith has ever put out as long as I hold onto the novels and essays that have meant the most to me.

3. If I haven’t read the galley within a year of publication, it’s very unlikely that I will.

This one is a heartbreaker. The publicity cycle moves so fast, and it would be physically impossible for me to keep up. Which doesn’t mean I don’t want to try. The books keep coming even if I still haven’t gotten around to that cool-looking essay collection from 2024.

4. You (I) can’t judge a book by its spine, no matter how pretty it is.

If I had unlimited space I’d proudly display my entire collection of NYRB paperbacks, with their uniform fonts and pleasing color palettes. But for this time around, I’ve got to limit the pretty books to the ones I’ve read and loved or that I might one day want to read (which is still plenty of NYRB titles).

5. Sometimes new information really can change my feelings about an author.

Which is to say I’ve kept the two Alice Munro story collections that are dearest to me, but the rest are being donated.

6. I have to give up on some of my little projects.

Back when Twitter was still a place to talk about books, I had asked users what their favorite underrated novel of all time was. The answers were wonderful and I had ordered a ton of titles from the responses, some new, some used from Thrift Books. They’ve stared at me accusingly ever since. Years later I had to admit to myself that I’d never get around to reading them, which involved coming to grips with time management, mortality, and other unanswerable questions.

7. When friends come over, their books must be on display.

This is non-negotiable. All of my friends’ books are staying put.

8. The books to keep are the ones I keep revisiting.

The most important rule in book collecting is to make sure that the ones that are thoroughly underlined and marked up, the ones you found truly revelatory, are easily accessible. Looking at them every day becomes part of who you are, and to me that’s one of the best feelings in the world.

9. There will always be more books.

I’m not deranged enough to believe that just because my collection is about 300 titles slimmer at this very moment that I’m gonna stay this way for long. And isn’t that great?

10. Tip your movers well.

If you insist on making owning a bunch of books an integral part of your personality, then you must make amends to the people who have to deal with them.

Full text

Businesses are racing to adopt and operationalize AI, but many are deploying the technology faster than they can govern it. This gap is quietly becoming one of the biggest security risks facing enterprises today.

AI agents are being embedded into everyday workflows as teams chase efficiency gains, and organizations are under increasing pressure from boards and senior leadership to automate processes faster.

However, beneath this perceived momentum sits a more uncomfortable reality: businesses still have limited visibility into how these systems behave once deployed.

Security teams need to take a step back and rethink what proper governance looks like in a world where AI systems operate with autonomous access, inherited permissions and limited visibility.

Confidence is outpacing verification

Understandably, many businesses view successful AI deployment as evidence that they are ready to scale AI across their business.

Recent research found that 87% of organizations believe their identity management posture is prepared to support AI-driven automation. Yet, at the same time 46% admit that their identity governance falls short.

This contradiction sits at the core of the AI security paradox.

The core problem is that organizations are granting AI systems increasing levels of access and autonomy before they have established clear ways to monitor or verify how these systems behave.

If nobody can explain why an AI agent took an action, the permissions it inherited, the systems it accessed and whether or not that behavior was actually intended, governance quickly becomes reactive rather than preventative.

AI agents undermine traditional identity governance foundations

Unfortunately, securing these new AI identities won’t happen overnight, as legacy governance models simply aren’t cut out for the challenges facing security teams today.

Traditional identity management was built around four key assumptions: predictable behavior, human intent and bounded permissions. Agentic AI changes all four. Security teams already understand the risks of AI agents and non-human identities. The problem is that operational realities are forcing many organizations to accept those risks regardless.

Research shows that 73% of organizations believe standing access for AI agents increases security risk. In other words, leaders recognize the dangers associated with giving AI systems privileged access, but feel under pressure to prioritize speed and operational efficiency anyways.

Crucially, the governance issue extends beyond risk. The fact that 80% of organizations said they cannot always determine why an AI agent took a privileged action suggests a fundamental issue.

That creates an entirely different governance challenge from one that ever existed in traditional identity management. Humans can typically justify intent, context or decision-making -autonomous systems can’t.

Shadow AI is becoming operational infrastructure

AI usage in the workforce has long moved on from a select few employees experimenting with ChatGPT. Now, the technology is deeply woven into production systems, workflows and enterprise data.

The scale of the problem is significant - 53% of organizations say they regularly encounter unsanctioned AI tools or agents accessing company systems or data, but only 28% can detect shadow AI in real time.

In reality, businesses are effectively allowing unknown contractors to roam freely through their corridors, with limited insight into where they’re going, what they’re doing and what they have access to.

This shift is forcing organizations to rethink traditional security priorities and focus on continuous monitoring and validation.

As a result, businesses need to begin focusing on how effectively they can monitor and verify what their AI systems are accessing, and whether that access is still appropriate.

Solving the governance contradiction

We know that organizations can’t afford to slow down on AI adoption given the competitive and operational incentives. But they also can’t afford to expand AI access and permissions faster than they can secure them.

This means bringing identity security to the forefront of AI governance strategies. Much of the discussion around AI risk still focuses on models, regulation and data privacy and those issues are important. But the true operational challenge increasingly sits between inherited permissions and unmanaged trust between systems.

For business leaders, the first priority should be improving visibility rather than adding more controls. They need to understand which AI identities exist within their organisation, what systems they can access, how permissions are inherited and where standing privileges have accumulated over time.

Organizations will also need to move away from persistent privilege models towards more dynamic models that provide temporary access only when required.

Ultimately, the organizations that will reap the greatest rewards from AI will be the ones that can understand, govern and validate the systems they use.

Deploying automation as fast as possible may lead to some quick wins, but doing so without the right governance measures in place could come back to haunt you.

We've reviewed and ranked the best firewall software .

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

Full text

One of the most controversial bits of World of Warcraft: Midnight was Blizzard taking aim at UI mods (addons) that impacted combat, with the idea that you probably shouldn't have to make your game look like an airplane dashboard designed by a drunk person just to play a videogame. Something that I've come around to, for the most part.

In a recent interview with PCGamesN , game director Ion Hazzikostas has affirmed Blizzard's choice to revoke addon author's access to combat information (with a few exceptions): "I know this may be a controversial statement, but I will say that, overall, [the new UI] has been successful so far. It's not done, it's not perfect; there's more work to go, and we are continuing to undertake that work."

"Controversial" is somewhat correct, mind. While I've been handling the shift absolutely fine, I'm also primarily a DPS guy—during the last raid tier, healers were suffering due to a complete mismatch between Blizzard's encounter design and their UI's ability to track dispellable debuffs.

Essentially, while Blizzard has touted that it's designing its encounters with an addonless world in mind, a raid encounter in Midnight's first season, Crown of the Cosmos, had a debuff called Null Corona that needed to be dispelled. However, because the studio's changes made it impossible to track dispels, healers were forced to squint at their party member's health bars to find a tiny purple jpeg.

This was eventually hotfixed , but that's far from the only issue. The homegrown DPS meter could, er, be better. It's missing a huge amount of functionality that was there with meter addons before, a step back by pretty much every metric. And it's not like Blizzard isn't working on it, but it's easy to feel salty about a sweeping lack of convenience—the rapidfire development cycle of hobbyist mod builders absolutely beats the often-complicated and difficult tasks of a major development studio.

"I think that, by and large, the vast majority of people are completing the same level of content that they were before, and far more are doing it without feeling like they need to seek out external tools. There have been some exceptions to that where the community has figured out ways of making some computational logic work, and we didn't want to keep breaking things in the middle of a patch."

That's another asterisk to the whole thing—many high-end raiders have figured out ways to gain the same functionality they'd lost before, but because of both the new rules around addons and the usability lost from the death of something like WeakAuras, these addons mostly aren't accessible to the general public.

Hazzikostas says that patch 12.1 should iron out a lot of those kinks, though: "The 12.1 update has what we think is a more comprehensive overhaul of the security backend of our addon interface, which should make it a little easier for addon authors to write addons, but also close some of the loopholes we've seen pop up here and there. Alongside that, we're continuing to improve our base user interface."

Ultimately, Hazzikostas says that "I think, while it's certainly been a transition with its challenges, we're excited to have this new baseline and foundation, and things will only continue to get better from here, both as we continue to add functionality to the base UI, and we continue to empower addon authors to add customization options.

"And as we, frankly, internally relearn some aspects of how we can build encounters in this new world. I think that's going to open up new doors and possibilities for players in raids, dungeons, Delves, and everything in between."

Best MMOs : Most massive

Best strategy games : Number crunching

Best open world games : Unlimited exploration

Best survival games : Live craft love

Best horror games : Fight or flight

Full text

#1 on the nonfiction Indie Bestseller list this week is Communion by bell hooks, which shares a title with the new JD Vance book. That’s no accident: a grassroots campaign encouraged readers to pick up the bell hooks title, and it worked. It got to the #12 bestseller spot in The New York Times and was the #1 bestseller on Bookshop.org. The publisher said sales on the title are up 1,000% since last year.

This list continues to lack diversity on many levels, including being disproportionately by white authors. Some Independent Press Bestsellers you should know about are The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian.

To get these numbers, we look at The New York Times , both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; Publishers Weekly ; USA Today ; and Indie Bestsellers, Fiction and Nonfiction, both Paperback and Hardcover.

Books On All Five Bestseller Lists:

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Whistler by Ann Patchett

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Books On Four Bestseller Lists:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir ( Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Indie Bestsellers)

The Deal by Elle Kennedy ( Publishers Weekly, NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Divorce by Freida McFadden ( Publishers Weekly, USA Today, NYT, Amazon)

Books On Three Bestseller Lists:

Strangers by Belle Burden (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

The Land and Its People by David Sedaris (NYT, Amazon, Indie Bestsellers)

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books .

Full text

For decades, cities have been designed around "gray infrastructure." Roads move people. Bridges connect communities. Water systems protect public health. These systems are governed by engineering standards because society recognizes that safety cannot depend on good intentions alone.

Urban nature deserves the same recognition.

In June, a heat wave gripped Europe, breaking temperature records across the continent. In France, officials reported over 2,000 excess deaths . In the U.K., hospitals declared critical incidents and machinery and IT systems failed. In the U.S., a heat dome over the Midwest and East Coast disrupted Fourth of July celebrations, with at least 25 heat-related deaths over Independence Day weekend.

Cities are being tested by a warming climate. Yet one of our most effective forms of climate infrastructure is being lost — not because it does not work but because we still do not treat it as infrastructure.

My view is simple: Urban nature ‪—‬ including street trees, parks, wetlands and other urban green spaces ‪—‬ should be categorized and managed as essential infrastructure , with minimum standards for its protection, quality and long-term maintenance. Just as we regulate roads, bridges and drinking water, we need standards that ensure all urban residents benefit from healthy and thriving urban nature. Without such standards, cities will become hotter, less resilient and increasingly unequal as climate change accelerates.

A cafe in the city of Nice during the heat wave that saw temperatures in France reach a record-breaking average of 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit (36.9 degrees Celsius). (Image credit: Valery Hache/Getty Images) Scientific research shows that urban trees and green spaces cool cities during heat waves, reduce flooding by absorbing stormwater, improve air quality, store carbon, support biodiversity, and improve both physical and mental health. During extreme heat, neighborhoods with mature tree canopies can be several degrees cooler than nearby streets dominated by concrete and asphalt. Those few degrees can mean the difference between manageable discomfort and dangerous heat exposure, particularly for older adults, children and people with existing health conditions.

But while the science is strong, our governance is not.

Cities enthusiastically announce ambitious tree-planting campaigns, biodiversity strategies and new greening targets. These initiatives are valuable, but they often focus on what is easy to count rather than what truly matters. Planting a tree is not the same as growing a healthy urban forest. Creating a park does not guarantee biodiversity. A green roof delivers little value if it fails during drought.

The real measure of success is whether urban nature continues providing benefits decades after trees are planted and established.

This is where cities are still falling short.

That is not simply an environmental issue. It is a public health issue, a climate adaptation issue, and an issue of social equity.

Unlike buildings or transport systems, urban nature rarely operates under consistent minimum standards. Many cities have no requirements for minimum tree canopy cover, adequate rooting space, soil quality, biodiversity targets, long-term maintenance or even whether newly planted trees survive. As a result, access to nature depends heavily on where people live. Wealthier neighborhoods often enjoy mature tree canopy and high-quality parks, while disadvantaged communities experience hotter streets, fewer green spaces and greater exposure to climate risks.

That is not simply an environmental issue. It is a public health issue, a climate adaptation issue, and an issue of social equity.

The solution is not simply to plant more trees. It is to establish urban nature standards that recognize nature as essential infrastructure.

These standards would not prescribe the same solution for every city. Instead, they would establish minimum expectations based on scientific evidence. They could include targets for accessible green space, minimum tree canopy cover, sufficient soil volume for healthy tree growth, biodiversity outcomes, long-term maintenance funding and routine monitoring to ensure that urban nature continues delivering benefits to communities.

The Bosco Verticale in Milan house around 800 trees and 20,000 plants. City officials have been expanding the green infrastructure with multiple high impact projects to address climate change. (Image credit: Emanuele Cremaschi/Getty Images) Importantly, these standards should focus on outcomes rather than simple planting targets. Counting how many trees are planted tells us little about whether cities are becoming more resilient. Measuring survival, canopy development, ecosystem health and equitable access provides a much better picture of whether investments in urban nature are actually returning dividends.

Some critics argue that cities cannot afford stronger standards for urban nature. Municipal budgets are already stretched by housing, transport and aging infrastructure. But this argument overlooks a fundamental reality: We already spend enormous sums responding to the consequences of extreme heat, flooding, poor air quality and declining public health. Healthy urban ecosystems help reduce these costs while delivering multiple benefits simultaneously.

RELATED STORIES

'River in the Sky': China's doomed plan to create a 'cloud seeding corridor' tells us how far the country will go to solve its climate crisis

Drinking wastewater, building an island from scratch and creating an urban forest: 3 bold ways cities are already adapting to climate change

War has brought Iran's water crisis to a breaking point: 'Things will collapse unless there is meaningful structural change'

As climate change accelerates, the distinction between gray and green infrastructure becomes increasingly blurred. Trees cool buildings and reduce energy demand. Wetlands decrease flood damage. Parks improve public health and strengthen communities. These are not optional amenities. They are functioning components of urban infrastructure that deserve the same level of planning, investment and accountability as any engineered system.

Building codes transformed the safety of our cities because they established minimum standards that every development had to meet. Climate resilience now demands a similar transformation for urban nature.

The next generation of resilient cities will not be defined simply by how many trees they plant but by the standards they adopt to protect, restore and sustain the living infrastructure urban life depends on.

The real question is not whether cities can afford to invest in urban nature; it is whether they can afford not to.

Opinion on Live Science gives you insight on the most important issues in science that affect you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their field.