Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

LLM applications fail in ways traditional software does not. The same prompt can produce different outputs. A retrieval step can return the wrong document while every HTTP status reads 200. An agent can loop through fourteen tool calls, burn thousands of tokens, and deliver a confidently wrong answer. Standard application performance monitoring (APM) alone does not capture this semantic behavior — prompt and output quality, retrieval relevance, or agent-level reasoning traces. This is the gap LLM observability and evaluation platforms fill. They record every span of an LLM pipeline — prompts, completions, retrievals, tool calls,…

In brief Supporters of BIP-110 split off into a minority Bitcoin chain on Saturday at block 961,632, but it mined only two blocks in about eight hours before stalling, falling dozens of blocks behind the main network. The fork inherited Bitcoin’s difficulty setting with barely any hashpower—about 2.53% of recent blocks signaled support, far below the 55% activation threshold, BIP-110 sought to temporarily block non-financial data like Ordinals inscriptions from transactions, a move critics including Michael Saylor call a dangerous precedent. The long-simmering fight over a controversial Bitcoin network proposal finally produced a chain split over the weekend, but the…

Uranium, a radioactive heavy metal, is typically locked inside minerals in soil. However, mining and other environmental processes can change uranium into forms that dissolve in water. Once it becomes mobile in this way, it can spread through the environment and create problems because of its toxicity. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), working with Wismut GmbH and scientists from the University of Granada, have now shown for the first time that bacteria can transform uranium dissolved in water into a stable chemical compound when glycerol is available as a food source. During this process, the uranium enters a chemical…

Tehran, Iran – Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have expanded their mutual defence pact to add Turkiye, raising questions about the emergence of a new security architecture at a time when the United States and Iran have yet to reach a final deal to end their war.Under the agreement signed in Mecca on Friday, any external armed attack on either of the three countries will now be considered an attack on all.The trilateral pact was announced more than five months after the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran, triggering a conflict that quickly spread to the Gulf and disrupted…

The UK will move faster and be more ambitious on achieving closer ties with Europe under Andy Burnham’s government, his new chief post-Brexit negotiator has said.Hamish Falconer, the new cabinet minister in charge of the EU reset talks, said there was “room to be ambitious” within Labour’s red lines on Europe, which exclude reopening discussions on the single market and customs union, and he would look at the “art of the possible”.He said greater cooperation on services – which might include visa-free travel for British people working in the EU, or mutual recognition of qualifications – was the next big…

When Hamish Falconer left his career as a Foreign Office diplomat for the hostile environment of a Labour party selection process, one of his last acts was a negotiation to free six hostages from the Taliban.When he won the key marginal seat of Lincoln in the 2024 general election, he did not expect to be back in those offices on King Charles Street quite so quickly – he was appointed Middle East minister just two weeks later.Two years on, he is one among the first three of his generation of MPs to reach the cabinet, and he is back around…

Earlier this week, the Alaskan cruise ship Wilderness Legacy rescued a small skiff stranded near Farragut Bay after running out of fuel. But, according to tracking data reviewed by the Alaska Beacon and Halifax Shipping News, the closest vessel was actually Mark Zuckerberg’s super yacht, Launchpad.Michael Love, a passenger on the Wilderness Legacy, posted on Bluesky that the captain announced the Launchpad was closer, but “repeatedly refused to respond,” which was met with booing from the passengers. The AIS tracking (embedded below) seems to support that the Launchpad was closer to the vessel in trouble, but then stopped near the…

Demand for US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) rebounded sharply this week, signaling renewed investor appetite after months of uneven flows, even as uncertainty persists around digital asset regulation and the security of crypto self-custody.On Saturday, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said the spot funds attracted roughly $1 billion in net inflows for the week, their strongest showing since April and third-best week since last October — a period he referred to as Bitcoin’s “silent IPO.”Source: Eric BalchunasThe term was popularized by investor Jordi Visser in November to describe what he viewed as a changing of the guard among Bitcoin…

India is attempting to do something the world has never seen before. So claimed Niti Aayog, the government of India’s policy thinktank, earlier this year. It said that no major economy has tried to expand GDP nearly eightfold within a generation while simultaneously redirecting its energy and industrial systems to reach net zero within two generations. Hence its detailed report’s claim that there is “no historical precedent”.There is something to this. China industrialised at vast scale, but not on a sustainable net zero path. Korea, Japan and Europe became wealthy by industrialising before decarbonising. Today, rich nations have already satisfied…

Iran’s demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, as laid out in a statement on Saturday, are largely what President Trump had already agreed to do in the memorandum of understanding that was signed on June 17 and quickly fell apart. But Iran sees control over the strait as its best chance of getting Mr. Trump to deliver on those promises — and is not willing to give it up just yet.For Iran, analysts suggest, denying Mr. Trump the ability to claim victory over the strait is the most efficient lever to persuade him to recommit to those agreements and…