The Perito Moreno Glacier has started losing contact with the bedrock below, causing it to shed more ice as it inches backward.

Vanuatu, which is home to about 300,000 people spread across 83 islands, is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

In a rare squid/security combined post, a new vulnerability was discovered in the Squid HTTP proxy server.

Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of “harmful” content that go far beyond graphic sexual content. EFF has extensively criticized the OSA for eroding privacy, chilling speech, and undermining the safety of the children it aims to protect. Now that it’s gone into effect, these countless problems have begun to reveal themselves, and the absurd, disastrous outcome illustrates why we must work to avoid this age-verified future at all costs.

Perhaps you’ve seen the memes as large platforms like Spotify and YouTube attempt to comply with the OSA, while smaller sites—like forums focused on parenting, green living, and gaming on Linux—either shut down or cease some operations rather than face massive fines for not following the law’s vague, expensive, and complicated rules and risk assessments. 

But even Reddit, a site that prizes anonymity and has regularly demonstrated its commitment to digital rights, was doomed to fail in its attempt to comply with the OSA. Though Reddit is not alone in bowing to the UK mandates, it provides a perfect case study and a particularly instructive glimpse of what the age-verified future would look like if we don’t take steps to stop it.

It’s Not Just Porn—LGBTQ+, Public Health, and Politics Forums All Behind Age Gates

On July 25, users in the UK were shocked and rightfully revolted to discover that their favorite Reddit communities were now locked behind age verification walls. Under the new policies, UK Redditors were asked to submit a photo of their government ID and/or a live selfie to Persona, the for-profit vendor that Reddit contracts with to provide age verification services. 

For many, this was the first time they realized what the OSA would actually mean in practice—and the outrage was immediate. As soon as the policy took effect, reports emerged from users that subreddits dedicated to LGBTQ+ identity and support, global journalism and conflict reporting, and even public health-related forums like r/periods, r/stopsmoking, and r/sexualassault were walled off to unverified users. A few more absurd examples of the communities that were blocked off, according to users, include: r/poker, r/vexillology (the study of flags), r/worldwar2, r/earwax, r/popping (the home of grossly satisfying pimple-popping content), and r/rickroll (yup). This is, again, exactly what digital rights advocates warned about. 

Every user in the country is now faced with a choice: submit their most sensitive data for privacy-invasive analysis, or stay off of Reddit entirely. Which would you choose? 

The OSA defines "harmful" in multiple ways that go far beyond pornography, so the obstacles the UK users are experiencing are exactly what the law intended. Like other online age restrictions, the OSA obstructs way more than kids’ access to clearly adult sites. When fines are at stake, platforms will always default to overcensoring. So every user in the country is now faced with a choice: submit their most sensitive data for privacy-invasive analysis, or stay off of Reddit entirely. Which would you choose? 

Again, the fact that the OSA has forced Reddit, the “heart of the internet,” to overcensor user-generated content is noteworthy. Reddit has historically succeeded where many others have failed in safeguarding digital rights—particularly the free speech and privacy of its users. It may not be perfect, but Reddit has worked harder than many large platforms to defend Section 230, a key law in the US protecting free speech online. It was one of the first platforms to endorse the Santa Clara Principles, and it was the only platform to receive every star in EFF’s 2019 “Who Has Your Back” (Censorship Edition) report due to its unique approach to moderation, its commitment to notice and appeals of moderation decisions, and its transparency regarding government takedown requests. Reddit’s users are particularly active in the digital rights world: in 2012, they helped EFF and other advocates defeat SOPA/PIPA, a dangerous censorship law. Redditors were key in forcing members of Congress to take a stand against the bill, and were the first to declare a “blackout day,” a historic moment of online advocacy in which over a hundred thousand websites went dark to protest the bill. And Reddit is the only major social media platform where EFF doesn’t regularly share our work—because its users generally do so on their own. 

If a platform with a history of fighting for digital rights is forced to overcensor, how will the rest of the internet look if age verification spreads? Reddit’s attempts to comply with the OSA show the urgency of fighting these mandates on every front. 

We cannot accept these widespread censorship regimes as our new norm. 

Rollout Chaos: The Tech Doesn’t Even Work! 

In the days after the OSA became effective, backlash to the new age verification measures spread across the internet like wildfire as UK users made their hatred of these new policies clear. VPN usage in the UK soared, over 500,000 people signed a petition to repeal the OSA, and some shrewd users even discovered that video game face filters and meme images could fool Persona’s verification software. But these loopholes aren’t likely to last long, as we can expect the age-checking technology to continuously adapt to new evasion tactics. As good as they may be, VPNs cannot save us from the harms of age verification. 

In effect, the OSA and other age verification mandates like it will increase the risk of harm, not reduce it. 

Even when the workarounds inevitably cease to function and the age-checking procedures calcify, age verification measures still will not achieve their singular goal of protecting kids from so-called “harmful” online content. Teenagers will, uh, find a way to access the content they want. Instead of going to a vetted site like Pornhub for explicit material, curious young people (and anyone else who does not or cannot submit to age checks) will be pushed to the sketchier corners of the internet—where there is less moderation, more safety risk, and no regulation to prevent things like CSAM or non-consensual sexual content. In effect, the OSA and other age verification mandates like it will increase the risk of harm, not reduce it. 

If that weren’t enough, the slew of practical issues that have accompanied Reddit’s rollout also reveals the inadequacy of age verification technology to meet our current moment. For example, users reported various bugs in the age-checking process, like being locked out or asked repeatedly for ID despite complying. UK-based subreddit moderators also reported facing difficulties either viewing NSFW post submissions or vetting users’ post history, even when the particular submission or subreddit in question was entirely SFW. 

Taking all of this together, it is excessively clear that age-gating the internet is not the solution to kids’ online safety. Whether due to issues with the discriminatory and error-prone technology, or simply because they lack either a government ID or personal device of their own, millions of UK internet users will be completely locked out of important social, political, and creative communities. If we allow age verification, we welcome new levels of censorship and surveillance with it—while further lining the pockets of big tech and the slew of for-profit age verification vendors that have popped up to fill this market void.

Americans, Take Heed: It Will Happen Here Too

The UK age verification rollout, chaotic as it is, is a proving ground for platforms that are looking ahead to implementing these measures on a global scale. In the US, there’s never been a better time to get educated and get loud about the dangers of this legislation. EFF has sounded this alarm before, but Reddit’s attempts to comply with the OSA show its urgency: age verification mandates are censorship regimes, and in the US, porn is just the tip of the iceberg. 

US legislators have been disarmingly explicit about their intentions to use restrictions on sexually explicit content as a Trojan horse that will eventually help them censor all sorts of other perfectly legal (and largely uncontroversial) content. We’ve already seen them move the goalposts from porn to transgender and other LGBTQ+ content. What’s next? Sexual education materials, reproductive rights information, DEI or “critical race theory” resources—the list goes on. Under KOSA, which last session passed the Senate with an enormous majority but did not make it to the House, we would likely see similar results here that we see in the UK under the OSA.

Nearly half of U.S. states have some sort of online age restrictions in place already, and the Supreme Court recently paved the way for even more age blocks on online sexual content. But Americans—including those under 18—still have a First Amendment right to view content that is not sexually explicit, and EFF will continue to push back against any legislation that expands the age mandates beyond porn, in statehouses, in courts, and in the streets. 

What can you do?

Call or email your representatives to oppose KOSA and any other federal age-checking mandate. Tell your state lawmakers, wherever you are, to oppose age verification laws. Make your voice heard online, and talk to your friends and family. Tell them about what’s happening to the internet in the UK, and make sure they understand what we all stand to lose—online privacy, security, anonymity, and expression—if the age-gated internet becomes a global reality. EFF is building a coalition to stop this enormous violation of digital rights. Join us today.

Each year, faculty and researchers across the MIT School of Engineering are recognized with prestigious awards for their contributions to research, technology, society, and education. To celebrate these achievements, the school periodically highlights select honors received by members of its departments, labs, and centers. The following individuals were recognized in spring 2025:

Markus Buehler, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received the Washington Award. The award honors engineers whose professional attainments have preeminently advanced the welfare of humankind.

Sili Deng, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received the 2025 Hiroshi Tsuji Early Career Researcher Award. The award recognizes excellence in fundamental or applied combustion science research. Deng was honored for her work on energy conversion and storage, including combustion fundamentals, data-driven modeling of reacting flows, carbon-neutral energetic materials, and flame synthesis of materials for catalysis and energy storage.

Jonathan How, the Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award. The award recognizes the best paper published annually in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics for technical merit, originality, potential impact, clarity, and practical significance.

Richard Linares, the Rockwell International Career Development Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the 2024 American Astronautical Society Emerging Astrodynamicist Award. The award honors junior researchers making significant contributions to the field of astrodynamics.

Youssef Marzouk, the Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was named a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was honored for influential contributions to multiple aspects of uncertainty quantification, particularly Bayesian computation and measure transport.

Dava Newman, the director of the MIT Media Lab and the Apollo Program Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received the Carolyn “Bo” Aldigé Visionary Award. The award was presented in recognition of the MIT Media Lab's women’s health program, WHx, for groundbreaking research in advancing women’s health.

Martin Rinard, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, received the 2025 SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes his fundamental contributions in pioneering the new fields of program repair and approximate computing.

Franz-Josef Ulm, the Class of 1922 Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was named an ASCE Distinguished Member. He was recognized for contributions to the nano- and micromechanics of heterogeneous materials, including cement, concrete, rock, and bone, with applications in sustainable infrastructure, underground energy harvesting, and human health.

Google’s vulnerability finding team is again pushing the envelope of responsible disclosure:

Google’s Project Zero team will retain its existing 90+30 policy regarding vulnerability disclosures, in which it provides vendors with 90 days before full disclosure takes place, with a 30-day period allowed for patch adoption if the bug is fixed before the deadline.

However, as of July 29, Project Zero will also release limited details about any discovery they make within one week of vendor disclosure. This information will encompass:

• The vendor or open-source project that received the report ...

The Trump administration wants to transfer a lawsuit over terminated National Institutes of Health grants to federal claims court, which has limited authority.

A new report shows where climate information is being deleted or revised. The White House says it's "shifting away from ideological activism."

Administrator Lee Zeldin in a social media post said the program to help pay for solar in low-income areas was eliminated by the recent tax-and-spending megalaw.

The European Commission released a controversial plan to offshore millions of tons of greenhouse gas cuts, but admitted to POLITICO it did not analyze the policy’s impact.

The review is intended to "inform" EPA's effort to revoke the 2009 endangerment finding.

The president’s signature legislation slashes nearly in half the royalty rates for new and existing coal leases.

An Arizona corporation said it had 3.3 million pollution allowances through Washington state's carbon market and tried to dupe investors.

The agreement comes as Union Pacific seeks federal approval for its merger with Norfolk Southern railroad.

The World Weather Attribution study found rainfall from June 24 to July 23 in the South Asian nation was 10 to 15 percent heavier because of climate change,

Living coral cover shrunk by almost a third in the south in a year, a quarter in the north and by 14 percent in the central region, a report said.

UBS’s departure comes shortly after similar moves from Barclays and HSBC Holdings.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 08 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41558-025-02400-3

Estimating transition risk is important for the banking sector, yet current practices still rely on conceptual scenarios. Now, a study provides a concrete approach to help regulators calculate the immediate risk that banks face from exposure to climate policy shocks.

Enter the basement in one of MIT’s iconic buildings and you’ll find students hammering on anvils and forging red-hot metal into blades. This hands-on lesson in metallurgy is captured in the documentary “That Creative Spark,” which won an Emmy Award for the Education/Schools category at the 48th annual Boston/New England Emmy Awards Ceremony held in Boston in June.

“It’s wonderful to be recognized for the work that we do,” says Clayton Hainsworth, director of MIT Video Productions at MIT Open Learning. “We’re lucky to have incredible people who have decided to bring their outstanding talents here in order to tell MIT’s stories.”

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Boston/New England Chapter recently honored Hainsworth, the documentary’s executive producer; Joe McMaster, director/producer; and Wesley Richardson, cinematographer.

“That Creative Spark” spotlights a series of 2024 Independent Activities Period (IAP) classes about bladesmithing, guest-taught by Bob Kramer, a world-renowned maker of hand-forged knives. In just one week, students learned how to grind, forge, and temper blocks of steel into knives sharp enough to slice through a sheet of paper without resistance.

“It’s an incredibly physical task of making something out of metal,” says McMaster, senior producer for MIT Video Productions. He says this tangible example of hands-on learning “epitomized the MIT motto of ‘mens et manus’ [‘mind and hand’].”

The IAP Bladesmithing with Bob Kramer course allowed students to see concepts and techniques like conductivity and pattern welding in action. Abhi Ratna Sharda, a PhD student at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), still recalls the feeling of metal changing as he worked on it.

“Those are things that you can be informed about through readings and textbooks, but the actual experience of doing them leaves an intuition you’re not quick to forget,” Sharda says.

Filming in the forge — the Merton C. Flemings Materials Processing Laboratory — is not an experience the MIT Video Productions team will be quick to forget, either. Richardson, field production videographer at MIT Video Productions, held the camera just six feet away from red-hot blades being dipped into tubs of oil, creating minor fireballs and plumes of smoke.

“It’s intriguing to see the dexterity that the students have around working with their hands with very dangerous objects in close proximity to each other,” says Richardson. “Students were able to get down to these really precise knives at the end of the class.”

Some people may be surprised to learn that MIT has a working forge, but metalworking is a long tradition at the Institute. In the documentary, Yet-Ming Chiang, Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at DMSE, points out a clue hidden in plain sight: “If you look at the MIT logo, there’s a blacksmith, and ‘mens et manus’ — ‘mind and hand,’” says Chiang, referring to the Institute’s official seal, adopted in 1894. “So the teaching and the practice of working with metals has been an important part of our department for a long time.”

Chiang invited Kramer to be a guest instructor and lecturer for two reasons: Kramer is an industry expert, and he achieved success through hands-on learning — an integral part of an MIT education. After dropping out of college and joining the circus, Kramer later gained practical experience in service-industry kitchens and eventually became one of just 120 Master Bladesmiths in the United States today.

“This nontraditional journey of Bob’s inspires students to think about projects and problems in different ways,” Hainsworth says.

Sharda, for example, is applying the pattern welding process he learned from Kramer in both his PhD program and his recreational jewelry making. The effect creates striking visuals — from starbursts to swirls looking like agate geodes, and more — that extend all the way through the steel, not just the surface of the blade.

“A lot of my research has to do with bonding metals and bonding dissimilar metals, which is the foundation for pattern welding,” Sharda says, adding how this technique has many potential industrial applications. He compares it to the mokume-gane technique used with precious metals, a practice he encountered while researching solid-state welding methods.

“Seeing that executed in a space where it’s very difficult to achieve that level of precision — it inspired me to polish all the tightest nooks and crannies of the pieces I make, and make sure everything is as flawless as possible,” Sharda adds.

In the documentary, Kramer reflects on his month of teaching experience: “When you give someone the opportunity and guide them to actually make something with their hands, there’s very few things that are as satisfying as that.”

In addition to highlighting MIT’s hands-on approach to teaching, “That Creative Spark” showcases the depth of its unique learning experiences.

“There are many sides to MIT in terms of what the students are actually given access to and able to do,” says Richardson. “There is no one face of MIT, because they're highly gifted, highly talented, and often those talents and gifts extend beyond their courses of study.”

That message resonates with Chiang, who says the class underscores the importance of hands-on, experimental research in higher education.

“What I think is a real benefit in experimental research is the physical understanding of how objects and forces relate to each other,” he says. “This kind of class helps students — especially students who’ve never had that experience, never had a job that requires real hands-on work — gain an understanding of those relationships.”

Hainsworth says it’s wonderful to collaborate with his team to tell stories about the spirit and generosity of Institute faculty, guest speakers, and students. The documentary was made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of A. Neil Pappalardo ’64 and Jane Pappalardo.

“It really is a joy to come in every day and collaborate with people who care deeply about the work they do,” Hainsworth says. “And to be recognized with an Emmy, that is very rewarding.”

Jason Sparapani contributed to this story.

The various aspects of design — such as creation, function, and aesthetic — can be applied to many different disciplines and provide them with a value. While this is universally true for architecture, it has not traditionally been acknowledged for real estate, despite the close association between the two. Traditionally, real estate valuation has been determined by certain sales factors: income generated, recent similar sales, and replacement costs.

Now, a new book by researchers at MIT explores how design can be quantified in real estate valuation. “Value of Design: Creating Agency Through Data-Driven Insights” (Applied Research and Design Publishing) uses data-driven research to reveal how design leaves measurable traces in the built environment that correlate with real economic, social, and environmental outcomes.

The late MIT Research Scientist Andrea Chegut, along with Visiting Instructor Minkoo Kang SMRED ’18, Helena Rong SMArchS ’19, and Juncheng “Tony” Yang SMArchS ’19, present a body of years of interdisciplinary social science research that weave together historical context, real-world case studies, and critical reflections that engage a broader dialogue on design, value, and the built environment.

Kang, Rong, and Yang met as students at the MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab, which was co-founded and directed by Chegut, who passed away in December 2022. Under Chegut’s direction, interdisciplinary research at the lab helped establish the analytical tools and methodologies that underpin the book’s core arguments. The lab formerly closed after Chegut’s passing.

Q: How might the tools used in this research impact how an investor or real estate developer makes decisions on a property?

Kang: This book doesn’t offer a formula for replicable outcomes, nor should it. Real estate is deeply contextual, and every project carries its own constraints and potential. What our research provides is evidence: looking back at 20 years of patterns in New York City data, we see that design components — physical features such as podiums, unique non-orthogonal geometries, and high-rise setbacks; environmental qualities like daylight access, greenery, and open views; and a building’s contextual fit within its neighborhood — has a more substantial and consistent influence on value than the industry tends to credit.

Rong: One reason design has been left out of valuation practice is the siloing of architectural information: drawings stay inside individual firms, and there are no standards for identifying or quantifying the components that make up a design. We have countless databases, but never a true “design database.” This book starts to fill that gap by inventorying architectural features and showing how to measure them with both insights from architectural theory and exploration of computational methods and tools. Using today’s reality-capture technologies and the large-scale transaction data we obtained, we uncovered long-term patterns: Buildings that invested in thoughtful design often performed better, not only in financial terms, but also in how they contributed to neighborhood identity and sustained demand. The takeaway isn’t prescriptive, but directional. Design should not be treated as an aesthetic afterthought, or an intangible variable. Its impact is durable, measurable, and, importantly, undervalued, which is why it is something developers and investors should not only pay attention to, but actively prioritize.

Q: Can you share an example of how design influences urban change?

Kang: As a designer and real estate developer, my work sits at the intersection of architecture, finance, and neighborhood communities. I often collaborate with resident stakeholders to reimagine overlooked or underutilized properties as meaningful, long-term assets — using design both as a tool to shape development strategy and as a medium for community engagement and consensus building.

One recent example involved supporting a longtime property owner in transforming their single-family home into a 40-unit, mixed-income apartment building. Rather than maximizing density at all costs, the project prioritized livability, sustainability, and contextual fit — compact units with generous access to light and air, shared amenities like co-working space and a community room, and passive house-level energy performance.

Through design, we were able to unlock a new housing typology — one that balances financial feasibility with community ownership and long-term affordability. It’s a reminder that design’s influence on urban change extends beyond aesthetics or form. It helps determine who development serves, how neighborhoods evolve, and what kinds of futures are made possible.

Q: How can this research be of use to policymakers?

Yang: Policymakers usually consider broader and longer-term urban outcomes: livability, resilience, equity, and community cohesion. This research provides the empirical foundation to connect those outcomes to concrete design choices.

By quantifying how design influences not just real estate performance, but neighborhood identity, access, and sustainability, the book offers policymakers a new evidence base to inform zoning, public incentives, and regulatory frameworks. But more than that, we think this kind of data-driven insight can help align interests across the ecosystem: urban planners, private developers, community organizations, and residents, by demonstrating that high-quality design delivers shared, long-term value.

In a time when urban space is increasingly contested, being able to point to measurable impacts of design helps shift debates from ideology to informed decision-making. It gives public agencies a firmer ground to demand more, and to build coalitions around the kinds of neighborhoods we want to sustain. Basically, this research helps create agency by making design intelligible in urban spaces where key decisions are made. The kind of agency we’re interested in is not about control, but about influence and authorship. Design shapes how cities function and feel, who they serve, and how they change. Yet too often, those decisions are made without recognizing design’s role. By surfacing how design leaves durable, measurable traces in the built environment, this work gives designers and allied actors a stronger voice in shaping development and public discourse. It also invites broader participation: community groups, resident advocates, and others can use this evidence to articulate why building attributes and environmental quality matter. In this sense, the agency is distributed. It’s not just about empowering designers, but about equipping all stakeholders to see design as a shared, strategic tool for shaping more equitable, resilient, and humane urban futures.