An obituary topped the day: Bob Cringely, who told the personal-computer story to a general audience, has died. The rest of the issue splits AI’s two faces — running large models on a home PC and reining in runaway bills — alongside resurrected old hardware, a war-time energy case, and arguments about trades work.

A German rocket reaches orbit from Western Europe for the first time, a central bank quietly moves gold to keep it tradable in a crisis, and the day’s most resonant threads — from license-plate tracking to forever chemicals — ask who gets to check power when systems get more concentrated.