From TVs that listen with the screen off to archives kept alive by monthly gifts and minds dulled by endless feeds, today’s threads test where technology should stop.

From the hidden compute tax AI crawlers impose on kernel.org to a California carve-out for open-source OSes and a Texas camera network built from a $1 fee, today weighs what openness and convenience really cost — alongside a sweeping new space telescope, Europe’s drying rivers, and the geometry of Earth’s longest straight lines.