Comment on In West Virginia, a former steel mill is now home to a cutting-edge battery plant

News and talk of GLP-1 drugs are everywhere these days—from their smash success in treating Type 2 diabetes and obesity to their astronomical pricing, drug shortages, compounding disputes, and what sometimes seems like an ever-growing list of other conditions the drugs could potentially treat. There are new headlines every day. However, while the drugs have abruptly stolen the spotlight in recent years, researchers have been toiling away at developing and understanding them for decades, stretching back to the 1970s.

The integrated development environment (IDE) Rider by Jetbrains is now available for free for the first time ever. After trialing non-commercial free licenses with other products like RustRover and Aqua, Jetbrains has introduced a similar option for Rider. It also says this is a permanent situation, not a limited-time initiative. In a blog post announcing the change, Jetbrains' Ekaterina Ryabukha acknowledges that there are numerous cases where people use an IDE without any commercial intent—for example, hobbyists, open source developers, and educators or students.

In a blockbuster story published Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two years, with the discussions covering a range of issues from geopolitics to business to personal matters. There are no on-the-record sources confirming the regular conversations between Musk and Putin, and Musk did not comment to the news organization.

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge today hailed a decision by the US Copyright Office to "grant an exemption specifically allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment—including soft serve ice cream machines similar to those available at McDonald's." The group, which teamed with iFixit to request the exemption last year, said the government ruling will "free the McFlurry." Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Meredith Rose called the decision a victory for "franchise owners, independent repair shops, and anyone who's had to bribe their kids with a chilly treat on lengthy road trips." The change should "spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customers," Rose said.

Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking. In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congress sided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases.

A trend on Reddit that sees Londoners giving false restaurant recommendations in order to keep their favorites clear of tourists and social media influencers highlights the inherent flaws of Google Search’s reliance on Reddit and Google's AI Overview. In May, Google launched AI Overviews in the US, an experimental feature that populates the top of Google Search results with a summarized answer based on an AI model built into Google’s web rankings.