Airport runways seem pretty simple, just another strip of asphalt or concrete not unlike the roads that our cars drive upon every day. We can even use these same highways as landing strips in a pinch, so you’d assume that the engineering for either isn’t that dissimilar. Of course, you can use a highway for an occasional emergency, but a runway that sees the largest and heaviest airplanes taxi, take off and land on a constant basis is a whole other challenge, as detailed in a recent [Practical Engineering] video and its transcript.

When you consider that an Airbus A380 the take-off weight is up to 550 ton, it’s quite clear what the challenge is for larger airports. Another major issue is that of friction, or lack thereof, as the speeds and kinetic energy behind it are so much higher. One only has to look at not only runway overruns but also when one skids off sideways due issues like hydroplaning and uneven friction. Keeping the surface of a runway as high-friction as possible and intact after hundreds of take-offs, tail-strikes and other events is no small feat.

Of course, the other part of runway engineering is for when things do go wrong and an airplane enters the runway safety areas, or overrun zones. This usually provides some flat and clear space where an airplane can safely bleed off its kinetic energy, with the collapsing surface of the EMAS technology being one of the best demonstrations of how this can be safely and dramatically shortened.

Another aspect not covered here that is part of these overrun zones are frangible structures, such as any localizer antennae of ILS, lighting, etc. Frangible here means that the structure easily collapses when a heavy airplane crashes into it without causing significant damage to the airplane.

It was the failure of such a design process that doomed the crew and passengers of Jeju Air Flight 2216 in December of 2024, when the airplane during an emergency belly landing skidded over the end of the runway. Although there was a lot of open space after the ILS localizer array with just a flimsy wall and further level fields, the ILS array’s base contained a poured concrete base on which the airplane effectively pulverized.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. Some of the words in the purple category were completely new to me. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Step up to the plate.

Green group hint: College division.

Blue group hint: Robert.

Purple group hint: Goaaaaaal!

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Involved in an at-bat.

Green group: A Big 12 athlete.

Blue group: Bobs.

Purple group: Soccer slang.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is involved in an at-bat. The four answers are catcher, hitter, pitcher and umpire.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is a Big 12 athlete. The four answers are Cyclone, Jayhawk, Sun Devil and Ute.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Bobs. The four answers are Beamon, Costas, Feller and Uecker.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is soccer slang. The four answers are howler, screamer, sitter and worldie

It’s the middle of February. It’s cold and wet across most of the US, and I am feeling especially reticent to lace up my running shoes and head out into the great outdoors, or even to the gym. Last year, I was in the same position – it was cold and dark – but I didn’t even have a gym membership, having moved house and being between gyms.

As someone who, like a golden retriever, needs a certain amount of exercise once a day, how did I cope? By equipping myself to better do workouts at home, of course, using sales events (like the current Presidents’ Day sales) to do it for less.

Rebecca Graham looks at a new exhibition at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences designed to educate the public about heart health and disease.

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of premature death and disability in Ireland. Nearly 9,000 people die of the disease each year, and it is estimated that 80pc of these deaths are preventable.

A new exhibition at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences hopes to educate the public about heart health and disease, and showcases the latest technologies for diagnosis and treatment of heart conditions.

‘Heart: more than a beat’ is the first exhibition at the Humanarium, a recently opened space in RCSI’s new research and education building on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin city centre. The space will host a rolling programme of events exploring health sciences and medical research.

Opening the exhibition today (10 February), the director of the Humanarium, Dr Alison Boyle said that the aim is to show “the science and stories behind every heartbeat”. She welcomed to the podium Ciarán Sloan, father of toddler James who underwent major heart surgery at just 10 months old. At the 20-week pregnancy scan, Sloan and his partner Cara McAreavey learned that James had serious heart abnormalities. Since then, the family have had a long journey of treatment and recovery.

Human side of heart research

The exhibition shows a 3D-printed model of a human heart which consultant surgeon Mr Jonathan McGuiness used to prepare for James’s surgery at Crumlin Hospital. Sloan described McGuiness as a hero to their family for his work with James. He also said the exhibition could be really helpful to parents in similar situations to themselves. “It’s not [just] medical, it shows the human side,” he said.

James’s mom Cara McAreavey talked to me about the family’s journey. She described being “blindsided” by the initial diagnosis, but later feeling so grateful that James could be operated on.

She recalled how the family, who travelled from Belfast to Crumlin for the surgery, were on the ward prepped for surgery twice only for it to be cancelled at the last minute to make way for emergencies. Though this was tough, she said they were warned this could happen by the medical team and felt grateful that James wasn’t an emergency case. She spoke with obvious pride about James’s recovery, describing him as incredibly resilient. I asked about her own feelings in all this and she said her attitude is that you either sink or swim, and she chose to swim.

As we spoke, three-year-old James was happily playing with his dad in the exhibition space, looking healthy and full of energy – the perfect embodiment of what this event is all about and why research into cardiovascular conditions is so important.

Cutting-edge research

Senior anatomy lecturer at RCSI, Dr Aamir Hameed spoke to me at the event about his heart device research. Hameed recently won funding under Research Ireland’s Frontier for the Future programme to develop mechanical heart support devices for small children.

Hameed is co-founder of Pumpinheart, an RCSI spin-out that has prototyped a device to treat advanced heart failure, which features in the exhibition. Hameed explained that when patients have diastolic heart failure, the heart muscles become stiff, preventing the left ventricle from filling properly, which reduces blood flow to the body and causes fluid buildup. He showed me the implantable pump that his team has developed to reduce pressure in the left ventricle and improve blood flow.

This device is at the very early stages of development. Pumpinheart raised €700,000 in seed funding and is now hoping to raise €2.5m to move to preclinical studies. Hameed said that the device provides a validated solution for a proven unmet clinical need, but funding is always a challenge, and they are looking to the US for investment. He hopes to be in a position to move to human trials in two years.

Hameed is also developing biosensors to work with the pump device. The idea is that sensors would provide data about the device to help prevent issues and reduce re-hospitalisations. He said that recently one of his students asked what would happen if a patient forgot to charge the device and this simple issue is one that a sensor could help prevent by causing an alert for low power.

I asked Hameed how he finds time for the research and teaching alongside the start-up and he laughed and said: “It isn’t easy … but it’s my passion.”

Keeping your heart healthy

A report from the National Office of Clinical Audit, as reported by RTÉ today, found that the number of people who called emergency services within an hour of experiencing heart attack symptoms was down last year compared to the previous year, leading to calls for renewed focus on public awareness of early signs of heart attack.

I asked Hameed about this and he said that commonly people think they can’t be having a heart attack because of preconceived notions of what a sufferer should look like, and this is particularly a problem with younger patients. He said the exhibition is helpful is teaching people about heart health. He thinks more needs to be done to help the public recognise a heart attack and to take steps to protect their heart health.

Journalist Maura Derrane, an ambassador for the Irish Heart Foundation, spoke at the event and encouraged people to get information about heart health from trusted sources and not from social media. She spoke about how women in particular can often ignore symptoms and that these can also be masked by menopause. She said, for example, she is more proactive about getting her cholesterol checked regularly since she turned 50. “We need to take personal responsibility for our health.”

For more information about the exhibition, visit the Humanarium website. The Humanarium is funded by Blackrock Health, AIB, Lanas and HSE Healthy Ireland.

By Rebecca Graham

Rebecca Graham is a Frontiers science journalism fellow at FutureNeuro Research Ireland Centre for Translational Brain Science in RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences. Frontiers is a science journalism initiative funded by the European Research Council. Rebecca is a former managing editor at Silicon Republic. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Until recently, the practice of building AI agents has been a bit like training a long-distance runner with a thirty-second memory.

Yes, you could give your AI models tools and instructions, but after a few dozen interactions — several laps around the track, to extend our running analogy — it would inevitably lose context and start hallucinating.

With OpenAI’s latest updates to its Responses API — the application programming interface that allows developers on OpenAI’s platform to access multiple agentic tools like web search and file search with a single call — the company is signaling that the era of the limited agent is waning.

The updates announced today include Server-side Compaction, Hosted Shell Containers, and implementing the new “Skills” standard for agents.

With these three major updates, OpenAI is effectively handing agents a permanent desk, a terminal, and a memory that doesn’t fade and should help agents evolve furhter into reliable, long-term digital workers.

Technology: overcoming ‘context amnesia’

The most significant technical hurdle for autonomous agents has always been the “clutter” of long-running tasks. Every time an agent calls a tool or runs a script, the conversation history grows.

Eventually, the model hits its token limit, and the developer is forced to truncate the history—often deleting the very “reasoning” the agent needs to finish the job.

OpenAI’s answer is Server-side Compaction. Unlike simple truncation, compaction allows agents to run for hours or even days.

Early data from e-commerce platform Triple Whale suggests this is a breakthrough in stability: their agent, Moby, successfully navigated a session involving 5 million tokens and 150 tool calls without a drop in accuracy.

In practical terms, this means the model can “summarize” its own past actions into a compressed state, keeping the essential context alive while clearing the noise. It transforms the model from a forgetful assistant into a persistent system process.

Managed cloud sandboxes

The introduction of the Shell Tool moves OpenAI into the realm of managed compute. Developers can now opt for container_auto, which provisions an OpenAI-hosted Debian 12 environment.

This isn’t just a code interpreter: it gives each agent its own full terminal environment pre-loaded with:

• Native execution environments including Python 3.11, Node.js 22, Java 17, Go 1.23, and Ruby 3.1.

• Persistent storage via /mnt/data, allowing agents to generate, save, and download artifacts.

• Networking capabilities that allow agents to reach out to the internet to install libraries or interact with third-party APIs.

The Hosted Shell and its persistent /mnt/data storage provide a managed environment where agents can perform complex data transformations using Python or Java without requiring the team to build and maintain custom ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) middleware for every AI project.

By leveraging these hosted containers, data engineers can implement high-performance data processing tasks while minimizing the “multiple responsibilities” that come with managing bespoke infrastructure, removing the overhead of building and securing their own sandboxes. OpenAI is essentially saying: “Give us the instructions; we’ll provide the computer.”

OpenAI’s Skills vs. Anthropic’s Skills

Both OpenAI and Anthropic now support “skills,” instructions for agents to run specific operations, and have converged on the same open standard — a SKILL.md (markdown) manifest with YAML frontmatter.

A skill built for either can theoretically be moved to VS Code, Cursor, or any other platform that adopts the specification

Indeed, the hit new open source AI agent OpenClaw adopted this exact SKILL.md manifest and folder-based packaging, allowing it to inherit a wealth of specialized procedural knowledge originally designed for Claude.

This architectural compatibility has fueled a community-driven “skills boom” on platforms like ClawHub, which now hosts over 3,000 community-built extensions ranging from smart home integrations to complex enterprise workflow automations.

This cross-pollination demonstrates that the “Skill” has become a portable, versioned asset rather than a vendor-locked feature. Because OpenClaw supports multiple models — including OpenAI’s GPT-5 series and local Llama instances — developers can now write a skill once and deploy it across a heterogeneous landscape of agents.

But the underlying strategies of OpenAI and Anthropic reveal divergent visions for the future of work.

OpenAI’s approach prioritizes a “programmable substrate” optimized for developer velocity. By bundling the shell, the memory, and the skills into the Responses API, they offer a “turnkey” experience for building complex agents rapidly.

Already, enterprise AI search startup Glean reported a jump in tool accuracy from 73% to 85% by using OpenAI’s Skills framework.

By pairing the open standard with its proprietary Responses API, the company provides a high-performance, turnkey substrate.

It isn’t just reading the skill; it is hosting it inside a managed Debian 12 shell, handling the networking policies, and applying server-side compaction to ensure the agent doesn’t lose its way during a five-million-token session. This is the “high-performance” choice for engineers who need to deploy long-running, autonomous workers without the overhead of building a bespoke execution environment.

Anthropic, meanwhile, has focused on the “expertise marketplace.” Their strength lies in a mature directory of pre-packaged partner playbooks from the likes of Atlassian, Figma, and Stripe.

Implications for enterprise technical decision-makers

For engineers focused on “rapid deployment and fine-tuning,” the combination of Server-side Compaction and Skills provides a massive productivity boost

Instead of building custom state management for every agent run, engineers can leverage built-in compaction to handle multi-hour tasks.

Skills allow for “packaged IP,” where specific fine-tuning or specialized procedural knowledge can be modularized and reused across different internal projects.

For those tasked with moving AI from a “chat box” into a production-grade workflow—OpenAI’s announcement marks the end of the “bespoke infrastructure” era.

Historically, orchestrating an agent required significant manual scaffolding: developers had to build custom state-management logic to handle long conversations and secure, ephemeral sandboxes to execute code.

The challenge is no longer “How do I give this agent a terminal?” but “Which skills are authorized for which users?” and “How do we audit the artifacts produced in the hosted filesystem?” OpenAI has provided the engine and the chassis; the orchestrator’s job is now to define the rules of the road.

For security operations (SecOps) managers, giving an AI model a shell and network access is a high-stakes evolution. OpenAI’s use of Domain Secrets and Org Allowlists provides a defense-in-depth strategy, ensuring that agents can call APIs without exposing raw credentials to the model’s context.

But as agents become easier to deploy via “Skills,” SecOps must be vigilant about “malicious skills” that could introduce prompt injection vulnerabilities or unauthorized data exfiltration paths.

How should enterprises decide?

OpenAI is no longer just selling a “brain” (the model); it is selling the “office” (the container), the “memory” (compaction), and the “training manual” (skills). For enterprise leaders, the choice is becoming clear:

Choose OpenAI’s Responses API if your agents require heavy-duty, stateful execution. If you need a managed cloud container that can run for hours and handle 5M+ tokens without context degradation, OpenAI’s integrated stack is the “High-Performance OS” for the agentskills.io standard.

Choose Anthropic if your strategy relies on immediate partner connectivity. If your workflow centers on existing, pre-packaged integrations from a wide directory of third-party vendors, Anthropic’s mature ecosystem provides a more “plug-and-play” experience for the same open standard.

Ultimately, this convergence signals that AI has moved out of the “walled garden” era. By standardizing on agentskills.io, the industry is turning “prompt spaghetti” into a shared, versioned, and truly portable architecture for the future of digital work.

Update Feb. 10, 6:52 pm ET: this article has since been updated to correct errors in an earlier version regarding the portability of OpenAI’s Skills compared to Anthropic’s. We regret the errors.

Employees at Salesforce are circulating an internal letter to chief executive Marc Benioff calling on him to denounce recent actions by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, prohibit the use of Salesforce software by immigration agents, and back federal legislation that would significantly reform the agency.

The letter specifically cites the “recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis” as catalysts, calling them the “devastating indictment of a system that has discarded human decency.” It’s unclear how many signatories the letter has received so far.

The letter, which has not been reported on previously, is being organized amid Salesforce’s annual leadership kickoff event this week in Las Vegas. During an appearance at the event earlier today, Benioff asked international employees to stand to thank them for attending. He then joked that ICE agents were in the building monitoring them, according to current and former Salesforce employees who spoke to WIRED.

Benioff’s remarks sparked immediate backlash among employees. “Lots of people are furious,” says one source, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. Another source tells WIRED that the internal pushback today was significantly more forceful than after Benioff made other controversial comments last fall supporting President Trump’s call to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco to address crime.

Salesforce did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Business Insider and 404 Media previously reported on Benioff’s remarks and the reaction to them inside Salesforce.

“We are deeply troubled by leaked documentation revealing that Salesforce has pitched AI technology to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help the agency ‘expeditiously’ hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip-line reports,” the letter reads. “Providing ‘Agentforce’ infrastructure to scale a mass deportation agenda that currently detains 66,000 people—73 percent of whom have no criminal record—represents a fundamental betrayal of our commitment to the ethical use of technology.”

The letter argues that Benioff’s voice “carries unique weight in Washington,” pointing to an episode last fall when Trump called off an ICE deployment in San Francisco after what appeared to be outreach from Bay Area tech leaders, including Benioff and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. It urges Benioff to use that influence as a “corporate statesman” to issue a public statement condemning what it calls ICE’s unconstitutional conduct and to commit Salesforce to clear “red lines” barring the use of its cloud and AI products for state violence.

Benioff has weighed in on both national and local political issues for years. He supported Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 and later became one of the most high-profile backers of Proposition C, a failed San Francisco ballot measure that would have raised taxes to fund programs to address homelessness. In 2020, he donated to the primary campaigns of some Democratic presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris.

But since Trump returned to the White House in January, Benioff has signaled greater support for some Republican leaders. In one interview, he said he strives to stay nonpartisan because he also owns Time magazine. But he also joked that, while he declined to contribute to Trump’s inauguration fund directly, he had “donated” a photo of the president on the magazine’s cover, which named him its 2024 Person of the Year. “He can use the Time magazine cover for free,” Benioff said in the interview with Fortune.

Benioff also faced backlash from Salesforce employees last fall when he suggested the National Guard should be sent to San Francisco to tackle crime ahead of the company’s annual conference in the city. He later apologized for the remarks, explaining they stemmed from genuine concerns about safety. He later reversed his stance and joined Nvidia’s Huang in asking Trump to refrain from sending troops.

The AI industry’s pursuit of licensable content has been a messy affair, filled with lawsuits and accusations of copyright infringement. Now, as tech companies look for legally safe sources of AI training data, Amazon is reportedly considering launching a marketplace where publishers can license their content directly to AI companies.

The Information reported Monday that the e-commerce giant has been meeting with publishing executives and alerting them to its plans to launch such a marketplace. Ahead of an AWS conference for publishers that occurred Tuesday, Amazon “circulated slides that mention a content marketplace,” wrote the outlet.

Reached by TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson didn’t deny the story but didn’t directly address the would-be marketplace either, saying only: “Amazon has built long-lasting, innovative relationships with publishers across many areas of our business, including AWS, Retail, Advertising, AGI, and Alexa. We are always innovating together to best serve our customers, but we have nothing specific to share on this subject at this time.” 

Amazon wouldn’t be the first major tech company to take this route. Microsoft recently launched what it calls a Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM), which it says will give publishers “a new revenue stream” while also providing AI systems with “scaled access to premium content.” Microsoft added that the PCM was designed to “empower publishers with a transparent economic framework for licensing” their content.

The move is a natural next step for the AI industry, which has already sought to solve the legally nebulous problem of how copyrighted material ends up in AI training data by forging deals with major news outlets and media organizations. OpenAI, for instance, has already signed content-licensing partnerships with the Associated Press, Vox Media, News Corp, and The Atlantic, among others.  

Those efforts haven’t been enough to stem the legal fallout. The fight over copyrighted material in AI algorithms has led to a monsoon of lawsuits, and the issue is still being worked out by the judicial system. New regulatory strategies to deal with the issue are being proposed all the time.

Media publishers have also fretted about the ways in which AI summaries — particularly those surfaced by Google in its search results — may be depressing traffic to their sites. One recent study claimed that such summaries have had a “devastating” impact on the number of users clicking through to websites. The Information’s report notes that publishers may view the new marketplace-based content-sharing system as a “more sustainable business [than current, more limited licensing partnerships] that will scale up revenue” as AI usage continues to escalate.