As baking and pastry instructors at Musselman High School in West Virginia, Rachel Nauman and Allison McClintock understand how nutrition affects learning.

“I remember being young and hungry, and I couldn’t imagine going out the whole day without eating,” Nauman says. At her school, that’s not an issue. Thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, schools and districts in low-income areas can serve students breakfast and lunch at no cost without requiring household applications. But things are changing nationwide.

Federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the 2025 congressional budget resolution (H.R. 1) have been shrinking the pool of families automatically certified for free school meals over the past year. Starting Oct. 1, states will be responsible for 75% of SNAP administrative cost, up from the current 50%. 

These changes to families’ SNAP status’ and state budgets can threaten districts’ CEP eligibility. In non-CEP schools, families that previously qualified for free lunch will have to reapply. That worries Nauman.

“Sometimes parents aren’t there, or are too proud to fill out the paperwork,” she says. The shift in free lunch policies has forced schools to navigate the administrative logistics.

The Impact of Program Changes

The cuts in H.R. 1 mean fewer families are “directly certified” for free meals — the automatic process where schools don’t need paperwork since the state knows the family receives SNAP. This is already having an impact. 

“We are just beginning to hear concerns from members about drops in direct certification,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

In place of direct certification, families are filling out applications, and that is going to complicate things. At Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, Principal Deborah Dennie says the paperwork is onerous.

“There’s a parent letter, that’s the front, and the back gives the federal income eligibility guidelines,” she says. Then there are four pages of instructions, and only then do parents get to the application, with its multiple sections and numbered subsections.

“The families who qualify for these things, they don’t want to spend the time to go through all of this paperwork,” Dennie says. That could mean kids who need a free lunch aren’t going to get one.

CEP eligibility is based on Identified Student Percentage (ISP) — the share of kids directly certified through SNAP and other programs. Cuts to SNAP risk shrinking ISP, which could mean schools’ reimbursement rate drops so low that CEP becomes financially unfeasible.

That concerns Sommer Purvis, the child nutrition director at Livingston Parish Public Schools in Louisiana, where kids get free lunch through CEP. From 2021-2024, direct certification percentages in the district increased. For the past two years, the percentage has dropped, putting CEP at risk.

“We have started to be very proactive with monitoring those numbers to see where we are, how they’re changing,” Purvis says. “We want to make sure that we’re prepared.”

How Schools Are Responding

With all these changes to free lunch, school leaders are getting proactive, and teachers are getting prepared. In West Virginia, nearly 183,000 students may be at risk of losing CEP. If it looks like that might really happen, McClintock thinks teachers will step up.

“Teachers are always going to support a free and reduced lunch,” she says. “They’re going to talk to their legislators. They’re going to talk to board members to make sure that is heard loud and clear. There’s going to be a lot of grassroots movement.”

Purvis is already preparing for the worst. If CEP collapses, she wants to be ready to help parents through the paperwork of individual applications. 

“We are monitoring our lists and trying to make sure that we are capturing as many of those students as we can,” she says. Loss of CEP would be “a fundamental change for families.”

Purvis has already laid the groundwork, knowing the current situation might arise. “We’re very transparent each year,” she says. That means telling parents: “The paperwork is not required, but that is a year-to-year decision and things can change.”

Meanwhile, after 10 years with CEP, the district needs to start asking questions internally, says Purvis. 

“How would schools handle those applications? Because after 10 years, a majority of our cafeteria managers have never processed applications,” she notes. “A majority of our principals have not had to deal with meal collection and meal debt.”

With that in mind, Purvis is already being “very honest and transparent with those individuals about what might be coming,” she says. She’s also looking at what training would be needed. She’s making lists of which principals and cafeteria managers may need a refresher or an introduction to the free lunch process, and hoping the state’s department of education will help foot the bill if training is needed.

At Leonardtown Middle, meanwhile, Dennie is thinking about the role that teachers will play. If paperwork becomes a hurdle for families, classroom educators will likely be the canary in the coal mine. “My teachers tend to have their ears to the ground and if they hear something, then they bring it to our attention,” she says. 

A student’s father came in to see a teacher recently, and Dennie suspected he was dealing with financial distress. Dennie gave the teacher a heads-up, “and lo and behold, when she spoke to him, that was indeed the problem,” she says. “We ended up doing something as a school for the family.”

Teachers will need to be even more attuned to such situations going forward. Families may not apply for free lunch “either because of pride, or because of the packet itself and how cumbersome it can be,” Dennie says.

A Proactive Approach

At Bartlett Academy, an alternative high school in Oklahoma that serves many students experiencing poverty and homelessness, Principal Amy Sanders is betting that a proactive approach will help her team weather the coming storm.

The district never went to automatic certification, and instead has always had families fill out applications for free lunch, whether or not the family thought it was needed. “That way we have an accurate count every year,” she says.

The application is part of the school’s orientation packet, along with standards for discipline, behavior, dress code and so on. This way, applying for free lunch becomes … ordinary.

“We have a lot of Native Americans [families], and there’s a pride about not letting everybody know your business,” Sanders observes. “We’ve tried to make it where this isn’t ‘everybody knows your business.’ This is just routine.”

Dennie is also trying to be proactive. She has lists of students who got free lunch or incurred food debt last year, and makes sure they all get applications to take home. When parents come for an open house, the application is right there on the table for them to pick up and fill out later. And she includes information about free lunch in her weekly newsletter, all year long.

“We let them know that it’s there,” she says. “We want to make sure that everybody gets what they need.”

Dennie notes that teachers and administrators alike have to tread a fine line here. In the past she’s encouraged kids to apply for free lunch, but as a result, one parent reported her to the board. “He said I have no right to talk to his kid,” she recalls. “So I make them aware, but at some point, I have to back off.”

Factorial Energy has signed a joint development agreement with Japan’s Mitsui Kinzoku for solid electrolytes, the latest in a run of partnerships its chief executive says are necessary because no single company can bring all-solid-state batteries to market. ProLogium, which is building Europe’s solid-state gigafactory at Dunkirk, is already mass-producing all-solid-state cells in Taiwan.

Factorial Energy has signed a joint development agreement with Japan’s Mitsui Kinzoku to industrialise its all-solid-state platform, the latest in a run of partnerships, InsideEVs reported. “Battery innovation can’t be done by one single company,” chief executive Siyu Huang said. The company listed on Nasdaq in June.

That is an unusual thing for a battery startup to say out loud.

The coalition splits the problem up. Posco Future M handles anodes and cathodes, Korea’s Phil Energy covers manufacturing tools, and Factorial is exploring how to scale with SK On. Factorial says it holds foundational intellectual property for all-solid electrolytes.

Two of its partners are European.

It has joint development agreements with Volkswagen’s PowerCo battery division and with Hyundai, and Mercedes ran a modified EQS 1,200km on its cells in September 2025. Huang said the company is “very well settled for both North American and European volumes“. Mercedes is a backer as well as a test partner, and Stellantis supplied the Dodge demonstrator.

None of it is in a production car yet.

The semi-solid FEST cell is rated up to 375 watt-hours per kilogram and sits in prototype Mercedes and Dodge vehicles. The all-solid Solstice targets 450 Wh/kg, roughly double a current lithium-ion cell, and uses a sulfide electrolyte Mitsui makes at a dedicated plant in Saitama. Karma Automotive is due to be the first to ship, in 2028.

The all-solid half is further off than the announcements suggest.

It is also not unclaimed territory. ProLogium is already mass-producing all-solid-state cells at 381 Wh/kg in Taiwan, about 6,000 packs a year, and broke ground on its French gigafactory in February.

Dunkirk is still a building site.

It is due to start at 0.8 GWh in 2028 and reach 12 GWh by 2032, subsidised by France and sited beside the Gravelines nuclear plant. It is also Taiwanese-owned, which is what a European solid-state champion looks like after Northvolt. The continent’s own champion did not get there.

The other view is that none of this reaches cars soon.

LG Energy Solution’s North America president said last month that the technology will arrive in phones “probably a decade“ before it reaches electric cars, because large formats are where companies struggle. Factorial’s answer is to stop trying to do it alone.

Two respected artists from jazz’s 1950s and 1960s golden era are not exactly household names these days: pianist Red Garland and tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.

But when you look at Garland’s discography alone, you quickly realize that he was the keyboard voice on many seminal recordings by no less than Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Some of his own albums with ’Trane and Donald Byrd—All Mornin’ Long, Soul Junction, and Dig It!—are considered classics in their own right and essential pieces of the completist collector’s puzzle.

Likewise, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis left behind a number of terrific sessions as both a leader and sideman, often working with Shirley Scott, Johnny Griffin, and Count Basie.

Given Garland’s subtle, tasteful playing style, it’s not entirely surprising that Prestige Records chose him to kick off its Moodsville series in 1960, paired with Davis’ breathy, crooning tone.

Accordingly, Craft Recordings has restored this rare gem as one of the first titles in its new reissue series. And I use the word “rare” here because, while there have been reissues over the years, only three original copies were listed on Discogs at the time of this writing—a handy barometer of relative scarcity for certain titles—and none appeared on eBay.

I’ve never found an original copy myself. 

Official press materials explain the Moodsville series’ intent:

“Each album will be released on vinyl in partnership with audiophile leader Acoustic Sounds, a partner Craft has previously collaborated with on its acclaimed Bluesville Records and Contemporary Records Acoustic Sounds series. Delivering the highest-quality listening experience, the LPs feature all-analog mastering (AAA) from the original tapes by GRAMMY-nominated engineer Matthew Lutthans (The Mastering Lab) and are pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Records Pressing (QRP). Faithfully reproduced tip-on jackets round out every release.”

As with the Frank Wess Quartet Moodsville, Vol. 8 LP, which I reviewed recently, as well as Coleman Hawkins’ The Hawk Relaxes, the overall production quality of this new reissue is excellent, with quiet, well-centered vinyl and superior cover graphics.

Musically, Moodsville, Volume 1 is really one of those “less is more” scenarios. Red Garland’s sensitive choice of notes and timing elevates the recording. For example, “Wonder Why” opens with a lush solo piano introduction and plenty of borderline lounge-y flourish, but when the band enters midway through, the arrangement suddenly shifts into territory that pre-echoes the vibe Vince Guaraldi would later champion on his best-selling soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Admittedly, artists like Oscar Peterson made music like this over the years, but his sheer firepower could sometimes overwhelm the material, making it less appealing for late-night listening when the lights are low. Peterson’s conscious forays into softer, smoother sounds—such as 1956’s In a Romantic Mood and Pastel Moods—unfortunately crossed the line into schmaltzy arrangements and remain among my least favorite of his recordings.

Priced at just $32.99 on Amazon, this new reissue of Moodsville, Volume 1 is an easy choice if you want some chill late night jazz sounds which skillfully ride the fine line between the cocktail lounge and genuine sensitive musicality.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Packaging

Where to Buy

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

In context: With AI coding assistants becoming an integral part of the software development process for professional programmers, many video game devs are reportedly using generative AI regularly in their workflows. A new report released at the 2026 Tokyo Game Show reveals just how widespread the practice has become.

According to a survey conducted by the Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association (CESA), there has been a massive surge in AI adoption among video game developers in Japan, with 85.8% of respondents reporting that they use generative AI as part of their game development process. While 63% of surveyed developers said they use AI tools daily, 22.8% said they use them only occasionally.

The survey results indicate that generative AI usage in the Japanese video game industry has increased by more than 70% since last year, when 51% of surveyed developers reported using AI in their workflows either regularly or occasionally.

The findings also point to a broader trend of AI adoption among software engineers across industries, reinforcing the growing belief that AI tools have become an increasingly important part of efficient app and game development.

It is worth noting that CESA has only released a preview version of the full survey, with the detailed report scheduled to be published in December. While the preview does not reveal exactly how developers are incorporating AI into their workflows, the most commonly cited benefits include “improved operational efficiency and productivity,” followed by “shorter development cycles” and “reduced development and operational costs.”

Almost all respondents denied using AI-generated output in their code, saying the tools are largely restricted to debugging, error correction, and automated testing. They added that all AI usage is “confirmed, modified, and supervised” by human developers to prevent abuse. The studios also reportedly restrict which AI tools can be used and how extensively, ensuring that humans remain responsible for creative decisions and final quality assessments.

The survey was conducted earlier this year among developers at Capcom, Sega, Level-5, Konami, Square Enix, Koei Tecmo, Sony, and other CESA member companies. In a statement, CESA Executive Director Tsutomu Masuda noted that this year’s report highlights the increasing use of generative AI in development environments but cautioned that the adoption of new technologies must not compromise intellectual property rights.

Google Research and HHMI Janelia’s FlyEM team released MaleCNS v1.0 earlier this month, a complete wiring diagram of an adult male fruit fly’s brain and ventral nerve cord. More than 166,000 neurons and about 125 million synapses sit in that public map, rebuilt from electron-microscope slices of a real Drosophila with machine-learning reconstruction. Hobbyists spent the next two weeks pointing those cells at DOOM, Beat Saber, Minecraft, a Rubik’s Cube, crypto tickers, and a parallel-parking drill. Then someone pointed them at Jimbo from Balatro.

Reddit user ActualAerie1011 posted a clip of a finished run on the default Red Deck at the lowest stake. Balatro, LocalThunk’s poker roguelike from Playstack, asks a player to build poker hands, buy Jokers, manage money, and survive eight antes before the blinds outrun the score. Shops, packs, and bosses change with every seed. Clearing Ante 8 on White Stake with Red Deck is the first real finish most people chase, and that is the bar the poster set.

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ActualAerie1011 had already put in the effort to upgrade a custom seed finder. This was a tool he had built before, to see if the high-score seeds people posted were actually reachable. That tool became a teacher. Then, they let the simulated Fly play through the same seeds as the teacher. The only difference was this: instead of just looking at the end game chip total, the Fly would get rewarded or punished based on how closely the Fly’s hand plays, discards, and shop buys matched the teacher’s play throughs.

According to the poster, the reward and punishment were based on how close the Fly was to the teacher’s exact choices, rather than the raw chip amount. Millions of games were being trained for. So far, the results look promising: a 20% chance of winning at Ante 8 with a completely random seed, and that’s at the softest setting. There’s also a video flying around that demonstrates a full clear. Of course, training hasn’t ended yet, so the outcomes could change. People have been begging for a repository, especially because so many people are skeptical, yet as of September 18th, there is still none. The poster even defined it as a test to determine if the Fly can learn this card game any faster with a real connection pattern, or if it’s just a generic reinforcement learner.

When it comes to the other MaleCNS toys, they function by mapping pixels to visual neurons and keys to motor cells, and then tipping in dopamine cells once the avatar gets damage or misses a beat, but Balatro deviates from that. A run is about reading shop, building up your hand, and recognizing when to skip forward to the next pack, which is a completely different type of struggle. It’s unclear whether the 166,000 cells they’ve put up are doing anything that a smaller network couldn’t, as the code has yet to be made public. For the time being, the claim is rather straightforward: on White Stake, Red Deck, and random seeds, one out of every five Balatro runs makes it to Ante 8. That’s already better than many humans do in their first play through.
[Source]

SK Hynix-owned Solidigm is considering a U.S. factory for the storage chips used in phones, computers, and data centers, a move that would reduce its dependence on China as Washington pressures foreign chipmakers to manufacture in America.

Upstate New York has emerged as the leading candidate, Reuters reported Friday, citing three people familiar with the discussions. No agreement has been reached, and the location, investment, capacity, and construction schedule remain undecided.

Solidigm said it regularly evaluates options to improve its long-term competitiveness but hasn’t chosen a course of action. SK Hynix similarly confirmed that it is reviewing options without committing to the factory.

The proposed project would be separate from SK Hynix’s discussions about producing memory chips at Intel’s planned Ohio facility.

Solidigm currently relies on one NAND production site, the Dalian facility in China. Adding a U.S. factory would reduce Solidigm’s dependence on Dalian while limiting its exposure to potential tariffs and restrictions on chipmaking equipment exports to China.

Washington and Seoul are pulling chipmakers in opposite directions

The Trump administration wants South Korean and Taiwanese chipmakers to expand production in the United States. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has threatened chip tariffs as high as 100% on companies that don’t make sufficient American investments.

South Korea wants SK Hynix and Samsung to continue investing at home. Seoul has urged both companies to accelerate construction of a domestic semiconductor cluster that could attract hundreds of billions of dollars in spending.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung acknowledged Friday that the U.S. and South Korean demands remain controversial. Lee said his government would protect South Korean interests while respecting decisions made by the companies.

One person familiar with Solidigm’s discussions said NAND is viewed as less strategically sensitive in South Korea than DRAM and high-bandwidth memory. NAND’s lower strategic sensitivity could make a U.S. factory more politically acceptable to Seoul than moving advanced memory production to Intel’s Ohio site.

A U.S. factory would still be more expensive to operate than one in South Korea. SK Hynix must weigh higher U.S. operating costs against tariff protection, access to American customers, and reduced reliance on Chinese manufacturing.

New York already has a growing chip industry

Upstate New York isn’t an arbitrary candidate. New York offers up to $10 billion in performance-based Green CHIPS incentives to attract semiconductor factories and suppliers.

Eligible projects must generally create at least 500 jobs and invest at least $3 billion during each 10-year project term. The available reporting doesn’t indicate that Solidigm has requested incentives or selected a specific New York site.

Micron is already developing a planned $100 billion memory-chip complex in Clay, near Syracuse. The workforce and supplier network developing around Micron could make upstate New York more attractive to another memory manufacturer.

New York also has semiconductor operations and research facilities connected to companies including GlobalFoundries, IBM, and Wolfspeed. New York promotes its workforce, research facilities, and available industrial sites as it competes for federal and private chip investment.

Solidigm’s business is focused on AI storage

The AI boom is usually discussed in terms of GPUs and high-bandwidth memory, but data centers also need persistent storage. Solidigm specializes in enterprise SSDs, including high-capacity drives intended for AI infrastructure.

A NAND factory would address a different part of the AI supply chain than SK Hynix’s existing U.S. project. SK Hynix broke ground in August on a more than $4 billion HBM packaging and testing facility in West Lafayette, Indiana.

The Indiana facility will receive wafers manufactured in South Korea and is scheduled to begin mass production during the second half of 2029. A Solidigm factory would add U.S. NAND fabrication outside China rather than perform only packaging and testing.

iPhone 18 Pro

NAND stores data in phones, computers, and data centers, while HBM provides high-speed working memory for AI accelerators. The proposed factory’s product mix hasn’t been determined, making it too early to predict which markets or customers would receive its chips.

The report doesn’t identify Apple as a Solidigm customer or suggest that the plant would make storage for iPhones, iPads, or Macs. Any Apple connection remains indirect through the wider NAND market.

SK Hynix formed Solidigm after agreeing to acquire Intel’s NAND and SSD business for $9 billion. The first phase closed in 2021 and included Intel’s SSD operations and the Dalian factory.

Solidigm later endured years of losses during a prolonged NAND downturn. AI data-center spending has since strengthened memory demand, but construction would take years.

The factory wouldn’t provide dependable capacity as soon as construction ended. Solidigm would still need to install equipment, raise production to commercially viable yields, and qualify the factory’s output for customers.

A U.S. factory would shift Solidigm’s risks rather than eliminate them. Solidigm would gain geographic redundancy and reduce its exposure to China, but it would accept higher production costs and the execution risks of bringing a new semiconductor factory online.