Numlock News: November 6, 2025 • Black Widows, Arm Farms, Stegosaurus

Nov 06, 2025

By Walt Hickey

Surfing

In 1972, concrete blocks were placed in the Eisbach canal of the Isar River in Munich to control the strong current. This had the unexpected effect of producing a now-famous wave that allows enterprising Germans to go surfing in the middle of a landlocked city. It’s generally considered a sick wave to ride, all things considered, rising to a height of four feet and inviting lines of spectators and daring urban surfers. Every year, the city drains the river to clean it. However, this time around, the wave failed to reform after refilling the river. A second wave in the same park has been the focus of surfer attention as authorities attempt to figure out how to restore that first one.

Stefanie Dazio, The Associated Press

The Last March of the Ents

A new study looking at pictures of 115 peaks from Canada to Panama found that trees are migrating up the slopes of mountains, though the precise cause is not exactly clear. Using Landsat imagery from 1984 to 2017, researchers found that while tree lines at peaks in northern climates have not moved much, tree lines are advancing up mountainsides at the rate of meters per year in Mexico and Central America. This change is still a mystery since we can’t chalk it up to climate change; northern climates are more affected by changing temperatures, but tree lines have barely budged. Even defining a “tree line” is itself a controversial boundary within the field. Some scientists contend it’s a fixed elevation above which trees fail to grow (which is what this study is using), while others contend it’s just the place that trees stop on the mountain.

Paul Voosen, Science

Black Widows

An emerging scam in Russia has soldiers (who’ve enlisted in the army bound for Ukraine) swiftly marrying a stranger. There are often only a few wedding guests, and the new bride often continues living with her ex-husband or other family. In the not unlikely event that the soldier dies in Ukraine’s bloody front line, the death payout to the next-of-kin is 14.5 million rubles (roughly US$200,000, or about 20 times the annual Russian salary). The scam targeting soldiers is now so common that the press has labeled the perpetrators “black widows.” I know Numlock enjoys sufficient overlap with Money Stuff’s readership, so I know what must have crossed some of your minds. Surely some financial institution has figured out that brokering this kind of arrangement for an up-front payment (or in exchange for a cut of the proceeds should the worst come to pass) could be a profitable endeavor. Turns out, several firms have; they are called “Russian organized crime.” One gang operating out of Khanty-Mansiysk recruited several men into such a scheme, netting 30 million rubles for its troubles.

Matthew Luxmoore and Milàn Czerny, The Wall Street Journal

Dinosaur Collateral

Police in Britain seized three complete fossilized skeletons in a settlement with a suspect in a large money laundering scandal. The dinosaurs are between 145 million and 157 million years old and are of a Stegosaurus and two Allosauruses — a mother and baby. All three dinos were purchased at Christie’s in 2024. The specimens were worth 12 million pounds (US$15.6 million). Additionally, nine London apartments (bought for around 15 million pounds) and 11 Chinese artifacts (bought from Sotheby’s for 400,000 pounds) were also part of the settlement. Upon the sale, the suspect will be able to keep 25 percent of the proceeds.

Jonathan Browning, Bloomberg

Paid TV

The latest data on U.S. households from Parks Associates places traditional pay television in just 41 percent of households, while 91 percent subscribe to at least one streaming video service. Most households subscribe to more than that, averaging six streaming video subscriptions and spending $109 per month. Now, wouldn’t you know it, but the average price of expanded basic cable service in the United States as of 2022 stood at $101.54. Anyway, congratulations everyone for jumping from prix fixe to a la carte and saving no money whatsoever in the process, hope those passwords are easy to keep track of.

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

“Arm Farms”

Lots of companies want to program robots to do chores that are comparatively easy for humans with full mastery of their motor skills, such as loading dishes or folding clothes. For entities made of steel, copper and actuators, these skills have proven evasive. There’s actually a reason why you might have a washing machine and a dryer but not a folder. To rack up the visual data used to train a robot for these tasks, data labeling companies (dubbed “arm farms,” often operating out of India) need to strap GoPros onto human workers and have them do common household chores. These “arm farms” then send hundreds of clothes-folding videos to clients in the United States. Objectways, one such company, has over 2,000 employees, about half of whom are labeling sensor data from self-driving cars and robots. Several other employees were responsible for sending 200 videos of towel-folding to an American client.

Nilesh Christopher, The Los Angeles Times

Hurricane

Google’s DeepMind model performed outstandingly well this hurricane season, with its cyclone-forecasting error coming in at 165 nautical miles within five days. That is a remarkable performance; the GFS model, the premier weather forecasting model produced by the United States, had an error of 360 nautical miles. DeepMind was also very good at intensity forecasting, and people in the weather world are very, very interested in the long-term implications for meteorology.

Eric Berger, Ars Technica

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