Numlock News: September 14, 2026 • Glaciers, Magic, Solar

Sep 14, 2026

By Walt Hickey

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Impractical

Practical Magic 2 underwhelmed with $30 million domestically and another $16 million abroad, which, after adjusting for inflation, is basically what 1998’s Practical Magic pulled. That’s an issue because Practical Magic flopped in cinemas and only gradually built up into the cult favorite it is today. Still, it did become the first film to usurp Spider-Man: Brand New Day at the box office after six weeks at the top and a relatively weak crop of new movies attempting to kick off the fall. Sometime today, Spider-Man will probably become the highest-grossing film in the history of the domestic box office, given that it’s a million shy of The Force Awakens.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Company Town

It’s often a sad sight when the mill gets sold, the factory shuts down or a crucial industry picks up sticks and goes elsewhere, leaving the workers and the community that thrived with them behind. I say often because very few people are shedding tears over the swift decline of Sihanoukville, the Cambodian beach town that became the epicenter of a global scam industry. The resort town was forced to adapt after the pandemic wiped out the hotel and casino business that put Sihanoukville on the map, but regrettably, that pivot was into a scamming industry that generated $12.5 billion annually in Cambodia, roughly half of the country’s economic output. A crackdown closed 600 illicit sites and detained 30,000 suspects, with 58,000 foreigners being deported and another 242,000 leaving voluntarily as the work dried up. Those cybercrime syndicates have since moved on to Sri Lanka and Africa.

Philip Heijmans, Bloomberg

Solar Cells

A new study published in Joule found that solar cells can be designed to operate for years under 10 meters of water. The solar cells were able to generate 324 mWh of energy — which could charge lithium-ion batteries — when submerged, and could operate at 10 meters down for 5.5 years. This is interesting because it offers a potential solution to the somewhat tricky logistical question of how to supply power to aquaculture operations.

Julia Grimmett, Cell Press

Tesla

The Trump administration killed off the federal electric-vehicle tax credit, and while it caused some short-term pain, it’s ultimately been great for Elon Musk’s Tesla. Yes, the company has seen a downturn in sales, with just 325,351 U.S. sales so far, down 16 percent year over year. But the end of the tax credit has shellacked the rest of the auto industry, where the overall EV market is down 30 percent. This has allowed Tesla to claw back some market share; once 80 percent of EV sales, Tesla’s market share hit 41 percent in 2025 when other automakers entered the market, but as of August 2026, it has bounced back to 52 percent of the U.S. EV market.

Christopher Otts, The Wall Street Journal

Vibecoded

The coding applications of LLMs have been relatively quick to materialize, and one result is that there’s been a surge in mobile apps released thanks to developers who can work faster or more efficiently as a result of the tools. The number of apps available on Apple’s App Store was up 30 percent last year. Thing is, though, just because there’s been a surge in apps doesn’t mean that anyone actually finds them useful or desirable; downloads were up just three percent.

Paul Ford, The New York Times

Glaciers

The Glacier Extinction study did exactly what it says on the tin and projected exactly how much warming each of the world’s glaciers will be able to tolerate before transitioning from geology to oceanography. A new tool, the Global Glacier Extinction Explorer, uses that data to directly map where and when the glaciers near you are projected to disappear under different levels of warming, building on a recent study published in Nature Climate Change. The extent of the warming will have a big impact on glacier survival: at 1.5 degrees Celsius, about 2,000 glaciers per year will disappear at peak extinction; by 2100, half of today’s glaciers might yet survive if temperatures are held to that level. That drops to just 20 percent of glaciers at 2.7 degrees Celsius, and just 10 percent at four degrees Celsius.

Koen Stein, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Air Conditioning

The air conditioner manufacturing industry is overwhelmingly based out of Asia, and companies like LG, Daikin and Midea have had a banner year as Europeans adopt cooling technology that was once generally unnecessary in their climate. For Midea, the PortaSplit — which costs about 1,000 euros and is appealing for renters because it’s a powerful system that can be installed temporarily without demolishing any walls — was a big hit in Germany, while Daikin is looking at an increase in European sales by about a fifth. In Germany, air conditioner sales are projected to hit 380,500 units this year, up 80.2 percent year over year, with portable unit sales up 112.9 percent. Those manufacturers also see lots of room to grow: Less than 20 percent of German homes have air conditioning.

Jens Kastner, Nikkei Asia

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Numlock News is written each day by Walt Hickey. Email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Every post is entirely by a human; send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. If you enjoy Numlock, tell a friend, word of mouth is the only way that independent publications like this one grow.

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