Europe says no, the strait cracks open, and Norway wins its first Oscar.

The Allies That Weren’t

Trump asked Europe to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz. Germany’s Merz: “We will not participate.” EU foreign policy chief Kallas: “Not Europe’s war.” Starmer distanced Britain. Even all living former US presidents denied privately backing the war. Day 18, 200 US troops wounded, 1,300 Iranians dead — and the coalition of the willing is a coalition of one. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Bessent confirmed the US is letting Iranian tankers through the strait, and oil dropped 4%.

Fire and smoke rise from an oil facility in Fujairah, UAE after Iranian drone strikes spread the war deeper into the Gulf.

Affeksjonsverdi tar Oscar

Joachim Trier’s film won Best International Feature Film overnight — the first Norwegian film to do so. “I’m just a film nerd from Norway,” he said in his acceptance speech. Støre has invited the entire team home for a celebration.

Every Layer of Review Makes You 10x Slower

Apenwarr’s new essay argues each approval layer adds roughly 10x latency: a 30-minute fix becomes 500 hours with cross-team sign-off. AI makes individual coding faster but can’t touch the review bottleneck — and may worsen it by flooding the queue with plausible-looking code that’s harder to review than human-written code.

Also today: Pakistan struck a Kabul hospital, killing 400. Cuba’s grid collapsed, then a magnitude 6 earthquake hit. Stortinget votes on an Epstein investigation. Nix 2.34 ships with a Rust installer and granular linting. SSB scraps all 2026 rate cuts. Jepsen found MariaDB Galera loses committed transactions.

Markets

	Value	Δ
S&P 500	—	+1.0%
Oil	—	−4.1%
Gold	—	−0.1%
USD/NOK	10.82	—
BTC	$74,345	+1.2%

Oil −4.1% as US lets Iranian tankers through Hormuz. S&P up on partial strait reopening.

World

Iran War — Day 18

Iran hits key UAE oil port and Dubai airport (BBC) | Al Jazeera — Iran struck the Fujairah oil hub and Dubai airport with drones, spreading the conflict deeper into the Gulf states. The port plays a crucial role in keeping global supplies moving when the Strait of Hormuz is blocked. UAE has since reopened its airspace.
At least 200 US troops wounded in Iran war, military says (The Guardian) — US Central Command confirms approximately 200 service members injured since Operation Epic Fury began, with 13 US service members and more than 1,300 Iranians killed.
European countries reject Trump’s call for help to reopen Strait of Hormuz (The Guardian) | BBC — Germany’s Merz says “we will not participate,” EU foreign policy chief Kallas calls it “not Europe’s war,” UK’s Starmer distances Britain. All living former US presidents denied Trump’s claim that one of them privately backed the war.
Trump delays China summit over Iran war; Vance denies rift (The Guardian) — Trump asked Beijing to postpone his visit by about a month. Reports of Vance being skeptical of the war persist despite public unity.
Iran demands yuan payments for oil to transit Strait of Hormuz (Daily News Egypt) — A significant move to bypass dollar-denominated oil trade. US Treasury Secretary Bessent separately confirmed the US is allowing Iranian tankers through the strait.
Iran’s Supreme Leader reportedly flown to Moscow for treatment (Kyiv Post) — Unconfirmed report that Mojtaba Khamenei was secretly evacuated to Russia. Zelensky separately warned of a Russia-Iran alliance, saying Putin is profiting from the conflict.
Gasoline prices keep climbing as war enters week three (NPR) — US gas up nearly 80 cents in a month; diesel nearing $5/gallon. Sri Lanka has declared Wednesdays off to conserve fuel. Africa is particularly vulnerable as food production depends on Gulf-imported fertiliser. Iran’s neighbours brace for a refugee crisis. (Also covered in Norway — SSB drops rate cuts, SAS cancels flights.)

Israel & Lebanon

Israel strikes Beirut and southern Lebanon; one million displaced (Al Jazeera) — Attacks hit three southern Beirut neighbourhoods as fighting intensifies. Canada, France, Germany, and UK warned Israel against a major ground offensive. A 12-year-old boy described Israeli forces killing his family in their car in the occupied West Bank.

A man walks past destruction after overnight Israeli airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Rest of the World

Pakistan strike on Kabul hospital kills 400 (AP) | The Guardian — Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of an airstrike on a drug rehabilitation centre in Kabul. Pakistan denies targeting the facility.
Cuba’s power grid collapses; magnitude 6 earthquake strikes (The Guardian) | NPR — The entire grid collapsed, leaving 11 million without power amid a US oil blockade. Then a magnitude 6 earthquake hit. Trump said he thinks he’ll have the “honor” of taking Cuba. Cuba is inviting exiles to invest in response.

People line up to buy bread in Havana as Cuba’s power grid collapses amid a US oil blockade.

At least 23 killed in suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Nigeria (Al Jazeera)
South Sudan on brink of civil war as 50,000 told to flee (BBC) — The army warns of a huge military offensive in Jonglei state.
Ecuador deploys 75,000 soldiers and police against drug gangs (BBC)
Malaysia first to declare US trade deal ‘null and void’ after Supreme Court tariff ruling (Benzinga)
Venezuela’s 600% inflation undercuts Trump’s boasts of revival (Buenos Aires Times)
U.S. threatens to withhold HIV aid unless Zambia expands minerals access (New York Times)
France: far-left and far-right gains in first round of local elections (BBC) | The Guardian — Strong showing by far-right and LFI throws mainstream parties into a quandary ahead of the final round.
UniCredit launches ‘unfriendly’ €35bn takeover bid for Commerzbank (The Guardian)
RBA hikes rates again as global energy shock hits Australia (The Guardian) — Second consecutive increase lifts the cash rate to 4.1%, driven by fuel-price inflation from the Iran war.

US Domestic

Federal judge blocks RFK Jr.’s changes to children’s vaccine policies (NPR) — Court blocked the administration’s reduction in recommended immunisations and changes to a key vaccine advisory committee.
Supreme Court to hear expedited arguments on Temporary Protected Status (NPR) — Court temporarily blocked deportation of ~6,000 Syrians and 350,000 Haitians granted TPS.
Tennessee teens sue Musk’s xAI over AI-generated child sexual abuse material (NPR) — Three girls say nonconsensual nude images were created using xAI’s image generation tools.
US SEC preparing to scrap quarterly reporting requirement (Reuters) — Would reduce transparency into public company performance.

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 2f57b1e5-ef00-4724-ab60-eacd847c9c14

Ukraine

Ukrainian counterattacks in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast continue to gain ground. Since late January, Ukraine has liberated over 400 sq km in the Oleksandrivka and Hulyaipole directions, with fresh tactical advances reported this past week — entering Sichneve, reaching Voskresenska, and seizing Rybne. Ukrainian forces have advanced to within 2 km of the Hulyaipole–Velyka Novosilka road, denying Russia its use for logistics even without physically cutting it. Russian forces have shifted from offense to active defense, pulling units from other sectors — including Pacific Fleet naval infantry, the 656th Motorized Rifle Regiment (unseen since August 2025), and possibly elements from the 35th CAA reserve — to plug the gaps. Zelenskyy claims Ukraine has thwarted the Russian offensive operation planned for March.

Around Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka the daily tempo remains high (31 and 30 clashes respectively on March 16), with localized advances on both sides. In the north, the Russian command is reportedly rushing two VDV regiments to Yunakivka (Sumy Oblast) after botching a redeployment that briefly left the area undermanned.

Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign continues to reach further into Russia. Drones hit the Aviastar aircraft manufacturing plant in Ulyanovsk (producer of Il-76 and An-124 transport aircraft), forcing a temporary shutdown. A Krasnodar Krai oil depot in Labinsk was struck. Russia launched 211 drones at Ukraine overnight March 15–16, of which 194 were downed — strikes hit energy, port, and educational infrastructure in Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv oblasts. A Lancet loitering munition — possibly AI-guided and delivered via a Shahed mothership drone — crashed near the Independence Monument in central Kyiv, though some Ukrainian experts suspect it may have been debris dropped as a psychological operation.

Russia’s internet crackdown is escalating sharply. The MoD has ordered soldiers to delete Telegram, threatening reassignment to assault units for non-compliance — a move milbloggers warn will further degrade C2 already impaired by the February Starlink block. Domestically, Telegram is being throttled across Russia, with over 12,000 user complaints on March 15. Overzealous blocking has rendered even state-owned whitelisted sites inaccessible in parts of central Moscow.

Arms competition

US redirecting air defense systems from Europe/Asia to Middle East — 20,000 APKWS rockets originally for Ukraine, plus THAAD and Patriot interceptors moved from Indo-Pacific. EU’s Kallas calls it “competition for the same resources.” The Iran war is directly draining Ukraine’s pipeline. (Also covered in World — Europe rejects Hormuz involvement.)

Zelenskyy visits UK; Starmer says Iran war must not be “windfall” for Putin — Zelenskyy also signals interest in dialogue with Netanyahu, citing shared interest in countering Iranian drone threats. (Guardian / Ukrainska Pravda)
Hungary blocks €90B EU aid to Ukraine — European Parliament pushing back; Slovakia’s Fico backs Hungary on Druzhba pipeline dispute. EU reaffirms it will not return to Russian oil. (EUReports / Ukrainska Pravda)
Ukraine developing FP-7 ballistic missile as a lower-cost ATACMS analogue for domestic production. (NV)
EU sanctions 9 Russians for Bucha war crimes ahead of the massacre’s fourth anniversary.
Ukrainian-led team won all five scenarios against NATO naval units during REPMUS/Dynamic Messenger exercises, exposing allied vulnerabilities.
Russian budget deficit tracking toward 17 trillion rubles for 2026 based on Q1 dynamics.
Russia agrees to stop using Kenyan recruits in Ukraine (BBC) — Some 1,000 Kenyans are believed to have been recruited, many under false pretences.

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 9730ed78-6fb8-4863-9a8f-3f66641673d4

Norway

The Mideast war is rippling through Norwegian daily life. SSB released its updated economic forecast, dropping all expected rate cuts for 2026 — the steering rate stays at 4%, with cuts not arriving until 2027–2028. Rising fuel costs from the conflict are pushing up import prices and keeping inflation stubbornly above the 2% target. Nordea Markets goes further, floating a possible rate hike to 4.5% by year-end. SAS has cancelled 133 flights this week, blaming fuel costs from the crisis, though pilots suspect the real driver is ongoing wage negotiations — and competitor Norwegian is operating normally. Støre says contributing to the US effort to reopen the Hormuz Strait is not on the table. (Also covered in World.)

Norway pitches itself as Europe’s energy lifeline — As the Iran war disrupts oil and gas supply, Oslo positions itself as Europe’s energy-rich savior. (Politico)

Stortinget is formally voting today to launch a comprehensive investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to Norway, examining links to figures including Thorbjørn Jagland, Terje Rød-Larsen, Børge Brende, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s contacts with Epstein in 2010–2014. Støre urged that the process be carefully scoped to avoid blanket suspicion of international diplomacy.

Five boxes of documents from the 1993 Oslo peace process have been retrieved from Rød-Larsen’s basement by the National Archives and the Foreign Ministry. The documents — some classified — had been missing from official archives for 33 years. Researcher Hilde Henriksen Waage, who first identified the gap in 2004, says she feels vindicated. PST is evaluating potential breaches of security legislation.

The basement storage where five boxes of Oslo peace process documents were retrieved from Terje Rød-Larsen’s home after 33 years.

The Marius Borg Høiby trial was postponed Tuesday because the presiding judge fell ill. Monday’s session saw the prosecution lay out its case, characterizing Høiby as a man with anger problems who committed what amounts to “an assault on a defenceless person.”

The government announced a major school reform for the youngest pupils. From August 2026, screens will be sharply restricted in grades 1–4, with potential postponement of subjects like English and religion to make room for more play and social-emotional learning.

“En skandale hvis dette stemmer” — Listhaug on the 5 billion kroner hydrogen ferry project for Lofoten, where fuel cell durability is now in question.

Hydrogen ferry scandal — Norway’s 5 billion kroner hydrogen ferry project for Lofoten is delayed to late 2026. Five local mayors are alarmed — these island communities depend entirely on ferry connections for healthcare, goods, and fish exports. (NRK)
Oslo S ground faults — Two ground faults in six days shut down all train traffic through Oslo S. Bane Nor still has no explanation. (TU)
Wild salmon injuries — Surveillance fishing in the Namsen river reveals unprecedented snout injuries on wild salmon. (NRK)
Tommy Olsen arrested — The Tromsø man remanded in custody on a European arrest warrant from Greece, accused of human trafficking. (NRK)
Ski resorts short on snow — Western Norway hasn’t seen this little March snow since the 1960s. (NRK)
Aasland vs. EU grid package — Energy Minister Aasland protests the EU Commission’s proposed cuts to Norway’s bottleneck revenues. (TU)
Røkke finishes Iditarod — Billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke (67) completed the Alaska sled dog race with his fastest time ever. (Aftenposten)
Sørlandet hospital report — Another damning report on malpractice and deaths. Director Nina Mevold refuses to resign despite eight years of criticism. (NRK)
Nav scandal lawsuit — Victims of the trygdeskandalen are filing a class action lawsuit against the state. (Dagsavisen)
Kartverket overhaul — Half-billion kroner upgrade of norgeskart.no with improved performance and new developer features. (Digi.no)
Kirkens SOS: more callers worried about war — The crisis line reports a rise in people calling to talk about fear of war. (NRK)

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume e7d61e74-bed8-48b9-be60-8cdf0ec92019

Norway — Street Level

The big cultural moment: Affeksjonsverdi won the Oscar, and r/norge is celebrating. The director’s acceptance speech — “I’m just a film nerd from Norway” — is circulating widely.

LO sier nei til regjeringas nye krav til sykmeldte — Government wants to mandate that sick-listed employees take tasks outside their employment contract. LO and the Medical Association oppose, citing weakened employment protection and health risks. A live political fight with real stakes for worker protections. (Fagbladet)

Ble bedt om å ikke nevne rullestolen i jobbsøknad — A qualified wheelchair user told by Nav to hide his disability in applications. The Bergen program #syktbrajobb has placed 108 of 189 disabled participants in jobs since 2019, showing what targeted support can do vs. the default system. (Fri Fagbevegelse)

A positive counterpoint to the usual health system stories: someone describing how pårørende, fastlege, DPS, and the emergency system all connected quickly when they were in crisis. Comments suggest this is less common than it should be, but people are glad to hear a success story.

Community micro-action of the day: a redditor spotted a neo-Nazi sticker in Gjøvik, recognized the location from another user’s post, and removed it on their way home from drum lessons.

Jobbe remote for dansk selskap mens man bor i Norge — Web developer navigating tax and social security between Norway and Denmark for cross-border remote work. (r/norge)

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 40db045a-0f4e-44e8-8126-d64a882876b0

Tech

Highlights

TypeNix: Full typing for Nix

typenix | Lobsters — Reuses the TypeScript type-checker pipeline (binder, checker, LSP) for Nix by converting tree-sitter-nix ASTs into TypeScript AST nodes. Already parses and type-checks all 42,298 nixpkgs files in 13 seconds. Provides autocomplete, hover, go-to-definition, and type errors in .nix files.

TypeNix providing autocomplete, type errors, and hover in .nix files.

Every layer of review makes you 10x slower | HN — Each approval layer adds ~10x latency. AI makes individual coding faster but can’t touch the review bottleneck — and may worsen it by flooding the queue. HN commenters note AI-generated code has already eroded review trust.
Jepsen: MariaDB Galera Cluster 12.1.2 | HN — Jepsen found committed transactions lost on coordinated crashes, lost updates without faults, and stale reads several times per hour during normal operation. Actual consistency weaker than Read Uncommitted in failure scenarios, despite claiming near-Serializable isolation.

“Verbose, plausible-looking, and wrong in ways that require sustained deep attention to catch” — HN commenter on reviewing AI-generated code

Speed at the cost of quality: Study of Cursor AI in open source projects | HN — Difference-in-differences study finds Cursor produces a transient velocity increase followed by persistent growth in static analysis warnings and code complexity, driving long-term velocity slowdown.
Language model teams as distributed systems | HN — Paper proposes applying distributed systems theory to multi-agent LLM deployments: when do teams outperform single agents, what’s the optimal size, how do structural choices affect performance.
Reviewing large changes with Jujutsu | Lobsters — Uses jj duplicate to create a mutable copy, inserts a review checkpoint, then progressively squashes reviewed files into it. Inspired by Jane Street’s Iron “brain” concept.
Leanstral: Open-source agent for formal proof engineering | HN — Mistral’s purpose-built Lean 4 agent with only 6B active parameters. Scores 26.3 on FLTEval at pass@2, beating Sonnet at $36 vs $549. Apache 2.0 licensed.
Patching LMDB: How Meilisearch made its vector store 3x faster | Lobsters — Patched LMDB to support multiple nested read transactions from a single write transaction, eliminating expensive full database scans. Went from 6 to 20 embeddings/second.
Building a software protection system from first principles | Lobsters — Six iterations from hardcoded serials to ED25519 signatures to encrypted “secret box” where the license is the decryption key. Good systems thinking about shifting attack cost.
Gleam v1.15.0 | Lobsters — Moves Hex package authentication to OAuth2 with short-lived tokens and MFA. Language server gains code folding and signature help.
The “small web” is bigger than you might think | HN — Kagi’s small web list grew from ~6,000 to ~32,000 sites. On a single day, they generated 1,251 new posts.
My journey to a reliable locally hosted voice assistant | HN — Detailed Home Assistant voice setup using llama.cpp, Nvidia Parakeet V2, Kokoro TTS, and Qwen. Key: default Ollama quantizations cause problems — use higher quantization from HuggingFace.
Video encoding and decoding with Vulkan compute shaders in FFmpeg | Lobsters — FFmpeg 8.1 adds GPU-accelerated codecs (FFv1, ProRes, DPX) via Vulkan compute shaders. Extends GPU acceleration to formats without dedicated hardware decoders.
Meta’s renewed commitment to jemalloc | HN — Meta reinvesting after years of community maintenance. Pairs with Memory Allocation Strategies on Lobsters — Ginger Bill’s series on arena, pool, and stack allocators.

Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill journalist over Iran missile story | HN — Prediction market bettors threatening a journalist to rewrite reporting that could affect their bets.
Hacking the Xbox One | Lobsters — Video on Xbox One security research.
Lazycut: Terminal video trimmer | HN — Simple TUI for trimming videos with FFmpeg.
human.json | Lobsters — A protocol for websites to advertise their human operator via a standardized /human.json file.

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 2508d980-7751-44ee-a699-3ea2e92ff7dd

Linux & Infrastructure

NixOS & Nix

Nix 2.34 released | NixOS Discourse — Major release with a new Rust-based installer (beta), stabilized linting infrastructure replacing no-url-literals with granular diagnostics (lint-url-literals, lint-short-path-literals, lint-absolute-path-literals), improved nix repl with inherit support, mTLS for HTTPS binary caches, multithreaded tarball unpacking, and better parser error messages.
Kcore: open-source hypervisor using NixOS as the immutable host OS | NixOS Discourse — Early-alpha hypervisor where every compute node runs NixOS from a shared flake. Controller communicates with node agents via gRPC. Aims to solve configuration drift and painful multi-node upgrades of traditional hypervisors like Proxmox.
rfm: lightweight flow data collector for NixOS routers | NixOS Discourse — TC-based ingress/egress flow tagging with a Go userspace process and Prometheus exporter. Runs on 1-core/1GB VPS boxes, ~80% of what libpcap-based solutions offer.
nixos-musl: tracking flake for musl/LLVM support in nixpkgs | NixOS Discourse — Runs CI for combinations of native and cross LLVM + musl builds. Notable: NixOS running at under 20MB.
Nixy: modular configuration builder for Nix | r/Nix — Typed schemas with defaults, traits (reusable behavior units), and nodes (targets that select traits and override values). Generates standard Nix modules.

Local binary cache with Harmonia — Practical discussion on Rust-based local Nix binary caches.
Yo: compile-time grammar compiler as a NixOS module — Nix-based voice assistant: compile-time grammar compiler generates regex from sentence templates, Rust runtime for fuzzy matching. Deterministic, offline, explicitly not LLM-based.
Policy on vibe-coded Nix tools? — Community discussion on trust and disclosure norms for LLM-generated tools.
ROCm validation suite: call for community use cases

Hyprland & Wayland

Sink Switch: audio output switcher for Hyprland — Bash script using fzf and PipeWire/WirePlumber for switching audio sinks via a floating menu. Supports Waybar integration and keybind mapping.
cwal v0.7.0: dynamic template updation for theme management — Automates theme switching by dynamically updating config templates.

Hyprland scrolling layout getting praise from a Niri user switching over.
A NixOS user switched back to i3 from Hyprland — the grass is always greener.

Self-Hosting & Services

Strix: IP camera stream finder (102K URL patterns) | r/selfhosted — Discovers working video streams from undocumented IP cameras by testing 102K URL patterns across 67K camera models in ~30 seconds. Three parallel methods (ONVIF, database lookup, pattern brute-force) achieving ~95% success. Generates Frigate NVR configs.
Self-hosted dictation API (OpenAI-compatible) — Single backend serving speech-to-text across all devices via an OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
Self-hosted services genuinely better than paid alternatives — Community favorites include Immich replacing Google Photos with better interface and ML features that have caught up.
Steam Deck as 10–15W Debian NAS — Broken-screen Steam Deck LCD repurposed: 512GB internal SSD, 6TB + 4TB HDDs, rsync snapshots, 2.5GbE, 10–15W idle.

Sync-in 2.1 — Self-hosted file sync with UI refresh, PKCE for OIDC, Dutch language support.
Booklore vanishes — AI-generated book management app’s GitHub and Discord disappeared without notice.
xpferd — Self-hosted e-invoice design tool for German ZUGFeRD/XRechnung standards.

CLI Tools & Terminal

CCGram: Telegram ↔︎ tmux bridge for coding agents | r/commandline — Maps Telegram Forum topics to tmux windows for remote control of Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini CLI sessions from your phone. Terminal-level operation (send_keys + pyte VT100 parsing), not SDK wrapping.
Lattice: modular terminal dashboard — Go-based with built-in modules for CPU/memory/GPU, weather, GitHub activity. External plugins via JSON over stdin/stdout.
GitTop: htop for Git repositories — Single-binary Go tool with commit heatmaps, contributor profiles, branch ahead/behind counts, file churn analysis, language breakdown.

GitTop summary view showing KPI cards and commit activity chart in the terminal.

Sentinel — TUI for managing Docker, systemd, and Kubernetes services. Vim-style nav.
gmail-tui — Gmail in the terminal, built on Bubble Tea.
tmpo — CLI time tracker with auto Git detection and SQLite storage.
unrot — Rust broken symlink detector with fuzzy matching to suggest new targets.
codesize — Tree-sitter based code size reporter for oversized files and functions.
justx — Interactive TUI wrapper around the just task runner.
ansinews — Zero-dependency terminal RSS reader in ~3500 lines of JS.

Home Automation

Claude MCP with Home Assistant — User reports using Claude with MCP to clean up a 3-year-old HA instance: reviewing logs, identifying issues, restructuring automations.
Knowledge graph memory for Home Assistant AI — Uses local Graphiti MCP + Neo4j + n8n to give home AI persistent memory via knowledge graphs.
Music Assistant MCP Server — MCP server for Music Assistant, usable from Claude Desktop or Claude Code.
Aqara Camera Hub G350: first Matter v1.5 camera — Hands-on review. HA integration limited until official Matter camera support ships, but workarounds exist.

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 089306fa-927a-4bb7-8288-a9822c92903a

Health & Science

New drug could be beginning of the end for sleeping sickness (NPR) — A new treatment brings the 2030 eradication goal within reach.

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume 2f57b1e5-ef00-4724-ab60-eacd847c9c14

cd ~/repos/ratatosk && claude --resume d3db2ed0-c078-4ffd-a922-ab652d51c505