Wildlife Sightings (#1591) published share token 9, so News takes the
next free token, 00. The token tests read the ledger before both where
they were written against it, and the README counts both layers.
A slow re-read of a refused key read as unavailable until it landed; it
now stays refused. The first-read wait is 10 s, for a margin under the
browser's 15 s. A failed Conflicts read no longer stops Local's refresh,
which the server reads on its own. Tests cover GDELT's wait, the refused
key and a caller abort past the timeout, and fail rather than hang; the
docs say what a section serves meanwhile.
A country's first World News API read, or Liveuamap's, could take up to
20 s while the browser waits 15, so the panel showed the browser's own
"signal timed out". A read with nothing to serve yet is now waited for
at most 12 s, as GDELT's already was: past that the section answers
unavailable while the read goes on, and the next refresh is served from
it. A client timeout reads "News feed unavailable".
A failed flow tile now carries the server's reason. A hosted deployment that limits each account answers USAGE_LIMIT_REACHED or RATE_LIMITED, which the traffic panel labels as the monthly allowance or a rate limit; a 503 with another reason reads as the traffic service being unavailable, not a missing key. The local proxy's no_key and daily budget labels are unchanged.
From 400 km, a tilt to -5° that a zoom out x2.5 caught 70 frames in eased down from the camera's old pitch at the new range. That put the camera below the place's horizon: the first frame's crosshair hit the ground 186 km from London, and London stayed hidden for about 11 frames. The re-solve also left the pivot pitch at 0°, so a zoom in before the next frame computed an infinite clearance floor, was refused, and stayed at 1,000 km.
The re-solved pivot pitch now stops at the place's horizon limit, or where the pivot already was. A camera that the zoom leaves past that limit steps down to it with the zoom and holds it, and the zoom still reports that angle. A zoom in straight after brings the range back to 400 km.
The voice runner subscribes to camera handoffs as it is created. The Cyber sonar test builds its runner on a StyleManager made from the prototype, which has no navigation owner, so the facade's delegation threw and both Node jobs failed. The facade now returns nothing there, like its other optional owners; the real shell builds its navigation owner before voice creates a runner.
One error was chosen before each failure's delay was known. An antimeridian
box 400 hid the other box's 503 Retry-After; a grid tile 400 with Retry-After
set a cooldown through the snapshot metadata; a short Retry-After on one tile
undercut a sibling 5xx's default backoff; and a huge Retry-After made the
deadline Infinity.
Every failed request now keeps its status and Retry-After. One function gives
each failure's delay: 4xx other than 429 none, 429 and 5xx their Retry-After
or the default backoff. The layer waits for the longest, and shows the
failure that set it. Retry-After is capped at one day, the proxy's own
daily-budget deadline, and non-finite values are ignored. Each publish of
one acquisition derives the default backoff from the backoff before it
started, so repeated tile publishes no longer double it.
From 400 km, a tilt to -5° that a zoom out x2.5 caught at -8.0005° reported -8°, and the next frame jumped to -9.407° and ended there. The zoom kept the camera's pitch as the goal when it was already past the new range's horizon limit, but at the same pivot pitch the longer range looks down more steeply, so the next lookAt dropped the camera 1.4° at once.
The zoom now re-solves the pivot pitch so the new range keeps the camera's pitch, and aims the tilt at the asked angle or the new limit, even when that limit is below where the camera stands: the tilt eases down to it. The zoom's reply names that end, and the camera reaches it with no frame moving more than 0.1°.
A partial failure reset the layer's cooldown, so a camera move retried at
once. Acartia's error was discarded, an absent X-Upstream-Status hid the
HTTP 503 (the proxy's daily-budget reply), and a grid schema error masked
the observation 503. Each failed source now keeps its status and
Retry-After, the HTTP status counts when no upstream status is sent, and the
layer waits for the longest 429/5xx cooldown among them. The shown error is
the one that explains the cooldown.
The held-pointer guard was one flag, so with two fingers down, lifting one cleared it and the recovery turned the view down under the other (pitch -42° to -90°). It now tracks each pressed pointer by id and defers until the last is released.
A release outside the window that the page never sees could leave the recovery deferred for good. A lost window focus, a hidden page or a lost pointer capture now releases every held pointer, and a pointer that moves with no button down is released.
The trim that fitted the tilt wording under the Realtime prompt ceiling dropped the -45° default from pitchDeg, so the model no longer read why a bare tilt goes oblique. pitchDeg reads 'Absolute; -45 default, -89 top-down.' again, and the direction description becomes 'Pan/rotate/tilt steps; orbit/rotate_globe default right.' to pay for it: the Overpass prompt measures 55,499, 1 under the 55,500 ceiling. The schema pin and the measured-size note follow.
A pivot range rebuilt from the camera's position came back a hair over the 1,000 km cutoff when the view sat exactly on it, so a tilt from 1,000 km ran in place and lifted the crosshair onto the sky. The cutoff now allows 1 m of slack.
A zoom during a tilt to an angle changes the range the pivot holds, and with it the place's horizon limit, but the tilt kept its old goal and its reply its old angle: from 400 km, a tilt to -5° zoomed out x2.5 reported -5° with no note and ended at -9.4°. The zoom now re-judges the goal at the new range, eases the tilt from where it is to it, and its result names the angle the tilt now ends at, with a note.
/grid/{z}/{x}/{y}.grid.json is documented in the v1 and v2 API docs as
Grid Tiles UTFGrid; only its per-cell records are unspecified, which is
what the schema guard covers. DATA_SOURCES.md now also notes that
Acartia's README asks API users to create an account and an API key,
although /sightings/current answers without one today.
An iNaturalist rejection discarded a successful Acartia reply, and the
antimeridian Promise.all lost both halves when one failed. Each box now
settles independently; the failed part is reported on
sources.inaturalist (error and failed boxes), the layer keeps that
area's last iNaturalist rows and shows DEGRADED with retry timing, and
the update fails outright only when every requested source failed.
The card's "Acartia" link was built from the contributor-supplied
photo_url, so any https site could appear labelled as Acartia. Acartia
has no documented per-sighting page, so the source link is now always
the Acartia site, on the server projection and again in the card.
The separate "Open on Acartia" fallback link is no longer needed.
A quiet or fully filtered feed raised invalid_snapshot, so the proxy
answered 502 with a 15 s cooldown and re-polled about four times a
minute. Only a non-array payload is malformed now; an empty projection
caches for the normal ten minutes and clears earlier rows.
Holding a drag still for half a second on a view that already showed no surface looked like a camera at rest, so the recovery turned the view down under the user's hand. The recovery now defers while a pointer pressed on the canvas is held, and runs once it is released, as for a flight or a playing scene.
The pre-check picked the in-place look from args.direction alone, while the tilt itself turns down for any direction but up. A tilt sent as left or right at the frame limit was checked as a turn left or right, refused as losing the globe, though it turns down toward the planet. A rotate sent as up or down was checked as a look up or down, though it turns right.
A tilt's look now comes from its goal pitch against the current pitch (tiltLook), and the tick tilts in place through tiltInPlaceWithinFrame(cam, m, goalPitch). Neither depends on the direction word, so a tilt to an absolute angle, or a tilt with no direction, can use them as they are.
Gemini runs one turn's calls one after another. By the time "pan left" ran beside "fly to Xyzzyville", the lookup had already found nothing, so there was no flight to wait on and the pan moved the old view with ok: true. OpenAI's parallel calls refused the same reply.
The runner now remembers, for the latest reply that sent a voice fly-to, whether one moved the camera and whether one found nothing. A tilt, orbit, pan or rotate of that reply with no flight left to wait on is refused when its fly-to found nothing and none moved. The reply is Gemini's turn, passed as a per-turn reply object, or OpenAI's authorityGroup. A motion in a later reply, or beside a fly-to of the same reply that did land, runs as before.
A motion queued behind a voice fly-to checked only that its reply was current and that the user had not touched the map. A location-panel search, share link or file import stamps a deferred navigation without stopping the flight, so the flight landed, the motion took navigation, and the search's reassert then failed: the search was silently dropped while the camera kept orbiting.
The runner now counts camera handoffs from subscribeCameraHandoff, less the ones voice fly-tos make themselves, and each voice flight records that count when it starts. A motion whose flight saw another navigation since then is not run and says so. Voice fly-tos' own stamps do not count, so a later fly-to in the same reply, including a lookup that finds nothing, is still followed as before. The test harness now publishes handoffs and stamps its voice lookups, as the shell does.
Local ranked its reports by severity first. A country's own news now
carries no severity, so in a conflict area GDELT's reports (severity 1
and up) could crowd every one of its stories out of the 40 listed.
Local is now newest first; severity still shows by colour.
Also: readTitle reads Conflicts headlines only, the economy category's
comment and the attribution popover name World News API's category,
and KNOWN-ISSUES names Core's ids for World News API's categories.
The bundled rules read fighting and crises; in everyday headlines their
words mislead ("Kazakhstan Advances in Global Digital Rankings" read as
ground fighting). A country's own stories in Local now keep World News
API's category (politics, business, else other) and carry no severity.
Fighting in the area still shows through the Conflicts reports placed
there.
An export is given up on (never published, unreadable, or failing three
times) only while GDELT itself answers: its list of exports read, or
another export of the same round read. An outage that answers 404, or junk,
for everything now gives up on nothing, and a failing file earns one strike
a round rather than three within the first seconds' rounds.
Docs: News's share token is 9; territories without a country code are named
as themselves too; the changelog fragment credits one pull request. Unused
exports dropped from the rules and stale scaffolding from the ledger tests.
A host that serves news only from its own news server mounts the proxy with
`builtIn: false`: without GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN the routes then answer "not
configured", as before Core read any news itself.
DATA_SOURCES, the README's layer and key tables, CURRENT-STATE and the
changelog describe the News layer as it now is: a configured news server,
or Core's own reading of GDELT (no key), Liveuamap (optional) and World
News API (Local, free plan backlink credited). .env.example gives the
download sizes and the daily read budget; KNOWN-ISSUES lists what machine
coding gets wrong and which disputed areas are named as themselves.
With GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN unset, Core answers the News layer's routes itself.
Conflicts need no key: the last 24 h of GDELT 2.0 event exports, physical
violence only (CAMEO 18-20), one report per story (copies of one agency
story merged), placed where GDELT put it, a town the article's own words
name winning over a bare country, and titled by the article's page title
from the GKG export of the same quarter hour (the newest 3 h), else by its
address words. GDELT's actor coding is never shown. Exports are read up to
the newest GDELT lists; one that cannot be read is given up on without
holding the rest back, and an outage of two hours answers 502 rather than
an empty feed. With LIVEUAMAP_API_KEY, Liveuamap's mapped items join them.
Local reads World News API by the source country at the view centre
(WORLDNEWSAPI_KEY, at most WORLDNEWSAPI_DAILY_READS a day), with the
Conflicts reports placed inside the area. Disputed areas (11 from Natural
Earth, bundled) and territories without a country code are named as
themselves and read from no country's outlets; a country's outline leaves
them out.
Categories, relevance and severity come from shared rules; keyed answers
are cached and served while they refresh, and no key or address is logged.
Local reads the area at the view centre (`/outline?at=`) and asks the feed
for its reports (`at`): the area is outlined faintly on the globe and named
at the top of the section ("News from Kazakhstan"; within 500 km at sea).
A disputed area is named as itself. A read that a newer look replaced, or
one left behind by a switch to Conflicts, is dropped, and a server without
the area route is asked once.
A section read from a key the server lacks says which key it needs
(503 `no_key`), that the key was refused (`key_rejected`) or that its
daily allowance is spent (`key_quota`); the other section keeps reading.
Liveuamap and World News API join the key registry.
Cards name the service a report came through ("via GDELT Project"), and
Liveuamap and Natural Earth are credited once their data shows. Economy is
a category of its own. Disputed-area labels are smaller and show the name
only; outlines keep up to 300 parts.
A feed card shows its event's picture whatever the number of sources, so a
lone Telegram post opening with a video gets its preview; the globe's
picture cards still need two. An event picture may carry its post's clip (an
HTTPS MP4 or WebM file): the card marks it with a play sign, and opened, it
plays with controls and sound, loading nothing before. An expired link drops
the clip.
Conflicts is the hotspots' significant news, on the map whenever the layer is
on. Local lists every report within 500 km of the view centre below 3,000 km,
and the map shows those instead while it is chosen. The section replaces the
"Include minor news" and "Show event cards" toggles: picture cards are always
on, and Local is what reads minor news. The Conflicts feed reads the same
whichever section is shown.
The panel's window label becomes a choice of the server's window and each
shorter one. The feed and map filter to it locally; the hotspot counts are
read again for it (/api/news/hotspots?hours=N, now on the allowlist). A
server names the longest window it serves as maxWindowHours.
Outlines move to geometry version 4: the news server now follows Natural
Earth's own border vertices instead of a coarse grid, and the new version is a
new cache entry. A severity a reviewer set (severityBy 'label') is kept as such
instead of reading as the rules'.
A host may serve fewer hours than the day. The hotspots answer may name its window
(`windowHours`, a whole number from 1 to 24); the layer keeps reports, the
feed, In view and the chosen event inside it, and the panel says
"Last 12 h" or "Last 24 h" accordingly. Without a window named, or with one
out of range, the layer keeps the full day as before.
The news layer brought its own ColorBrewer yellow, orange and red, solid
coloured marker discs, a coloured edge on every card, an amber developing
ring and pink disputed areas, which read as foreign next to GEV's cyan glass.
Severity now uses colours GEV already has (dim and primary text, the military
layers' amber, the Cockpit's emergency red), drawn as GEV's dark disc with a
severity rim and icon; attestation is still the rim's form. Cards lose the
coloured edge and name significant and major events in a mono badge;
attestation chips follow the status badge; outlines stay in the accent family
with disputed areas dotted in the primary text colour.
From review of the news layer:
- An event's other sides older than 24 hours (or undated) are no longer
listed, and a report dated more than 15 minutes ahead is outside the
window, as in the regional brief.
- Picture cards are one canvas per event in a bounded cache (24), repainted
in place when the age changes, with each card's picture dropped with it;
the age in the key had made a new canvas every minute.
- The feed list drops reports that leave the window and is capped at 600.
- "In view" is filtered from the reports the layer already holds; it reads
the feed only with minor news on, once per refresh, never per pan.
- Infinite scroll restarts after a filter change or a failed read.
- The two filter selects stack, so "Significant and above" is not cut off.
- The timeout tests hold the event loop until aborted, so they pass on
Node 22 as well.
`./server/providers/news` (node) with its own package boundary, so a host composing its own local providers can serve /api/news from GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN as Core's standalone server does.
Events ▸ News draws the last 24 hours of reports from curated hotspots
(Ukraine–Russia, Israel–Gaza–Lebanon, Iran–Hormuz, Yemen–Red Sea, Sudan,
Sahel) and developing situations elsewhere, from any server that answers the
`/api/news` read routes.
- Globe: one marker per merged event, clamped to the ground and culled at the
horizon; one beacon per hotspot when zoomed out and a pulsing beacon for a
developing situation; hotspot outlines with disputed areas dotted and
labelled by who administers and who claims them; picture cards for at most
ten major or fast-growing events with two or more sources, never
overlapping, switchable off.
- Panel: hotspot chips, a severity filter (significant and above by default),
categories, minor news off by default, and a scrolling list of event cards
with picture, headline, place, sources, age and the sides that reported it.
"In view" lists what is near the map below 3,000 km once the camera
settles. A card flies the globe to its event and opens it with a link to
the publisher. Reduced motion stops the pulse and the flights.
- Core serves no news itself: the local server proxies GEV_NEWS_ORIGIN when it
is set, and answers 503 unavailable otherwise, so the layer reads "not
configured" once instead of retrying.
- Share token 9 (enabled-only); voice stays off for this layer.
The pure half of a news layer: validated records for a news server's
`/api/news/hotspots|feed|outline` contract, a presentation model and canvas
markers and picture cards, and a fetch client.
- Colour carries severity only (0 no physical event, 1 minor, 2 significant,
3 major), never a side; the category is the icon, the rim is attestation
(confirmed, a claim, one side's own press), size grows with sources and
markers fade with age.
- Cards say "Reported by {side} sources" and mark official channels; a
machine-read English headline is labelled as such.
- `createNewsSource` reads same-origin routes with a 15 s timeout, a 4 MiB cap
and record-by-record validation; `NEWS_API_PATHS` and `newsQueryAllowed`
let a host proxy exactly what the client sends. A 503 marked unavailable
means "not configured": no retries.
- Exported as `./layers/news/source`, with its own package boundary.
Denis Groshev