Tech
Arelion boosts Baltic connectivity with resilient route | Computer Weekly
In a move that it said will reduce latency to Western Europe for multinational enterprises in a key region, global connectivity and digital infrastructure provider Arelion has completed a major expansion of its Baltic network, constructing a fully diverse, high-capacity route between Helsinki and Warsaw, creating a resilient ring for traffic between Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Explaining the rationale for the move, Arelion noted that Finland’s datacentre market is projected to reach $5.23bn by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 54.6 percent, underscoring the importance of robust digital infrastructure across the Baltic region. The project, partially funded by the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility 2 (CEF2) program, highlights how strategic investment can advance digital sovereignty in a historically underserved region.
Scandinavia has long been regarded as a connectivity hotspot, and to maintain this reputation for its clients in the era of increased and network-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, Arelion upgraded its Scandinavian network in summer 2025 to connect hyperscale datacentres and serve the region’s booming AI markets.
The new terrestrial path is intended to reduce latency between the Baltics and Western Europe, increase diversity in a geopolitically sensitive region and secure future capacity for what the connectivity provider regards as an underserved EU region.
The diverse terrestrial route connects the Baltics to Western Europe via subsea and land systems from Helsinki through the Baltics to Warsaw, bypassing Copenhagen and Stockholm to avoid bottlenecks and ensure high-availability connectivity for customers. Using open optical line systems with 400G coherent pluggable optics and 1.6 Tbps connectivity from its Waves programme, the route will provide long-term scalability to support what are anticipated as being the massive data flows of next-generation applications in Europe’s growing AI sectors.
Arelion’s expansion is also claimed to be able to deliver backbone-grade performance with predictable service-level agreements (SLAs) to reduce downtime risk, ensuring reliable business continuity for customers in cloud, financial services, manufacturing and other critical sectors.
Arelion added that by combining network fibres from regional partners with own infrastructure, the expansion provides enterprises and service providers with scalable, future-ready connectivity amid increased investment in local markets.
The infrastructure is also designed to provide customers with reliable, secure connectivity from Baltic markets into Nordic, Central and Western European data centre hubs. Arelion believes that organisations with latency-sensitive applications can benefit from consistent, predictable performance, resilient infrastructure and backbone-level security that could mitigate DDoS attacks and routing threats before they reach enterprise networks.
The route offers metro routing flexibility in major cities, including Warsaw and Helsinki and supports scalable IP Transit, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Ethernet, DDoS Mitigation and other global services.
Among the various points-of-presence (PoPs) throughout the region that will be connected through the expansion are Arelion’s Iso-Roobertinkatu 21-25 PoP in Helsinki; Greenergy’s Tallinn DC-1 PoP in Hüüru, Estonia; Tet’s Pērses datacenter in Riga, Latvia; The Riga TV Tower datacentre; the Delska DC2 (formerly RackRay) data centre in Vilnius, Lithuania; the Vilnius TV Tower datacentre; and Equinix’s WA1 datacentre in Warsaw.
Commenting on the route, Arelion vice-president and chief evangelist Mattias Fridström said: “This new route enhances diversity and bandwidth between the Baltics and Western Europe, delivering the secure, low-latency connectivity our customers need to scale AI and cloud applications. With support from the EU, we are strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty while ensuring that enterprises and hyperscale operators can rely on resilient infrastructure to power innovation.”
Tech
Top Chirp Discount Codes: Up to 67% Off
Chirp reinvented the wheel—or at least one type, the yoga wheel. Chirp Wheels are effective in relieving upper and lower back pain, sciatica, and tension headaches. WIRED contributor Hannah Singleton has said the Chirp Wheel XR-3 Pack has even helped undo her tech neck and alleviate her brain fog.
Recently, the wellness brand has expanded beyond its flagship wheels into recovery gear. The lineup now includes powered rolling massagers (which I’ve been using a lot lately for back pain relief), TENS units, and even a full massage table (Chirp Contour) that I’m currently testing (stay tuned for the full review). Where Chirp stands out from heavyweights like Hyperice and Therabody is in its simplicity and value. The products tend to focus on doing one thing well rather than piling on features you may never use. Chirp promos and discounts run frequently on the Chirp website, and we have Chirp discount codes, so you can get an even better deal on recovery gear that’s already reasonably priced.
Save up to 67% on Chirp Products With Daily Deals
I like checking Chirp’s Daily Deals page because the exclusive offers rotate frequently, and you can save as much as 67%. I’ve spotted the Chirp Wheel XR 3-Pack on there, but you’ll also find different versions of the wheel, along with storage accessories. Some wheels skip the pressure-point nodes, which can feel better if you’re focusing on improving spinal mobility and flexibility rather than digging into stubborn knots. If the Chirp RPM Mini pops up at a special discount, it’s worth considering for your first purchase. It’s essentially an electric roller that kneads muscles more gently than most percussive massage guns; it also comes with a carrying case, so you can toss it in a bag and take it with you.
Get a Free Chirp Wheel+ Deep Tissue 2-Pack When You Spend $99 or More
Spend $99 or more, and Chirp will throw in a complimentary Chirp Wheel+ Deep Tissue 2-Pack, which retails for $75. The bundle includes two wheels: a 6-inch Deep Tissue Wheel designed for larger muscle groups and a 4-inch Focus Wheel meant to target trigger points in the neck and other small areas. You’ll need to sign up for the email newsletter to claim the freebie before adding it to your order.
Get Free Shipping on Chirp Orders Over $75
Chirp customers receive free shipping on U.S. orders over $75, and the perk stacks with the brand’s daily deals and most codes. If you time it right, you can shave a decent chunk off the final price. No promo code at checkout required.
Chirp Discount Code: Select Customers Can Get 15% Off
Chirp offers a 15% discount to certain groups through an online verification process. That includes: active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their dependents; first responders and law enforcement officers; medical professionals and healthcare workers; and teachers and academic administrators at any grade level.
Tech
Sam Altman’s Orb Company Promoted a Bruno Mars Partnership That Doesn’t Exist
Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning startup, Tools for Humanity, announced last week that a new product called Concert Kit—designed to give verified humans a way to purchase concert tickets—would first roll out on Bruno Mars’ world tour of his latest studio album, The Romantic.
However, Bruno Mars Management and Live Nation, the producer for the Romantic Tour, told WIRED in a joint statement on Tuesday that the partnership “does not exist,” and that Tools for Humanity never even approached them about working together.
The confusion stemmed from a Tools for Humanity event April 17 in San Francisco, where chief product officer Tiago Sada said the company would be joining the Romantic Tour to not just provide access to tickets but also “VIP experiences for verified humans.”
The statement was reiterated in a blog post published by the company, which read: “Concert Kit launches today and will roll out during the Bruno Mars World Tour featuring DJ Pee .Wee (aka Anderson .Paak), where verified humans will have exclusive access to VIP suite experiences at select stops.”
A video of the event, and the company’s blog post, have since been edited and reshared by Tools for Humanity. They now say that Concert Kit will roll out on the 2027 European tour for Jared Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.
“To be clear, we were never approached by TFH, nor were we in any discussions regarding a partnership or tour access,” said Bruno Mars’ Management and Live Nation in a joint statement to WIRED. “We first learned that our tour was being used to promote their project after their keynote made those initial claims.” (WIRED had referenced the Bruno Mars partnership in its original story about the event; the story has since been updated to include this new information.)
A spokesperson for Tools for Humanity confirmed to WIRED in a statement Wednesday that the startup “does not have any agreement with Bruno Mars to test or feature Concert Kit, and there is no association or affiliation with the artist or his tour.” Tools for Humanity declined to explain why they announced Mars as a partner for the project in the first place.
Tools for Humanity was cofounded in 2019 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and German entrepreneur Alex Blania, with the aim of using blockchain technology to verify people in online environments where scams are prevalent. In 2023, the company launched a physical, iris-scanning orb that works in conjunction with a mobile app.
While Live Nation and Bruno Mars Management say they “have no opinions for or against their products,” it’s possible that Live Nation is feeling prickly about Tools for Humanity for other reasons. The startup is proposing that Concert Kit will help thwart the bot problem that plagues sites like Ticketmaster—which is owned by Live Nation.
In September, Bloomberg reported that the US Federal Trade Commission was investigating Ticketmaster over whether it had done enough to keep bots off its platform. Anderson .Paak made a cameo at the Tools for Humanity event to vouch for this approach, saying to the crowd, “I fucking hate bots … they make everything really shitty. Especially for the fans.” (Anderson .Paak, for what it’s worth, will soon be touring with Bruno Mars under his moniker DJ Pee .Wee. The plot thickens.)
Tools for Humanity also took a jab at Ticketmaster in its press release for last week’s event, saying that “diehard Swifties will never forget the Eras Tour presale, where Ticketmaster faced 3.5 billion system requests in a single day, locking out millions of fans.”
The partnership with Mars was one of many announced at Tools for Humanity’s Lift Off event, which aimed to legitimize the startup’s identity-verifying technology by working with major brands. Executives from Tinder, Zoom, and Docusign said they’d be expanding their work with Tools for Humanity at the event. In the past, Tools for Humanity has struggled to get governments around the world on board with its technology as a safe, privacy-protecting way to identify real humans.
Tech
Cocaine-Fueled Wild Salmon Swam Twice as Far as Sober Ones
Cocaine pollution can affect the behavior of fish—altering, for example, the way Atlantic salmon move through their environment, prompting them to swim farther and disperse over a wider area.
So finds a recent study by a research team coordinated by Griffith University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Zoological Society of London, and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and published in the journal Current Biology. The findings provide the first evidence that the effects of cocaine contamination on fish behavior occur not only under laboratory conditions, but also in the wild, where animals are exposed to much more complex environmental conditions.
Cocaine and its metabolites have been detected with increasing frequency in rivers and lakes around the world, entering waterways primarily through wastewater treatment systems. Although previous research has shown that cocaine pollution can affect animal behavior, this evidence was limited to laboratory conditions. A 2024 study by the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Brazil showed that even sharks are exposed to cocaine, but little is known about its effects on animals in the wild.
To understand more about it, the authors of the new study surgically implanted small devices that slowly release chemicals into 105 juvenile Atlantic salmon in Lake Vättern in Sweden. They were then divided into 3 groups: a control group, which was not exposed to substances; a group exposed to cocaine; and a group exposed to benzoylecgonine, the main metabolite of cocaine that is commonly detected in wastewater. The researchers also attached small tags to the fish so they could monitor their movements over a two-month period. From subsequent analyses, the team found that, compared with the control group, fish exposed to benzoylecgonine swam up to 1.9 times farther, dispersing at the end of the experiment about 20 miles from the release point.
“The location of the fish determines what they eat, what eats them, and how populations are structured,” said co-author Marcus Michelangeli. “If pollution is altering these patterns, it has the potential to affect ecosystems in ways we are only now beginning to understand.”
In addition to showing how cocaine pollution has changed the way salmon use space in a natural ecosystem, the new study found that the most pronounced effect was observed not so much in the group exposed to cocaine itself, but in that exposed to its metabolite. This result has implications for monitoring, since the metabolites are often more common in waterways and current risk assessments generally focus on the main compound, potentially neglecting important biological effects.
“The idea that cocaine might have effects on fish might seem surprising, but the reality is that wildlife is already exposed to a wide range of human-made drugs on a daily basis,” said Michelangeli. The researchers’ next step will be to be able to determine how widespread these effects are, identify which species are most at risk, and test whether alterations in behavior translate into changes in survival and reproduction.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Spanish.
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