Technical debt refers to the cost of future work due to rushed work in the present (e.g. not following best practices for project management, rushed code, unsustainable design decisions, incomplete trials/experiments, etc.). Recently, organizations have come up with ways to calculate technical debt, such as the Tech Debt Score (TDS)

In college sports, the transfer portal refers to a mechanism that allows players to move between universities without losing eligibility. In the last several years, transfer portal movement has greatly accelerated, partially due to the ability of college athletes to receive sponsorship deals and get paid. In some cases, a majority of a team's players have transferred in over the course of 1 year (e.g. they did not play at that university the year before but are now on the team). The NCAA is the governing body of top-level college sports in the US.

A “confrontational” approach to romantic relationships prioritizes proactive communication and radical honesty. This means regularly checking in about the relationship, addressing dissatisfaction early, and being transparent even when the truth may hurt.

By contrast, a “compromising” approach emphasizes being reactive to issues when they emerge in the relationship, and prioritizes attentiveness to a partner's needs. This means waiting to raise concerns about the relationship until they become significant and prioritizing the needs of one’s partner, even at the expense of communicating one’s own needs.

Psychometrics is a discipline within psychology that concerns itself with the measurement of theoretical attributes (e.g. intelligence, introversion, thought patterns, etc.). Key psychometric tests that have become popular in the 21st century include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), IQ tests, and Rorshach tests.

On 20 January, a Chinese AI startup called DeepSeek released their open-source language model. While DeepSeek's capabilities are comparable to ChatGPT, it was much cheaper to develop and requires significantly less processing power. This has raised questions about how expensive AI research has been in the US, and opened new possibilities in terms of accessible AI.

DeepSeek says that it used Nvidia's older H800 chips, which it could have acquired legally in 2023. However, the US government has accused it of using newer Nvidia chips that were smuggled into China via Singapore, despite the fact that their sale to China is banned under American export restrictions.

M23 is a militant rebel group based in Eastern Congo, a region rich in minerals such as cobalt, gold, and coltan. Recently, M23 has intensified its campaign in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), capturing the major cities of Goma and Bukavu with heavy civilian casualties. The Government of Rwanda has been credibly accused of heavily supporting and operating M23, which is ideologically pro-Tutsi.

The Wagner Group is a Russian-based Private Military Contractor (PMC) with presence across Africa. It has notably been contracted to aid the governments of Mali, Sudan, Libya, Mozambique and others in government counterinsurgency efforts, and is known for a willingness to use brutal and collective attack tactics.

Yeridat Hadorot (Decline of the Generations) is a tenet of Jewish theology, which states that each subsequent generation of believers becomes less able to intellectually and spiritually understand god and divinity. The concept is applied both to observers of Judaism and to Rabbanical orders (jewish clergy and religious authorities).