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Daily Briefing

World in a Pulse

Briflio distills the day's signals into one calm feed — a personalized mix of the top stories across every topic, with context, not noise.

AI

The AI Pentesting wave. Pay for effort vs pay for impact.

The AI Pentesting wave. Pay for effort vs pay for impact.

Amazon’s Best New Kindle Offering Is a $35 Accessory
Technology

Amazon’s Best New Kindle Offering Is a $35 Accessory

If you already have a compatible e-reader, the Kindle Click could be all the upgrade you need.

OpenAI and Anthropic Claim AI Has Disproved a 27-Year-Old Computer Science Hypothesis | HackerNoon
Science

OpenAI and Anthropic Claim AI Has Disproved a 27-Year-Old Computer Science Hypothesis | HackerNoon

AI may have overturned decades of computer science research. Discover why OpenAI and Anthropic's claimed breakthrough matters.

Heart-healthy salt could prevent 12,000 deaths a year
Health

Heart-healthy salt could prevent 12,000 deaths a year

Researchers found replacing regular salt with a potassium-enriched version could also prevent 60,000 cases of cardiovascular and kidney disease annually in the UK.

Ball State vs. UMass prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks from proven model
Sports

Ball State vs. UMass prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks from proven model

SportsLine's model revealed its best bets for Wednesday's Mid-American Conference college football matchup of the Ball State Cardinals vs. UMass Minutemen

World

Tennis great Rafael Nadal set to join Real Madrid board

The 22-time Grand Slam winner is to be ratified onto club's board of directors.

A night of historic firsts: 2026 midterm election winners set new milestones for diversity and generational change
Business

A night of historic firsts: 2026 midterm election winners set new milestones for diversity and generational change

Midterm elections often fail to bring the enthusiasm that surrounds a general election, but this was no ordinary year. Americans across the country went to the polls and delivered a significant rebuke of President Trump and candidates who support him. Democrats took back the House and the Senate, flipping long-standing red states like Texas along the way.  Election results are still rolling in, but an incredible number of historic milestones have already occurred, from the first Muslim Am

Chix On Netflix -- Guess The '90s Bombshell!
Culture

Chix On Netflix -- Guess The '90s Bombshell!

This week's Chix On Netflix is goin' back to the 90's ... Can you score the sexy star sportin' this hot pink swimwear?!

‘Totally insane’: Alex Stamos on giving AI agents your bank logins
AI

‘Totally insane’: Alex Stamos on giving AI agents your bank logins

Alex Stamos says people give agents like Meta’s Muse and Instinct whole 1Password vaults, leaving banks facing bots with real logins.

OpenAI Announces End of ChatGPT Classic for Mac: When Will It Stop Working?
Technology

OpenAI Announces End of ChatGPT Classic for Mac: When Will It Stop Working?

OpenAI is phasing out its older ChatGPT desktop application for Mac. Users still running the app are being notified that it will be discontinued on January 30, 2027.

Benchmark chair
Science

Benchmark chair

James Birdle described his experiment using AI to assist in chair design: What we have here is, quite literally, a chair designed by someone who has read a lot about chairs but never actually sat i…

Health

iGC: Antibody Optimization via Reinforcement Learning over a Learned Somatic Hypermutation Prior

Antibody affinity maturation is a natural optimization process in which B cells acquire mutations through somatic hypermutation (SHM), undergo selection for improved antigen binding, and iteratively evolve toward higher affinity. Computationally modeling this process requires capturing both biologically plausible mutations and antigen-specific selection. However, existing mutation models do not directly optimize binding, while affinity optimization often neglects realistic mutation trajectories.

Prisco's Week 9 NFL expert picks: Jaguars roll over Lamar Jackson-less Ravens, Cowboys rebound
Sports

Prisco's Week 9 NFL expert picks: Jaguars roll over Lamar Jackson-less Ravens, Cowboys rebound

Pete Prisco reveals all of his Week 9 picks, including the Bills handing the Vikings their second straight loss

World

America is heading for two years of constitutional brinkmanship

An unlikely mix of political bargains and constitutional confrontation will define the next two years.

The National STEM Festival is taking its science fair global
Business

The National STEM Festival is taking its science fair global

In 2023, the National STEM Challenge launched with a goal of attracting students to technical fields—including those who wouldn’t have necessarily seen themselves as traditional science types.  Roughly three years later, the event—now known as the National STEM Festival—has drawn students from across the country to present innovative projects at its annual gathering in Washington, D.C. The festival, run by the educational media company Explr, has also provided connections with business l

Fleabag star offers rent-free flat to new writers
Culture

Fleabag star offers rent-free flat to new writers

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is donating the accommodation to playwrights from underprivileged backgrounds.

Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4's controversial AI features are going live
AI

Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4's controversial AI features are going live

watchOS 27.3 beta comes with Live Rewind and Siri Recap. Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 back in September, along with a set of...

Technology

From Autonomous Agents to Cognitive Symbionts: Toward AI-Augmented Human Intelligence

For a decade, progress in artificial intelligence has been measured by how much a machine can do on its own. Large foundation models now write code and run multistep tasks, and personal agents act on a person's behalf. Yet people still forget what they once knew, miss what they are not looking at, fail to find the right words, and face hard choices without the benefit of their own history, because the machine that could help stands outside the situation. As AI moves into the physical world, atte

Science

SBi3PCF: cosmology with Dark Energy Survey Year 3 cosmic shear

We present the first cosmic shear data analysis of the integrated 3-point correlation function (i3PCF), a higher-order weak lensing statistic, and the first simulation-based inference (SBI) analysis of a three-point cosmic shear correlation function on survey data. Using SBi3PCF, our previously developed SBI framework for the i3PCF, we jointly constrain the $w$CDM parameter space with the cosmic shear 2-point correlation functions $ξ_\pm$ (2PCFs) and the i3PCFs $ζ_\pm$ from the Dark Energy Surve

Do mosquito repellent patches work? Experts weigh in on the buzz
Health

Do mosquito repellent patches work? Experts weigh in on the buzz

As West Nile virus concerns rise, some parents are turning to essential oil patches for easy bite prevention. Mosquito authorities explain why you should stick to sprays instead.

Rory McIlroy fine playing in Abu Dhabi: 'Don't think I would ever feel unsafe'
Sports

Rory McIlroy fine playing in Abu Dhabi: 'Don't think I would ever feel unsafe'

Rory McIlroy has downplayed safety concerns about competing at the Abu Dhabi Championship this week amid the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.

World

UK Supreme Court hears appeal against Palestine Action’s proscription

Rights activists say UK decision against Palestine Action is a 'misuse of terrorism powers'.

Business

When Listwise Deletion Works: Causal Diagrams and Complete-Case Regression

Listwise deletion (LWD) appears more common than imputation: our review of leading journals finds that about 50% of articles state or imply LWD, versus 7% describing an imputation model. Assuming oracle regression with all required values observed consistently estimates the population average treatment effect, we ask when complete-case regression remains consistent. With constant effects, we offer two checks: whether covariates and the missing indicator satisfy the adjustment criterion in an aug

Crimson Desert Patch Notes for Update 2.04.06 – DLC Fixes and Performance Improvements
Culture

Crimson Desert Patch Notes for Update 2.04.06 – DLC Fixes and Performance Improvements

Crimson Desert update 2.04.06 fixes DLC issues, crashes, and framerate drops. Here are the full patch notes and platform availability details.

AI

Meta Starts Debut Euro Bond Sale After $15 Billion US Deal

Meta Platforms Inc. is making its debut in the euro bond market, joining a burst of borrowing by the world’s biggest technology companies as they race to finance trillions of dollars of investments in artificial intelligence.

Technology

Aligning Language Models with General Preferences: An Empirical Study of Direct Nash Optimization

Direct Nash Optimization (DNO) aligns a language model to a general preference function by approximating the Nash equilibrium of a two-player preference game. Its practical variant, DNO-Prct, iterates on-policy sampling, LLM-based rating of the samples together with a teacher's gold response, large-margin preference-pair selection and a DPO-style contrastive update. We re-implement DNO-Prct independently and study it on two open-weight instruct models, Llama 3.1 8B Instruct and Mistral 7B Instru

Science

Mapping large-scale structure without galaxy formation - combining fast radio bursts with CMB lensing

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are an emerging precision probe of cosmological fluctuations. The amount and quality of observed FRB data will grow enormously over the next decade. FRB dispersion data directly probe the free electron distribution up to intergalactic scales. Precision models of the free electron distribution are necessary to exploit this exciting new probe of large-scale structure. We show that the free electron distribution almost exactly follows the total matter distribution. We confi

Woman still going strong 3 years after stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis
Health

Woman still going strong 3 years after stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis

Three years ago, Irene Ho received news that would change her life. The single mum of three was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and learnt that she might only have three to six months to live.Now, 50-year-old Irene has long surpassed that given timeline and continues to make the most of each

NBA Power Rankings: Summing up all 30 teams' starts
Sports

NBA Power Rankings: Summing up all 30 teams' starts

Here's where all 30 NBA teams rank after two weeks of action, plus the four words used to describe how each team has started the season.

World

Tariffs to Iran war: Can Democrats reverse Trump policy with midterms win?

Democrats can block Trump's legislative agenda, launch investigations but don't have the numbers to override his veto.

Business

Left-Digit Bias: Theory and Empirical Evidence from a Tax Salience Experiment

Demand often drops sharply at whole-dollar prices. To explain this phenomenon, known as left-digit bias, we develop a random utility model in which consumers consider a good only if its price is below a heterogeneous attention threshold. Masses of consumers with integer attention thresholds generate demand discontinuities. When a tax is introduced, the model predicts a weaker demand response compared to rational choice for left-digit biased consumers. Using data from a tax experiment, we find th

Maura Higgins shares ‘reality’ of competing on Dancing With The Stars
Culture

Maura Higgins shares ‘reality’ of competing on Dancing With The Stars

The Love Island star is taking part on the US version of the dancing series, where she has been paired with professional dancer Mark Ballas.

Oppo F35 Pro Gets ColorOS 17 Update in India
AI

Oppo F35 Pro Gets ColorOS 17 Update in India

Oppo says ColorOS 17 improves app launch stability by up to 55 percent.

Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra dummy 'confirms' huge changes
Technology

Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra dummy 'confirms' huge changes

See how the S27 Ultra compares to its predecessor and rivals in real life thanks to a new dummy unit of Samsung's upcoming flagship phone

Sam Altman just renamed himself ‘Ram Altman’ in U.S. Midterms aftermath — the panic is setting in, but is the AI bubble starting to crack?
Science

Sam Altman just renamed himself ‘Ram Altman’ in U.S. Midterms aftermath — the panic is setting in, but is the AI bubble starting to crack?

Sam's memory loss may be one for the record books

Health

NYC Marathon runner's death linked to rhabdomyolysis. What is the rare condition?

... Health, told the Times. Uren, who sees ... Not every case is preventable, particularly those caused by injuries or underlying medical conditions.

"He did not let any ego get in the way" - Ambati Rayudu lauds star India player for his contribution in NZ vs IND 2026 1st ODI
Sports

"He did not let any ego get in the way" - Ambati Rayudu lauds star India player for his contribution in NZ vs IND 2026 1st ODI

Former Indian cricketer Ambati Rayudu praised skipper Shubman Gill’s innings in the run chase in the series opener against New Zealand, even though it was far from his usual stroke-filled style and te

World

Jerusalem Daily: Mass arrests across occupied West Bank

Israeli forces bomb Gaza displacement camps and arrest 45 people in the occupied West Bank.

Executives need a point of view
Business

Executives need a point of view

There was a time when executives could hide behind a brand. Not anymore. Today, people want to know the humans behind the companies they buy from, work for, and invest in. They also expect them to sound like people, not talking points with the life edited out of them. That expectation has made executive visibility a major part of the job. Leaders who speak credibly in public build trust and create awareness, while giving people another way to understand the companies they represent. A TRUS

Celebrity hairstylist John Frieda dies aged 75
Culture

Celebrity hairstylist John Frieda dies aged 75

He was stylist to the stars in the 1960s and 1970s before creating a global range of hair products.

OpenAI Wants to Stop You from Hating Data Centers by Renaming Them
AI

OpenAI Wants to Stop You from Hating Data Centers by Renaming Them

OpenAI is launching a policy push to rebrand data centers as AI compute campuses to defuse growing public backlash.

Technology

Databricks opens new office, plans $350m Singapore investment

Databricks also launched an AI accelerator for startups that aims to support more than 100 early-stage companies over three years.

Scientists Found That Seabirds Get Jet Lag — And It Makes Them Fly Off Course
Science

Scientists Found That Seabirds Get Jet Lag — And It Makes Them Fly Off Course

Even seabirds get jet lag, and it's actually a problem.

Health

A Bayesian Optimized Biquad Filter-Burg Model for Real-Time EEG Phase Estimation

Real-time phase estimation on stimulus-aligned transient EEG is critical for closed-loop neuromodulation systems targeting the theta-band, yet most real-time phase estimation methods have been developed and validated on resting-state, high-fidelity signals in the alpha band. Recent work has pursued deep learning architectures, while individualized classical bandpass filter tuning remains underexplored. This study characterizes the spectral and temporal properties of non-anticipative bandpass fil

Week 9 QB Power Rankings: Familiar name returns to No. 1, Cam Ward crawls out of basement
Sports

Week 9 QB Power Rankings: Familiar name returns to No. 1, Cam Ward crawls out of basement

Josh Allen returns to the top spot, Joe Burrow climbs into the top five and Patrick Mahomes moves up once again

World

Why are Europe’s governments struggling to respond to growing protests?

Protests intensify as governments prioritise security measures over addressing underlying social and economic concerns.

Business

Regret-based Characterization, Information Limits, and the Sample Complexity of Auditing Adaptive Policies

A policy can earn its performance by where it locates on average or by reacting to information. For any Markov policy $π$ in a finite-horizon MDP, let $ν$ be its open-loop marginal, which plays $π$'s average action distribution at each step. We show that $J(π)-J(ν)$ equals $\sum_t tr Cov(Q^ν_t,π_t)$ under endogenous dynamics. Audits based on immediate costs alone can have the wrong sign. Writing the covariance as a joint-versus-product gap gives the bound $|J(π)-J(ν)|\le\sum_t span_t\sqrt{I(s_t;

Sasha Lacuna continues to make waves at The Miss Globe 2026 in Thailand
Culture

Sasha Lacuna continues to make waves at The Miss Globe 2026 in Thailand

Bb. Pilipinas Globe Sasha Lacuna. Image: INQUIRER.net/Armin P. Adina Binibining Pilipinas Sasha Lacuna's trajectory at The Miss Globe pageant's 2026 edition continues to rise as the

AI

CrowdStrike to buy Fiddler AI, Dreadnode for $495m

Fiddler's software will be integrated into CrowdStrike's Falcon platform as Falcon Observe.

Technology

Call adjustments help bats keep their echolocation signals distinct, study finds

Bats can produce ultrasonic pulses with high frequencies between 20,000 and 120,000 hertz, which are inaudible to humans. The sound waves they produce travel forward, hitting nearby objects and bouncing back in the form of echoes.

Microsoft's AI PC push meets a wall of RAM prices, but Redmond is still beating the drum
Science

Microsoft's AI PC push meets a wall of RAM prices, but Redmond is still beating the drum

Customers are sweating assets amid tight budgets, yet that doesn't stop an exec from Redmond getting creative with the sales pitch

Type 2 Diabetes: 54% Young Adults Enter Remission with Diet, Exercise
Health

Type 2 Diabetes: 54% Young Adults Enter Remission with Diet, Exercise

More than half of younger adults with type 2 diabetes entered remission after following a low calorie diet and supervised exercise program for six months, a new study found.

Toledo vs. Sacramento State prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks from proven model
Sports

Toledo vs. Sacramento State prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks from proven model

SportsLine's model revealed its best bets for Wednesday's MACtion between the Toledo Rockets vs. Sacramento State Hornets on CBS Sports Network

World

Trump admits Iran war hurt Republican vote, vows to veto ‘insane’ bills

US President Donald Trump has admitted that the war on Iran contributed to Republican losses in the midterm elections.

AI won’t end developer jobs
Business

AI won’t end developer jobs

I’ve known hundreds of software developers during my career in financial services. Maybe even thousands. What nearly all of them share is the pride and respect they have for the craft. Good code takes time, discipline, and judgment. So, what happens now that AI can generate working code in seconds and then test it, fix it, and deploy it? Many are asking if the coding profession is on borrowed time. But that framing misses what’s changing and why. History tells us that when building beco

South Korean TV drama production at risk of collapse, industry groups warn
Culture

South Korean TV drama production at risk of collapse, industry groups warn

SEOUL —Twelve South Korean industry groups urged the government on Wednesday (Nov 4) to invest in and support production of Korean television dramas, known as K-dramas, warning that the country's production base risked collapse.K-dramas have been hugely popular globally, but the number produced has

AI

TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Doors open at 9 a.m. ET in Boston

Today is the day to join TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 in Boston's SoWa Power Station. Register now to join this founder-focused conference today.

Technology

DreamX: Video Diffusion Model is a Universal Latent Action Learner

Learning a universal action representation from video requires modeling dynamics that are consistent across different executions of the same action yet invariant to changes in embodiment and appearance. Existing latent action models infer actions from visual transitions, but their representations often entangle the underlying action with irrelevant visual variations, limiting transfer across embodiments. We introduce DreamX, which repurposes a pretrained video diffusion model as a universal late

Air pollution: Indian capital Delhi's air quality worsens ahead of Diwali festival
Science

Air pollution: Indian capital Delhi's air quality worsens ahead of Diwali festival

On Wednesday morning, Delhi's air quality index reading was at 377, in the "very poor" category.

Health

Empirical Bayes Flow Matching for Continuous Cryo-EM Heterogeneity

We address the problem of learning generative priors over high-dimensional latent variables from indirect, noisy observations, with a focus on continuous heterogeneity in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). In this setting, 3D atomic structures $x \in \mathbb{R}^{3N_a}$ are never directly observed and must be inferred from 2D projection images $y$ generated by a complex, non-linear forward operator. We propose Empirical Bayes Flow Matching (EB-FM), a method that learns a flow matching prior $p_θ

Central Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks by proven model
Sports

Central Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan prediction, odds, time: Week 10 MACtion picks by proven model

SportsLine's model revealed its best bets for Wednesday's Mid-American Conference college football matchup of the Central Michigan Chippewas vs. Eastern Michigan Eagles

World

Iran hails US voters rejecting war while Khamenei warns hostility won’t end

Iranian officials see Republican midterm losses in a positive light, but supreme leader says US policy will not shift.

Markets rise, but SpaceX and Tesla stocks fall, after Dems take back the House and Senate. Here’s why
Business

Markets rise, but SpaceX and Tesla stocks fall, after Dems take back the House and Senate. Here’s why

There’s no two ways about it: Yesterday’s midterm election results were nothing short of a massive victory for the Democrats (a “blue tsunami,” indeed). The Democrats will now control both chambers of Congress by a wide margin, radically altering the balance of power in Washington. While change brings uncertainty—and no one likes uncertainty less than investors—stock markets have so far reacted positively to the news. As of the time of this writing, S&P futures are up more than 1%, Do

Emmerdale airs explosive Joe Tate and Caleb Miligan confrontation in early ITVX release
Culture

Emmerdale airs explosive Joe Tate and Caleb Miligan confrontation in early ITVX release

Warning: Contains spoilers for Wednesday's episode of Emmerdale, which airs at 8pm on ITV1 or can be streamed now on ITVX.